The Week in Walks, etc. Vol 10

Note: Like last week, I'm posting this before the Sunday walk. Check back in about 3 hours for the Sunday walk write-up and the In Other News section...

Monday, 24th September

Looking back towards the parking lot of the park from the road leading to the entrance/exit.

It was a warmer day, and I made a really bad decision. I went out of the park and around the long way, up the road that I go under to get to the park. That led to me having to slide down a big hill very slowly. Not an experience I'm going to be repeating anytime soon, unless I want to take a really long walk.

Total distance - 11324 steps, 9.05km

Tuesday, 25th September

Looking down a slide on the playground equipment? Wanna go down it? ;)

I walked just after the rain ended and got back just before it started raining very heavily. Quite good timing, I should think. Even the mosquitoes weren't too bad though their numbers did increase as I went along as it was still quite humid. Hopefully it will end soon and they will go away!

Total distance - 10418 steps, 8.33km

Wednesday, 26th September

A grab shot experiment - this is of the parking lot; I really liked the colors as they wound up in this picture. :)

I really cheated today. I was making good time when I started walking, but due to some conflicting events (such as needing to head to the grocery store to visit the bank before a specific time), I wound up only walking halfway back home until I was picked up. I decided to then make up the rest of the way to 10000 steps by doing some walking around the house. ;)

Total distance - 10337 steps, 8.26km

Thursday, 27th September

An anvil cloud forms to the north of the park; I don't know if it actually caused any rain though.

It was another wet day, this time with thunderstorms in the area, but I waited it out until the rain stopped. Just to be sure, I took the umbrella with me, and that was good since just as I was walking out of the park, a light shower started which lasted for maybe 30 seconds.

Total distance - 11230 steps, 8.98km

Friday, 28th September

A bit of a time lapse look at some bugs flying around alongside the road. I decided to go around them ;)

Again, being Friday, I decided to repeat the keeping track of my steps during the day while at volunteering. I walked in the evening using the white light and it worked actually quite decently, better than I would have expected.

Distances -
10.13am (after walking to volunteering and working for a couple of hours) - 1403 steps, 1.12km
3.35pm (after volunteering) - 1651 steps, 1.32km
6.15pm (after getting home and before walking - 4433 steps, 3.54km
8.20pm (after walking) - 13354 steps, 10.68km
end of day - 13560 steps, 10.84km

Saturday, 29th September

A 30-second timelapse looking towards the southwest. The purple light is actually a combination of the white and red lights on my headband.

I went to walk late in the day again, just because I still have time management issues. It's something that I desperately need to work on. Anyway, as I was walking, I spotted what I thought was lightning in the southwestern sky, but I think now it was just a camera's flash, as it only happened a couple of times, and wasn't followed up by thunder. I continued on though and it never did rain.

Total distance - 11446 steps, 9.15km

Sunday, 30th September

A woodpecker goes to work on a tree. (I'm having problems with the image showing up, so it might not appear for you...)

Today's walk was a bit different because I decided to break it into two distinct sections. I decided to get to the shelter that's at the park and then stop to do a bit of writing - it worked pretty good, I think because I don't have the distractions that I have on the computer available to me in the park. Hopefully, it will help me to focus on writing when I'm at the computer.

Total distance - 10752 steps, 8.60km
---

In other news, I'll be honest and say that it wasn't the greatest week with keeping on target with my goals. I'm still falling victim to temptations on the internet. As I mentioned, what actually worked was taking 15 minutes with a pencil and paper to sit and write in the park. I also fell down on the work with putting together a to-do list every day; I only admittedly made one on Thursday.

I've now purchased a very simple day planner (no fancy type on it that says "Day Planner" or "DayRunner®". Nope, this is just a $1.84 "assignment" notebook, with a line for the date on it; it's simple and, provided I make myself determined to actually stick with it, should work. I'm also taking advantage of a small egg timer I have here to help me with eliminating the distractions by allowing myself only to do them after doing something, and only for a short period of time (10-20 minutes).

The final GYST Update:

Has it been 4 weeks already? The time certainly seemed to fly. I've successfully made it to walking 10,000 steps every day this week; however, I am still around the 2-hour mark for my daily walks. I've gotten to the point now where I will walk in just about any conditions, including the dark of night, with the assistance of a headband flashlight.

However, this week, I've been bad with my eating by having junk food (really the first junk food that I've had for almost a month, but still it's bad) and doing a bit of overeating. It's a minor setback, but I feel that I'm ahead of where I was at the beginning of the month.

I still have issues with resolving the distraction issue I have, along with managing my time so that I can do everything I want to do in a day. I've invested in a small notebook which will be only for setting out tasks for me to do on the day, and am going to make use of a small egg timer that I have to put a limit on the time I take in pursuing my distractions, if they do arise.

I feel that I've made a start on the way to improving my life, but I know that there is still a long way to go for me to get to where I want to be. However, I know that I can make the changes, I just have to commit to them.

Looking for a place to chat?

Note: This post is a paid post

I've been active off and on in chat rooms for about nine years. Now, of course, there are other people who I know who have been around the chat scene ever since it started, but that's their story. ;)

There have been a lot of different ways of being in chat rooms, from the bare-bones IRC server networks, to one-on-one environments like ICQ and AIM, and then to Yahoo Instant Messenger which was one of the first chat clients to include a variety of chat rooms right there in the messenger client.

However, over the last couple of years, chat systems have moved away from separate, downloaded, programs to being able to chat right in your browser. One of the newer services out there that provides these free chat rooms is wireclub.com.

Interestingly, aside from a chat site, wireclub also provides a sort of "lonely hearts" club by letting you know if a member is there for just to chat, or if they're there to possibly start dating. Also, the site goes beyond just having chat, and into the web 2.0 world with the availability of clubs to join (literally everything from erotic discussions to almost any sport out there).

If you sign up, you will also be able to start a blog there, post photos of yourself in the gallery (which is only visible to registered members), participate in the forums, and of course, have access to the chat rooms.

For me, as a stats junkie, the most intriguing page on the site is the country listings, where they show profiles from the ten most active countries for the day. Not surprisingly, the most popular countries are the US and Canada, but usual suspects like India, Australia and the Philippines are there, but you also have three African countries represented today - Nigeria, Egypt and South Africa.

They've got a good setup going there, and the best part is that to use their services, you don't even need to have extra software - it's all based on javascript and html, no need to have Java running and taking up system resources.

If you're into chatting with new people online, have a go with wireclub - it's completely free and you might even meet some new friends there. :)

Zucchini Files, part 2

After making the Zucchini Bread last week, there was still an appreciable amount of shredded zucchini left. In fact, it almost completely filled up this container in the fridge -

That means only one thing - I have to find more things to do with the zucchini, other than just putting it into a shape that looks like bread. As it also happened, my mother took one of the loaves of bread into her work, and on Monday I received a thank you card from the person who's in charge of the office she works at.

The best thing about the card is that the reason it was sent was that they liked the bread and were apparently sending a message of "More, please" for me to make some more stuff to be brought in.

My latest experiment was to make the same recipe that I used for the bread, but I made the decision to halve the recipe because I wasn't totally sure on how it would work to use the bread recipe for muffins. Fortunately, almost everything converted neatly for halving - the only "oddball" measurement was the milk - 1/6th cup; no half eggs needed either. ;)

The batter all came together quickly this time, and I had some fun with the bowl while waiting for the oven to heat up - manually taking the spatula and creating a bit of centrifugal force causing the batter to go up the sides of the bowl.


Then I put the batter into a couple of muffin tins, chucked it into the oven for about 15 minutes, after which time it was all done. The half-recipe yielded 12 larger muffins and 9 mini muffins which made a nice pile when it was all done. Amazingly, we still have most of the muffins - one is enough for a nice snack. :)

Here are a couple more pictures -

The mini muffins ready for the oven

All the muffins made, piled up and ready to eat.

Another great album you've likely not heard of...

This week, we look at another of my all-time favorite jazz albums: Arturo Sandoval's Hot House. It's an album that I always depend on to allow me to focus on whatever it is I'm doing. In fact, of all the tracks I've played that have been transmitted to last.fm, Arturo comes in 7th overall.

The album is one of the first albums that I had bought on my own (as in I got it based on it appealing to me without having had a taste of it in the past). I've had it ever since May of 1999 when the school jazz band I was in for the year took a trip down to Chicago. One of the things that the trip involved was a visit to the Jazz Record Mart which was still at 444 N Wabash St (and no, I didn't need Google to remember that address ;)) at the time.

All this time later, I don't remember exactly what hooked me on buying the album, it might have been the color on the cover, with the pastels, though I seem to remember there being a sticker on the shrink wrap that said something about being a Grammy-award nominee or winner.

Anyway, whatever the reason I bought it, the album is still worth paying full price for.

If you don't know anything about Arturo, the important thing to know is that he is originally from Cuba, but has been a citizen since 1999. In fact, in 2000, HBO did a movie about him called For Love or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story. To this day, I have not seen the movie*, but from what I've heard, it was done really well.

I've actually had the chance to meet him in person. It was November of 1999, and we were attending a jazz clinic at a college up in Appleton. The first event we went to was a clinic and Q-and-A session he held for all the participants of the event. However, the bit that I still remember to this day was the concert.

He had flown in from Denver on that day, but thanks to some foul-ups in luggage, he didn't have his usual equipment with him. That didn't stop him from putting on an amazing show, with the major feature in the show being his performance of "Sandunga" where he did solos on just about every instrument available to him - the piano, trumpet, flügelhorn, drums, timbales, and even making rhythms on his stomach.

To top it off, some of us stuck around after the show and he came out to chat a little bit, while enjoying a cigar, and I was fortunate enough to have my copy of Hot House signed by him. Looking back, about the only thing that wasn't perfect was that I didn't have a camera with me, but I have my mental camera and I can still see the stage that he was on, and that's all I need.

But I do digress back to the topic at hand. Hot House is one of my favorite albums, partly because of the history I personally have with it, but also for the fact that the music is just great to listen to. Interestingly, in my Senior year in High School, we played two of the songs from the album, partly as a result of us petitioning the director to let us play them.

The album starts out with "Funky Cha-Cha" - I think that if every album started out like this one does, you'd have people enjoying music more, but you'd probably have a lot more deaf people because right out of the gate, you have a trumpet glissando up to an approximate high-C and a pop! sound. It's hard to describe in words what the song sounds like because of its just overall "poppiness". If you have a listen to the Amazon sample of the song, you will hear the first 30 seconds of it.

The second track, "Rhythm of Our World", is one of those songs that, for me, sets me in a good place. It starts out with the trumpet again, this time there's no popping, but rather a very smooth flow, with minimal backing from the piano. It is some of the cleanest playing you will ever hear, with just an amazing vibrato when a note is held. Luckily, this is one of the songs that you can listen to in its entirety on Arturo's official site - it's well worth the five minutes.

Both of these songs are the ones that we played in my Senior year. I didn't play the feature part on Rhythm, but I can tell you that the person who did play it gave it justice.

Then we head back into the driving jazz with the title track, "Hot House". It's in the style of almost power rock, but done with the Latin beat. Next up is the first of the two vocal songs on the album, "Only You (No Se Tú)". It's a love song performed in both English and Spanish; I don't remember exactly who the singer is, but she has a very rich voice that perfectly fits the role that is necessary for this song.

The fifth track is the aforementioned "Sandunga" - again, it's another powerful song, with a lot of the popping you find in Funky Cha-Cha. It features the late Tito Puente on the timbale, and some excellent solos by the house band. This is the other song from this album that is available in its entirety on Arturo's site, another five minutes well worth the time.

Next is the second voice track, simply titled "Tito". It's an homage to Tito Puente, sung in Spanish by Ray Ruiz, and again features Tito on the timbales. It's another excellent work that features lyrics such as this -

Para tocar al timbál
Tito tiene la llave
Si tú quieres aprender
Tienes el vida de saber

Translated:
To play the Timbal
Tito has the way(?)
If you want to learn
You have the life to know

Later on, the song goes on to say that he is the king of the timbál - which is a very true statement.

Up next is "Closely Dancing" (even though for some reason Amazon have dropped the C of the front...). This is a ballad-style tune, which shows off really how sensual the trumpet can sound, along with the amazing range that Arturo and his band have. However, the range that has been shown up until now doesn't match the range that is used in the next track - "Mam-Bop". Being another tune with quite a bit of 'popping', it fits right in with the rest of the album and has some amazing sounds in it, not only from the winds, but from the percussion section as well.

We then go back to another ballad with "New Images" - it starts out with the fluegelhorn, transitions to the alto sax, then builds more layers starting with the trumpet, followed by a guitar interlude and then concludes with the whole group playing their hearts out, led by the trumpets again.

Next is "Cuban American Medley" which, as the name suggests, is a medley of American "standards" played in a Cuban style - the first two are instantly recognizable as "Back Home Again in Indiana" and "Take Me Out to the Ballgame". Another tune performed is the "Little Lulu" theme - I'll admit that I had to look that one up on the Amazon reviews as I don't know where the sleeve booklet went for the album.

The album ends on a lighter note with "Brassmen's Holiday", which could almost be mistaken for the I Love Lucy theme music with other tunes mixed in, but it is its own piece and a fitting end to the album, with a final display of amazing range from Arturo and winds up getting you moving to the beat in the end, wanting to hear it all again.

That is one thing about this album - it never seems that once is enough. I know that I'm prone to going back and listening to it over and over again, just because it is such an amazing piece of work and worth listening to.

Should you get this album? Absolutely - even if you're not a jazz fan, it's worth listening to at least once. Of course, my opinion might be slightly tainted by the fact that I've met the man and seen him play in person, and that I've actually played songs from the album. Though you never know, listening to this album might change your mind. :)

Lastly, a mention needs to be made of his version of A Night in Tunisia. For years I'd had heard only the first half of the song, but recently have heard the full version. While it isn't the most famous version of the song ever done, it is one of the best; it goes for 15 minutes, but it doesn't feel like that long when you're listening to it. Below is a clip from the Montreal Jazz Festival where Arturo played a version of Night In Tunisia.

Be forewarned though, that it gets cut off right before the end, and that there is synth playing involved.



Next week, I'm not going to feature an album, but rather a radio show about music...

*Actually, I did see the movie, but it was scrambled so I could only hear it (anyone else remember the days when you could watch the scrambled feeds of the premium channels? ;))

An example of disorganization

A few days ago I was tagged by Meg for a meme called the Blog Improvement Zone. She tagged me because I'm getting my world more organized.

However, there are some stumbling blocks to my organization. I'm not saying that it's an excuse as to why I'm not already more organized, but once you see it, you understand why I'm working towards changing this one thing.

This is a picture of my desk as it is right now. I will say that it has improved greatly over the past when I had a CRT on it (over on the right hand side of the desk, over the lower compartments), however, as you can see it doesn't take a lot of stuff to make the desk cluttered.

A couple of weeks ago, I did a major cleanup of the desk, throwing out a lot of junk because I looked at the area around the desk, looked at the mess that the desk was in, and it made me feel really blah. It was right there when I realized that the thing that is holding me back from a lot of stuff is actually my desk - it's too small and inefficient for me to be able to reach my maximum productivity.

An interesting thing about this desk is that it is the same exact desk that we've had ever since we bought our first computer over 13 years ago. If I remember correctly, it was supposed to be a sort of corner desk with a small piece connecting the main desk to a printer table at a ninety degree angle, a feature we never took advantage of.

A few years later, we decided to get a new desk that was larger due to us having a larger monitor that didn't exactly fit onto the old desk. This was a really nice desk - a proper corner desk with a keyboard drawer and plenty of room to move around in. It also had a nice side shelf on the left side and an open space on the right side, which was useful to put things like a VCR (and this was in the days before I had a TV card).

When my brother moved out, however, it was around the time that I was heading off to college, so there wasn't a real need for the desk to be here anymore, so we let him have it. I think that he still has it, but I haven't asked if he's still using it or not.

Where I go to volunteer, I've worked the last couple of times at a desk that is a full corner desk, fitting into a space of about 8 or 9 feet square, and the surface is about two feet deep. I have room on that desk to spread things out and work on them. However, a quick measurement of this desk reveals that it is a little over 3.5 feet wide by 1 foot 11 inches deep.

I have the computer on a small table to the right of the desk and on my immediate left is a couch which winds up being a dumping ground for other stuff I've used such as newspapers and books. We're thinking of moving a table out here to take the place of the couch, the only problem being that the table is appreciably higher than the desk - I can deal with that though.

However, I am now saving up to either build my own desk or buy a kit to build a desk. I have a draft drawing of the size I want the desk to be - if I keep it as I have it now, it will be a massively huge desk - approximately three or four feet deep and filling an area of 11 feet square. Needless to say, I'll have to reduce the size I want in order for it to fit into the space I have for it. I haven't even started to think about materials or even how the desk is going to hold its own weight.

I'd be interested to know if anyone has tips of where to find a good desk plan (that's free preferably), or if you have an idea of a desk that might be a good fit for me (what I'm looking for is a corner desk with the monitor in the corner part, and the option of having a keyboard shelf - preferably wide enough to have the mouse down there as well), please let me know where to find it.

And as far as the meme goes, I've discussed the thing that I'm going to change for my blog yesterday, but if you have any suggestions for what's bugging you with this template, let me know. ;)

I've got a good thing going...

...and you're looking at it. I've put in a bit of hard work into making this blog all that it is right now, but there is a lot of work still to come.

When I started the blog, I kind of figured it'd be like my previous attempts at blogging - I'd be interested in it for a while, but then I'd get distracted by some random shiny object and give up on the blog. However, and a lot of thanks has to go to Snoskred for this, I have stuck it out and here I am today, posting every day and getting comments on almost every post I make now.

One of the areas that I've made the biggest progress in is getting out there into the blogging community. While I'm not the best participant in the community - I still have the tendency to be a lurker on blogs, and not make too many comments - it is a far cry from when I would only read blogs if I found them on the "next blog" button or in the unlikely chance that I had actually bookmarked them.

The biggest change in my participation in the blogging community came in November of last year when the NaBloPoMo challenge was going on. Between Snoskred and I, we had set ourselves the goal of commenting on every participating blog.

While we didn't quite get to all of the blogs in the list, we did get through a large chunk of them and through it found some great blogs that are still read today. I am looking forward to getting the details of this year's event, but so far there has been noting mentioned about it yet.

After NaBloPoMo, the blogging went along well until I actually did get distracted by shiny objects - mostly getting back into scambaiting and other things involved with that, which led me to forget about the blog almost completely. In fact, I went almost a whole month without posting anything because it wasn't a focus for me at the time.

Then, in May, I started to get back into the blogging and really got into the community aspect of blogging by joining up with Bumpzee and creating the US Blogs Community. I've also, as I'd mentioned previously, gotten involved in commenting on more blogs regularly now than I had in the past.

However, the next change is coming soon, with moving this blog over from Blogger to WordPress. I've been doing some learning on the platform over the last few weeks, and over the next week, I'm going to focus on getting the whole system down pat and transitioning this blog over to there.

What you'll need to know about the transition is this - if you are subscribed to my FeedBurner feed, then there should be nothing in the change. Similarly, if you had subscribed to my feed when it was still on the blogspot address, that will remain forwarded to the FeedBurner address and not be an issue. If you have subscribed to my feed via this domain, then you will likely lose the feed (unless I can sort out a way to ensure that the address of the feed is properly forwarded).

During the transition, I will turn the publishing of this blog back to the Blogspot address and depending on how long it takes for your ISP to recognize the new location of the domain, the site will not be available for upwards of one to two days.

After the transition is complete, and dependent upon other factors (such as the possibility of me getting a job out of the house, I've not gotten any offers from anyone, but I'm keeping my options open and getting my name out there), I'll be becoming more active within the blog community. I'll also get my act together and get posts pre-written; I've already got ideas for posts for every day through next week Saturday with the exception of two days.

This week's Hump Day Hmm.. is about A Good Thing Going. If you've not participated in the Hmm yet, next week's topic is: "A challenge in my life and how it affected and affects me". Of course, you can still get in on this week's topic as well.

Improving your Google Reader Experience

Over the last few weeks, one thing that would keep me from actually reading blogs was the way I was reading them. For as long as I can remember, my Google Reader just read "100+" for the number of unread items (note that this was before they started counting to 1,000). To make matters worse, I'd add feeds left, right and center, and just dump them into the main list of feeds.

Sure, I did have some folders, such as one for feeds from the newspaper, one called "new-nablopomo", and one called new-blogz. The trend would be that I'd read the items in the folder, and then get further down the list, only reading one or two of the blogs from down there.

I had reached, as Meg puts it, "feed bankruptcy," something she's had to redeclare recently. I was missing lots of items in my feeds, and I would get bogged down in the knowledge that there were all these feeds needing to be read.

However, there were a few problems with how I was reading feeds in my Google Reader. The first of which is that I just had way too many feeds in there - before I started paring it down, I was at 141 feeds, almost all of them not in any folders whatsoever. Among those feeds, I had five in particular - feeds from scam sites - which were giving me an average of over 200 new posts a day.

If you add in the fact that the Bumpzee feeds I subscribe to - Australian Blogs, No Nofollow, and US Blogs - provide nearly 300 new posts a day on their own, I had over 500 new posts a day. I also felt that I had to read every last post in a feed, which contributed to me feeling snowed in with the feeds.

What did I do?

There are three things that I did to improve my use of Google Reader - unsubscribing, using folders, and changing how I read.

Unsubscribing

As I had mentioned, before I started on this, I had 141 feeds, which was way too many. I had to unsubscribe from quite a few blogs. Most of the feeds that I unsubscribed from are ones that I hadn't been reading, for a variety of reasons - either they didn't update anymore, they've moved, or I've just lost touch with them. A great guide to some of the reasons why I unsubscribed from a lot of blogs can be found in Snoskred's 14 reasons readers unsubscribe.

I'm now down to (after adding some new feeds over the last few weeks) 113 feeds. I'm also taking it easy on adding every single blog I come across that I like now. ;)

Using folders

I also started to make use of the folder option. Up until I did this, there were only a few feeds separated from the rest - job site feeds, feeds from my newspaper, and newer blogs that I was reading. Now, having finally finished sorting the rest of my feeds into folders, I have 16 separate folders with anywhere from two feeds up to about 15 feeds in them.

I have folders for Aussie blogs that I read, blogs about Blogging, foodie blogs, life improvement blogs, sport blogs, photoblogs, and a couple of special folders.

The first special folder that I made is called "Frequently-updated" - that folder is for the feeds that have a lot of posts every day; in my case - Lifehacker, Neatorama, Mashable! and English Russia. I've also set aside a folder specifically for the bumpzee feeds so that they don't get forgotten and that I don't get bogged down by seeing one single folder with a lot of unread posts. The last special folder is called Zzz-iftime, which is for blogs that I read, but aren't updated too often or are blogs I tend to leave go for a variety of reasons.

Changing my reading habits

The biggest thing that I've done to improve my use of Reader is by simply changing how I read through feeds. It used to be that I read every single post in what is known as "expanded" view - viewing every item in its entirety. This is a strategy that does not work at all when you have feeds that give you dozens of new posts a day.

The contents of my "frequently-updated" folder in list view.

I made the decision one day to start using list view to view the really busy folders - frequently-updated and bumpzee. That way, I can simply have a look at each item's headline and, if it piques my interest, I just click on the headline to view that article. When I'm done reading that folder, I just hit Shift+a to mark the whole folder read, and that's that.

Viewing an item in its native environment thanks to GPE.

One of the best tools that I have found that helps my reading is a script for Greasemonkey called GPE - Google Reader Preview Enhanced (I haven't been able to get to the site, so you may have issues as well). What this script does is lets you open the actual entry right in Google Reader. This is great for the blogs where the owner has chosen to only allow a partial feed of their site; it's also great if you want to comment on a blog post you like.

The biggest drawback that I've had with this script is that it keeps breaking down so that the keyboard shortcut doesn't work; otherwise, I'd be able to use shift+v to open the post. In fact, the script was just updated so that it works again. Yay! Hmm...or not...there's a new version on the way though, so hopefully it will stick (or I just need to restart my firefox... :))

The last secret...

There is one more secret that I've been using for quite a while now to help me be a more efficient reader in Reader. It's a secret that is, for most of us, right under our fingertips most of the time.

Keyboard Shortcuts.


Google Reader keyboard shortcuts, visible anytime by typing in a question-mark.

I'm a convert to using keyboard shortcuts. It was one of those extra features in Gmail that I said, well, that's nice, but not for me (and honestly I'm still lukewarm to Gmail keyboard shortcuts). However, with Reader, I find that it's a lot more efficient to flip through a list of items by using N and P (if you don't want to open them), or by using J and K (if you do want to open them).

Part of that comes from the fact that I am a big user of keyboard shortcuts in Thunderbird - most often it's using N & P (for unread messages) or B & F (for messages that are read), or one of the number keys to assign an item a color.

Another really handy thing that I can do with the shortcuts is make tagging posts easier. Say, for example, I saw a recipe that I wanted to try. Normally, I'd have to star it and leave it unread in order for it to get my attention. Now, all I do is type in the following - L , F, U, enter, enter. This generates the keyword fud2try and places that recipe into my own virtual recipe box, for me to try when I can scrape together the ingredients. Total amount of time taken - about 3 seconds.

I know that keyboard shortcuts won't be for all of you, but I suggest you take them for a spin before rejecting them out of hand. You might be surprised. :)

Further Reading

Pearl has posted some great links about Google Reader with Google Reader hacks-repository.
Alex Ionut. Chitu shares some of the numbers behind Google Reader
In the companion post to this, Snoskred takes up the techy side of Reader and shows how it can make your life easier.

Previously in the Tuesday Think Tank
21st August: RSS
14 Reasons Readers Unsubscribe From Your Blog
Tuesday Think Tank: All About RSS

28th August: Blog Templates
Blog Design - Open Your Eyes.
Demystifying Blogger Template Editing

4th September: Nofollow
Spam, Spiders And Do Follow, Oh My!
Say No! to Nofollow

11th September: Site Meters
Do NOT Rely On Your Site Meter.
Track Your Visitors with Google Analytics

18th September: Technorati
Technorati - Sending Out An SOS
The Ups (and Downs) of Technorati

Over to you
Do you have any tips that for making the Google Reader experience more efficient? What do you think should be added to Reader that isn't there already? I know that having the actual post time showing would be really handy. Your thoughts are always welcome.

Don't forget that if there is something you'd like to have covered in a future Tuesday Think Tank, feel free to contact either myself or Snoskred via the email links on our sites, or leave a comment with your request.

Lastly, if you like what you've read, feel free to stumble it using the links below or by using the toolbar. :)

This was the Week that Was, Vol. 14

It's been another busy week for me around the blog, and an important note for US Blog Community members - there is an important change coming. Be sure to read about it further down.

Posts I liked -

Tay from Super Blogging Tips has something that, as she says, is obvious, but can't be repeated enough,
• The More you Write, the better your writing gets.
• Liz Strauss has thesecret to massive Digg and Stumbleupon traffic, without resorting to spamming the sites.
• If you're wondering about why one stumble gets you hundreds of hits, but another gets you a trickle, Venture Skills has Stumbleupon mathematics for stumblers
• From the Tetherd Cow, a letter straight Out of Africa. The scammers are always coming up with new tricks ;)
• From Sydney Daily Photo, Sally has a picture of some interesting postboxes which are in front of a hotel that used to be the city's post office. The interesting thing is that they're not red ;)

New Blogs I'm reading in Google Reader

• Interesting Observations - another of those blogs I'd been reading off and on, finally getting a fulltime spot on my list ;)

Great Stumbles:

• Who's on first for the new generation
• Are you artistic, logic, or both - I don't want to spoil it for y'all, but I'm logic according to this
• Australia's Great Train Journeys - Book your tickets for The Ghan now ;)

To get started stumbling, go to StumbleUpon and download the toolbar. Click here to check out my Stumbles.

New blogs this week in the US Blogs community at BumpZEE -

• 4urthoughts
• MyLifeDump - Dumping life, one thought at a time.
• Fun Things to Do
• Candle Retirement Plan
• High Plains Buddhist
• The Impudent Observer - Global Liberal Issues
• Earning Money Online!

Important note: The address of the US blogs buttons will be changing shortly. I'll post the full details later, but please know that from approximately next Monday, if you have the old link to the image, it may not work anymore! I'll also post a note about this on the community page when I do change over the image's location.

This week around the blog, Think Tank Tuesday was about Technorati, and I talked about The Ups (and Downs) of it, Snoskred sent them an SOS - we both got replies from an official representative of Technorati. Now, that's service! ;)

The Hump Day Hmm this week was about how I matter, and I talked about the helpful person that I am. I also discussed an album I love but you probably haven't heard, and showed off my baking skills with some zucchini bread.

Coming up, tomorrow we'll be talking about Google Reader in the Tuesday Think Tank; Snos will be handling the technical side of matters, giving you some great tips on reading, and I'll discuss some changes I've made in my reading habits. The topic for this week's Hump Day Hmm hasn't been announced yet, so keep your ears open to see what that'll be about. ;)

I've also been tagged for some blogging advice, more about that later in the week.

Til next week y'all :)

Track your weight loss progress

Note: This post is a sponsored post.

As you may know, I've been working on changing my diet and exercising more. The main way that I am dieting is to just cut back on how much I'm eating. I have tried to count calories in the past, but it can be a frustrating experience when you don't eat the exact amount that is listed for a serving, or don't know exactly what the nutritional information is for a product.

That's where a site like MyFitnessPal comes in - they have a lot of completely free tools, such as a calorie counter that will keep track of what you are eating. They also offer ways to lose weight in a safe manner - by spending more calories than you take in. If you decide to join, you'll also have access to a diet journal to watch your progress as you do lose the weight.

The best feature of the site, however, is the calorie chart, which has the nutritional information available for a wide variety of foods, including selections from some of the more popular fast food restaurants including McDonald's. It's not a complete service, but considering that you don't pay a single cent for it, you're getting a great deal. :)

The Week in Walks, etc. Vol 9

Just a note - I'm posting this before walking today as I have a function to attend this afternoon and didn't want to delay the posting of this. Be sure to check back later tonight after I have walked for today's picture and the write-up of the walk.

Update: I've now posted today's walk. ;)

Monday, 17th September

One of the younger trees in the park, picture taken just as the rain was starting; I put the camera away shortly after.

Well, it worked out well to walk when I did. Never minding that it was warmer so the mosquitoes are out in force (again!), right in the middle of my walk, it started to rain. However, I was not deterred, and kept on walking. As it turns out, I went the farthest that I had in a walk up to now.

Total distance - 9996 steps, 7.99km

When I took the pedometer off and saw that, I was tempted to put it back on and make the four more steps to make up the full 10,000, but I figured that's be cheating ;)

Tuesday, 18th September

An interestingly placed penny in the park's shelter. I don't know why someone nailed it there, but it's there so I took a picture... ;)

I decided to do some exploring by heading furhter down the road I walk along before heading into the park. I did find the remnants of a guardrail that was there at one point in time, but went away for some reason. I also found an alternate path, but that had a no tresspassing sign, so I made the wise decision to just turn around and head back to the park. I followed the mostly usual trail around the park and the soccer fields, then headed toward the parking lot to check in on the trees, which are still there.

I then headed back via the disc golf course and cutting between a couple of the holes in the high grass that is there. When I got back, I checked the pedometer and saw that I was close to 10,000, so I decided to walk around the house, and that worked. ;)

Total distance -10017 steps, 8.01km

Wednesday, 19th September

This is one of the stands of trees - you can see the colors starting to come; they're a bit early (thanks to it being kinda dry in this area), and not very colorful...yet...

I tried a different route today, by going up the old "longer" route, and wound up actually doing less steps for what seemed to be a longer distance (go figure eh? ;)). It was quite warm again, but the mosquitoes were actually tolerable (I think they're naturally sorting themselves out).

On my way back, it turned into a race, which I won ;)

total distance - 9566 steps, 7.65 km

Thursday, 20th September

A hint of color here, thanks to a red oak(? - it might be a maple leaf) leaf lying in the middle of the path

I started out walking thinking that I'd make it a bit of a shorter walk because my ankle had been giving me grief all day long, but as I started to walk, I got into my rhythm and started to just "do my thing". I went and explored another part of the park that I hadn't in the past, which led me into a couple of swarms of mosquitoes - aside from the general annoyance they cause, it was not that big of a deal.

I then did a couple of laps around the parking lot, swerving between sides of the aisle to increase the distance I was walking. While on the stretch run, I can tell that I am getting tired when I walk as I was barely feeling like I was moving, even though my feet were going one in front of the other.

Total distance - 10658 steps, 8.52km

Friday, 21st september

One of the kites that were up flying in the park

A bit of an experiment, I've had the pedometer on all day. I've kept track of the steps at various points of the day, just to see how much walking I'd done while I was volunteering. The only estimated reading is the end of day one, as I had taken the meter off after getting back from my walk (yeah, I know, lazy!).

The walk was done straight after getting back from volunteering so that I didn't walk into the night like I did the last time I went volunteering. While out, I saw some folks with kites launching them in the decent conditions for flying - it was quite windy.

Here's the progression of the distance -
7.55AM (after arriving at volunteering after a short walk from my drop-off point) - 1152 steps, 0.92km
3.30PM (after volunteering, before walking back to the pickup point) - 1896 steps, 1.51km
4.30PM (before heading out to do my "daily" walk - 2923 seps, 2.34km
5.02PM (after putting bugspray on for the second time and on entry to the park) - 4673 steps, ~3.74km
5.25PM (in the park, after going through the forest and around one of the soccer areas) - 6506 steps, ~5.20km
5.53PM (still in the park, after going around the main area of the park) - 8011 steps, ~6.41km
6.23PM (after leaving the park, on the way back to the house) - 9942 steps, ~7.95km
6.50PM (after getting back in the house) - 11727 steps, 9.38km
bedtime - approx. 12000 steps, 9.60km

Saturday, 22nd September

Three hot air balloons fly to the south of the park. There wasn't much wind today, so they didn't last too long up there.

I went walking later in the day again, but it wasn't too bad, even if the mosquitoes were almost as bad as they were in the beginning of the month (they've gone away quite a bit, but are still there). I finally had to resort to taking out a notebook I have in my bag (a decent sized one, which I'm using to draw up my desk plans in) to try to swat at them. It wasn't the most effective thing, but it did work as temporary relief.

While out, I saw two groups of people playing disc golf; the only thought (aside from shut the f--k up for the one group who were screaming like crazy - ok, they're having fun I know ;)) was that these are the people responsible for leaving junk everywhere. Yeah, it still bugs me, even though the amount of trash isn't as bad as it had been at other times. Other than that, I have started to do a trick of walking back and forth in the parking lot of the park, just to build the distance.

total distance - 10670 steps, 8.53km

Sunday, 23rd September

I haven't gone walking yet, so I'll update the post later on in the day when I have gone out to walk. I have to go to an anniversary party and have to head out to my bank to put in a check I received, so time management is still an issue for me, obviously. ;)



It's a reflective sign, lit up by my head! ;)

I've come back from walking - I gave myself permission to do a shorter walk since I had first gotten out to start walking at 7PM. I have a new toy after getting a mention that it's hard to see me - this little head light. It works really good, and I prefer to use the "traditional" flashlight lamp.

Total distance - 9073 steps, 7.25km

---

In other news, my desk plans are going somewhat slowly, mostly because I'm having a hard time coming up with a design I'd like. All I know right now is that it's going to be a corner desk, and somewhat large (I'm thinking like 11x11 feet, but that's just a first draft in which the feasibility hasn't even been tested with rulers yet). As far as my time management planning has been going, it starts good, but then I get off track, usually by finding something that will distract me.

I've made up the list of daily tasks, all I have to do now is actually put together the little sheet where I check off after I get the task done each day. As far as getting things together to make some spare cash, I've managed to get 4 items listed on ebay to sell; I'd share the information on that, but that would reveal my true identity; something I'd prefer not to do here. I've also gotten a reply on a bid I made on Sponsoredreviews, and you'll be seeing that coming later today or tomorrow.

Here's the GYST update for this week -

This week, I've gotten myself over 9500 steps every day, and over 10,000 steps on four days (so far, I'll update this after I walk today). I've also been better with getting tasks set for myself, but time management is still an issue for me as I tend to get distracted by random things like videos on youtube. I've also been keeping good with eating less, and have noticed that if I want something at night for a snack (bad, I know!), I usually just open the refrigerator and close it without taking anything out of it.

My goals for the upcoming final week are to work on the time I take to walk, by speeding up my pace I walk at, with the goal to get the time I'm walking down to between 1:30 to 1:45 from the current 2 hours. I'm also going to work on eliminating distractions from my work in order to improve my use of time. Also, I'm going to keep on making to-do lists for every day and making sure that I do reward myself for a job well done.

Falling for some Link Bait ;)

As I was running disk cleanup on the Windows 98 machine we have here (it's not used too often, and the only practical use that I have for it is to use our ancient parallel scanner, other than that my mom uses it for the most part), I thought of the contest being run at sitefever.com.

It was going to run until October 23rd, but apparently it's been shortened to end in the next week or so. What is the contest, y'all are asking? It's a contest to win a 1TB external hard drive. So, there's the link bait ;)

However, there is another part of the contest - what I'd do with a 1TB hard drive. Well, I haven't mentioned it before, but I'm addicted to watching TV shows from around the world - particularly Australia. We don't get a lot of the quality shows that they have down there - Enough Rope with Andrew Denton and The Chaser's War on Everything (even though I didn't think that their stunt at APEC was terribly funny) are two shows that I watch on a regular basis, usually by them magically being sent to my computer.

I'm also a sucker for forms of racing that, while they do air here, they don't show it until December, when the series has already finished their seasons; and even then, they only show highlight shows. Again, these are magically sent to my computer. ;)

The problem is that it takes up hard drive space. I do have DVDs, but I'm a lazy sod that has a ton of DVDs, but need to make the time to actually burn them (it's a longer process because I like to confirm the burnt data).

With a 1TB hard drive, I'd be able to store tons and tons of videos on there. I'd also be able to record more TV using my capture card, as the recording settings I use take about 70 megs per minute. I then compress the video files down to about 8 megs per minute.

Oh, and the other computer? I'd be able to take almost everything that isn't system or program related and store it on the vast expanses of the terabyte. Trust me, there are a lot of documents on that computer, though they could almost all be removed, but I'm a certified digital packrat.

I know that one terabyte is probably more than I'll ever need, but if I did have it, I'd certainly take that for a test. Then again, I thought that 200GB would be more than I'd ever need, but I've gone all the way down to 20GB free. ;)

The Best Albums you've Probably not Heard

This is the first in an occasional series of posts about some of my favorite albums, and chances are that you have not heard these albums before, as they are in a bit of a niche (mostly Jazz) that obviously isn't the most popular these days; at least if you weren't involved in the art when you were in school. ;)

The first album that I'm going to highlight is one of the most famous live albums in all of jazz - Ellington At Newport, recorded in July of 1956 at the Newport Jazz Festival and released shortly after, it revitalized the fledgling career of Duke's band, one of the last big bands that were still touring at the time.

The version of the album that I own (the 1999 re-release after discovering a "lost" tape of this concert) starts off with one of the best renditions of the national anthem out there. Coming in at a scant 1:14, it should serve as a lesson to anyone performing the song that you can do it without a lot of fanfare and make it sound amazing. The secret is that you just can't have someone signing the words to the song since that is the cause of the time loss.

After some introductions and a few more songs, the band leaves the stage and Father Norman O'Connor discusses the goings-on at the festival, mentioning one Quincy Jones who would become famous a few years later as a composer.

What had happened was that half of the band were off on their own, so when they were all found once again, they retook the stage and performed what is Duke's signature tune - Take the A-Train. With the concert finally back in full swing, they then get into the meat of their performance - the three part piece especially written for the festival. This is also where you start to see massive differences between the live album and the "studio" album.

Since I've heard this album too many times to count, I know the specific markers in some of the songs that will tell you if it is the live version or the recorded version. For example, in the first segment of the performance, Festival Junction, there is a point in the live version where (this is about 1:30 into the track) you hear grunting in the background. The studio version removed this grunting, which takes away a bit of the character.

The part that I really dislike about the studio version is that, since solos are what they are - meant to be different every time - the solo at the end of the production track just doesn't have the same feeling as the solo that was done live (the production version's solo is, for the lack of a better term, bland).

Taking center stage for this album, though, is the 14-minute rendition of Diminuendo in Blue and Crescendo in Blue, with a long solo in the middle by Paul Gonsalves, which leads to pandemonium in the crowd. It starts out pretty serenely, but as the track progresses, the momentum builds as you experience the solo going on and hear the background noise of the audience just build and build.

At this point, the crowd were totally out of control, so Duke goes straight for another song, I Got it Bad (And That Ain't Good), featuring Johnny Hodges (of whom is said, "If you've heard of the saxophone, you've heard of Johnny Hodges"). If it wasn't for discovering the "lost" tape of this concert, one of the best-sounding mistakes would likely have been lost forever.

In the opening of the tune, Hodges (pardon the technical term here) "fracked" a note as he started to play. He did it twice and then got it right on the third try, yet the studio version cleans all that up in the name of a good sounding album. In my opinion, if there was ever a time when you could get away with a mistake, this certainly was it.

After a couple of more tunes, the album then has a track simply titled "Riot Prevention." How can anyone resist an album that has a track with that title? It starts with someone yelling "That's it!", but Duke persuades this person to let him just say good night.

As it so happens, saying good night means announcing that there's a heavy request for drummer Sam Woodyard and Skin Deep - which lasts for almost 10 minutes. They finally do say good night to a crazy crowd who are disappointed to see them go, but I suspect that if they did go on, you'd have heard stories about arrests.

Like I mentioned, the album then has the rerecorded portions of the concert, mostly as they were released in 1956, including the noticeably fake crowd noises interspersed into the comments by Father O'Connor and Duke; you also hear the crowd inserted into the songs, mostly during solos. While there are a few people who say that the studio version is the better version for a variety of reasons - less mistakes, I've always preferred the live version of the songs, and will do so for as long as I listen to it.

If you're interested in checking out the album, you can find it on Amazon, where they do have clips of each of the songs available for you to listen to. This is one of the albums that I think anyone who is studying jazz should definitely listen to over and over again. I have to admit that I'd not listened to it for a while, but have been listening to it during my walks lately and it is a truly remarkable work that everyone should listen to at least once.

Are there any albums that you can think of which would be considered essential listening for everyone?

Zucchini Bread, Yay!

Over the last couple of years, we've been changing up what we grow in our garden here. It used to be that we'd grow the staples - potatoes, onions, radishes, lettuce, tomatoes, beans, peas, carrots, peppers, cauliflower, broccoli and a couple of rows of sweetcorn.

Then, we decided to have a go with starting our own seeds, along with planting some different vegetables. One of the vegies that we planted were zucchini. Prior to growing our own zucchinis, I hadn't tried it, and thought the idea of zucchini bread was bizarre - I mean, vegetable-based bread? You can't be serious.

However, we planted a couple of them, and they came up. We then got one recipe for bread with chocolate chips - that turned out really good and we've already made two loaves this year of that (the recipe makes 2 loaves). Even after that, we still have loads more shredded zucchini. Since it was up to me to shred it up, I wasn't totally sure on how to shred it, so I did some searching and came across this recipe which was a result of the person having fifteen cups of shredded zucchini.

As you can see, it does call for some interesting ingredients, including lemon or orange zest (which I did skip since we don't have any oranges or lemons around), and an interesting quartet of spices - cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and allspice. I knew that we didn't have allspice, and wasn't totally sure about the ginger, yet the whole thing worked thanks to a miracle product: Pumpkin pie spice!

Yep, pumpkin pie spice has cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and allspice (along with an anti-caking agent). As the recipe calls for a variety of amounts of the individual spices, I decided to go on my own with the measuring and went with 1 teaspoon of pie spice, along with 1 teaspoon of cinnamon (since it was 2 tsp. of cinnamon for the recipe). I also skipped the raisins and only put in about a half cup of walnuts.

By far the coolest thing was making oat flour by putting a cup of Quaker Rolled Oats and processing it in the food processor for a couple of minutes.

I could have gotten three slightly-smaller loaves out of the recipe, but I decided to make two larger loaves. Fifty-five minutes later, it was done; so I let it cool for about an hour or so before taking it out of the pans. Before I took a picture, I had sampled a piece of the bread and it was fantastic. ;)

And, of course, here's the bread, minus a smallish sample ;) :

A helpful kind of guy

The topic for this week's Hump Day Hmm.. is about How I Matter.

One of the most important ways that I matter is that I am a very helpful person, and always willing to be out there to help out. It's something that I've shown quite often here on the blog, with offering to do how-tos for things that I might not know how to do before doing it, but learn how and share the information with everyone.

For me, it's just second nature to lend a hand if someone asks; it's not about my ego, it's about giving the helping hand. Sure, if the helping out does result in some side benefits, I'll usually accept it, but it really is about being a nice guy.

Outside of the blog world, I am also quite helpful around the house (even if the outside appearances might be different from the reality). I am usually the one who cooks dinner every night; I fill the gas tank in the car (considering that a couple of years ago I had no clue on how to do that, that is a big step for me). I also make sure that the trash is out by the road every week and go to get the mail in each day.

Most of the time, I am helpful in small ways, such as when I went to the clinic the other week, I offered to give up my chair for a lady who had her children and her mother with her. I didn't have to do it, but in my mind, it was a case where I can see that she needs the seat more than I do, and I can always find another seat. A little bit of a side benefit for me was that she was a native Spanish speaker and had an interpreter with her, so I figured I could use a bit of my skills in the language to "show off" a little bit, but also to make things more comfortable for her, for which she was quite appreciative.

The most helpful thing that I've done recently is to assist my mom when she was recovering from a somewhat-minor surgery she had back in May. This surgery involved having to be mostly laid-up for a couple of days with a piece of equipment that kept the affected area cool and able to heal effectively. This meant that I'd need to go in and refill a small cooler with ice every couple of hours.

I will admit that it wasn't the least stressful time, as it did get somewhat frustrating to be called in repeatedly for something that was forgotten, or for other reasons. I managed to make it through the recovery, and even was able to take the dressings off when it was time to remove them (even though I was quite squeamish about it).

The best part about being helpful is that I feel that I have put a good impression of myself on anyone I've come across. It's something that I'm proud of, that's for sure. It's also something that I really like to do, because it does give me a good feeling, one that tells me that I do matter.

It's also a major factor in why I do volunteer. As I had mentioned when I blogged about it, the folks that work there are very appreciative for the things that the volunteers come in and help out with. In fact, I've just phoned now to let them know that I'll be in on Friday to volunteer all day.

The Ups (and Downs) of Technorati

This week's Tuesday Think Tank came as the result of a request from Julie, who had some questions about Technorati and why her ranking has been changing recently. If you have something you want to have covered in a future Tuesday Think Tank, we always are willing to take suggestions; all you need to do is send an email to either myself or to Snoskred, and we will tackle your topic on a future Tuesday. :)

There really isn't a lot to explain technically when it comes to Technorati. The biggest thing is basically an explanation of how it all works.

Technorati is most often considered the way to gauge a blog's popularity. It works by counting both the number of blogs that it finds with links to your blog, and also the actual number of pages that link to your blog.

There are three different numbers that come as a result of Technorati's counting - Authority, Rank, and Reactions.

Authority and Rank are intertwined, one based on the other. Authority is simply the total number of blogs that have linked to your site, or to a page on your blog. In other words, no matter how many links a particular site may have to you, it will only count as one authority point. Rank is derived from authority and is simply where your blog's authority ranks among all blogs they have listed.

When you start a blog, it starts with an authority of 0 and a rank of somewhere around 8 million. As blogs start to link to you, the numbers do improve; however, to get into the top 100 blogs by Authority, you'll have to have close to 4,000 different blogs linking to you. To get into the top 100,000 (which would have gotten you a nice graph in the past, but recent changes have seen the dropping of that graph), you would need an authority of around 60.

The most important thing to know is that authority and rank are not permanent numbers; of course you do want them to improve over time, but after a while, specifically six months, they may begin to go down. The simple reason for this is that links listed on Technorati "expire" after that amount of time. While I'm not an expert in Technorati, the main reason would be that some of the links might be in posts, or they might be temporary links which go away (for example recent comments lists on dofollow blogs).

Reactions are simply all the links that go back to your blog. This includes links in blogs' links lists, links within posts, and links that come from other methods of linking, such as from the dofollow blogs.

If you want to see the daily "performance" of your blog's reaction, you can check out an image like this -

- which shows you the links over the last X days. The address to use is the following -
http://www.technorati.com/chartimg?q={URL}&days={# OF DAYS}&width=460&height=200&type=url
putting in your blog's url (minus the http://) and the number of days in the appropriate slots.

Of course, none of this works without Technorati finding the links on blogs.

How do they find links to my blog?

Technorati finds links like any other search engine would - through the use of spiders. It used to be that these spiders were fully-functional, seeing almost all the links that were on a page - including blogrolls, if you have them on your blog.

However, at one point in time in the last few months, they changed spiders to ones that are more in line with regular search engine spiders which cannot see JavaScript elements on a page. That means that if you're part of a BlogRolling blogroll (for example, the Blogger Chicks blogroll), links back to you on other blogs that are part of the network will not count towards your authority. If you're a part of a big blogroll and have experienced a drop off in your authority recently, that means that the six-month window has passed.

Another way that Technorati can find links to other blogs is by reading RSS feeds. If you ping them with a service such as Ping-o-Matic, and include your feed's address, Technorati will look at that, along with your blog, to find links you've put in posts.

A word of advice

Something that I've seen ever since joining up with Bumpzee are these "link trains" which are meant to increase both your PageRank and your Technorati Authority. You'll notice that I don't participate in them; at first it was because I was lazy, but then it was because I didn't see the value in linking to sites that I don't read (or in a lot of cases, never heard of), all in the name of possibly increasing my rankings (and supposedly my traffic).

The other part of the equation for that is that any gains that I'd see would be short-lived (for example, anyone who had participated in the exchange would not have their link to me counted on Technorati). Additionally, have updated their webmaster guidelines that these schemes are not good practice for you to follow as they feel that these types of links are not "proper" links.

Further Reading
In the companion post to this, Snoskred discusses the issues she's having and sends out an SOS.

Previously in the Tuesday Think Tank
14 Reasons Readers Unsubscribe From Your Blog
Tuesday Think Tank: All About RSS
Blog Design - Open Your Eyes.
Demystifying Blogger Template Editing
Spam, Spiders And Do Follow, Oh My!
Say No! to Nofollow
Do NOT Rely On Your Site Meter.
Track Your Visitors with Google Analytics

Over to You
Do you have any more questions about Technorati? (Other than the obvious one of why in the world their servers are so blasted slow, or don't work half the time.) Feel free to leave a comment.

If you've liked this post, feel free to Stumble it using the links below. :)

This was the Week that Was, Vol. 13

Before I get into the regular TW3, here's the GYST update for this week:

This week has been another great week for the walking. I've boosted my average over 8000 steps for the week, with walks of over 9000 steps on Saturday and Sunday. I'm also eating less than I had been, and am liking it. The only thing is that I'm losing my touch on other aspects of my life such as organization.

My goals for the week are to get myself back into the swing of organization by ensuring that I make a to-do list every day, also making a list of daily tasks that I can be going through and checking off as I do them each day. Additionally, I'm going to step up my efforts to bring some cash into my world (I know that it's not everything to have money, but the world does require it to thrive).

For the walking, I am going to go for getting the distance up to 10,000 steps a day by the end of the week, so that I can start working on increasing the speed I walk at, so that the walk doesn't take two hours to complete.

And now, on with the update ;)

Posts I liked -

• The Tao of Making Money highlightsOne of the worst credit cards out there - after all the required fees, you're left with a $247 bill, and only $53 left on the card.
• Club Troppo discusses what the best newspapers in the world are and how to determine them. Here's the secret - there's no one best paper in the world. :)
• Katie from A byootaful Life has some tips for How to pass (or fail!) your driving test. She passed. Congrats!
• For those of us who are getting annoyed at the lack of a Pagerank update, Sitefever has some advice - Don't Wait for Pagerank to make your blog successful
• Jon from Smartwealthyrich has 7 things that he hopes will make blogging easier and more fun. Some good stuff there :)
• The Twin Cities are a mess when it comes to municipal borders, which leads to questions like the one Yesterday's News found in a story from 1963 - So, where's the (Minneapolis-St. Paul) Airport, anyway?

New Blogs I'm reading in Google Reader

• Couture Cupcakes
• SiteFever.com
• David Airey :: Graphic Designer

Great Stumbles:

• Winston's Lego Computer
• Nicu's How-to - Jump Out in the GIMP

To get started stumbling, go to StumbleUpon and download the toolbar. Click here to check out my Stumbles.

New blogs this week in the US Blogs community at BumpZEE -

• Couchmouses' Corner
• Supernatural Fairy Tales
• Invisible Illness CFIDS/FMS
• Lumpys Ocean Life

This week around the blog, I received a review from RT at Untwisted Vortex - go and check it out! ;)

Keywords -
watch boondock saints online divx - erm, ok, I have not heard of that, but as always there are places that I may or may not know of where you can find that. ;)
pictures of woman skimpily dressed on plaine - "plaine"? What is that? Anyway, if you're thinking about those women who had to cover up, just remember that they'd be burnt badly in the event of an accident.
setara qassim myspace - I don't know. All I know is that I don't have and don't want a myspace account.
problem with blogger feed and magpie - can birds read blogger feeds? I don't remember them being able to read in the first place...
does not work google analytics no visitors tracking - have you installed the code correctly? It might just be that you're not getting any visitors as well...

This week, I blogged about Google Analytics, and how to find info on your visitors in the Tuesday Think Tank. I also questioned the sanity of people who dress sexily on a plane, showed you some delicious Salmon and vegetables on the grill, and told you about a new addiction of mine.

Coming up, the Tuesday Think Tank is going to discuss Technorati, how it works, and why the authority changes from time to time. The Hump Day Hmm... this week is about How I Matter. It's going to be a very introspective look at the world.

'Til next week y'all! :)

Get ready for Christmas shopping early!

We're coming into the Christmas shopping season, and that means that you'll start to see sales for everything under the sun, especially about two months from now, on the day after Thanksgiving. In recent years, it has become known colloquially as "Black Friday", from the fact that many retailers use the sales from that weekend to come into profit after a potentially bad year otherwise.

Before last year or so, the only time you would be able to find out what was on sale would be when the Thanksgiving Day paper came (or, if you live in an area like I do, the day before Thanksgiving's paper). As thick as a Sunday paper, it is filled with thanksgiving ads for specials only valid for five hours on Friday, and rock bottom prices on the stuff you want to have.

The newest trend is for people to get leaked copies of these ads and post them on the web for everyone to see. There are a lot of sites out there; some have the actual ads posted, but black-friday.net has just a plain list of the items on sale. They've got the items for sale listed for a lot of stores. Having a look through, though, I'd say that Fred's deals are some of the better ones out there.

It's early though, and I'd expect that there will be a lot more stores with their sales listed for Black Friday, whether they want them to be out there or not. You can also sign up for emails when more ads get listed to the site. ;)

Note: This post is a paid post.

The Week in Walks, etc. Vol 8

Monday, 10th September

Here are the horses I blogged about ages ago, coming towards me. I bet they were drawn in by the orange shirt I was wearing... ;)

So, I've learned something about my new shoes - they're not waterproof! Then again, it might have something to do with the fact that I did walk a long way through grass that should be shorter than it is cut (you'd think that a soccer field would have short grass, but it doesn't for some reason). As I had mentioned, it was only 12°C outside when I went walking, so I did take the opportunity to take the I'm walkin' here shirt for a test drive. It worked very well, as everything I put into the jacket's pockets stayed dry, even though it got really cold. I also stayed nice and warm the whole time and relatively unbothered by mosquitoes.

That is, except for the one mosquito which decided to fly into my mouth. That was a very unfun time, until I spat it out. Probably TMI, but you never know.. ;)

Total distance - 8536 steps, 6.82km

Tuesday, 11th September

A look towards the southwestern horizon; sorry about the sky blowing out, the skies were blue, with clouds (as evidenced in other pictures I took).

The winds were really up, but this was the first time since last Sunday when I went without bug spray. The mosquitoes are actually down to manageable levels again, except for another one which decided to fly into my mouth....

While I was out walking, I spotted someone cutting the lawn in the fields, but I guess they must have lost interest or something since they only bothered cutting like 1% of the whole fields, and hardly any of the soccer fields.

Total distance - 8950 steps, 7.16km

Wednesday, 12th September

A hawk, in flight over the trees in the park. I have some more shots of a hawk up close (though not too close), which I'll post in the future. :)

It was a warmer day, so that meant the mosquitoes were back again. :( However, I just put on the bug spray and went along, not being bothered that much. I'm finding that as I walk more, I'm being able to "find" steps in unlikely places, like discovering the road that leads out of the park, and by walking around the disc golf holes. I'm also walking around the parking lot, along the outside of it. Right now, it's about building up the distance I'm walking.

Total distance - 8739 steps, 6.99km

Thursday, 13th September

An interesting tree. Does anyone know what kind of fruits these are? I don't believe that they're bananas since we're not exactly in a tropical environment...

A warm day, so more mosquitoes, and this time they were worse than the day before. Though that might have been because of the fact I didn't wear my long sleeve shirt because of the temperature. I decided to meander around the park, and generally stay away from the forest and that was a strategy that worked out for me, but not so much for the mosquitoes. ;)

Total distance - 8928 steps, 7.14km

Friday, 14th September

A squirrel which startled me sits on the tree before climbing further upwards

I went a bit earlier; it was much cooler today, and it wasn't too bad walking. I also did some exploration of the park, going down to the lower half of the park where the first part of the disc golf course is. I decided to go up one route where the course went, and wound up climbing straight up a hill that is meant to be gone down (there are some interesting grades along that course, incidentally).

I then went up a path and discovered two trees that had fallen down across the path. Instead of going back and going around, I just climbed over the one tree and around the other tree.

Before doing that, I came across a father and his son and asked if I could take a photo and they obliged, and the photo came out really nicely. However, I did not ask for permission to post it online, so I can't let y'all see it.

Total distance - 8865 steps, 7.09km

Saturday, 15th September

The last light of the day, with the moon visible in the distance

This seems to be happening every week now, where I go out way too late. I've been going out at around 7 pm, and this time wasn't an exception. Unfortunately, the sun doesn't like to stay out for the same amount of time, so I wind up walking further and further into the night. By the time I was getting ready to start out of the park, it was almost pitch black, and by time I got out to the road, I had to use a flashlight. The good news was that no cars came toward me and dazzled me.

The best part about walking in the really cold air (I'd guess it was around 10°C at the beginning of my walk and downhill from there), was that I encountered a grand total of 3 mosquitoes the whole time.

Total distance - 9131 steps, 7.30km

Sunday, 16th September

This is the other part of the grass story. As you can see, they did finish the grass cutting; except for the area inside the actual soccer goals.

My strategy as of late with respect to the bug spray is to spray when I get close to the park so that it's at its most effective level of work. I followed approximately the same route as yesterday, but did some more distance while out there. While at the park, there was a couple of parents with their kids playing around on the gym set. I decided to pass on the photo opportunity this time.

I did pause and sit down during a walk for the first time in a long time, but it was with a reason. I took time today to think up a plan to get myself to a place where I can improve my situation. I wrote it down in my notebook. :)

Total distance - 9458 steps, 7.56km

In other news, I didn't go volunteering this week. It has been a bit of a down week for me this week as a result of not being able to use the new scale I got - I'm too big to get a number on there, however now I do know what my goal is for that - to get a number on the scale.

The plan that I was mentioning above is for me to work towards improving the area I work in every day. I won't go into full details about this right now, but the short part of the story is that the desk I'm working at is the same desk we've had ever since we bought our first computer back in 1994.

My plan is to either save up enough money to buy a new desk outright or to actually build one from scratch (I'm up for the challenge of drawing the plans and building the desk on my own, I was thinking of plans while I was walking today).

The way I'm going to do that is to actively pursue opportunities to make money through my blog, such as bidding on a couple of offers on Sponsoredreviews each day, also checking in on Blogsvertise every day and seeing what they have up for offers. I'm also going to watch payperpost on Tuesdays like a hawk - they have some great opps that come up on their $1k Tuesdays. If I post about it, then you'll know that I got in on one of the opportunities. ;)

Another thing that I'm going to do is ramp up selling stuff on ebay. I've been talking about it for ages, but have only listed two items in just over a year. I'm looking to build that up to getting anywhere from 5-10 items listed over the next couple of weeks.

The last, and most important thing is that I have to get back on track with making daily to-do lists and rewarding myself when I finish something on my list of tasks.

I'll post my GYST update as part of the update tomorrow's blog round-up. ;)