Category: Blogging

Personal Goal – 365+1 Posts in 2012

I’m not one for New Years resolutions (mainly because I forget I made them) but I’ve seen a lot of “projects” online that revolve around doing something (mostly photos) once a day for the entire year.

I’m going to challenge myself to publish 365 +1 (leap year this year) blog posts in 2012.  So far so good, it’s January 14th & this will be my 15th post of the year.  I got a little carried away on January 7 and posted 2 items in one day.

I commented on Facebook the other day I was running out of ideas, even though I had 27 draft posts in the queue…  Some of those 27 will get published but many will end up being deleted because they are no longer relevant or I can’t find enough to write about to make it worth posting.

Happy 2012 to all & I hope you have as much fun reading the 365 +1 posts as I’m going to have writing them.

2011, 2112 and Beyond

Happy New Month everyone!  I know it’s technically a “new year” but 366 days is a lot to comprehend, especially when you think bout how this new year can be broken up into:

  • 12 months
  • 52 weeks
  • 8784 hours
  • 527,040 minutes
  • 31,622,400 seconds

Although 31,622,400 seconds seems like a long time, you’ve probably already used up 10-15 seconds so far reading this blog post.  That’s time you can’t get back (sorry).  You can (hopefully) remember what you did during that time, and possibly regret what you did (I hope not!).  What you can’t do is change it.

I mention this because we all, at one time or another, think about the past and how things would be different if certain times in our life was spent doing “something else”.  It’s the Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda Syndrome and there’s nothing particularly wrong with looking back and reflecting on past success or failure.  It’s actually a good way to help you move forward because it’s your “Life Experience” and as humans we learn how to use our past to impact our future.

When I look back at 2011 it’s been both good and bad.  I’ve had my share of successes, personally and professionally.  There has also been time that I wish I had done “something else” with it.

In 2012 I’m going to continue to use my life experiences to prepare for, and make the best use of, the time I spend with friends, family, co-workers, clients, and strangers.  Right now I’m 11-hours into the new year.  It’s time to make the other 8773 hours count.

Being a Webmaster

If you’ve been a webmaster very long (I started in 1995) you learn quickly that links to external sites will eventually break.  Website-sites go down, domain names change, pages get stale (and eventually deleted), old pages become available via subscription only, and finally sites get abandoned

As you build your site the number of links can get pretty large.  IndyScan.com has several thousand links and up until recently it’s been a challenge to make sure every link took you somewhere.

When I moved the site to a new host last weekend I found an application that makes the process of monitoring external links a breeze.  Broken Link Checker has been a HUGE help with cleaning up dead links in posts and it does it automatically every couple of days.  I even get an email report letting me know what’s broken and why.

If you use WordPress this is an awesome FREE plugin to help you maintain the links on your site.

 

 

Blog Maintenance = Complete!

We’re back in business with a new look and feel to the site.  After testing about 15 themes, and not finding what I wanted, I decided to take the closest one and make some changes to it to fit my vision.  I’m aiming for a clean, fast design with minimal distractions and easy navigation.

I’m going to continue to tweak things over the next couple of weeks (colors, fonts, etc.) but the overall design will remain the same (until I get the bug to change again).

Hope you like the new look & I welcome any feedback you have about it!

4-Day Weekend!

Been a while since I posted on my blog.  Been SUPER busy at work and just have not had a lot to say!  Finally taking a day off tomorrow & taking advantage of a 4-day weekend.

The area Farmers Markets [PDF] are opening up this weekend too so it’s time go get back on the local food kick.

Dropped Comcast in favor of U-Verse about a month ago.  So far I’m pretty impressed!  We keep running into the 4-stream limit at night when we are recording shows and kids are trying to watch live TV.  Other than that little bit of frustration I would recommend the U-Verse service if it’s available in your area.

I have a lot of ideas for future posts so I’ll make an effort to get back on the Blog!

Happy Memorial Day everyone!

No More Twitter Posts!

twitter_fail_whaleAt least on this blog…  I’ve experimented with using Twitter to supplement the content on the IndyScan blog but have found that it just ends up cluttering things up.  I already have the latest “tweet” on the right hand column and Twitter does come in handy to alert Facebook of Blog updates…  I tried the “weekly” summary of Twitter posts but even that can get a little unruly…  So, for the time being I have removed all Twitter content from the archives and will concentrate on actual blog posts…  If you want to follow me on Twitter, feel free to do so here.