Five Things You Didn’t Know About Me Before Reading This

Wow! Since I’ve started blogging, time really seems to fly by! If I didn’t know better, I would say it’s only been a couple days since my last post, but I look at the dates and see that it’s actually coming up on 10 days. Sorry for the break in posts! I’ll blame it on holiday travel. smile

Anyway, it seems that if you blog for long enough, you end up doing one of these “Things you didn’t know about me” posts. I’ve been real busy lately working on another site, so I’ve not had much time to really put together a good article, although I do have lots of ideas. I just need time!

I thought I’d put together a quick fun post, so without further ado, here are five things you didn’t know about me before reading this.

The List

  1. I was a four sport athlete in high school; basketball, golf, track, and cross country. My senior year I was all league in all four sports, all district in three, all region in one and all state in one. I was all state in Ohio for the 400 meter dash. Finished 12th at the state meet.
  2. I’m a scratch golfer. I’ve been playing the crazy game for nearly 20 years. My lowest round to date is a two under par 70.
  3. I have a cat named Puss and a dog named Sammie.
  4. I have a few favorite songs; “Far Behind” by Candlebox, “She Talks to Angels” by The Black Crowes, and “The Dance” by Garth Brooks. I’m not sure which one is my most favorite.
  5. After I graduated college I had a heck of a time finding a job doing something that I liked and was related to my major in school (Computer Information Systems). So, after graduation, I started working for T-Mobile as a sales representative. I worked there for three and a half years while applying for (and failing to find) other jobs. Looking back, even though dealing with the public on a daily basis is the pits, I did learn a lot from the experience. When I started, I was somewhat of an introvert in that I didn’t like public speaking and wasn’t comfortable holding a long conversation with someone in person. After a short time of having no choice but to interact to make my sales goals, I really leaned a lot about how to communicate effectively with all types of people. I guess the lesson learned there is that no matter how bad the situation is, if you look hard enough, you can find something positive to take away from it.

Well, that’s it for now. I hope you enjoyed reading more useless information about me. cheese

If you’re wrote one of these types of posts yourself, link to it in the comments section. I’d love to read it. 

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It’s Better to Try and Fail Than to Have Never Tried At All

How many times have you wanted to do something but for whatever reason you never tried? Maybe it was fear of failure? Maybe you fear ridicule from your peers? Maybe you thought about your idea so much that it started to sound stupid and you simply talked yourself out of it? Don’t worry, we’ve all done these things.

I’m sure you have heard the old saying that it’s better to have tried and failed at something than to have never tried at all? Sure you have, who hasn’t? If you stop and think about the message for a second, it can be very powerful, not only for you as a web publisher or blogger, but in life. Every time you want to do something which involves some risk, I think you should stop and think about this saying.

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Slight Change of Direction with Nice Stylesheet

Almost all so called “CSS galleries” would be better labeled “digital art galleries”.

As I’m sure all of you know, I launched my own CSS Gallery a couple weeks ago. If you were around at the time I published the first designs, you probably noticed that the gallery had some of the same designs that you currently see on every other showcase site, e.g., Veerle’s Blog, and Web Designer Wall. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with these designs. In fact, they are amazing if you ask me, but they are everywhere! Having these designs in my gallery does nothing for my site except show that I can go around and publish the same content that everyone else has already published 10 times over.

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My First Guest Post

I don’t have a lot of time here, so I’ll make it quick. Just wanted to let everyone know about my first guest post. Adnan from Blogtrepreneur asked me a couple weeks ago if I would write a guest post. I was honored to even be asked to write a guest post, so there was no doubt I would be writing one.

The idea came up the other day when I asked another designer that I chat with every now and again his opinion of a design and he pointed out that the text really looked “jagged.” Turns out he had ClearType disabled on his machine so all of his fonts were aliased, which makes the text seem jagged. I get in a bad habit myself sometimes of not checking my designs with ClearType enabled as well as disabled to ensure that visitors who may not have ClearType enabled (quite a bit of users) will get a similar experience as those with it enabled.

I just finished updating Nice Stylesheet with 10 new designs and I’ve got quite a bit of other work left to do, so that’s the reason for the short post. I hope to get back to some regular articles by the end of the week or early next week.

Anyway, if you get a chance, go check it out and maybe leave me some feedback.

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Free Blog Tips Review

A while back I came across a link on The Blog Experiment for five free blog tips from Easton Ellsworth. I guess I just got lucky because Easton actually gave me 10 tips instead of five.

Here they are and my thoughts on each:

1. Add a clear tagline so the blog’s title doesn’t make too many people think it’s just random chit-chat.

I agree and disagree. I know that focusing on one specific topic is good, I just like having a few topics I can write about. I don’t want to feel jailed in that I can only write about one thing. Plus, with a name like Random Jabber, I think I need to be able to write about numerous things.

2. The logo is genius - maybe make it bigger.

Yeah, I like it too. cheese

3. Make the favicon bigger.

Can’t do it with the way I designed the talk bubbles in the logo (wasn’t thinking about a favicon at the time). They are not as tall as they are wide and this presents a problem when moving the graphic over to a 16x16 pixel favicon. The sizes just won’t proportion correctly.

4. The footer could probably be removed, or at least everything in it except maybe the copyright info / design info. Move everything in it up into the sidebars.

Yeah, I agree. It could be removed as it’s mostly just a catch all for all of the unimportant stuff on Random Jabber. I kinda like it though. It’s nice to check out MyBlogLog and see who’s been visiting. One thing I do need to get rid of is the Amazon Affiliate links, they are doing nothing!

5. Add a photo or video to the about page.

Done. Uploaded one the other day to the small about section in the footer as well as to the about page.

6. We’re the same age. Okay, not a tip, just a nice fact.

Nice!

7. Put the popular posts list higher than the recent posts list.

Never really thought about doing this before, but it’s a good idea I think.

8. Use keywords in the tag line that you want search engine users to find.

Yeah, I admit, I don’t really pay attention to keywords. I do need to be more conscious of the keywords that I want people to find me listed under in the search engines.

9. Maybe put the top commentators list higher.

Done. Moved from middle column at the bottom, to the right column and up higher.

10. Remember, it’s hard to just have ads on your site make the big bucks. Consider offering something for sale like an ebook or premium membership content or consulting services, e.g.

Yeah, you’re right. I removed the ads from Random Jabber just because they weren’t doing anything really except sitting there, so no point. Offering consulting services isn’t a bad idea though.

Those Are My Tips, What Do You Think?

Is Easton right on par with these suggestions?

I’m always interested in finding out how the user perceives my blog. The way I see it and the way everyone else sees it can be totally opposite.

As a reader, do you have any suggestions that you feel would improve Random Jabber?

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