RSS Feed30 days of blogging
Just to be clear, no, the title doesn’t mean that this is my first 30 days blogging. Far from it. My original blog has posts dating back all the way to October 2003. I’ve been at it a while. However, I don’t always blog on a regular basis. Sometimes you’ll get 5 in a week, sometimes 3 in a month. Sometimes it’s less frequent than that.
At the beginning of September, Jason asked if anybody was interested in joining him in his 30 day challenge. The goal was to blog at least 1 time per day for 30 straight days. I’m usually really bad at following through with these types of things, so naturally I agreed to join in. And, as of today, this marks the 30th consecutive day! I made it! What’s most amazing is that of the 8 people I knew who were in the challenge, I’m the only one that finished all 30 days! I’m not sure how it happened, but I made it and I’m really excited about it!
There are a fair amount of benefits that you receive by blogging every day. Here’s a small sample of what my experience have been:
- Google page rank went from 1 to 2
- Alexa rating dropped from 616,280 to 371,929
- #of visitors tripled from last month to this month
- # of RSS subscriptions tripled in 1 month
I’ve also realized that the more I blog, the more I enjoy the writing process. It’s nice to have a place to just sound off on whatever topics I want. But even more enjoyable is writing posts that solve problems for people. The solution to an issue in WordPress and fixing my broken Rock Band drum pedal both have received steady traffic from people searching for answers on Google.
This month has been pretty gratifying. I intend to keep the streak alive and see if I can break 50 days, then 75 and maybe even 100 days in a row. We shall see.
Here are some highlights from the month in blogging:
Most visited blog post
Fixing the WordPress login issue
Most active referrer
http://stumbleupon.com/
Most common search term to find my site
rock band foot pedal
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Double-Check Your Work!
Over the past few weeks I have been working on organizing the WordCamp:Las Vegas conference in January. I but together a website, I added some content and I even signed up for eventbrite.com to let them handle the registrations. I added a button to the site to send the visitors over to eventbrite.com to complete their registration and I tested the link to make sure everything was working properly. Once satisfied, I checked that off my list of things to do and I moved on.
This past weekend there was a LOT of buzz surrounding WordPress and more specifically, WordCamp. There were events held in 3 different cities around the country. There’s another one taking place this coming weekend. WordPress and WordCamp are the hot ticket right now. And yet, it’s been almost 2 full weeks and not a single person has completed the registration form. I realize that the event is still over 3 months away, but come on. Not 1 person signed up?
I received an email this morning from a guy who took the time to write. It said the following:
“Trying to register for WordCamp LV, but the registration form has no submit button. I’ll try again in a day or two and hope it works.”
ACK!! I immediately followed up with an email to the help desk at eventbrite.com asking what the deal is. Unfortunately, it’s now been a full day without a response. That saddens me a little bit. I’ll be following up in the morning with another email and perhaps a phone call.
In this case it wasn’t my work that needed double-checking. But had I taken the extra step to test out the form before considering it done, I would have saved myself some grief.
Live and learn.
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Contest #2: Domain Name Dilemma
You may or may not know this about me, but I LOVE buying domain names. A couple years back I owned about 50 domain names and started feeling very overwhelmed and unproductive, so I sold the bulk of them to Jason. Since then I’ve slowly built up my stable of domains again and am back to owning about 40 domains. You would think that my previous experience would keep me from doing this again. But you’d be wrong.
This weekend I won an auction on eBay for a new domain name. I’m a sucker for 4 digit domain names already, but when I saw this one was about to expire and nobody had bid on it, I just HAD to throw my $0.99 at it. And now I’m the proud owner of pssw.org.
I was sitting around thinking to myself, “what will I do with this new domain name?” Nothing good comes to mind, so I thought I’d leave it up to my readers in the form of a contest.
The contest is simple. Come up with the best idea for a site (or blog) to use on pssw.org and win $10 via paypal. Once again, I’ll be the only judge here. Leave a comment giving me the basics of your idea. If you send the winning entry, I’ll pick your brain (as needed) for additional details. And, if it turns in to a viable money making project, I will also give you 10% of the profits for the first 12 months.
If you feel your idea is too good to share in an open forum such as the comments, feel free to email it to me at john [at] johnhawkinsunrated [dot] com.
All entries must be received by Midnight, Sunday, October 5th.
Good Luck!
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I missed it all
As I wrote about yesterday, my leg is in some pain. What I didn’t realize that the combination of seeing the doctor yesterday and having him work on my leg followed up by 5 hours of standing at a Foo Fighters concert was going to render me basically crippled.
I woke up this morning around 5:30 to the most severe pain I’ve felt in years. My leg was absolutely screaming at me. I woke up the wife and had her get me an ice pack. I iced the leg for a while but didn’t really feel any relief.
I spent about 2 hours sitting at my desk trying to get some work done. By the end, the pain was unbearable. We grabbed some lunch and then I crashed out on the couch for a 2 hour nap. I then went upstairs and moved in to bed where I would spend the remainder of the day and evening.
This weekend there were 3 WordCamp events that I would have loved to have gone to. Not all of them, but any one of them. 2 of them were relatively close being in Utah and Oregon. But, when I was trying to schedule it all, a buddy’s wedding today and Foo Fighters tickets last night meant that I wasn’t going to be leaving town. Then, instead of going to the wedding, I spend the evening in bed.
This sucks.
I plan on another visit to the doctor on Monday. I need to start getting well pretty darn quick. There is NO WAY I can tackle Disneyland next week in my condition.
Did I mention that this sucks?
My leg is currently feeling as bad as it did at 5:30 this morning. I’ve iced it several times, took some Advil and have tried to stay off it as much as possible. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.
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Procrastination and the Faux-hawks
pro·cras·ti·nate
[proh-kras-tuh-neyt]
–verb (used without object)
1. To defer action; delay: to procrastinate until an opportunity is lost.
–verb (used with object)
2. To put off till another day or time; defer; delay.
WHY do I put things off so long? Hey, that was supposed to be rhetorical.
But seriously, I do it all the time and it just makes no sense. I like to consider myself a slacker, but at the same time, I like to think that I can get things done when they need to get done. So why is it, exactly, that I can’t seem to go to the doctor’s office when I first realize I need to? Instead, I put it off until I’m at the point where it’s a toss up between doctor’s office visit and emergency room.
Current situation: Rock Band Injury.
Stop laughing. It’s not funny. OK, it is funny, but can you hold your laughing until I’m not arround? It’s only polite.
I was playing Rock Band 2 the day it came out and I was kicking ass on some drums. However, I was playing drums on both hard and expert modes which means there is a LOT of foot pedal involved. The shorts I was wearing let my wallet rest below my butt cheek. When I sat down behind the drum kit, the wallet was under me, but still, no concern.
The following day I notice that my leg is a little bit sore. The day after was even worse. Rather than doing anything about it, I simply ignored it thinking the problem would go away on it’s own. Once again, I was wrong.
Yesterday I gave my massage therapist a call and asked if he’d come over to see if he could help massage the issue away. I explained the cause and effect and instead of saying, “Sure, I’ll rush right over”, he says, “Go see a Doctor… Tomorrow!” He’s a genius, why didn’t I think of that.
I went to the doctor today and he thinks I may have a touch of Bursitis. He gave me some samples of some anti-inflammatory drugs and sent me on my way. Had I not procrastinated for nearly 2 weeks, I’ll bet I’d be all better by now. Instead I have to worry that I’ll be fine in time for our drip to Disneyland next weekend.
Oh yeah, I mentioned faux-hawks, too, didn’t I?
For those who don’t know what a faux-hawk is a hair style worn by dudes who have a full time job that would frown upon them having an actual mohawk but want to look bad-ass when they hit the clubs. If you look it up in the dictionary, you may find it right next to the descriptions for “popped collar” and “douchebag.” While these three things don’t always go together, it’s amazing how many times they do.
Tonight we went to see the Foo Fighters in concert. They were fantastic. However, I could not get over the amount of faux-hawks in the crowd. I’m a big fan of the Foo, but never realized that they had become the Band De Jure for the faux-hawk faithful. I felt seriously inadequate being around such a collection. Am I not a true fan if I don’t have a faux-hawk or popped collar? To make sure I fit in, whenever possible I tried to be a douchebag to make up for my follicular shortcomings.
I hope I don’t need to turn in my fan club membership card if I’m found out.
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