Tag Archives: blog

The Blog-Off Begins

Welcome, everyone, to the first Blog-Off for Babies, a competition between eight different bloggers to win some cash prizes and raise some money for the March of Dimes charity.   We have a great group of people and blogs assembled and this should be a complete ton of fun.    For details on the competition rules and schedule, read this post.

Today is the first day of the blog-off and the first topic is being given out, which I’ll mention in a bit, but first I thought I’d introduce the participants to you, the readers, so you can get to know them a bit.   If you’ll notice, on the left-hand side of this blog there is now a “Blog-Off” section with links to each of the blogs involved so you can easily click over and read each of their entries.

The Participants

Joining in the Fun

Just because you aren’t one of the bloggers in the competition doesn’t mean you can’t participate!   Feel free to follow along, read all the entries, and comment on them.   We bloggers LOVE comments and especially when you’re doing a blog-off, comments help you gauge how you did on the topic given.    So chime in!

Week 1 Topic:

And now the moment you’ve all been waiting for — the first topic.   Here goes!

Topic: Oprah has popularized the phrase, “Best Life” with a series of shows centered around so-called “experts” talking about how to have, “the best life”.    What is your definition of a “best life” and how do you think you are — or are not — fulfilling your conception of it?

There ya go!   Your topic for the week.    Entries are due by the end of July 7th (Tuesday); voting can begin on Wednesday through Saturday night.     So get writing and have fun!

Hello, Fuel My Blog!

we_are_fuelmyblogSome weeks ago I did an interview with the blogging website, Fuel My Blog, and today the interview was posted!

So hello, anyone coming over from there — poke around a bit, see what you think!    For my regular readers, you can click here to read my interview and see how I did.   Check out FMB, they’re a pretty neat site with lots of interviews and blogging information!   Thanks for the interview, FMB!

Tweory (Twitter Theory)

Twho. Twho.

Twho. Twho.

I am really fazed and confused by the recent development on Twitter of everyone “auto-following” and sites that help you automatically gain OMG numbers of followers as long as you follow them all back.

Seriously, are you people BORED!?

I tweet, of course — you can click on the “T” icon on the upper right to see my stream and/or follow me if you like, but I try to hold that which I transmit to the masses to a dull roar, and if I can, keep it to something interesting. I’m not about to tell you every time I use a Kleenex because, frankly, you probably don’t givashit. And if you do, you’re creeping me out. Shoo.

I use TwitterFox for watching my own stream of followees, but I keep it trimmed down to a short, scrubby brush. If you follow me and I don’t follow you back, or only do so for a little while, it means you’re not interesting enough to bother with. Don’t take it personally, but I have enough updates to watch without hearing about how incredibly sore the third pimple on your left buttcheek is. It’s not that I don’t care — I just…don’t care.

Have you seen my Tweets?

Have you seen my Tweets?

The other part is this: I have a limited number of CPU cycles in my brain that can do something during the day, and most of those are already taken up by work, family, Facebook, personal projects, and daydreaming about a very frightened and bikinied Julia Stiles. Twitter has to slip itself in there somewhere, and if it’s inserting junk, that’s just going to gum up my gears. Not a pretty sight.

That being said, there’s a good deal of Tweeps that add and enhance my life. Here’s a brief list of those folks I follow who are truly amusing and/or informative. You might find them likewise, or they might strike you as a step above goring your own liver out with a swizzle stick. Different strokes.

  • McCainBlogette – Meghan McCain, someone I’ll go into more later, but a fun-sounding gal, despite the political affiliation
  • Slashdot – Keeps me from having to read the webpage just to find the few stories I care about
  • wootshirt – A shirt a day of some odd incarnation
  • thatgirlonline – Caitlin Hill, TheHill88 on YouTube, social youth media at its quirkiness
  • planetmoney – NPR’s Planet Money, covering everything financial in real-world terms
  • dooce – Mmm….psycho mommy. Heart!
  • blurb – Dooce’s husband, an enigma into himself
  • DMRegister – The Des Moines Register, Iowa news
  • MarsRovers and CassiniSaturn – Because who doesn’t want to know all the sordid details of space probes?
  • richardbranson – Mostly self-promoting, but hey…it’s some dude in a wild haircut who is richer than sin. That’s kinda neat.
  • BrentSpiner – All the famous characters revealed in the man himself
  • levarburton – Butterflies in the sky, they can tweet twice as high
  • ComputerGeeks – Great deals on tech stuff from ComputerGeeks (geeks.com)
  • wilw – Wil Wheaton’s random timelines of thinking
  • BreakingNewz – The AP’s twitter feed for new news stories
  • DellOutlet – Deals from Dell on whatever’s on sale that day
  • thewino – Kris is inspiring to everyone, except those too dumb to read their way through her awesome writings

There’s more, of course — I’m following 93 people as of this writing — so don’t feel bad if you got left out (feel free to leave a link to yours in the commentary). Or check out my Twitter page to see who I all follow.

So….do you tweet? If so, why? If not, why not? And who do you like the best to follow if you do?

Relevant Geek

I have finally released my new blog to the wild — Relevant Geek!

For a long time I’ve wanted to have a technical blog, one that concentrates mainly on computer programming, system administration, and so forth so I have a venue to share my knowledge and code snippets with the rest of the Internet.    Now I have one.

If you are of the technical inclination, stop on by and sign up for the RSS feed.    If you’re not technically-inclined, you’re bound to find it pretty dull and gibberish-y.    That’s ok…we’re not all computer programmers.    But if you are, you might find it useful.

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