Showing posts with label blogcatalog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogcatalog. Show all posts

Monday, February 16, 2009

Blog Criticism and Review



Lord Frederick Leighton (1830-1896)Study: At a Reading Desk Oil on canvas, 1877

Blog Criticism and Review

Right now, I am looking for criticism of my blog. I am asking for people to find fault with what I am doing so I can make it better for you to read what I am writing.

I have started by asking at Bookblogs on Ning for criticism of the design of this blog.

So far, the header has been changed, the font for the blog, some of the background colors, and a number of typos fixed. I am looking to do a little bit more. I have also identified a problem with Mozilla Firefox not reading the html line spacing commands for blogger. I am still not sure what to do about this. I contacted blogger help about this. Now, it seems to be working a tiny bit better. I also changed the number of posts visible on the page to five at a time. I had ten at a time. This should reduce the amount of time it takes to load my page considerably.

Mugshot http://www.blogcatalog.com/user/mugshot was nice enough to donate a new header. I have started a second conversation about redesigning my blog on blogcatalog. http://www.blogcatalog.com/discuss/entry/criticise-my-blog-dont-be-nice

Sunday, December 7, 2008

Miscellaneous Thougts (A Bit Scattered).

Artist in His Studio1630-32 Oil on Panel Colnaghi, London.



Daily Thoughts

Sometimes you think of things that are not quite in your domain of expertise. I noticed that the supermarket is now renting DVDs with a company called DVD Xpress. It mostly sells very trashy movies, but sometimes these are a way to find what people want to watch. I picked up a brochure to bring to work. They have been asking us to find more popular material.

There is also a listing of bestselling dvds and rentals on Video Business. http://www.videobusiness.com/ . Sometimes you just notice these things as part of surfing the web.

I watched part of The Ultimate Avengers, The Movie an animated movie based on the Marvel comic book, The Ultimates. It was quite fun. I especially liked them finding Captain America frozen in ice. It is fairly simple and straightforward with many of the classic heros, Thor, Ironman, Captain America, The Black Widow. I liked that Nick Fury, Agent of Shield is black in this story. It adds a nice touch.

There is a short piece about the history of the Avengers as an extra. Kurt Busiek is one of the people interviewed. In addition, there is a second film, The Ultimate Avengers: Rise of the Panther which looks quite interesting. You watch the film and think, this is more about the interactions of the heros with each other than the villains. The villains seem to be the generic evil enemy of the month.

This morning I went to see my doctor again. I lost another three pounds. I wasn't expecting it. I still am doing the Yoga RX exercises, but I didn't do too well with my diet during Thanksgiving. The pumpkin pie and sweet potato pie got me. I have to watch myself for the holidays. No sweets.

I am honestly feeling a bit distracted. Billy The Blogging Poet just quit doing blogging. He is going to do a new green enterprise, a recycling franchise. It looks kind of interesting. I wonder if he is going to focus at all on recycling books and cardboard. He was part of the Metaxu Literary Cafe. I think I lost a decent part of my readership when Metaxu Cafe closed. http://recyclebills.squarespace.com/recycleblog/

I found something interesting while wandering the internet. It is called mibook. At first it looks like an ebook reader, but when I got to the site, I found something very different than a standard ebook reader. http://www.mibook.com/ This is a specialty focus ebook type device. The sample focuses on cooking, gardening, and home renovation. In effect it is a how to book device focusing on a specific niche.

I feel like today is a day where I am picking up bits and pieces from all over the internet. Sometimes I do that when I am blogging.

I did not read a book at the laundromat today. I did not read anything. I watched a film and watched some television at the laundromat. Maybe, I needed a break from reading books.

All commercial content except for the books and dvds which I post from Amazon and the Powells.com search box has been removed. I also removed some links from my link exchange. I did this to make this blog more focused as well as indicate it is not a particularly commercial blog. Project Wonderful is no more, so are a few other things. Some of the services I used were not providing adequate results for the amount of time I put into them.

I did not even realize that I didn't have some widgets which I used regularly. I just put in my Fuel My Blog Widget. I generally prefer widgets that are somewhat interactive. Twitter is interactive (it is a microblogging platform), Fuelmyblog is interactive (it has a forum and thumbnail directory), Blogcatalog is a community (it has a forum, directory, thumbshot guide, and many other features. These three are what I am focusing on. More than three is too much.

I am not that fond of Technorati, Stumbleupon, and Entrecard. These are focused on building traffic, not interacting with people. It is like being in a horse race with other people to get the most people to visit. They often take a lot of time, with not much depth.

Monday, January 28, 2008

Morning Thoughts. Afternoon Thoughts. Evening Though.

Right now, I am drinking a cup of tea with lemon and honey, it is 9:30 a.m.


I tried to pay my Comic Book Legal Defense Fund membership, I will have to call them, their online payment system didn't work. Oh well. I started reading one of Nancy Pearl's selections from Book Lust, The Professor and the Madman, A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester. So far it has been enjoyable to read.

I have another book to consider reading Possession by A.S. Byatt.

I haven't checked to see which books have come in through interlibrary loan. The interlibrary loan books come in big plastic tubs which are practically indestructible. These are far more practical than cardboard boxes which usually end up breaking and costing more money in the long run. I usually check in the early afternoon when they are finishing checking in the interlibrary loans for the day.

I have been checking on my advertising. Adsense made me $1.55 in the last couple days. There may be real hope for Google adsense. I have 3 cents coming to me from Project Wonderful so I am on my way to my can of selter water. Amazon has stalled for a bit so that is alright.

I checked my various member sites and looked at a few new sites to add to my fuelmyblog widget, as well as my friends section in blogcatalog. I also noticed that entrecard has a favorites section for blogs. I'll add some favorites to my page to generate some goodwill.

Tomorrow, I am going to the New York City Publishers Reception at the Kitano Hotel for the Information Industry Summit. It should be fairly interesting. I am going on library time, so I will have to describe it to my supervisors and spend at least a little bit of time talking about things relative to libraries. I might write a short one page description as well.

I am debating about what I should wear. I'll probably wear slacks and a black turtleneck sweater. Something casual.

The morning has started off well for me. I'll write more as I think of new things.
I took a look through the Bookaholic blogring and looked at two blogs which I like a lot, http://teareads.blogspot.com/ , a very genteel seeming book blog, and http://kimbooktu.wordpress.com/ a blog with a nice directory of book sites, and commentary on book related technologies like bookmarks, playaways, and ebook readers.

It has reached afternoon. I had a brief lunch. My holds have come in. The book Oil by Upton Sinclair has come in. It is the basis for the academy award winning film There Will be Blood. Someone asked me to read it earlier. I also have Sunshine by Robin McKinley, a Mythopoeic award winning book, and a book which a patron was taking out, Creating A World Without Poverty Social Business and the Future of Capitalism by Muhammad Yunus. Muhammad Yunus is the founder of Grameen Bank and a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. This book should be both important and interesting.
I called in this evening. I am a standby juror tomorrow. I get to sit until they maybe call me and read. I will bring a few books to sit in the waiting room. I have to bring a pen. I wonder why.