Today, I found and recovered my very first blog post – and have posted it here on the date it was originally published, September 14, 2004.  It was recovered from the Internet Archive’s WayBackMachine.

As best as I can tell, I abandoned Skedaddle’s Log after only a very few blog posts.  During the next month, I established 3 niche  blogs and North Farnham Freeholder, with all but that very first post moved to it.

I had been trying to make some income online for a while. At the time there was no way to place ads on blogspot  (which was also known as blogger).  After looking at several different blogging platforms, I decided to self-host and use WordPress, moving North Farnham Freeholder to the web host I had been using for a while.

A couple of years later, Exit78 was established, with many of the old posts being moved to exit78.com/weblog.  Then, in early 2009, my blogging at Exit78 was moved to the root directory, exit78.com.  Unfortunately, I made a change that wouldn’t let me access the original Exit78 location and, when I tried to fix that, I ended up losing many of the older posts.

I’ve been able to recover quite a few over time and, yesterday, found that many that hadn’t been recovered were available on the Internet Archive WayBack Machine.  I’ll be recovering those, republishing them here on Exit78 at their original publish date.

Do remember when you first started blogging?

Do you still have or can you find your very first blog post?

The only program that I’ve found so far that I wasn’t able to install on Windows 7 was my OmniPage 14 OCR program.

For those who don’t know the term, OCR stands for optical character recognition – in other words, a program that recognizes text in a scanned image and turns it into editable text.

For Christmas, I received a copy of OmniPage 17.  I plan to use it in a long range project that involves old public domain books.

Like any other processing software, an OCR program will to some degree be limited by the quality of the data, or, in this case, images, that is provided as input.

For my first test of the program, I loaded a pdf file of a 440 page book published in 1913.  OmniPage 17 was able to load and process the entire book, unlike previous versions of OmniPage and other OCR software that I have used, though  I’m sure that, at the time, they had also been somewhat limited by the operating systems and computers.

During the processing, OmniPage 17 flags text that it is not “certain” of and provides the user with the opportunity to correct or ignore the text.  The percentage of flagged text is far lower than I expected.

After the book was processed by OmniPage, I saved it and proofed it in Microsoft Word.

The proofing was, by far, the hardest part of the process.  I read the entire book, with much more attention to detail than I would have if I had just been reading it for pleasure, in order to correct any errors that the OCR might have made as well as to italicize words that were in italics in the book.  Again, the number of corrections needed were far fewer than I expected.  I suspect that there were be very few corrections needed when converting modern documents from image to text.

What was the book that I converted, some might wonder?

It’s part of the long term project, so I don’t want to be too specific at this time other than to say that it was a diary of a lady who had been raised in privilege.

So far, my experience with Windows 7 has been positive.

All of my files on the old computer, including images, copied over to the new computer painlessly through a wireless connection using the “Windows Easy Transfer” wizard.  Of course, most of my files are on three external hard drives – photography files replicated on each of the three –, so there was no need to transfer most of them.

Still, there was 13 gigabytes to transfer wirelessly, and that took several hours.  I spent that time reading, watching TV, and sleeping, since it wasn’t done by bedtime.

There are a number of ways that Windows 7 is significantly different from XP.  It’s going to take a while to get used to some of the ones I’ll be using.

I realize, of course, that most of the features of Windows 7 first appeared in Vista.  In fact, one article I read complained that Windows 7 was little more than a service pack for Vista.  The argument was that, for the price of Windows 7,  there was no reason to upgrade Vista to Windows 7 and that the only good reason to go to Windows 7  was if you were buying a new computer.

However, going from Windows XP to Windows 7, many Windows features are very new to me.

The biggest change is the way the task bar at the bottom of the screen is used.

I usually have a lot of windows open at one time.  In XP, I would have the entire bar filled with  application icons and I would use the bar to navigate between them.

In Windows 7, a newly open application’s icon will appear on the task bar if it’s not already there. In this instance, when you close the application, its icon also closes.

One of the features that I like is that you can “pin” useful applications to the task bar.  Then, to open the application, all you have to do is click on it’s icon on the task bar.

When there are multiple windows of an application open, holding the mouse’s pointer over the application’s icon in the task bar displays all of the open windows for that application, as shown in the image below, which shows 7 open Firefox windows .

Microsoft has had some real flops over the years and I understand how a lot of IT professionals are going to be hesitant to move to Windows 7.

Large companies, though, are often slow to adopt new platforms.  The company I worked for had only just moved to XP about the time that Vista was coming out.

I still have not loaded Office on to my new machine, though I probably will install Office 2003.  I have installed Open Office and want to play with that for a while before I decide.

This blog post  my first WordPress post written using Windows Live Writer.

On my blogs, I like to share some of what we’ve seen and done while we are traveling.   I always seem to get behind and come up short with what I had planned hoped to do.

The same thing goes with my photos, but then, perhaps, that’s part of the problem.  I’m doing fairly well this time with the photos.  I have 3 1/2 days worth of images to go through.  Unfortunately, I’ve not finished with going through the photos from several prior trips.

I have a new solution that I think will work rather well.

Instead of trying to keep up with blogging while we are traveling, I will be journaling and photographing as we go.  The journal will be a pocket-sized moleskine notebook, where I will keep both brief notes as well as extended entries.  These, along with photographs, will be used to develop blog posts with “Commentary and images from the road.”

I started doing some of that this time, which is what enabled me to finish the trip with most of the images processed.  I will pick back up with the travel journal blogs from September 5th.

I am publishing all posts specifically related to our travels on two blogs, Exit78 and Haw Creek Out ‘n About.  Apart from our travels, these two blogs otherwise have different focuses.

Some of the days of our trip warrant  more than one blog post.  I will be mixing mostly topical posts with mostly pictorial.

We got back home on Friday and Karen headed out today for a week in Wisconsin where she will be taking care of the grandkids while our daughter goes to New York City with her husband on a business trip.

I get to stay home and go to work.

__________________________________

This post is being simultaneously published on Exit78 and Haw Creek Out ‘n About

The number 35:

Year 35 (XXXV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar.

Year 35 BC was a common year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar.

35 mm film is the basic film gauge most commonly used for both analog photography and motion pictures
In years of marriage, the coral wedding anniversary

The designation of Interstate 35, a freeway that runs from Texas to Minnesota and the only freeway to have East/West divisions (in two places, the Twin Cities and the DFW Metroplex)

In Ancient Rome, the age of a man in his prime, at which he was eligible to become a consul.

The minimum age (in years) of candidates for election to the position of President of the United States, President of Ireland and President of Poland

Convoy of 35 Israeli soldiers, who were killed in the war of independence in 1948

The retired baseball jersey of Randy Jones

Licence Plate code of Izmir/Turkey.

The number of the French department Ille-et-Vilaine

The passing grade in many Indian Colleges (out of 100). Scoring a 35 is known to many students as getting a “Stamp”

____________

Sometimes creating a posts can be a simple as taking a hard left “out of the box.”  This post was completed and posted in less than a half hour.

day 35

note: information in this post is from Wikipedia

I’m terrible at replying to blog comments.

It’s not that I don’t intend to do it, because I really do.  I think replying to blog comments is  important unless the number of comments is significant.

I’m just not very good add it.  It’s something I need to work on.

I even have filters set up on my gmail account so that emails notifying me of comments are “starred” — and, for me, “routine” email deletions are only of those that are unstarred.

So now I have a bunch of starred email going back to sometime in May reminding me that there are all of those comments that I need to reply to.

I’m going to do it.

I really am.

But first, I want to just say thanks to those people who have taken the time to read my posts and make comments — and I’m going to list all of those from blog posts that I have not replied to.

The first starred email for an unanswered comment is Virginia!. While I replied to most of the comments, one from Friar snuck in on  May 21st. It took me a while to figure out why I couldn’t post a reply and then I realized that my “window” of 14 days for comments had expired. (I’ve removed the automatic closure of comments for now.)  Others who commented were Vered, Michelle Gartner, Debo Hobo, Leslie, and teeni.

The next post with unanswered comments was totally unanswered.  It is Those Vultures on the Potomac and received comments from Dot, Betsy, Vered, XUP, Jean Browman, rose, teeni, and LisaNewton

For Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho …, again …, maybe …, probably, I receive 9 comments, from Betsy, Dot, Vered, Patricia (2 comments), rummuser, Debo Hobo, Michelle Gartner,and  Jean Browman.

Vered, rummuser, and  Debo Hobo commented on my Wednesday Weigh-In update for May 27.

THAT isn’t news! garnered 7 comments from Bob (no URL), Patricia, Davina, rummuser, Dot, Debo Hobo, and Natural.

That brings me up to after the beginning of the month.

So now I’ve done a little penance:  I’ve given a little link love, I responded to all of the comments mentioned here, and I’ve written a fairly long post for today.

Now, I just need to reply to the rest of the comments that are outstanding and keep at it — unless, by some magic, a post goes viral and I’m overwhelmed by comments…, or I start getting dozens of comments for each and every post…, but that ain’t gonna happen.

3

A year is a long time in the on-line world. A large percentage of the blogs out there today will shrivel up and disappear by the end of 2008. Many others will still be there, but posting on them will have slowed down to a trickle… or will have stopped all together.

Most blogs don’t have the staying power to last a year. Look at the archives of the blogs you visit. What percentage only have a few months in them?

Exit78 has been around for a little over a year now. It has gone through several transformations and the URL had to be altered slightly. For some reason, Technorati wasn’t recognizing posts to the original URL.

While posts on the blog go back to December 2005, those before December 2006 were transfered from an earlier blog… one that shriveled up and disappeared. Before that there was a blog on Blogger; that one didn’t last long.

Will I be here posting to Exit78 at the end of 2008?

I’m making this one of my 2008 goals, so, yes, I will be posting here this time next year!

How about you? Will your blog still be here at the end of 2008?

This article is also a short story. Unfortunately, it’s a true story.

Written September 15, 2004, moved here from an old website I’m retiring.

I don’t know which one I should be angry at, my friend or that damn doctor.

My friend didn’t take care of herself. On the surface she was a laid-back, easy-going person, seemingly without a care in the world — everyone’s friend. Yet very few of the people who knew her really knew how sick she was… and how depressed she was.

Several years ago she had heart related surgery. I don’t remember exactly what.

She didn’t take care of herself the way that heart patients are supposed to and had to have another operation.

She still didn’t take care of herself. Her health deteriorated.

We had met her and her husband when we joined a mixed league for bowling many years earlier. They were also just starting in the league and ended up being our bowling partners — and friends — for years.

As her health deteriorated, she was no longer able to bowl. Her husband stayed on the team, but another lady took our friend’s place.

Our friend developed diabetes, and didn’t take care of herself.

She was everyone’s friend, but very few people really knew her.

Part of the reason she didn’t see a doctor was that she knew she would be told that she would have to have more surgery. They still had debt from the previous surgeries. Her husband was self-employed and they didn’t have insurance.

She didn’t want to build up more debt.

She didn’t take care of herself.

She had suffered for years from depression.

A sore — a blister — developed on one of her feet.

She didn’t take care of herself.

The sore didn’t heal.

After several weeks she finally decided she had to see a doctor.

The sore had developed into something worse. She was a diabetic and had not taken care of herself.

The doctor was not a doctor she had seen before. It seems that whenever she would go to see a doctor, it would be someone different than she had seen before.

The doctor — I don’t know his name, and I’m not sure that I want to know his name — apparently really laid into her when he saw the condition of her foot.

He asked her — practically accusing her — if she was an alcoholic, an addict, if she was on meth.

He told he that the sore had developed into gangrene and that they probably wouldn’t be able to save her foot or her leg, and, “oh-by-the-way, you might lose your other foot, too.”

Years ago, a lady that our friend knew had been hospitalized from complications arising from diabetes. She had a lot of problems, including the loss of both legs, before she died after a lingering illness.

Our friend didn’t want that to happen to her.

Our friend disappeared.

She was missing for two days.

Two days was the waiting period for a handgun.

——–

I miss my friend, especially on Wednesdays, like today. On Wednesdays we go bowling.

My friend didn’t take care of herself. I miss her and I’m angry.

I don’t know which one I should be angry at, my friend or that damn doctor.

——–

October, 2007

I’m not angry any more. I just reflect on how unfortunate it all was.

Unfortunate that she didn’t take care of herself.

Unfortunate that the doctor wasn’t more humane in her instance.

Unfortunate for her husband who has had a host of problems in the time that’s passed.

Unfortunate for the poor soul that found her body.

We live in the country, three miles from a town with a population of about 1000 or so. When we first moved there, we had a problem with mice, even though we had two cats. Over time, though, the mouse problem just kind of went away. And, when we got new furniture, the cats went outside — permanently.
Living on a highway, even though it’s not heavily traveled, poses a couple of problems with cats.

The first problem is the highway itself. Young cats often do not survive their first year. It’s unfortunate, but that’s the way it is. You can’t fence ‘em in and you can’t put ‘em on a collar and chain. That’d be cruel — and they’re not coming in the house.

The second problem is stray cats. Over the years, most of the cats that we’ve had were ones that wandered up to our place. Some came to live; some just visited a while and moved on. I realize that many of the cats wandered in from somewhere else. However, some of them were obviously dumped. Some were friendly and came right up like they owned the place. Others were skittish and afraid, but it was obvious that some wanted to be petted and have attention paid to them.

Another problem for us is that we like to travel on occasion. In order to be able to do it, though, we have to have some one feed and water the cats when we aren’t there.

I don’t even know how many cats we’ve had over the years. I do know that it had been a long time since I had seen a mouse. However, a while back, the longest surviving cat, Muffin, disappeared. We figured she had wandered off someplace in the woods and died. At the time, she was the only cat — and we decided we didn’t want any more.

We forgot about the mice.

They came back, probably descendants of the originals that were there when we moved in — many generations removed from those early mice, of course.

So we started talking about what we were going to do, which included the possibility of cats. Our daughter told us that her boyfriend’s family had an outside, half-wild cat that just had a litter and that we could have the whole litter if we wanted. We decided to go for it.

Having experienced with cats that turned out half wild, we decided we wanted to get them when they were young enough that there was a decent chance their growing up friendly. We also knew that just bringing them out to our house that young probably wouldn’t work unless we had some way to keep them from running off into the woods. To keep that from happening, I built a good sized cage that we would keep them in for several weeks before we let them out on their own.

There were four kittens in the litter and they certainly were a mongrel bunch. There was one striped tabby that looked so much like the last cat we had that we gave her the same name. Another cat looked just like a Siamese and, from the beginning, just clung to you with his claws when he was picked up. He earned the name “Clinger.” There was a solid white kitten with a blue eye and a kind of amber eye. I jokingly suggested that we call him “Oddball,” and the name stuck. I can’t remember the fourth cat’s name. She was a calico looking cat.

All of the kittens were a little wild to begin with. The two males calmed down pretty quickly.

The days and weeks passed. We paid attention to the kittens and they grew to know and trust us, for the most part, and eventually the cage went away. The cats stayed.

The calico stayed a little wild all the time that she was with us, but she did get to the point where she would come to us and allow us to pick here up.

Muffin was a little standoffish, a little shy, and very stiff when she was picked up, holding herself

Oddball and Clinger were best friends. They were always together. And they both loved attention. Oddball, I think, was the best cat that we have ever had.

The first to go was the calico.

She just disappeared.

As I said before, that just happens, living in the country.

About the same time, a stray started showing up. He was really nervous and stayed away whenever we were around. He had the loudest meow of any cat that I’ve ever heard. We thought that there was going to be conflict with our other two males so we started running him off whenever we saw him.

Then the first problem that I talked about at the beginning of this essay, the highway, took its next casualties. Early one morning, as I was heading out to work, the two buddies, Oddball and Clinger, both silently sprawled out on the highway.

I stopped, got them off the road and, upset, buried them, before continuing on to work. Later, when I knew that she would be up, I called my wife to let her know what had happened.

Oddball, I think, as I said before, was the best cat that we ever had. The buddies, though, were the best two that we ever had at the same time.

Today, we have three cats. Muffin, like her namesake is now the one that we’ve had the longest, though she is a pretty young cat.

She had two kittens in her first litter. She showed them to us right away, and then kept hauling them off to the worst place she could. We had an addition to our house in progress and she took those kittens up into the attic and built a nest in the blown in insulation in the heat of the summer! When we found them the first time, they were dehydrated and their throats were full of insulation. She kept insisting on taking them up there, though. The runt did not survive.

Finally, I just went ahead and built another cage to keep Muffin and the kitten in so that there would be some chance of it surviving. And survive it did and, eventually, we stopped using the cage.

But then it wandered off. Just like so many, though most were older when they did.

What a let down after putting so much effort into giving it a fighting chance despite what its mother wanted to do with it.

Then after a couple of days, it was back. And it was so, so happy to see its mother — and its father — and us. It was bounding all over the place, climbing all over us and its parents. It still comes running whenever it hears the front door open, very unusual for a cat, even a kitten.

We still haven’t named it though, an attempt, I guess, to keep from becoming too attached to it, since we’ve already lost it once.

It’s a neat kitten, though, almost as good as Oddball. It’s a male, striped like its mother.

Its father?

Its father is a black and white cat, a stray, with a very loud meow, the loudest I’ve ever heard. We gave him a name, not very original for a cat, “Sylvester.”

I still miss Oddball.

Updates:

After, this article was originally published in October 2004, Muffin had another litter, this time with three kittens. The father, Sylvester, disappeared after that. There was only one left of this newest litter, “Frisky,” another not-so-original name.The kitten from the previous litter? He was still around — grown up and aloof — and still didn’t have a name. We just called him “Kitty.”

Then again, I guess that was his name.

October 2, 2007 – Time has passed and all the cats are gone. We travel quite a bit and our daughters no longer live in the area, so there’s no one to feed any critters when we’re gone. Maybe we’ll have pets again someday, but not soon.

---

February 26, 2010 – A few years back, when moving the blog location, I lost many of my older blog posts and images. Recently, while exploring the Internet Archive WayBackMachine, I discovered much of what I had lost.  I’ll be restoring the lost material and will share some of the better “recovered blog posts.” I’m also restoring some previous recovered posts to their original dates.  This was originally published on blogger on or before October 19, 2004.

A lost Exit78 post, recovered from Internet Archive WayBackMachine; March 2011

After we got back from our trip, I was still not feeling great for a couple of days — actually until this evening. However, I have been busy working on my on-line material.

I’ve got the diary entries for the month of October 1863 done for Daily Chronicles of the American Civil War. The diarists are John Beauchamp Jones, a clerk in the rebel War Office, and Gideon Welles, the Union Secretary of the Navy, a cabinet level post in 1863. The entries will be posted on the corresponding day of this month at 2 A.M. central time in the U.S.

I’ve eliminated two of my old blogs. I’m in the process of (slowly) moving and deleting material from one web host and these two blogs were part of that.

My old general purpose blog, North Farnham Freehold, is no more. Most of the posts were moved to this blog and posted with the original date. Some of the posts have been republished more recently as they have current interest for me. A few are preposted and will be published over the next week or so. A good number of the posts were deleted as they were not relevant to what I am trying to do with this blog.

I’ve also deleted my old Out ‘n About blog. It was replaced over a year ago with Haw Creek Out ‘n About, but the content was not moved at that time. Before deleting it, most of the articles were transferred with the original date. A few were republished within the last few days and a few have been or will be used as fodder for essentially new posts. Quite a few of the Out ‘n About posts were deleted, as well.

I’ve done a little work with the home page for this site: exit78.com. This is very preliminary, but all that I had there before was just an ugly plain place-keeping page. I still have some thinking and research to do before I do the serious redesign. Besides being the home page for this site, it’s going to be a pointer to all of the other sites and blogs that we have. The page will likely look very different when I get done with it.

Besides the web work, I’ve also done some real world stuff the last few days.

I fixed the drain line leak under the house — after I felt good enough to crawl under there again. It was an easy fix. Turns out the idiot plumber that ran the new drain lines year in 2005 had missed gluing one of the PVC joints — and it had separated, probably when I was under the house in early August stringing coax for the new location of our TV and satellite system. I’m not a small guy and I probably jarred it loose the last time I was squirming my way out.

The even better news was that the drain was only shower and sink water — not toilet water as I had feared.

Oh, yeah — the idiot plumber that missed gluing the joint in 2005 — that was me!

I also got the hot water heater fixed. It took two trips running to town to Lowes, but now it has new thermostats — not needed — and a new temperature-pressure safety valve — needed — as well as a new flexible outlet hose that had started leaking.

It’s a good thing that we had the camper parked close to the house, because fixing all of these things took until yesterday!

Comments on “Two blogs down — and other changes”

October 6, 2007

Opal Tribble @ 5:16 am

Written September 2004

I should have been an English major — at least, that’s what Glenda told me in freshman English.

I didn’t tell her that I couldn’t take the pay cut.

Who was Glenda and why should she care about my major?

Glenda was the lady who was teaching the class and the wife of the dean. She later taught freshman English to my wife and high school senior English to both of my daughters.

Now I don’t really know an adverb from an adjective, but I can usually tell a noun from a verb. Conjunction and participle are just words to me. I probably knew what all of them meant at one time, but not any more. If I need to know what they are, I can learn them for a class, for a short time, but that knowledge is just that, short term retention.

What I learned and retained long term was functional English. I passed English in high school and earlier – did okay, in fact – but I’m sure that I didn’t excel. However, I did learn how to use the tool that is English.

Today, my use of the English language is what feels right for me. And usually, not always, what feels right is right… because that’s the way I learned it.

I find it difficult to read material that doesn’t follow the standard rules that I learned, material that is consistently grammatically wrong. (Unfortunately, this includes almost all poetry, which requires addition concentration for me to get through.)

Glenda’s comment that I should have been an English major was in reference to what was done in class and turned in for credit. It was about what I wrote and how I expressed myself.

I like to write, but I would hate to do it as a job.

I’ve imagined writing a novel. Who hasn’t. I’ve even started a couple of times, outlining the story and even starting with the first chapter. I’ve written a short story that I never shared with anyone and poetry that was lost to my youth.

Writing for a living is hard work.

I could have been an English major.

If I had, I would probably ended up as an English teacher.

I couldn’t take the pay cut… so I didn’t major in English.

September 30th, 2007 addendum — so here I find myself retired and writing material that I self-publish online. Ironic or what?

Though not lost, archived version was found on Internet Archive WayBack Machine review 2/25/2011, page, and 2/26/2011, page.  Was not restored to the originally published date since there were comments for the 2007 updated post. (written September 26, 2004; revised September 30, 2007) However, in the effort to find the right place for this post, the comments were lost and, subsequently, restored.

A lost Exit78 post, recovered from Internet Archive WayBackMachine; March 2011

I’m finding that as this blog develops — and I develop along with it — that I am enjoying writing and that sometimes the words flow really well.

When words are flowing really well, some folks have the tendency to ramble on and on and on and… well, you know.

I try not to do that. Often times, a short succinct article is more effective and has a better result than longer articles, as Skellie notes in Little Words, Big Meaning.

A long article has it’s place. It’s good for detailed explanations, in-depth reporting or descriptions, and, sometimes, even humor — such as Dawn’s Because I Said So blog — or satire. However, it needs to flow and generally be well organized, not ramble on and on and on and… well, you know.

Speaking of which — I think I’m going to keep this short and ramble on… to something else!

Comments on "Keep it short! — sometimes."

September 10, 2007

Opal Tribble @ 7:45 am

I have the tendency to ramble so does my father.

A lost Exit78 post, recovered from Internet Archive WayBackMachine; March 2011

I was a sailor. Spent nearly nine years in the US Navy – fifteen full months under water.

Have you ever heard the phrase, curse like a sailor?

Even though I spent what seemed like a lifetime around other guys that did, I don’t curse like a sailor. On a few occasions when I did use a choice expression, I can recall a few raised eyebrows.

The reason I don’t often swear is that I considered who my audience would be if I slipped up and let my bad nature show. I really didn’t want to be sitting down for Christmas dinner with the family only to blurt out something in front of my Mom that would embarrass both of us and others.

It was a conscious decision to take into consideration possible audiences and change bad habits that were already developing before they became very difficult to alter. It’s worked.

I believe the same concept goes for blogging, whether it’s for blogging for money or blogging for fun. Will your blogging voice, your blogging personae attract your audience or will it drive your audience away? There are some internet income related blogs that I have tried and then left because of what I perceived to be the attitude of the authors.

For me, it comes down to:

• Be yourself,
• Be nice, and
• Be family friendly.

In the last few months, I have decided to really be myself.

I’ve stopped being anonymous online. I use my name when I blog and when I comment. My family, friends, and former co-workers are welcome here, though they may not agree with some of the opinions expressed here.

While I’m not a blogging expert nor an expert about making money online, this tip is just good old fashioned common sense. You are a part of what you are trying to sell online.

Check out Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger 31 Day Project page for more tips from Darren and other bloggers.

Comments on “A Tip – Think About The Audience That Reads Your Blog” »

August 5, 2007

Opal Tribble @ 5:05 am

You are a part of what you are trying to sell online.

Exactly! Unfortunately, I think some people forget this fact. I agree you have to think about your audience. I will include this in my weekly roundup it will work perfectly with my theme blogging tips.

Mike Goad @ 8:51 am

That’s cool! Thanks!

August 7, 2007

Mary @ 9:27 pm

I was cruising your blog after clicking on it from Problogger comments. You have a good attitude with blogging! I am 57, I don’t have my OWN blog published yet but I’m workin’ on it.
I see you were a sailor and thought you might like to see the blog I am creating for my dad. (He sits about 10 feet away from the computer and tells me what to put on it! lol)
Don’t you think we need more “seniors” in the blogoshpere?
PS Denny’s has a senior discount too!

How to Blog Successfully – 70 Reader Blogging Tips @ 11:13 pm

[…] A Tip – Think About The Audience That Reads Your Blog by Mike Goad […]

Rose @ 11:31 pm

One does not need to be a blogging expert to share tips and let me point out that this is an excellent tip.

Skellie @ 11:40 pm

Internet income blogs really do seem to encourage arrogance from their authors — yet those that have been successful all have something in common: modesty.

Thanks for the tip Mike. I’m sure you’ll get many readers from the link at ProBlogger. I’m one of them!

ProBlogger’s How to Blog Successfully Links @ 11:56 pm

[…] A Tip – Think About The Audience That Reads Your Blog by Mike Goad […]

August 8, 2007

Mike Goad @ 12:59 am

Mary – I checked out ” USS LSM-427.” It looks really good. One of my great regrets is that I don’t have many photos of my time in the navy. Thanks for for stopping by and commenting. Yes, I think it would be nice for more “older” folks to be blogging; however, most of the “older” people I know really don’t have a clue about blogging, though some of them do check in here on occasion.

Rose – Thanks for the very kind comment.

Skellie – I don’t know if Karen, my wife, would agree with the modesty part of your comment. However, that’s an interesting interpretation of what I was trying to communicate. Thanks!

Jim @ 3:51 am

One thing that many bloggers forget is the first rule of writing…think about your audience.

Bottom line, who are you writing for? If it is for yourself and you don’t need readers…

Dee Stewart @ 8:55 am

Sweet, simple and packed with so much wisdom. What we say in the blogosphere never disappears. Great post.

Mark McGuire @ 5:02 pm

Exactly how does this tie into thinking about your audience? It seems to be more of a reflection on how you want to appear to your audience. I like this article though. I just can’t see the connection to thinking about your audience which is what I have been doing a lot of lately.

Mike Goad @ 6:44 pm

Mark

I agree that the article is on how you want to appear to your audience. However, as I said in the article, “You are a part of what you are trying to sell online.” People who are overly aggressive or who talk down to me are not going to have me in their audience and they won’t be selling me anything if I’m not there. I also will not linger long on a blog where there is an excessive amount of swearing – there’s usually no good reason to swear on a blog – or where the author purports to be an expert on something that he obviously knows little or nothing about.

Here’s an actual example of my taking into consideration a potential audience:

With my interest in the American Civil War, I’ve been considering writing an article on the national flag of the Confederate States of America based on some of what I’ve learned over the last couple of years. However, yesterday, when I considered that my audience might include people who feel very strongly either against or for what is today perceived as the confederate flag, I decided that I didn’t know enough about the subject and shelved the idea. I may resurrect it again some day, but if I do, I will be more of an expert on it than I am today or it will very clearly be identified as an opinion piece.

Mike Goad @ 6:46 pm

Jim and Dee – thanks for stopping by and for your comments

Starfeeder @ 8:30 pm

I agree 100%

Its just as in starting a business or anything. If you love what you do or are doing, and you get to naturally be yourself, the quality in the work will show.

August 9, 2007

Michael from Pro Blog Design @ 6:31 pm

I agree with you about remembering your audience, but about being completely yourself? Very, very few of the people I know outside of the internet know about my blog, and I’m happy that way. It probably wouldn’t interest them, and it means I don’t have to answer a million “how do you do this” questions when they take a notion to start their own blog. xD (That sounds very unhelpful, but it’s more the fact that I don’t have it in me to say no to people. They ask, they get.

Mike Goad @ 7:26 pm

Michael – fortunately (I guess) most of the people I know outside of the internet don’t have a clue about blogs – many of them can just barely use the internet and one or two haven’t even made it to the point of owning a cell phone. I don’t see any reason personally not to be myself when I blog. Other people with other blogs and audiences may have a good reason for people not to see them as they are – it may suit their blog better.

August 10, 2007

Michael from Pro Blog Design @ 7:05 am

Thanks for the reply Mike. I agree with you there, it all depends on the situation and the blogger.

I suppose someday I’ll be as open as you are. (In the beginning, I suppose it’s also a safety net. If the blog dies in a month from now, no-one will ever know.)

August 11, 2007

Tyler Lloyd @ 10:36 am

Really enjoyed this post. Makes me think of how much social leverage there is in a friendly demeanor. Thank you.

August 14, 2007

Blogging Monetization – The Truth As I See It at Money Making @ 11:16 am

[…] A Tip – Think About The Audience That Reads Your Blog by Mike Goad […]

August 21, 2007

Blogging Articles @ 6:22 pm

[…] A Tip – Think About The Audience That Reads Your Blog by Mike Goad […]

A lost Exit78 post, recovered from Internet Archive WayBackMachine; March 2011

Its a fantasy novel called The Fall of Daoradh.

You can buy it at Hastings or at John’s IMC Studios website.

A lost Exit78 post, recovered from Internet Archive WayBackMachine; March 2011

Darren Rowse, a blogger in Australia, has a group writing project going called “Top 5.” His blog, Problogger, is one that I look at on a regular basis. As of day 2, there had been 374 submissions, with two more days to go.

My article went in on day 1 and was around #46 submitted. It’s at my Daily Chronicles of the American Civil War blog and is titled My Top Five Firsts of the First Two Years of the American Civil War.

The prize is $1,001 US, but I doubt that I will be the winner. The prize for me is more exposure for my blog and civil war material.

A lost Exit78 post, recovered from Internet Archive WayBackMachine; March 2011

Although I am not a lawyer, or, perhaps, because I am not a lawyer, it seems to me that concepts associated with copyright issues are sometimes made unnecessarily difficult. I don’t mean to say that copyright law is easy by any means. However, it is my belief that interpretations and claims that are often asserted concerning copyright do little more than cloud or confuse things, and that sometimes it’s done with that specific intention. While my interests are primarily with literary copyright, much of what I will be discussing in this article applies to music copyright, graphic copyright, and copyright for other forms of original expression.

To start with, copyright deals with the right to copy “something” that has been created. This right to copy belongs to the creator of the “something” that he created, or, if he was hired to create it, to the person or company that hired him.

continued at Copy Right, Copy Sense

Post from one of my abandoned blogs – North Farnham Freeholder – recovered from Internet Archive WayBackMachine 2/26/2011 – page

Fire and Ice
Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire;
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Post from one of my abandoned blogs – North Farnham Freeholder – recovered from Internet Archive WayBackMachine 2/26/2011 – page

Sonnet 18
William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee

Post from one of my abandoned blogs – North Farnham Freeholder – recovered from Internet Archive WayBackMachine 2/26/2011 – page

I don’t know which one I should be angry at, my friend or that damn doctor.

My friend didn’t take care of herself. On the surface she was a laid-back, easy-going person, seemingly without a care in the world – everyone’s friend. Yet very few of the people who knew her really knew how sick she was… and how depressed she was.

Several years ago she had heart related surgery. I don’t remember exactly what.

She didn’t didn’t take care of herself the way that heart patients are supposed to and had to have another operation.

She still didn’t take care of herself. Her health deteriorated.

We had met her and her husband when we joined a mixed league for bowling. They were also just starting and ended up being our partners, and friends, for years.

As her health deteriorated, she was no longer able to bowl. Her husband stayed on the team, but another lady took our friend’s place.

Our friend developed diabetes, and didn’t take care of herself.

She was everyone’s friend, but very few people really knew her.

Part of the reason she didn’t see a doctor was that she knew she would be told that she would have to have more surgery. They still had debt from the previous surguries. Her husband was self-employed and they didn’t have insurance.

She didn’t want to build up more debt.

She didn’t take care of herself.

She had suffered for years from depression.

A sore, a blister, developed on one of her feet.

She didn’t take care of herself.

The sore didn’t heal.

After several weeks she finally decided she had to see a doctor.

The sore had developed into something worse. She was a diabetic. She had not taken care of herself.

The doctor was not a doctor she had seen before. It seems that whenever she would go to see a doctor, it would be someone different than she had seen before.

The doctor – I don’t know his name, and I’m not sure that I want to know his name – apparently really laid into her when he saw the condition of her foot.

He asked her, practically accusing her, if she was an alcholic, an addict, if she was on meth.

He told he that the sore had deleloped into gangrene and that they probably wouldn’t be able to save her foot or her leg, and, oh by-the-way, you might lose your other foot, too.

Years ago, a lady that our friend knew had been hospitalized from complications arising from diabetes. She had a lot of problems, including the loss of both legs, before she died after a lingering illness. Our friend didn’t want that to happen to her.

Our friend disappeared.

She was missing for two days.

Two days was the waiting period for a hand gun.

I miss my friend, especially on Wednesdays, like today. On Wednesdays we go bowling.

My friend didn’t take care of herself. I miss her and I’m angry.

I don’t know which one I should be angry at, my friend or that damn doctor.

This post was recovered from a retired blog – Skedaddle’s Log– recovered from Internet Archive WayBackMachine 2/26/2011 – page

This was my second blog post, which was posted, again, later, on October 8, 2007, with some afterthoughts added at the end.