The Ickiness Subsides

I’ve been battling a frustratingly-mild cold of some sort all week. By that I mean it has been just bad enough to incapacitate most of the creative part of my brain, but not enough to render me incapable of daily life functions. I only just now realized that nearly every blog post from this week has been formulaic stuff that I actually scheduled to post weeks ago.

I realize that if I apologize too much for infrequent blog updates, I risk becoming the Least Interesting Man in the World, but it’s a chance I’ll just have to take.

The last time this happened, I was able to buy your forgiveness, dear reader(s), with an Olivia Munn GIF. I see no point in trying anything different now. Continue reading

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Confessions of a Digital Hoarder

I am something of a virtual hoarder (or digital hoarder, either will do). By this, I mean that I am constantly bookmarking things I read online, saving funny memes and other pictures into vast directories, accumulating animated GIFs that I may never look at again because I think they might be useful in a Facebook thread some day, and so on. I’ve mentioned before that I have amassed a sizable collection of unpublished blog post drafts, some half-written, some entirely unwritten, and some that are nothing more than a title and a note to write something with that title.

By TheDoctorMo (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

Not pictured: My blog dashboard. This is a metaphor.

Among those drafts are several accumulations of links to major news stories of the past couple years, which I accumulated through hours upon hours of reading time-wasting on the internet. I have no reasonable expectation that I will ever take those giant lists of URLs and spin them into written gold, but I want to do something with them. I proclaim this to be blog-cleaning season! Continue reading

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Long Break from Regular Blogging

I had to go AFK for a bit because of hand and elbow surgery, but that was now more than two months ago, and I’ve been back at my regular writing job for a while. My lack of regular blog updates might have upset my reader(s), so I am committing to [trying to] do better.

In the meantime, I found this GIF of Olivia Munn saying “boobs” in an Imgur folder:

That’s in honor of the series finale of The Newsroom, where she played Sloan Sabbith and was awesome.

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500

I just noticed that I have exactly five hundred drafts of unpublished blog posts saved here, ranging from mostly-finished posts to a title with one or two links.

Surely I have raised procrastination to an art form by now.

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Blogging is Going to Change the World!!!!!1!!!!!

The power of bloggers to change the world appears to be the theme of the almost comically-pretentious documentary American Blogger (h/t Julie).

The trailer tells us this ‘beautiful’ and ‘cinematic’ movie follows some documentarian you never heard of as he travels America in an Airstream interviewing bloggers… who with only one (briefly shown) exception are gorgeous white women who appear to be fairly wealthy.

This is the face of blogging: blond MILFs lounging about in hammocks on their porches. As a blogger this pretty well reflects my life.

Everything about this trailer – from the premise to the awful fucking music – is hilarious. Please hate-watch this.

I can’t add much to that, except to note that if blogging does change the world, the blogs probably won’t originate in suburban middle America. (If someone wants to make Egyptian Blogger, there might be more to it.)

Also, has anyone actually touted the ability of blogs to “change the world” since Twitter and Facebook first caught on? There’s always a new killer app that’s going to change the world until the next world-changing killer app comes along…..

Anyway, you can hate-watch the trailer here:

American Blogger Official Trailer from Chris Wiegand on Vimeo.

 

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5 Tips for Successful Blogging in the Space Age

Earlier this year, I authored a post entitled “5 Tips for Successful Blogging,” in which I offered advice based on my years of experience remembering to put food in my mouth and not my nose.

It seems as though other self-styled “experts” are still out there, offering their own bits of sage advice, but still missing the most important aspects of being an effective blogger. So, here are five more tips that I can offer the bloggers of today and tomorrow. Technology keeps advancing every day, so all of this may be obsolete by the time you finish this

New technology has made blogging even easier, only requiring the parts of your brain that aren’t watching those judge shows on Fox every morning. Here are five tips for successful blogging for the bloggers of today and tomorrow.

1. Carpal tunnel syndrome continues to be a major problem for office workers around the world. You can delay the onset of carpal tunnel syndrome by refusing to learn how to type, and using only your two index fingers (or the nearest available fingers.)

2. Sirius, also known as the “dog star,” is approximately 8.6 light years from Earth. Factor that into your marketing plan.

3. The keys on your keyboard should face up (unless you practice inverted blogging, in which case there is nothing more I can teach you.)

4. Tardigrades, also known as “water bears,” are a terrible target demographic for most bloggers. Studies have shown that tardigrades have little interest in most blog topics, with the as-yet unexplained exception of Gaelic football.

By Goldstein lab - tardigrades (originally posted to Flickr as water bear) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

I think it wants to hug you!

5. List-style blog posts will remain extremely popular forever. Always blog in list form. Even if your post only has one point to make, number it.

Photo credit: By Goldstein lab – tardigrades (originally posted to Flickr as water bear) [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

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5 Tips for Successful Blogging

Blog posts about blogging abound on the internet, usually with titles like “5 Tips for Writing Blog Posts that Make $$$” or something. They pretty much all have the same advice, which I might summarize as follows:

  1. Update often.
  2. Optimize.
  3. Share among social media platforms.
  4. Have guest bloggers.
  5. Have compelling content. (This is my all-time favorite, for its shameless redundancy.)

I might as well add some advice of my own to the mix. My additions to this would be:

  1. Drink plenty of water.
  2. Try to write in the predominate language spoken in your market.
  3. Type with your fingers.
  4. Make sure the CO2 concentration in the environment in which you blog stays below 360 ppm.
  5. Do not allow ferrets to proofread your work.

711px-Fretts_301004_selbstfotografiert,_GNU-FDL

Not the editorial staff you’re looking for.

Follow these tips, and blogging success is yours for the taking!

Photo credit: By de:User:Viki (de:Wikipedia) [Attribution], via Wikimedia Commons.

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The Number of the Blog

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Okay seriously, who numbered this beast?

I just noticed that my blog has 666 published posts. With this one you are currently reading, of course, it has 667, but it seemed like a moment worth mentioning. Whether my blog becomes more or less devilish after this milestone remains to be seen…..

Photo credit: ‘The number of the beast’ by David Stutz [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

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BlogathonATX Approaches

logoLabor Day weekend will mark my one-year anniversary as a “professional blogger.” I cannot honestly say that I switched from courtroom attorney to paid scribbler of words because I overly enjoy the company of others. That said, even the most hermetical of people ought to get out and meet like-minded people now and then. Ileenie “The Weenie” Haddad’s BlogathonATX series is about to have its latest incarnation, and I plan on going for the hell of it. Rather than try to come up with a nifty unpaid sales pitch, I’ll steal words from Q:

This homegrown conference was the brain child of Ilene “The Weenie” Haddad.  Weenie originally thought it would be fun to get all her favorite local bloggers together in one place for a whole day and see what happened.  The result was a loosely structured event comprised of impromptu learning and interaction with the coolest, hippest, smartest and most laid-back folks in the city.  After the first BlogathonATX, the people wanted more.  Now, on Saturday, September 15 2012, the fifth installment of BlogathonATX is scheduled to take place–and tickets are on sale now.

I might even consider waking up early on a Saturday for this.

Weenie, I might add, is quite the comic artist.

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A quantum singularity of blogging that could destroy the Universe

'NGC_6745' by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center NASA-GSFC (The Goddard Library) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Could this be the end result of self-referential blogging? History will decide.

Social media marketing consultant Jayme Soulati has a post up at her business blog entitled “Six Types of Blogging.”The first type on her list is “Blogger Teaches Blogger.” She raises some very good points about identifying an audience and a goal or goals for one’s blog, something I have not really done in earnest.

My main goal here, however, is to write a blog post about a blog post that discusses bloggers who write about blog posts. That ought to be enough of an infinite feedback loop.

Photo credit: ‘NGC_6745’ By NASA Goddard Space Flight Center NASA-GSFC (The Goddard Library) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

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