Kalong’s Pick of the Day #5
September 4, 2008 | 0 Comments
So interesting things continue to happen as a result of the August Blog-O-Rama. First my website viewers goes up significantly and then I discover what blogging is all about. Yesterday I was featured on Kalong’s Pick of the Day. Kalong is one of the wonderful people behind the very cool Strands, which I’ve mentioned before. Check it out:
In case you’re wondering what the salt comment is all about, it’s from something I said on Twitter. She picked up on it and, well, there you go.
Thanks kalong!
End of the Journey
August 31, 2008 | 0 Comments
Well, here we are, the end of the journey. It’s been 31 days since I started the Blog-O-Rama Challenge and it’s finally come to an end. As crazy as it sounds, there was something posted every single day in the month of August. Sure, everything (and I do mean everything) was written at least a day before it was posted, but the fact remains that it was written and it was posted.
Going into this I thought it would be a pretty tall order and that, should creativity run out, I could always post a link to an interesting find on the internet with a snarky comment, sort of what Gruber does. Of course he posts a half dozen a day, intermixed with his content, but he makes money off the deal. Either way, I didn’t end up doing that. Sure, I posted some links and some snarky comments, but everything was — in my mind — solid content. This was a big surprise.
Will I do this again? Yeah, maybe. We’ll see what happens and if the mood to delve fully into mindlessness and creativity strikes. What I think will happen, almost immediately, is the frequency of posting will increase. It’ll be pretty hard to go from sometimes writing four posts a day (which I did) back to zero. But who knows. I am lazy so there’s always that.
What was your favorite post during the Blog-O-Rama Challenge? Let me know in the comments below.
An Award and an Answer
August 22, 2008 | 3 Comments
The other day I noticed that fellow blogger and Twitterer Oh My Seven decided that I deserved this sweet little token of appreciation:
Yeah, it’s pretty cool. Now, after reading her blog post a second time — it was all about me the first time — I realized that Seven had given it to three bloggers (myself included) and her brother had given it to four (Seven included). Here comes the problem. I don’t really know who to pass it on to. You see, because of this award I realized why I’m such a bad blogger: I don’t read other blogs.
I mean, sure, I read a ton of topical blogs — things like Destructiod, MacUser, and TV Squad — but I don’t really read people’s personal blogs. It’s not really that I’m too self absorbed to be concerned with other peoples lives (maybe it is, what do I know?), it’s really that I find it odd reading about other peoples daily lives. It seems a bit invasion of privacyish — which is why I don’t really talk at all about my own life here. It’s all observations and topical things, because that’s what I read and find interesting.
It’s funny. You see, back in April I asked what blogging is all about. Who would have thought that my August Blog-O-Rama challenge would bring that answer. Warning: introspective content ahead.
For me, blogging is all about topical issues and not about life events. Life events are private things that don’t really need to be shared with the whole world. I call this site Mindless Chatter because it’s my incoherent ramblings about topics that interest me. It’s why you’ll find plenty of posts about Apple and not many about what I did yesterday. It all makes sense now.
But this touchy feelly crap doesn’t get me out of passing this award along. No, that’d be too easy. Instead, I’m going to pass it onto two topical blogs that I do read and enjoy that aren’t owned by a giant media conglomerate (since Seven’s brother went with four and Seven went with three, I figure I’m supposed to give it to two):
Two Slashes
Two Slashes is written by Nick Tabick and is basically his views on tech related issues. They are always interesting and I find myself commenting more there then anywhere else on the interwebs.
Hummer Guy
Hummer Guy is written by Brian Dooley, my college roommate. It’s about, you guessed it, Hummers: industry trends, new products, racing, everything. I don’t know how Brian gets all his information and it’s possible I don’t want to know, but it’s well written and deserving of a read — if you’re into Hummers of course.
So there you go. It was a long road to get to the point where I could share the award with others, but I learned something along the way. Did you? What defines a good blog to you? Topics, personal stories, jokes? Let me know in the comments.
August Blog-O-Rama Halfway Point
August 15, 2008 | 0 Comments
Two weeks ago I started the Blog-O-Rama Challenge. So far I’ve actually been able to post some form of new content every single day. Granted, all of it is written a few days prior to it actually posting, but it’s still daily content. In fact, before the Blog-O-Rama began it took nearly three months to see fifteen posts. Since August 1 there have, obviously, been fifteen posts. That’s a big difference.
I’ve noticed a few other big differences that I actually didn’t count on before starting this project. Namely traffic. There has been a large increase in visitors here and in turn, comments left on posts. I guess it shows that new and interesting content breeds activity and conversation. If I cared about trying to make money off this site then that’d be good to know. But I don’t. I’m not undertaking the Blog-O-Rama challenge to pimp my stats or try and become one of the blogging elite, it’s just an interesting result.
Another interesting thing I’ve noticed is that I talk about Twitter an awful lot. Of the first fifteen posts in the Blog-O-Rama, nearly a third of them are carrying the Twitter tag. Considering prior to August 1 I had only tagged three posts with Twitter, that’s a large number. I have also ranted twice. I haven’t ranted in, well, who knows how long (I cleared out the Rants category at some point for some unknown reason). Back in the sites heyday I ranted a lot. It was fun. Perhaps there will be more ranting in the future.
So far the Blog-O-Rama experience has been pretty good. It’s been challenging to come up with interesting topics to cover and fun to actually cover those topics. The second half is going to be much more difficult though. When this posts (I’m writing this on the 10th) I will be out of town for the weekend and will be leaving at the end of the month for PAX. So the challenge will be to create enough content to cover these days while I’m away. But that’s why I’m calling this the Blog-O-Rama Challenge. Alright, enough rambling. I’m going to bed.
August Blog-o-Rama!
August 1, 2008 | 2 Comments
If you follow this site with any amount of consistency then you know the one thing this site lacks is consistency. I’m kind of a slacker when it comes to blogging and only post stuff when things strike me. The Celebrity Playlist was the first time I had ever even thought about using WordPress’ scheduling ability to write a post for future publication. You could say it opened my eyes — sort of.
I’ve decided to take on a challenge, a challenge that there really isn’t a reward for (at least of the top of my head). I’m going to post something every single day in the month of August. Sure, it’s not quite a Blog365 challenge, but it’s a start. Maybe this will get me to start thinking about things to put on here and get some pretty cool content — either that or it’ll fail miserably and I’ll end up posting a months worth of links I found via NetNewsWire. We’ll see. Then of course I could get horrible behind and completely fail the challenge all together. One thing’s for sure, if I end up going down I’m going down in flames — there won’t be any backdating going on here.
So I guess sit back and enjoy the ride. It should be pretty interesting. If you’ve got something you think I should cover, the comments would be a good place to let me know. After all, I’ve got a lot of blank dates to fill.