Blogging Promotion

Hey, new blog, and second of the day. I was reading one of the top blogs on Technorati, and it actually contained a blog mentioning how to improve the quality and readership of one’s blog. One of the tips was to keeping blogs shorter and more focused, one thing I am guilty of not doing. So here we are, trying to put these ideas into practice, and here’s the seperate blog to go with it lol.

Another idea was to link to other people’s blogs, so I’m starting a call to the masses: If you want your blog to be linked from here, contact me, and that goes for both friends and strangers. To my friends, you know the correct channels of contact, and to strangers, don’t hesitate to mail me – I’m not sure if I have put up contact details on here, but if I have, then power to you stranger, and if I like your blog, then I will happily link it, and probably become an avid fan and follower of it :D.

When I get round to uploading this later this eve no doubt, I should link the article. And here it is – quite a smart blog, it may ahve to be one for the future. Another pointer was to maintain very good, or more accuractely correct grammar in your blog. I think I mostly achieve this, although there is no doubt a few spelling mistakes from the frenetic pace of my touch typing, plus grammar is fine except if I type the shorthand “ppl” or drop into the kind of typing that I usually reserve for the chat channels for WoW – i.e. slightly broken english with just enough information in the sentence to illustrate the main point, or lots of terminology, which is always a good thing :D.

I don’t think it’s wise for this newly adopted blog etiquette that I start waffling about something else. Saying that, the monkey guy read my last post about geeks which was a tiny bit lengthy which reminds me I need to ask the guy how he stumbled onto my blog. Also he commented that I could be the first geek stud, which is my bad cos the Japanorama programme mentioning how thanks to the Otaku movement gaining momentum, some of the more outgoing ones have decided to enjoy the spoils of this newly found fame, so actually there exist a good number of geek studs out there.

“Hey, do you wanna IM later?”
“I’m IEEE standards complaint, if you know what I mean?!”

Take it Easy
J-Man.

Earning as you blog, an interesting concept…

Hey peeps, it’s blogging time again, and I finally uploaded some of the backlog onto the site. I’ve added a few things as I’ve already mentioned earlier, and I reckon it’s looking quite spiffy so far. I have even got a comment from a monkey! Well Ape to be precise, but monkey is a funnier word. Although I will take this moment now to break the dream and say that the guy isn’t an ape much to your and his dismay probably – to quote Stewie “It’s fun to pretend”.

Moving on, and every couple of months or so, I get excited by the idea of paid blogging, or more accurately blogging and receiving money thanks to placing Ads on your site. There is fact a blog dedicated to promoting the idea of achieving a respectable income from blogging – Problogger.net if I have remembered the address. Most of this income comes from ad clicks generated by visitors to your blog as I just mentioned, but some more extreme ideas come in the form of being sponsored for blogging on particular subjects. I found a semi-old post on a WoW fansite, it may have even been theinstance.net, but it mentioned that the site WowInsider were looking for people to blog about aspects on the game and get paid for it. This sounded a tempting prospect, but I’m not in a good position to do this as I’m not supremely interested in the Lore aspect, and my raiding experience is minimal, and despite putting in a healthy (read: unhealthy) number of hours, I still don’t feel quite expert on it.

I have actually already signed up for an adsense account so when that gets sorted, I will have google ads on my new blog, despite me not feeling 100% comfortable with trying to force products and/or services at people.

I can’t go without saying that if anyone out there wants to sponsor me to blog about any particular subjects, am I prepared to throw in my 2 cents. Like when I started the participation in stumbling with StumbleUpon, there is a possibility of being sponsored to “stumble”. This idea intrigued me, so I wrote a quikc sponsorship blurb, but there were so many “asking” for sponsorship giving quite lame and uninspiring reasons like “I need the money, I’m broke!”. I tried to make mine as witty as possible, but I’ve heard nothing since writing it lol.

Don’t forget to tip your geek… [Dated 24/04/07]

Hey, a short post this time as I have been shopping for a card for my Mum’s upcoming birthday. Anyways enough of that…

For some reason I got thinking about how I introduce myself to other people, and how people define themselves. I like to think there are two quite, well almost distinct halves to me, them being Jonathan and Jonny, everyone’s friend lol.

Not to dig up the Becca thing again, but I think she is actually the only girl I’ve met who has done a different reaction to me telling me that I do/did Computer Science. Generally girls I meet who ask what I was doing for a degree, and I reply Computer Science, and they would all go, “oh” and go colder to what was before a warming prospect of friendship etc. Becca actually replied “Oh, like what Rob does”, when I told her after she asked many a year back, but I dunno, maybe girls hearing that draw the same conclusion that I must be a geek, and that is a bad thing. That saying I am a geek, but I don’t like the way it is considered a negative thing.

Geeks are responsible for any piece of technology that we use today, and jock types/geek haters should actually realise that and be thankful for the time these “uncool” people dedicated to exploring what was possible. The internet, the vessel you use to send you horrible, gut-inducing chain mails, “send this to 8 people NOW, or you maye die! etc” to all your stupid friends, was created by University boffins trying to get two seperate computers to send messages to each other.

I remember back when I was an avid user of StumbleUpon, (great addon for FF if you use it, get it you will not be sorry), I found a few articles and the like where it was saying the benefits of dating a geek, and I quite excited about that, but that train of thought has not broke through into the mainstream just yet.
Thanks to watching the bizarre Japanorama, there is a buzzing sub-culture of Otakus,or geeks/nerds, that are finally being appreciated, and heck it sounds very tempting to be part of that movement. Also the word Moe (pronounced Mo-ay) is rather smart. The Japanese have given a word to a pleasure moan if you like – it was something I immediately wanted to force into my everyday vocabulary.

Speaking more broadly, I often get frustrated at how much imprortance is placed on money, and how effectively you need it to do anything basically. I am quite sick of the life I’m living right now, I’d love to uproot myself, move somewhere else, do something new and exciting, but that all takes money which I don’t have to a degree.

Moving back to something lighter, I’ve started rewatching the entirity of the Shield in preparation for the new season, season 6. There’s a few shows that have started new seasons, Scrubs, Lost, Prison Break, 24, and I’m a little behind so I need to sort out some kind of schedule so I can watch them all, rather than blitzing them seperately. Oh my I forgot, the Stargate shows as well, oh my, that’s 7 seperate shows, and I might even wanna watch some more Drew carey Show, as watched season 1, and it’s not too bad, although Drew is a weird frontman for a show.

Time to wrap up, day off tomorrow, so some overdue tidying in store, both physically in my room, and files on the PC, so that should be fun. As someone said at work yesterday, “days off aren’t really days off, cos then I’m just busy at home”. Once again reminding me how little I want to do the whole 9-5 thing, just to chase some money to buy a few things to make me happy, and then savior the few days off I get, which would then be spent sorting out personal life. Man I can’t wait to join the Rat Race, seeya there!

Take it easy
J-Man.

Charity begins at the Record Store… [Dated 23/04/07]

Hey, slightly old topic, but last week, the Wright Stuff raised the issue of the usefulness of big Charity Concerts what with one coming up to raise funds and awareness about global warming. This concert follows the historical Live Aid, and the ones that spawned off that, like Live 8 recently.

They came to the conclusion that not much awareness is raised, generally ppl go to see their fave bands etc, and well money is raised, which is one good thing, but it’s almost subtle charity as the crowds haven’t bought the ticket for the cause but rather the chance to see their bands/groups/musical artists that they like. They raised the point that ppl will only remember the bands they saw, rather that the good work they did raising money for the cause of the day. They also raised the point, that unless the charity event is grossly publicised celebrities don’t want to be part of it. Once again further proving that their is no such thing as a selfless act, as the celebrities are only interested if they can make a PR gain.

Now, I’m not attacking those that give a lot to charity, I’m sure your efforts are appreciated, but for a lot of people, charity is buying a charity single for Red Nose Day or Comic Relief etc. I guess the point I’m trying to make is it’s not really charity if the donation has to be forced out of you by purchasing a single or a red nose etc. Also, the people that patrol the pedestrian areas of city/town shopping centres are also ppl trying to convince you to part with your money for a good cause. To stand and wait, and then chase you down as you walk past, making everyone feel uncomfortable hardly seems charitable. You can actually see clear paths forming as ppl make wide arcs to avoid being harassed.

As I’ve probs blogged before, in conversation with my Nan, we got chatting about the ease on which our country, along with many others, gave aid for the tsunami disaster. Now i’m not saying it’s not a tragedy, but again agreeing with a point raised on the Wright stuff about these charity concerts, that maybe aid should be given to those suffering in our own country. They went on to say how celebrities are only too happy to do the trendy charity thing, and go help out a village of children in Africa.

Moving onto something lighter, and again conversing with my Nan, and someone she knew who came out of Uni wanted to do Law, to which she approached a number of solicitors. They rejected her applications, saying that she should do some volunteer work to help boost her CV. That is pretty sick, that you she should perform tokens of goodwill volunteering, for the sole purpose of boosting her career oppurtunities. I’m sure if she did some volunteer work, that she would feel good doing her bit, helping out people. Maybe i’m losing focus, but I’ve argued in the past, that there is no such thing as a selfless act. It’s very difficult to prove, and people try to come up with instances where such a thing exists but I am sceptical. I guess with doing the volunteer work that ppl want to receive recognition for the good work that they do, I know I do. Thinking back to my time spent at Uni, and I had the oppurtunity to join Warwck volunteers. Again, I’m sure a lot fo ppl did this to bolster their CV, and also satisfy this feeling of needing to help, and that’s fair enough. But that should be enough, but people can, and did advertise the fact that they spared some of their time by wearing clothes with the Warwick Volunteers logo.

On a tangent, I have still not uploaded these blog posts to the intermaweb – last night I got caught up trying to get videos and the like to stream to the 360 with questionable success. the problem lies in that the 360 can only play wmv files thanks to the Microsoft machine. That means either converting my video files to wmv, or as I started to investigate the problem deeper, use thrid party software to transcode the videos “on-the-fly”. I will look into that a bit more, but I used this encoder program to turn a video into a mpeg which teh 360 can read, but when playing the video on the 360, it seems incredibly laggy, missing whole chunks of video at times, making it unwatchable. IT’s weird cos I have a dedicated line between the 360 and my PC, so their shouldn’t be any traffic on it, plus when configuring Media Center, one of the tests concluded that the network speed of the connection was sufficient to stream to the 360.

We’ll see, but in more important news, I should find out if I have an interview with Midland Computers in Telford, I’d like to think they would at least consider me and give me an interview so fingers crossed.

No Topic :S [Dated 20/04/07]

Hey again, and welcome back to the library, the liviest place in town! Anyways enough of that, down to business lol.

I think this is the first time since resssurecting this blog that I’ve started blogging without a clear topic to start with, so this will probably be a bit of a rant.

To kick things off, I moaned in the last blog about Carl’s friend, and how I prefer to walk home from the train station on my own, well I must have jinxed it or something, cos thanks to a kid who hopefully had tourettes on the train, she felt like venting towards me. Just like when I bump into this guy Matt who works weekends, I don’t actually say much, he like Carl’s friends just like talk. I do wish sometimes that I can just switch off and just drop into a daydream while they yap, but alas no luck yet – if it happens enough, I could probably tune it out with practice.

speaking of trains lol, the other week I bumped into an old friend, well not really more acquaintance – a guy I knew back from Secondary School. We called him Seggar, as it was his last name, and well that the was the lazy nickname of choice at our school, I’m sure it was at yours too. Anyways, I hadn’t seen him since college most likely, so the last heard he had become a chef, so that’s what I told him.

He told me that he still was, and had recently moved back up from london where he did a stint of cheffing down there. As it turns out, he has a child, omg. I hid my suprise pretty well I thought, but fair play to the guy. This is a guy, who probs by his own omission is a large guy, but he found a partner (his word, not mine :s) and they had a child, but were not seperated. He had allowed custody to fall to the mother cos well he said that a child can’t be without their mother plus he then took the job down london. Anyways, he moved back to be closer to his offspring, and he was moaning that he had him more than his mother recently. He then went on to say, that he could easily get custody of the child, as he is in a stable full-time job, and she is, to paraphrase Seggar, on benefits, and always getting lashed everynight.
It’s quite scary that Seggar has a child firstly, and that he is actually the more stable of the parents. I dunno, I mean fair play to him, I probably suffering a little from Peter Pan syndrome, not wanting to grow up, and the idea of being a father is a scary one.

Once upon a time, I was quite pumped at the idea of being a daddy, obviously sometime in the future, not like next week lol. But reading and seeing all these stories about raising children, and how this generation seem to be the most awful parents – problems with junk food, obesity, paedophiles, it’s a scary world.
I also was quite happy at the idea of getting married one day, but in today’s society, it hardly seems worth it, what with about half of them ending in divorce. Maybe I’m seeing the extreme end of the spectrum thanks to daytime talkshows, but unless I’m wearing some rose-tinted glasses, standing at the alter reaidng my vows on how I will love this woman forever, I’m not sure I would believe it. But then again I’m a cynic, pessimist, call it whatever…

Maybe it’s an idea to move on to something a bit more upbeat. I have purchased Guitar Hero for the 360, a week or two ago, and it’s pro. I’ve hot a bit of a wall so far, playing through on hard. I was stuck for ages on Wolfmother’s Woman, the solo was killing me, I kept failing, but I eventually managed to crawl through. Saying that, in the next group of songs, The Police’s message in a bottle is much easier, so a little upset that the balance of the difficulty isn’t quite perfect. It’s a lot of fun with my shiny Explorer guitar, and thanks to good ol’ Claudio also possessing one, I’d actually really like to own my own explorer one day, but a quick check on the internet at prices, and oh my are they expensive :S
It’s quite bad in a way, cos my actually RL guitar playing has been slipping, and I’m simply not practicing as much as I’d like, it seems there aren’t enough hours in the day. Finally bringing work into the picture, and the 4 hours I am there are incredibly boring and tedious, there are times when I’ve looked at the time, and thought “shit, I haven’t even been here 2 hours!” :(. It also is pretty sucky, that thanks to the train timetable, I spend about 7 hours out of the house for 4 hours of work, which thinking about it, it’s pretty lame, I almost feel sick at it.

There’s a possiblity of a job in Telford as a web programmer, but I’m trying to not get over excited about it. I sent off my Cv etc and should know next week if I have an interview, which hopefully I should. Again with the few hours in the day, thanks to spending 7 hours away for 4 hours of work, I never feel like doing anything constructive when I get back in. Cos I haven’t done much programming at all really since leaving Uni, it would seem wise, to start getting back into that frame of mind, in preparation for this potential interview, but most of the time, I end up thinking, meh.

To sum up, moan moan for 4 paragrpahs and relax… Nah, but seriously, the hope is that it’s healthy to vent like this but I’ve been doing this kind of stuff for some years now, and well i’m not sure if it’s working. Looking not too far forward, I was chatting with Eric on the msn last night, and he and Karlie are coming into Wem, the only reason being to hang out it seems so far, and we’re going for a few drinks this eve, so that should be alright. It seems a bit of a highlight of this week so far *sob lol. Also, can you believe that Eric reckoned I should hookup with Carl’s friend, until I explained her unattractive qualities which I cba to list here. And before ppl turn round and say that’s harsh to put it like that, as Wilson convinced me, we can’t help who we are attracted to, so I’ve learnt not to feel bad if I am only attracted to stunning model types and not ugos. I’m kidding, it’s not quite that extreme, but I can’t help who i think is attractive or not, so thanks to Wilson for convincing me of that.

Until next time, take it easy.
J-Man.