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From My E mail: Gas and Eggs  

This is thought-provoking:

For those of us who also own vehicles besides our bikes, this might prove
to be a very interesting exercise.........................

A man eats two eggs each morning for breakfast. When he goes to the
grocery store he pays 60 cents a dozen. Since a dozen eggs won't last a
week he normally buys two dozen at a time.

One day while buying eggs he notices that the price has risen to 72 cents.
The next time he buys groceries, eggs are .76 cents a dozen. When asked to
explain the price of eggs the store owner says, "the price has gone up and
I have to raise my price accordingly".

This store buys 100 dozen eggs a day. I checked around for a better price
and all the distributors have raised their prices. The distributors have
begun to buy from the huge egg farms. The small egg farms have been driven
out of business.

The huge egg farms sells 100,000 dozen eggs a day to distributors. With no
competition, they can set the price as they see fit. The distributors then
have to raise their prices to the grocery stores. And on and on and on.
As the man kept buying eggs the price kept going up. He saw the big egg
trucks delivering 100 dozen eggs each day. Nothing changed there.

He checked out the huge egg farms and found they were selling 100,000
dozen eggs to the distributors daily. Nothing had changed but the price
of eggs.

Then week before Thanksgiving the price of eggs shot up to $1.00 a dozen.
Again he asked the grocery owner why and was told, "cakes and baking for
the holiday". The huge egg farmers know there will be a lot of baking
going on and more eggs will be used. Hence, the price of eggs goes up.
Expect the same thing at Christmas and other times when family cooking and
baking happens.

This pattern continues until the price of eggs is 2.00 a dozen. The man
says,"there must be something we can do about the price of eggs". He
starts talking to all the people in his town and they decide to stop
buying eggs. This didn't work because everyone needed eggs. Finally, the
man suggested only buying what you need.

He ate 2 eggs a day. On the way home from work he would stop at the
grocery and buy two eggs. Everyone in town started buying 2 or 3 eggs a
day.

The grocery store owner began complaining that he had too many eggs in his
cooler. He told the distributor that he didn't need any eggs. Maybe
wouldn't need any all week.

The distributor had eggs piling up at his warehouse. He told the huge egg
farms that he didn't have any room for eggs would not need any for at
least two weeks.

At the egg farm, the chickens just kept on laying eggs.

To relieve the pressure, the huge egg farm told the distributor that they
could buy the eggs at a lower price. The distributor said, " I don't have
the room for the %$&^*&% eggs even if they were free".

The distributor told the grocery store owner that he would lower the price
of the eggs if the store would start buying again. The grocery store owner
said, "I don't have room for more eggs. The customers are only buy 2 or 3
eggs at a time". "Now if you were to drop the price of eggs back down to
the original price, the customers would start buying by the dozen again".

The distributors sent that proposal to the huge egg farmers. They liked
the price they were getting for their eggs but, them chickens just kept on
laying.

Finally, the egg farmers lowered the price of their eggs. But only a few
cents. The customers still bought 2 or 3 eggs at a time. They said, "when
the price of eggs gets down to where it was before, we will start buying
by the dozen."

Slowly the price of eggs started dropping. The distributors had to slash
their prices to make room for the eggs coming from the egg farmers. The
egg farmers cut their prices because the distributors wouldn't buy at a
higher price than they were selling eggs for. Anyway, they had full
warehouses and wouldn't need eggs for quite a while.

And the chickens kept on laying.



Eventually, the egg farmers cut their prices because they were throwing
away eggs they couldn't sell. The distributors started buying again
because the eggs were priced to where the stores could afford to sell them
at the lower price. And the customers st arting buying by the dozen again.

Now, transpose this analogy to the gasoline industry.

What if everyone only bought $10.00 worth of gas each time they pulled to
the pump. The dealers tanks would stay semi full all the time. The dealers
wouldn't have room for the gas coming from the huge tank farms. The tank
farms wouldn't have room for the gas coming from the refining plants. And
the refining plants wouldn't have room for the oil being off loaded from
the huge tankers coming from the Middle East.

Just $10.00 each time you buy gas. Don't fill it up. You may have to stop
for gas twice a week but, the price should come down. Think about it.

As an added note...When I buy $10.00 worth of gas, that leaves my tank a
little under half full. The way prices are jumping around, you can buy gas
for $2.65 a gallon and then the next morning it can be $2.15. If you have
your tank full of $2.65 gas you don't have room for the $2.15 gas. You
might not understand the economics of only buying two eggs at a time but,
you can't buy cheaper gas if your tank is full of the high priced stuff.
Also, don't buy anything else at the gas station, don't give them any more
of your hard earned money than what you spend on gas, until the prices
come down..

End...

Worth considering?


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Checking in  

I haven't forgotten my blogs. It's just that there are still only 24 hours in a day, and my job has been keeping me incredibly busy, not to mention worn out. For all that I work at home much of the time, there are still expectations to be met. On Wednesday I was in the office until 7:15 PM (my shift ends at 5:30 PM, but I had documentation to complete before I could leave.) At the end of a long day, the last thing I want to do is still more typing...so my blog entries have been less frequent. But I am still here.

Dylan was here for a short time yesterday. His mother was at work, and her usual sitter had an emergency, so Dylan got to go to work with mom for a short time. Jay picked him up and brought him home, then Mom picked him up mid-afternoon. Jay unplugged one of our phones, and Dylan was carrying the receiver around...and now it is nowhere to be found. I'm confident it's here somewhere, we just haven't found it yet. From now on, Dylan only gets to play with a toy phone, no matter how much fun the real ones seem to be. He's learning new words, and progressing nicely. He, his mom and dad are invited to our house for Thanksigving dinner. We're having ours the Friday following Thanksgiving;; it seems to work out better for us. It will be the first chance I've had to visit with Lauren on a holiday at home in a while, so I'm looking forward to it.

Today is going to be a challenge, since I have to start a time-study for my job; it will last two weeks. I carry a beeper, and each time it goes off I will need to note my exact activity at that time. I last did this two years ago, and it was a pain then; I don't expect it will have changed much, except that now I have more control over extraneous noise in the environment. I do have plans this weekend to do some serious work on tasks from my To Do list. I meant to complete some of the tasks last weekend, but my ISP had a technical glitch that kept me offline for three hours, and I lost momentum for getting anything productive accomplished.

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BlogExplosion, An Antidote to Online Boredom  

Nope, BlogExplosion is not new. But in a sense, it's new to me. I've just discovered how to use some of it's features, and I can see huge potential for spending time there. I've figured out how to make my surfing "count", and now I get credit for browsing, which I like to do anyway. (Note to self, for future reference: Read the FAQ!)

I've even submitted one of my blogs to BE. This is one moreactivity that is now going to take a permanent position on my ToDo list. I like the BlogMarks list capability, and although I've only listed one blog (thus far) on my Do Not View list, I can see how it would be useful, even though the maximum upper limit for the list is 50. After 50 blogs have been placed on the Do Not View list, you have to trade an old one for a newer one. The ability to view Surf History is also welcome, because it provides a chance to go back and Blogmark any sites I meant to and didn't as I browse.



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SO YOU THINK YOU KNOW EVERYTHING?  

Time for a little Humor and Trivia. . .

A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.

A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.

A crocodile cannot stick out its tongue.

A dragonfly has a life span of 24 hours.

A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.

A "jiffy" is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.

A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.

A snail can sleep for three years.

Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.

All 50 states are listed across the top of the LincolnMemorial on the back of the $5 bill.

Almonds are a member of the peach family.

An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.

Babies are born without kneecaps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2 to 6 years of age.

Butterflies taste with their feet.

Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds. Dogs only have about 10.

"Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt".

February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.

In the last 4,000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.

If the population of Chinawalked past you, in single file, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.

If you are an average American, in your whole life, you will spend an average of 6 months waiting at red lights.

It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.

Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable.

No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple.

On a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament building is an American flag.

Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.

Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.

Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.

"Stewardesses" is the longest word typed with only the left hand and "lollipop" with your right.

The average person's left hand does 56% of the typing.

The cruise liner, QE2, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.

The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.

The sentence: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every letter of the alphabet.

The winter of 1932 was so cold that Niagara Fallsfroze completely solid.

The words 'racecar,' 'kayak' and 'level' are the same whether they are read left to right or right to left (palindromes).

There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.

There are more chickens than people in the world.

There are only four words in the English language which end in "dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous

There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order: "abstemious" and "facetious."

There's no Betty Rubble in the Flintstones Chewables Vitamins.

Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.

TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.

Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.

Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks; otherwise it will digest itself.
...Now you know everything

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"I Jump!" and "Shoes Bye-bye"  

We had Dylan over for the night last Sunday. He is a delight, but it does take both of us to keep up with him. He is not "hyper" active, but is very busy. So much to see, touch, hear, taste...and get into. He is beginning to form simple, two word sentences such as "shoes, bye-bye." (When his mother and uncle were small, they would see me reach for my shoes -- I hated shoes then, and hate them today -- and they would say, "Mommy, I want to go..." because they knew I was going out. They generally went most places with me.) So, Dylan comes by his association of "shoes" and "bye-bye" honestly.

He climbs, and is totally fearless. He climbed onto the couch in the living room and from there onto the card table in the center of the room (we don't have a coffee table, so we just put the card table where a coffee table would go), then walked to the center of the table, looked at me, and said, "I jump". Next thing I know, he's launched himself straight into my arms. He repeated this exercise five or six times before he lost interest.

Bedtime here is not as much of a challenge as his mother finds it to be. She describes getting him to bed at night as "a nightmare." I suggested she put into place a simple, predictable bedtime routine for him, and be consistent. He gets playtime, then "PJ time" here. When the PJ's go on, activity levels and noise and light levels start decreasing. He sleeps in darkness in a quiet room, with little problem. I told his mother that babies are very much creatures of habit; they like knowing what comes next, and they like routine.

The house usually looks like a cyclone's hit it when he leaves...but I find I really don't mind the mess. I'm mellowing with maturity. His mom never gets upset by the messes, and good for her and for Dylan. She continues doing a superlative job of nurturing him, despite having had some very serious barriers early on. He is without question one of the most absolutely secure children I've ever known.

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A Birth Anouncement, of Sorts: The Teaching Tree  

As has happened in the past, I have decided to create a new blog to contain a specific type of content that has outgrown this space. I have written tutorials here and elsewhere on the web (The Handicapped Computerist) for some time now. Rather than having to dig through an ever-growing list of posts on my several blogs searching for a particular tutorial, I've created The Teaching Tree, a blog whose focus is (naturally)focused on how-to's, tutorials and related resources.

While I will still be posting tutorials here from time to time, they will be found mainly in the Teaching Tree. The Tree will eventually include links to others' tutorials, as well as reviews. So if you write them, I'd like to hear from you! Drop by and sit with me under the branches of the Teaching Tree often! We may both come away more informed as well as entertained.


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My Page: What's On It Currently?  

I've written before about my personal Start Pages. I use the plural specifically because I have several pages for different topics/purposes, and they are linked together. It's my own website, stored in a folder on my hard drive.

My main page currently includes:

--> A site index (a list of all of my current and planned pages
--> Favorite Links, including several sections (Get Organized, Spiritual Resources, Favorite places I visit frequently, Computing links, Out and About on the Internet (Cool new sites and programs I've found), a section for my favorite Tag sites, Links for blog and Start Page tools, Coding resources, a list of other Start pages, Yahoo links, a collection of RSS readers, MapQuest links, blogging forum sites, a list of favorite software, and a calculator. (All of the items in this section are in the left sidebar.)

In the main section of the page:

--> A To-Do list, Search boxes, weather (including radar), search engines, news and local information links, download sites, wikipedia links, Technorati and Delicious quick links, Computer Newsletters and tip sites, bookmarklets, online comics, links to sites for sending/sharing large files, fun and games sites, a newsfeed from Digg.com, text of a favorite prayer, a daily scripture passage link, LifeHack links, online shopping links, my favorite books and authors lists, Windows tweaks and tips, tutorials, a list of links to cities I'd like to visit or learn more about, a section of links that don't currently fit anywhere else, plus space for more data.

In the right sidebar:

--> links to my blogs for quick access, a monthly calendar, links related to my job, folksonomy links, e-mail links, a list of favorite online magazines and periodicals, my blogrolls, Google tools, links to scripts I use, and Page Credits.

I add new items to my main page and to the others freqquently, and the pages serve as a quick reference as well as keeping my life online in order.




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Freeware Review: Delicioso  

If you use De.licio.us (and if you don't, what planet are you on?) for blogging and bookmarking, you could do a lot worse than check out ¡Delicioso!. What is it, you ask? Good question! ¡Delicioso! is a neat little freeware program that automates the process of submitting URLs to De.licio.us social bookmarking/tagging service. It takes only seconds, and you can submit URLs in batches. Fill in your De.licio.us username and password, enter your blog (or site's) URL in the URL field, and click Quick Submit, or enter the URL plus the title of the post you want to submit, and click Get Info. the tags for your post will be automatically generated, then you can simply click "submit." Done. What could be easier?

There is a textbox at the bottom of the screen that will either display information for individual links you click there, or that will submit the selected links to De.licio.us for you, and if for some reason you need to gather the tags from an entire blog's postings, you can easily do so by typing the URL, then the title of the blog in the Title field. In the textbox where the URL's appear, simply click on an individual URL with the "Get Info" Button selected. Then, as you click on the individual URL's, the tags for that post are displayed in the tags field, and you can copy and paste them. You can also load URLs from a file stored on your computer, if you like.

For free, and with no limitations of any sort, you have nothing to lose by trying it, so hop on over here
and download it. See if it doesn't turn you into a Delicious power-user very quickly.

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Blogging Central 101, Part 6: Blogger Hacks, social bookmarking and a few other gems  

Blogger Hacks
Once you’ve worked with Blogger for a while and have become comfortable with it, you may wonder what else you can do with it. There are a number of Blogger Hacks you can implement to further customize your blog. Read and follow the provided instructions carefully, and do remember to backup your template before you begin.

Adding Categories
One hack I’ve used is adding Categories to Blogger. Categories organize your posts by topic, which can make it easier for you and your readers to locate specific information quickly. Note: The ability to use categories in a blog is not currently directly supported by Blogger, but there are ways to do this. I’ve written a tutorial for one way to add categories to your blog, using De.licio.us, a social bookmarking service. Another method of doing Categories is found on the Virtual Scratchpad blog by Matthew Sheffield. Here's the direct link for his tutorial.

The categories hack using De.licio.us proved a challenge for me to implement, but with practice and help from a few fine bloggers, it was successfully done.

Speaking of De.licio.us: If you decide to use this service, check out the Absolutely Delicious Complete Tool Kit; this site is frequently updated, so you may want to bookmark it for future reference.

Related Resources for Extra Support: if you do run into issues you can’t resolve, take heart. Help from other experienced bloggers is only a few clicks away: is a forum where bloggers at all levels of expertise from complete novice to advanced coders come together to share questions, answers, suggestions, links and helpful information related to blogs and blogging. You will need to register (free) with a user name and password to post.

Other blogging forum resources:
Forum 4 Bloggers and
Blogger Talk.

Related Resources for Social Bookmarking
(These are just a few of dozens of such services available currently):

De.licio.us
Technorati
Digg

Furl
Simpy

The Team Blog: Let’s say your blog is for a company or business. Perhaps there is a need for more than one person to work on or post to a blog. With Blogger’s Team Blogs, this is not a problem. Here are answers to several questions related to Team Blogs.

The Handicapped Computerist is a team blog I work on in collaboration with friends.

Of Possible Interest: You may be interested in this post from my main blog, which documents my early experience with Blogger.com.

I hope by the time you have finished with this tutorial, you are well on your way to understanding how to create and maintain an enjoyable, informative and successful blog. Happy coding and happy blogging!




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Blogging Central 101, Part 5: Learn the Code!  

Related information regarding editing your Blogger template: Learn to Create the Coding! There is a vast amount of free information online that will help you learn different types of coding. They range from very basic to advanced, so you will always find something to suit your particular needs. Here are just a few:

Learn some basic HTML: One HTML site geared to beginners is Lissa Explains It All, a site written with children in mind. It is very easy to follow, and does include advanced HTML as well. This site has been online since its author was 11 years old, and she is now in college. Other resources:

See this Blogger Help resource, the Barebones Guide to HTML or W3CSchools HTML Tutorial or HTML Goodies for help with learning basic html coding skills. This skill-set will be necessary when you need to edit your Blogger template.

There are also many resources for learning CSS and even Javascript online when you are ready for those; you can find them by doing a search using Google or your favorite search engine.


As your skills develop and improve, you can add CSS: W3Schools CSS Tutorial
The Complete CSS Tutorial

and Javascript:
Javascript Tutorial

Page Tutor

Javascript Tutorial for Novices

Later, you can even use javascripts such as the ones from Dynamic Drive,
Hotscripts or many other such sites on the web.

Contacts in your blog: An Important Note About Spambots and How to Avoid Them:
One important reason for learning to code HTML has already been noted in this tutorial: It allows you to add links of all sorts to your blog, so that both you and your readers have access to the sites you link to. One such link you are likely to want to add is an e mail link, to allow readers to contact you if they have questions. You may want to set up an e-mail account specifically for your readers to use to contact you; this will help keep your regular-use e mail in-box from overflowing. One note of caution: You will likely want to take steps to encrypt the e-mail address that you place on your blog, to prevent it from being harvested by spam-bots. You can do this by using the E-mail Riddlertool from Dynamic Drive. If you would like to create a button for G Mail or one of several other e-mail services, please refer to my tutorial for detailed instructions and necessary resources.


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Blogging Central 101, Part 4: Where To Find Help; Template Basics  

Blogger Help, Features and Resources:
If you need assistance or have questions, a good place to look for information is Blogger Help.

The Blogger Dashboard
Each time you log in to Blogger.com, your first stop is the Blogger Dashboard. Think of it as a central control panel for Blogger. You can view a list of your blogs here, as well as viewing individual posts in a blog. You can edit posts or drafts as well, and you can click the view button to the right of the editor’s list of blog posts to view each entry’s post page, where the entries are each on their own page. This is helpful when you are using tags such as those for Technorati or De.licio.us on your posts. Be sure to check the bottom of the Dashboard page periodically for site news and announcements.

Your Blogger Template
The templates provided by Blogger are written in HTML and CSS code. (Some resources for learning HTML, CSS and more are included later in this tutorial.) The HTML and CSS coding controls the appearance of your blog and the functionality of its features. Blogger does provide a means for users to modify or edit the template. It is not mandatory that you edit your blog’s template; you can have a perfectly fine blog without doing so. There are some advantages to learning to edit the template, however. Among them:

1. It helps you learn to read, understand and begin to create the coding. This is the best way to learn coding; get your hands into it, and play with it. You can certainly find WYSIWYG (“what you see is what you get”) text editors out there by the dozens, but many of them add extraneous code that is clunky and may or may not function as it should. Learn the basics yourself so that you know what to look for and how it should work, then get tools that will automate your work to allow you to be more productive, if you like.
2. It allows you to add your own personal content and touches to your blog, which is a personal medium of expression; for all that a (potentially) worldwide audience has access to it.
3. It allows you to take charge of your blog’s overall appearance and functionality, to make it “yours.” After all, scores of people may be using the exact same template as yours at any given time. You want yours to stand out in a crowd, and you can do that by adding your own personal touches. Besides, if you plan to spend any length of time maintaining your blog (and why would you not, given your interest in blogging and the benefits it can have for your business or other pursuits?), it is nice to have a comfortable, attractive and easy to use “space” of your own.
4. If something should go awry, you can troubleshoot and identify and fix the problem, with or without support.

To backup your template in Blogger: From the Blogger Dashboard, click the name of the blog for which you want to back up the template. The edit window will appear. Notice across the top of the window there are several tabs, including a Template tab; you will need to click this tab. On the next screen, there is a large window in which your template’s code appears. Place your mouse anywhere in this window, right-click your mouse, and choose select all. Copy all of the text (code) in the window. Open a text editor such as Notepad, and paste the selected text into the text editor. Give the file a name, and save it to your hard drive. Now, you have a backup copy of your template. Get into the routine of saving your template this way each time you edit it, and provide a distinctive name each time. Then, if something goes wrong, you can easily restore a saved copy of the template.

On a related note: You can also backup your entire blog.
detailed Instructions for doing so are available. It is of course easiest to do this when you have only a few posts and it is a good idea to make this a part of your regular routine. If you choose not to back up your posts using this method, you can simply save each of your posts in a text file in a folder on your computer. Also save any links you have in your sidebars on a regular basis. As with any backup, it is far better to have one and never need to use it than to need one and not have one available.

To restore a saved copy of a template: Select and delete the entire existing contents of the template window, then open your saved template file, select all of the text in it using your mouse or keyboard commands, then just copy the text into the blank template window, save your changes, and republish the blog.

To edit your template: You can edit your template by adding to or modifying its code. You can add links to your sidebar for quick access to favorite sites, or you can add various pieces of javascript or other code to add features to your blog. To edit, just copy the template code into your favorite text editor such as Notepad. Another good, free editor is Crimson Editor.
To change your template: If you decide to change your Blogger template, be sure to make a backup of any links or other code you want to keep, so you can place it in the new template. Changing the template without doing this will result in the loss of your added data or code. Under the Template tab, click “Pick new” to choose a new Blogger template, select the new one you want to use, then click the “use this template” button.

A Word About Viewing Source Code
When a novice blogger first looks at source code, it will likely seem wholly nonsensical and incomprehensible. It may even seem like a foreign language and it may feel like it will never be possible, let alone easy, to read. Do not let these impressions deter you. Put the blog you are viewing the source code for in one window if you are using IE (or in one tab in Firefox) and view the source code for the very same blog in another window or tab. Take note of where certain “landmarks” such as the links section are in the blog when it is open in standard view (that is, the blog itself is visible, not the source code), then take note of where the code for those same landmarks is within the source code. You will soon learn to orient yourself by looking for familiar landmarks. Open your text editor, and practice creating snippets of code (such as hyperlinks) so that they are click-able when you are finished. Soon, you will be able to write hyperlinks as quickly as you can type. One suggestion: Go ahead and create a second, “tester” blog, so that you can experiment without causing harm to your main blog’s template..

Some of the templates offered by Blogger as standard are similar to each other, while others differ sometimes markedly. This can take some getting used to, especially for a beginner. Remember: This is a learning process. Give yourself time to look around and do as much reading of help files and other Blogger information resources (including this tutorial!) as you can, and do take time to explore the various tabs, Windows and Settings within Blogger itself.



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Blogging Central 101, Part 3: Blog Traffic (Tell People About Your Blog)  

Blog Traffic: Tell People About Your Blog
Congratulations! You are now a blogger. Now, you may begin to feel as though you are shouting into an empty bucket: “Hello. . . ! Is anyone out there?” It can begin to feel rather lonely. When you’ve created your first few posts, you will likely want to think about how you can “advertise” your blog’s existence, or “presence” on the Internet. One way to do this is word-of-mouth: Tell friends and associates, and ask if they will spread the word. Another way is to register or list your blog on blog search engines. There are many blog search engines you can choose from, and you can even choose several. Here’s a selection from a recent Google search:

· Feedster: Feedster This one is for RSS feeds
· FeedBurner: FeedBurner
· IceRocket: IceRocket
· BlogExplosion: Blog Explosion
· Blogdex: Blogdex
· Blogarama: Blogarama
· Blogdigger: Blogdigger
· Bloglines: Bloglines

You can register your blog for free with any or all of these or other search engines. Blogger.com also offers helpful suggestions to help increase traffic to your blog. Find them here. Once you have your blog established with just a few posts and have registered with the blog search engines of your choice, the next step is to let those search engine sites know when you’ve updated your blog. You can do so by pinging the sites. As with most things that are blog-related today, you have several pinging services, such as Pingoat to choose from. Here is one site I found that provides a list of several pinging services you can choose from; you can use more than one pinging service as well.

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Blogging Central 101, Part 2: An Introduction to Blogs  

An Introduction to Blogs
Before I ever began writing my blogs, I was reading them. You can find interesting, informative, instructive, fun, newsworthy or even controversial blogs everywhere on the Internet; just use a search engine such as Google’s new BlogSearch or similar search engine, (more below about these), and begin reading. When you find blogs you like, you can place them on a blogroll, in a list that you can even post on your own blog. I use a free Blogrolling account for this, and I’ve placed a bit of code into the template of my blog to display the blogroll in a sidebar. The blogroll is, in my opinion, better than simply having bookmarks for various blogs in a folder. For one thing, if I am away from my own computer and for some reason I can’t access my bookmarks, my blogroll will likely still be available (unless of course the blogrolling site is down.) Plus, clicking an easily visible hyperlink for a blog is quicker than rummaging through folders looking for a link. Also, I began viewing the source code of blogs I enjoyed, to see how the coding was written and how features such as drop-down menus were implemented. If you have Internet Explorer, go to View in the menu bar, and choose Source. This will open the source code so that you can see it and study it. I find it helpful to use Mozilla’s Firefox browser and its “View Source With” extension, (setup to use my favorite text editor for viewing the code) because I can keep the blog open in one tab and open another tab for viewing source code; it is a matter of a mouse-click or two to switch back and forth between the tabs. This is how I learned to read Blogger’s source code, and I used a text editor to copy and work with code I wanted to use, to learn how it worked.

Getting Started with Blogger: Create Your Blog
You have decided you want a blog. This is easy to do with Blogger:
Step 1: Go to http://www.blogger.com/start, and click on the “create your blog now” arrow. The first step is to create a Blogger account. Here you will choose your user name, set your password, (you will need them each time you log in to Blogger.com, although you can check the “Remember Me” box to set a cookie for your log in if you like) and choose a display name for your new blog’s signature line. Just fill in the requested information (including a valid e mail address) in the text boxes, then read and accept the Terms of Service. Click the Continue arrow to proceed.

Step 2. Choose a title for your blog, and enter the URL (this may be a form of your blog title. Example: One of my blogs is titled “Angelsong’s Firefox Index”. The URL I chose is http://angelsongsfxindex.blogspot.com, which is the actual web address for the blog. Complete the word verification by typing the text you see into the text box. Click the Continue arrow to go to the final step.

Step 3: Choose a template for your blog. There are a number of templates available on Blogger; choose any one you like. (You can change your template later, if you like.)
When your blog is created, you can begin posting right away, or you can create a profile for yourself and tweak your blog’s settings first. You will see an edit window where you will type your blog entry; provide a title for your first post, and write whatever you like. You can create as many blogs as you like, and you can have blogs for different purposes. It’s completely up to you. That is one of the best things about blogs and blogging: The blogger is in charge.

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Blogging Central 101, Part 1 Everything You Always Wanted to Know (But Didn’t Know Where to Ask)  

Preface: THe inspiration for this tutorial came to me last week in the form of an Instant Message from an online friend, who left it at 2:30 AM. My friend said he has decided he wants a blog, and he "needs blogging 101." I found the message later that morning, and this is my response. I have decided to include it as part of my blog in case others need it also.


If you’ve been out and about on the Internet at all, you have likely seen references to “blogs”, “blogging” and “bloggers”. You may even have read a blog or two, (if you are reading this, it may even be a blog entry!) and now you’ve decided you want a blog (or several) of your own. Welcome to an exciting and dynamic part of the world of online writing and publishing; come on in! This tutorial will help you get started by providing some basic blogging information plus somewhat more advanced information and resources. I know I am presenting a lot of information here; this is a collection of resources and information I’ve gathered in a little more than a year of blogging. To make it easier for you to use and refer to, I’ve created sections. Take what you need, use it, and then come back for more when you are ready. No rush, no pressure; you can proceed at any pace comfortable for you.

What is a blog? Defining a few terms:
Let’s begin with a few definitions. A “blog” is short for “weblog”, which is simply an online journal or diary to which one or more people post entries on a regular basis. A blog can be used for a business, to share news and information about a product, service or company, or it can also be personal, to document events in day-to-day life. A blog can also be useful for instruction via posted tutorials. For some people including myself, a blog may be their first foray into the world of online publishing, and can be a way to gain certain skills, such as writing or editing hypertext markup language (HTML) or cascading style sheets (CSS) code, via editing a blog’s template. I will provide more information about templates and editing shortly, so keep reading . . .

“Blogging” is the process of creating and maintaining a blog. A blog is maintained via postings, or entries made on a regular basis. A “blogger” is a blog’s writer or contributor.. Note: I draw a distinction between “blogger” and “Blogger”. For the purposes of this tutorial, Blogger refers to a specific blog platform, which is owned and operated by Google. (There are many other choices of blogging platforms available; you can search them out on the Internet. Some of these are free; others require a fee. Also, some, such as Blogger, are hosted; others require you to have a web server to upload them onto. Blogger is hosted on Blogspot. This discussion focuses on Blogger, since that is the one I am currently using and therefore the one with which I am most familiar.)

Blogger is a good choice of blogging platform for beginning bloggers, because it offers useful features that are fairly easy to use (such as editable templates) and it is free. New features are planned for Blogger, and several have been added to make it easier and more productive for new users. One such feature is Blogger for Word. This is a downloadable plug-in for Microsoft Word that makes it possible to write, edit and post a blog entry from inside Word. This tutorial is being composed in a Word document. It is also possible to include photographs in a blog entry, using Blogger. Formerly, a user had to do this via two external programs. Currently, all it takes is a few mouse clicks in Blogger. You can also host photos and other types of small files such as icons on an external site such as ImageShack.


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