RSS FeedMy favorites of 2008
2008 will be history in less than 24 hours. Before we close the door on it, I wanted to look back and take a snapshot of the things I liked (and disliked) about 2008. These are in no specific order at all. Please feel free to comment and leave your list of faves.
Favorite Gadget: 3G iPhone
This one was easy. The iphone has become more than a phone, I use it as a business and organizational tool. I won’t say “can’t live without it”, but it really is handy.
Favorite iPhone App: Evernote
Having the ability to quickly bookmark something while away from my desk or retrieve information I’ve previously saved has been an extremely useful tool.
Favorite Movie: Choke
You may think this was an automatic decision for me, but it really wasn’t. I had a hard time narrowing down my list. But, at the end of the day, for a movie I had been waiting so long to see, it did not disappoint. It’s one of my favorite books and Sam Rockwell absolutely nailed his performance. Iron Man, The Dark Knight, Wanted and Zack and Miri Make a Porno were all in the running for this one.
Favorite Educational Blog: Strobist
Off-Camera lighting to me is the most interesting and challenging part of Photography. The information and knowledge shared in this blog is priceless. As a bonus, there are over 40,000 members in the strobist.com group on flickr with over 180,000 photos. People take the information they learn from the blog, apply it and then show their results. It’s incredible way to learn.
Favorite Photography Blog: TheBlogIsFound.com
When I grow up, I want my photography to be like Nate and Jaclyn. I find that when I look back through their blog and find sets like this one, I want to email and ask how Carla and Adam are doing. It’s more about capturing the moment and presenting an engaging set of photographs. One of my things to do in 2009 is get out to SoCal and take part in one of their shoot shops. So much to learn from these two.
Favorite Memory: Our trip to Alaska
Face it, everybody is too busy these days. We go go go go 1000 miles an hour all the time. My kids are growing so fast and it won’t be too long before the idea of taking a vacation with mom and dad will seem like torture to them. Getting away with just the 4 of us was absolutely incredible. Even if we were to hop back on the ship and head back to Alaska tomorrow, it wouldn’t come close to how special that trip was to me.
Happy New Year to you all. I hope you go out and make a million memories in 2009.
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WordCamp:Las Vegas is only $20 for 2 days!
I know I’ve talked about it before and my long time readers have probably heard about it a bunch, but, I have a few hundred new followers on Twitter who may be hearing this for the first time, so please pardon me if you’ve read this before.
If you are interested in learning more about WordPress, blogging, monetization, personal branding, or building up interest for your personal or business blog/website, I invite you to join us for WordCamp:Las Vegas.
You can find all the details about who’s speaking at the event, the agenda, who’s sponsoring and everything else there is to know about it at LasVegasWordCamp.com, but here are the basics:
When: January 10-11, 2009 (8am-5pm, both days)
Where: Palace Station Hotel & Casino, Las Vegas, NV
Cost: $20.00
Where to Register: EventBrite.com
For your $20 you’ll get a t-shirt plus 2 full days of learning and networking. You’ll have a hard time finding a better deal!
See you there.
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Top 5 posts of 2008
Sticking with the them of looking back on the past year, I thought I’d take a look back at my top 5 posts as calculated by the number of page views. This is made a heck of a lot easier thanks to the excellent WordPress plugin, WordPress.com Stats. This plugin is so useful, I’m almost surprised it hasn’t become part of the core installation of WordPress. But, I digress.
And the top 5 posts of 2008 are:
#5. JHU Caption Contest
I’ve never been one to take myself to seriously. Posting a photo of myself with a thought bubble and leaving the rest up to my readers had potential danger written all over it. There were a bunch of great entries, and as I had hoped, it drove traffic to my blog. Win-Win.
#4. Become a Twitter Rockstar
This year Twitter really took off. And, like most things that become popular on the internet, people started trying to find ways to use it to make money. After using Twitter myself for a few months, I put together and ebook that describes how you can build a business using a blog, Twitter and some free time. The ebook is free. Sign up for the newsletter to get your copy.
#3. Fixing the WordPress login issue
Back in September a bug was found in WordPress version 2.6.1 that would let somebody go and create a user account on your blog and then force a reset of the admin password. This gave people fits as they were unable to log in to their blog. Thankfully the bug wasn’t really malicious, just annoying. My step-by-step instructions for fixing the issue was a popular post and still receives steady traffic.
#2. Review: Fisheye Lomography Camera
A few months back EpicEdits.com ran a contest where you had to buy a film camera (non-digital) for less than $50, shoot an entire roll of film, get it developed and then publish a review including all the shots you took with it. I had just learned about the Lomo fisheye camera and thought it was a perfect opportunity to pick one up and test it out. The camera is amazingly fun to shoot with and the results are silly/interesting/ridiculous. I may not have won the contest, but I gained a ton of exposure (ha, get it) for my blog and a fun camera in the process (again, with the puns… I kill me.)
Drum roll please… And the winner is…
#1. Rock Band Foot Pedal Reconstruction
Thanks to a heavily keyworded post related to the hottest game of the year, this post trumped all others in a landslide victory. The first wave of traffic came to this post thanks to StumbleUpon. But it wasn’t long before Google picked it up and this post ranked very well for several keyword combos bringing people to my site in search of how to fix their drum kit. On a side note, I’m sad to say that I have since broken the replacement part and have fixed it again. I’m back to rocking out once again.
So there you have it. Congratulations to all the winners.
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A quick year in the life of a blog
After blogging on geeeek.com for several years, for some unknown reason I decided to move my blogging to a more personally branded domain. Enter: JohnHawkinsUnrated.com. Last year on December 14th I started JHU and since then geeeek.com has fallen in to ruins. Actually, so have a few of my attempts at blogging. I have “plans” for many of these projects, it’s just finding the time to execute the plans that I need to work on. Really, what I need to do is find direction and figure out which projects are important to me and which are not. JHU I plan to keep as my personal blog. A place for me to rant. Welcome.
This is post #172 since the beginning of JHU. I was going to go back and pick out some of my favorite posts from the year, but I’m working on something similar for a post on New Year’s Day. so instead I thought I’d do something a little different. Here’s a snapshot of the “popular tags” found on JHU so far. I figure this would be a good way to figure out what my blog is all about.
By the looks of it, my year was dominated by the following:
Yeah, that pretty much sums up my year. It will be interesting to see how this tag cloud changes over the next year. What will dominate my time and interest in 2009? I can’t wait to find out.
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2009 Project: Photo-a-Day
I enjoy a good challenge. Currently I’m in the middle of my second “30 Day Challenge” with a group of friends who all wanted to push themselves to post to their blog once per day for an entire month. There’s no money on the line and there’s no penalty for missing a day. There’s just the shame and humiliation piled on you from your friends when you miss a day (you know who you are). So far, so good for me. I’m about half way through and going strong. But with the holiday coming up, I fear the tough part is still ahead.
I’m not one to be slowed by merely having too much on my plate. I tend to thrive in these conditions. That could be the only reason why I have decided to create a project that is far larger than simply blogging once a day. That’s child’s play compared to what I plan to try. My goal is to post one new photo every day for the entire year on my photo website, SlackerPhotos.com.
In the past I tried a photo-a-day project and failed after just one month. The reason it failed is because I was going about it the wrong way. I was trying to take a new photo each day. This quickly turned in to a rush at the end of the day to take a photo that wasn’t horrible. Each time I posted one of the photos I felt worse about the project, so finally I just stopped. This project should be easier to accomplish as my goal is to POST a photo-a-day. I’ve taken several thousand photos over the past year and I’ll be able to pre-schedule photos to post on the site each day. I believe this will give me the leeway I need to be able to succeed with this project.
I recently gave SlackerPhotos.com a make-over with a new template. I removed some of the photos that I had posted before and it’s all set for it’s re-launch on January 1st. Subscribe to the RSS feed to receive a new photo each day. And, if I miss a day, feel free to mock me in whichever way you deem appropriate.
Do you have any project plans for 2009?
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