I don’t have a list of these books, but I should. When I was in the seventh grade, I was given a stack of old sci fi mags that had a profound effect on me. They were poorly written, or so I thought-I could do better than that. I believe that it is this very thought that drives all writers to start writing. I can do better than that. But once you start doing so serious reading, you find a lot of stuff that you can’t do better than-Moby Dick springs to mind, and Pride and Prejudice. But even the…
Category: blogging
Information overload
Information overload refers to the state of having too much information to make a decision or remain informed about a topic. It is often referred to in conjunction with various forms of Computer-mediated communication such as e-mail and the Web. The term was coined in 1970 by Alvin Toffler in his book Future Shock. Wikipedia Writing a trendy blog means that the whole world is open as potential material for an article. Since it can be about anything, it is generally about nothing. I have blogged about sports, politics, entertainment, tv, movies, science, photography, writing and the everyday odds and…
A bit of time with the Next Blog Button
Back in the dark ages, a few months ago, I used to look for blogs with the Blogger Next Blog Button. You rarely found anything interesting as it is so random that you had to rely on karma to find a good blog. But it was a fun way to while away the odd hour. Then I found Google Blog Search, Blogcatalog, Entrecard, and DoFollo, all much better at helping me find blogs I might like and want to leave comments on. Blogcatalog and Entrecard have their own little groups of Power Users who appear to be everywhere on those…
Do You Have A Real Job?
Get a haircut and get a real jobClean your act up and don’t be a slobGet it together like your big brother BobWhy don’t you get a haircut and get a real job? George Thorogood I have always wanted to be a writer, but have never had the patience for it. Which, of course, means that I don’t really want to be a writer-right? Sitting down and banging out that thousand words a day would be easier than being a portrait photographer, wouldn’t it? There is something to be said for the old days when you were told what you…
Comments? We Don’t Need No Stinken Comments
“First.” “first” “First!” Top comments on most popular blogs-Little Green Footballs has banned this silly and pointless practice. I wrote a blog post on Altered States of Consciousness and this post got around 13000 hits. For me this is the current record. I know, small potatoes for the Perez Hiltons and Boing Boings of the world. This story was on the front page of FARK. It got a handful of Diggs. It even got a few random Googlers looking at it. So, how many comments did I get from these 13000 or so visitors? On my blog, I got 5…
When Fish Fly-On Becoming World Famous
Reviewed by the World Famous If You Write It Blog During a recent meeting our Boss asked us-How many of you want to work here next year? One person out of ten raised their hand. There is a lot of money here, just not for us. There is a lot of hard work and a lot of long hours-that is for us. As with most companies, the front line people, the ones that the actual customers get to interact with-are the ones that get paid the least and have the least reason to make a good impression. The Home Office…
Hitting The Front Page on FARK
It’s now News, It’s FARK. Last July I started working on ways to get traffic to my blog. I did the SEO stuff of tweaking Meta Tags, hitting the keywords, working on getting listed here, there and everywhere. I followed, as best as I could, that standard bit of advise about good content. I write everyday and usually try to tie it to something current. So far as I can tell, none of that has anything to do with getting on the front page of FARK. FARK is different from Digg and Reddit, in that there are no buttons to…
Google Pagerank and the Odd Blogger
I mean odd as in random, but well, also as in strange. My latest timesink has been a site called Blogcatalog, which is a place for bloggers with nothing better to do to hang out and talk about life, the universe, and everything. Here are bloggers that blog for the love of writing, bloggers that want to get rich with Adsense, bloggers that saw the word blog somewhere and thought, hey, I wanna do that! Pagerank is how Google keeps score of the internet. Their page on Pagerank has a PR of 7 out of 10. Adobe has a pagerank…
An Anti-Social Blogger Speaks
I made this image using a Poser Figure in Bryce, she looks a bit lonely, don’t you think? It is easy to blog in a vacuum. You look at Google Trends or Yahoo Buzz and crank out a post about whatever nonsense is going on in the world at the moment. Following this model has gotten me most of my traffic over the past few months. Want traffic? Blog about Vanessa Anne Hudgens. Really. My highest viewed post is about the naked Vanessa Anne Hudgens photos. I really should delete it, the yahoos who stop by don’t care what I…
Top Ten Blogs by Famous People
The Rich and Famous love to blog as much as the rest of us do. Some even more so. I have often been shocked and amazed at people who have blogs. There are hundreds of writers that have blogs. Many of these writers I have never heard of, but it still boggles the mind that they spent time working on a blog rather than working a book. One of the cool things about blogs is that they are easy to start. Just a few clicks and Bam! you have a blog. But then there is all that stuff that follows…