Monthly Archives: September 2012

Leaps and Bounds in Blogging Land – Then and Now

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Disclaimer: If I would have waited and gone to the WordPress Conference a lot of this heartache could have been avoided I suspect. Having said that, nothing beats hands-on experience. The more you use something, the more comfortable you become. In just two short weeks I feel I have gone as far as I can go with .com on its own and am ready to move on.

As far as my blog goes, I am just interested in writing so I have different needs for my blog than people who are setting up a business website, something interactive or something where you want streaming video or music, etc. etc. These are all things that need to be considered when fashioning your blog. If you are going to stay on .com for the foreseeable future, I suggest you get the upgrade package.

So just a few short days ago, I wrote this:

After an exhaustive search, I finally found something that I think might actually be the basic beginner’s guide for using your blog – not codes or SEO or keywords or L, M, N, O, P. I hate how they always talk about things like “well obviously everyone knows that, pffft” so who needs to explain it. I mean Codex, html, keyword generators come on. I was all WTF as I started to read. (If you barely know what I’m talking about, welcome to my world.) This Easy Guide is great!

Dashboard – that’s what I would define as your ‘toolbar’, or.

This is where you manipulate the appearance and settings of your blog.

Let’s skip to the meat – do not delete the first email that you get from WordPress, it’s a virtual bible of where to go to do what. After almost an hour of … (see below, or save your time and go to your initial email).

Change your blog settings … bingo!

Right so after you log in, if you click below your avatar (picture of you, if you’ve imported an image, drawing of a face if not) at the top what I would call a toolbar area (I am probably using the wrong terms here but) a drop-down menu appears:

If you you go down to the bottom link and hover a pop-out menu appears:

Dashboard
New Posts
Site Stats
Manage Comments
Read Blog

Okay Dashboard is where you do all the editing to your blog.

If you want to get to what I would call your home page, you click read blog.

Okay now we’re cooking with gas and there’s three hours of my life I’ll never get back, (repeats mantra – “labour of love, labour of love, labour of love”.)

Really Rogers? (What Ever Happened to Manners)

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Right so I know Ted fell of the horse and Alan is new at the reigns but really, a little common courtesy would it kill ya? Your customer relations sucks ass dude and you are seriously going to have to mop the floor with this one.

Are you fucking kidding me? Nationwide internet integral systemic problem, but only on the internet platform, yet everyone still has wireless access (you guys would have been calling and emailing each other so you were well aware) Did it not occur to anyone at any time to do some damage control and oh you know, send out a customer-wide email

“Please be advised there seems to be a systemic problem. We are aware of it and working to remediate the problem as soon as possible. In the meantime, if you could please bear with us. We apologize for the delay and appreciate you as a customer. Thank you.”

It’s called communication – WOT have you fucking forgotten how to do it?! Jeebus but I’m pissed.

And the worst part, all the poor people at tech support and customer service haven’t got a clue. People I know you’re pissed but have a heart and consider the source. Don’t give some poor schlep a nervous breakdown that’s working for minimum wage. Oh no, we don’t have slave labour, we’ve progressed to the much more far reaching emotional abuse.

To my peeps, I know you’re angry but when did it become acceptable to scream or rant a tirade at someone just because they were on the end of a phone?! More flies with honey.

As to Rogers, you’re getting paid how much for this?! *Shakes head.* Listen if you want me to come over there and teach you how to liaise with the masses in a kind, respectful and decent way AND increase your quarterly profits (because apparently money matters, not kindness, decency, humanity, love or altruism anymore), I would be happy to do so.

I started off angry, but now I’m just sad.

WordCamp 2012 – SOLD OUT!

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What will you do unimpeded by fear, other people’s criticism? Would you dance naked in the street, would you run amok? Me, I would write. And so I relegate that fear to the background and step forward … albeit tentatively and brush my hand in the water. It’s a slightly shocking sensation but soothing too. It feels like home. This is the place I’ve been looking for my whole life. Oh the land of blog is very funny place, where everyone wears a funny, funny face 🙂

Now I’m at the WordPress Conference called WordCamp at George Brown College in Toronto. Tons of free swag, gourmet coffee, food – so cool. After party at Habanero’s, woot! (Keep saying I’m too tired but I’m thinking the tired might be outweighed by the networking. Already my best information was in part due to conversations with other attendees.) Even if there isn’t really anything you don’t already know, if you’re someone in the industry, this is a great place to network. Not to mention everything in the computer age is so five minutes ago. These people who have their pulse on the hand of trending and what’s new, hot and up and coming. I went to the session “Go Mobile on WordPress”, a very engaging and witty speaker enlightened me to the fact that more and more people, particularly the younger generation are using their mobile devices to access the web in place of their computers. After he said it, I thought it made perfect sense. However it never would have occurred to me that I would want to consider what kind of theme I was using and how it reacted when uploaded on a mobile device. He said 3 seconds is too long to load, people will leave! Damn Skippy, that’s not a lot of time.

The section for newbs drew me to the conference, but because of my previous excessive blog research over the past few weeks, I actually realized that I knew the vast majority of the “introduction” section. Luckily you’re allowed to slide between one of any three sessions offered in that time slot. In a nutshell, each session is nice and short (45 minutes – with 15 minute breaks in between), there’s a number of speakers, lots of visuals and you really don’t need to take notes because everything’s linked. The whole conference is available on WordPress.tv.

In case you’re wondering, ipod defines streaming as:

“… to start a progressive download of the file, where the file isn’t downloaded to your computer in a lasting way. This is called streaming.”

And there’s a WordCamp for developers coming up in November peeps!

You and the Law – Protecting Your Words and Ideas

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Disclaimer: I do not have a law degree; I am not an expert in anything. I’m just trying not to step in it as I go.

If you weren’t scared already, this ought to do it. Having said that, grab that fear by the balls and have at ‘er. But remember, ignorance is never an excuse and could possibly get you booted out of blog land forever.

One of Girlie’s bestest proliferated clichés, “everything in moderation, including moderation.” (Oscar Wilde was the bomb. If you haven’t read him, please do! The Importance of Being Earnest is hilarious.)

And then I wrote, don’t veer too much from your original path (I kill myself – anyway) – or you will definitely lose your way. A blog just full of other people’s links and words ain’t gonna be much of a blog either …

*****

So great, I’ve started this amazing blog, I’m on fire, I’m awesome! So can just anybody yoink my words willy-nilly and use them? What’s the deal? Do I have any rights?

There’s a ton of stuff concerning copywriting, e-book writers, etc. (When I get that wicked book contract or screenplay deal I will totally look into this but for now we want to concentrate on the blog aspect. Okay focus!)

(Slightly off-topic but noteworthy (well that focussing thing really worked out well for me) … self-plagiarism who knew?)

Okay, I’m back – aha! What this guy said! (Claps hands, I just love adding links and apparently that’s key in this battle 🙂 *Curtseys to blogbloke*.)

“It’s the “idea” or “concept” that matters, not just the words. That’s why they call it “intellectual property”.”

(I will write in-depth on intellectual property later, she’s a hairy-backed beast with many teeth and hidden claws I tell ya.) Passing-off is a huge issue in IP (Intellectual Property) arena and makes a lot of lawyers where I work a lot of money arguing the finer points of this aspect of IP.

Quite simply, we all know that knock-offs are illegal. If I buy a pair of knock-off Nike’s I’m aware I’m doing something illegal. Well it’s the same kind of thing with your writing. If you are not sitting at the keyboard tapping away but cutting and pasting from other people’s writing without giving them credit, you’re plagiarizing. Same deal as when you were in school, if you didn’t cite your work properly you failed. In college and university you can get booted on the spot for this type of activity. Just because you’re sitting at a keyboard feeling anonymous makes it no less heinous and don’t think for a second that the long arm of the law isn’t far-reaching when it comes to this type of thing. Don’t forget, you buy those shoes, you don’t get caught, you’re good. You write something, it’s on your blog; presumably you’re trying to attract an audience so it’s for all to see. So are you writing in good conscience? If an IP lawyer skimmed through your blog would there be any red flags?

Not everyone can blog, if you’re having a hard time coming up with an original idea, perhaps it’s time to consider another aspect of the world-wide web for your endeavours but don’t break the law and knowingly plagiarise, it’ll just come back and bite you in the ass I can assure you.

And hey, don’t forget, it’s the “world-wide” web. Don’t think because you’re sitting at your computer in Bulgaria it’s different there … (a topic to expound upon another time).

Want more information, I found plagiarism today awesome and very informative.

Please note, this site is also NOT written by a lawyer (obviously, I did not fall off my chair from boredom while reading through it).

And as to the “there is no such thing as an original idea” adage, yeah you people keep thinking that and I’ll keep writing!

It’s Blog, It’s Blog – Part 4 (Does This Title Work?)

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A lot of advice states, don’t get bogged down with too much information but did you know for instance that your post titles could be excluding you from searches in google and other search engines? Me neither.

When I first set out to research blogs all my queues from these fabulous gentlemen and their site.

How To Really Make $5,000 Per Month Online

Copyright ©2012 The Keyword Academy

Court Tuttle and Mark Butler

As well as providing this 80 page synopsis of how to create a successful blog (which I have yet to delve into in detail), you can subscribe to their emails which is how I came across this link. (Don’t worry it’ll only take you two minutes to read.)

Pretty fascinating huh? It also makes me wonder if you get censored because of the nature of your blog, i.e. if it is of a controversial nature or has certain key phrases in do they get by search engines? We should probably be wary of what we say. It’s all well and good to wax poetic and spout opinions off the cuff but remember, nothing is lost in cyberspace and yes, they can hold it against you should the need arise. I also have to wonder where that leaves me in the swearing department, I love a good tirade and it loses something without a few expletives.

Going one step further, be wary of any content that goes over the net, personal emails, comments on social networks (or messages), any sites you write on in any capacity. If you want privacy, write a letter or meet in person. Hey, there’s a novel idea, have a real conversation with someone! For instance, look what happened to that poor RCMP officer in British Columbia just because they found he had a profile on fetlife.com, a site particularly for the BDSM and fetish community. Hello! Private life, i.e. what he did on his own time. I believe it in no way affected his job (may have even improved it – again a point for another time) but the RCMP summarily dismissed him because his association with this site allegedly tarnished the RCMP’s reputation – really?!

The crux of the article and its slant on what they describe as “abnormal” behaviour is another matter entirely, I will not address that here except to say I whole-heartedly disagree.

The point is, you have to consider your day-to-day life, your job, your kids, spouse, relatives how it would reflect on you if what you write or look at came to light, could it be detrimental? (As an addendum regarding porn – for the love of Joe, rent porn! The amount of spam and trojans and hidden crap that comes along with it is not worth the agro.) Not to mention, remember what I said above – forever! You might be 17 and carefree now but what about in 40 years when you’re trying to get on the bench as a federal judge and the opposition roots around and finds those little gems?

 You may think you’ve deleted things but the fact of the matter is, you can’t take things back on the internet/world-wide web. If someone wants to find it, they will. Tread lightly and write a good title.