Rod's Blog Stardate blah blah blah: links

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Friday, September 3, 2010

Rod's Log of Everything

My Cyberbrain 2.2

The following is a Blog pretending to be a Web page...see also My Worldwide WEB [which is also archived] due to GeoCities having been sold to Japan 2009.

WEB Log… Dated Items / WEB Pages of Interest / FB Related - usually just f 'n / Personals - yours and/or mine / Notes to Self / News at 11 / Searches and Keywords - see Wikipedia and Google / Images / Previously - also Updates / Quotes and Ponderables / Vids...OK, YouTube / Data Dump
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+ Dated Items \
Begin Stardate 11500.0 [12 am July 1, 2011], a Friday
+ WEB Pages of Interest \
+ FB Related - usually just f 'n \
+ Personals - yours and/or mine \
+ Notes to Self \
+ News at 11 \
- The Daily Planet soon to be updated
- WikiPedia always has the latest information and manageable links
+ Searches and Keywords - see Wikipedia and Google \
+ Images \
+ Previously - also Updates \
+ Quotes and Ponderables \
+ Vids...OK, YouTube \
+ Data Dump \
- Previously...

Geocities Home pages Re-Creation Project

My Den
Virtual REFerence Desk WWW Virtual Library eLibrary Bartleby eBooks Oxford's Shakespeare Book of Quotations Dictionary Thesaurus Encyclopedia Britanica Encyclopedia.com Encarta by MSN InfoPlease Encyclopedia Columbia Encyclopedia FreDictionary-pedia Wikipedia Smitsonian Encyclopedia CIA Factbook & World Atlas Frommer's NEW Law References The Holy Bible National Geographic Scientific AmericanPopular Science Gray's Anatomy Merck's Medical World Desk References by DK Bartender's Guide

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News of the day "Sumerians Look On In Confusion As God Creates World"

...more news...The Big Bang to Humans (pt 1) / .the last 4.5 Billion Years / FaceBook in History / And on the Future front

My favorite news sources...

The Onion... America's Finest News Source / Sign of the Times / More Alternative Headlines / The Funniest Headlines...more... Slate

TV Shows I am Watching has an Updated page of its own as of the last week of September, 2010

Music Top 100s Radio by Category or by Year

Movies

The EX [note: I have not watched this yet, so don't know how or IF it ends, or hangs]

YouTube

“When Life Gives You a Bad Romance, show everyone your Poker Face, buy a new Telephone, call Alejandro, and you guys Just Dance!”

...music playlists...
Ghost in the Shell ending / Rihanna / Bitch / Pink! / Damn / Radio Ga Ga - Queen / Princes of the Universe / The Wall / KISS Symphony Alive IV / I Got The Music In Me / Savage Garden / Golden Years / Illusion / Celtic Woman / Sylvester and other '70s tunes / Culture Club plus /

Previously, from my April 2010 FB Notes...

Animusic / Garbage - Stupid Girl / Katy Perry - I Kissed a Girl / Smoke on the Water - Deep Purple / Eve Of Destruction / Clap for the Wolfman + '70s tunes / Too Late... + '70s and '80s / Cover of the Rolling Stones / Tone Loc - Funky Cold Medina / Bowling For Soup - 1985 / Bad Religion - 21st Century Digital Boy / The Breakfast Club ending / Simple Minds - Don't You Forget About Me / Glen Campbell - Rhinestone Cowboy / Warren Zevon - Werewolves Of London / A Horse With No Name / Blue Man Group - The Complex Rock Tour more / Three Dog Night 80+ tunes / Doctor and the Medics / Buffy- The Musical

Tagalog- Bathroom Dance / Hindi Ako Bakla / vs Rey Valera / Napakasakit... / Anak / Wow Wowee / Prisoners Dance / Kar Wash / channel Wowowee / channel Eat Bulaga / Jeproks and more Mike Hanopol / Pinoy Biscuits

Naked Funny / SexyCam / Pay attention to your GF / The AXE Effect / Old Spice  responses /   Improv Everywhere / Scare Tactics / Achmed the Dead Terrorist  / George Carlin on Religion,  on War, and  Life is Worth Losing 2007 also  Baseball vs Football / Robin Williams and more / from The Gospel according to John, Paul, George, and Ringo / Rambo II / Head to Toe /  Chemical Dance / funny Indians ...go fwd to 3:00  /  A Knight's Tale  / Eureka - She Blinded Me with Science  / SyFy- Imagine Greater / Myka & HG  / small apartments / Everything Gonna Be Alright   / Psych, Outtakes, in Hindi   /  FFwd to 3:45 / SciFi plots / Everybody Look What's Going Down / Warriors and other '80s movies / SI Swimsuit ed. 2009  / Miss Universe 2010

Star Trek-   TOS react to ST 2009  / Star Trek XI's "accidental" similarity to Star Wars  /  ST 2009 High School Never Ends, We Used To Be Friends  /  Spock vs Q  / ffwd to 3:33  / Enterprise No Bloody A...  / "These are the voyages..."   / "Klingon" cultural tutorial / Klingon Honor Guard / Q in "Borg"  and more  / "Of Gods And Men"  / Classic episodes

Full movies, etc...
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

Personals on FB
"Growing Up Without a Cell Phone!!! by JD / "7 Deadly Sins of Social Media: Sin 1 – Being Somebody Else" by SMD and other Social Media Design links / Maribel A's Wall

Personals and Blogs from FBies and Others
Catherine Tripp more   FinGalSF / Steve Moyer  / JiMbO James  other site  Que Car BQ Place  /   Pleasant Dreams  / Sherry /   Mark of Oakland / Local East Bay Express /  OHS Memorial Class of 1976  / Cheryl 5.0 / Sonia  / Redhead Rants  / Elaine  / Natalie's channel  / Emotion Machine  / Social Times  / All FB  / Working Chronicles  / SM Experts Daily / Gizmdo / Replayed / Byte Knight more

Dead Links Lori's Notebook * /

I Googled Myself...
Imperium

Calendar Date Converter
Julian, Hebrew, Persian, Islamic, Mayan, Bahá'í, Indian, French Republican, ISO-8601, Unix () time value, and Excel Serial Day Number
Tarek's, Darian, Erisian, and Stardate

WEB Pages of Interest
My Laptop; old one  / 1984 First Mac commercial  / and the Internet / 15 funny apple ads - Big and Small / Mac Wiki / Official  / NEW Mac Book Air
Idea Labs / Smartphone Comparison / State if the Internet by Jess3 / Three Minute videos / RSS in plain english  / How To Wikis  / for Web Designers  / What is the Social Web? / You Might Be Saying Wrong  / Death + Taxes /
The Future of [Virtual] Money  / Next 5 Years...  / WEB Strategy / Mashable /  The Oatmeal  / Tremendous News / Gauge Media / FB and South Park  / 10 FB Tips / What They Know - chart 1 - chart 2
FML2  / Oakland Crime / Daily Videos  / Why You're Fat  / Nom Nom Girls  / Rolling Stones
Map of On-Line Communities and Social Network  / The Most Colorful Colors on the WEB / Map of Brand Icons / Stand Alone Complex explained

My oldest FB post topic and later updates Sugar's Power and Sugar versus high fructose corn syrup  and the Conspiracy  - a Follow-up

Previously, from my April 2010 FB Notes...

Government Accountability Office and Official Document Libraries

Federation of American Scientists and World Government Secrecy News

look up Principia Discordia

About Games for the iWhatever

The Latest Geek-related news / Another Geek related site

The Ultimate List of End of Decade Lists / Last Decade in Pictures [keywords and ideograms]

Not just about post-Katrina New Orleans

Where Knowledge Junkies Get Their Fix

Life is pretty normal today

Humorous captions

More Humorous captions

Another FML [how many are there?]

The Internet 1993 and 1321 more videos from CBC

See a Smile everywhere

And the sign says... Signs, signs; Everywhere there's signs Yes, I am still stuck in the '70s!

Every Bro Has a Story

Vids featuring celebrities, etc

Connecting Bloggers

The best of the Web, sifted, sorted, and summarized

The Most Awesome Men's Entertainment Site On The Internet

Relationships, Health, etc for Women

A Little of Everything

Weird and Bizarre

Crazy Pictures posted on the Internet

Do you shop at WalMart? Go in pajamas and you might find find yourself here!

Connecting Authors and Readers

Bakugan

Real Artist

a little Cosmology and other oddities

The Improve Everywhere

Playlists of The Improve Everywhere on YouTube

73 scenes one after the other of The Improve Everywhere

Jeff Dunham and Achmed the Dead Terrorist / Ricky Gervais on Fat People / Ricky on the Bible / Louis CK / Sarah Palin interviews

Book-WEB for kids and teens / Digi-Book for adults

Wargammer resources in print

Heroes, Claire and Gretchen Kiss

Commissioned Aug 30, 2010 9:47pm
Updated Sept 9, 2010 12:05pm and Sept 14 to present END

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Slowing Down Skimmers

In response to 7 Deadly Sins of Social Media: Slowing Down Skimmers . Here's a few helpful style guides to attract skimmers. Although it is impossible to please everybody, And there is always a flip-side to every suggestion. Here are a few of mine. Please note that in Composition Writing 101 I flunked; Reading and Comprehension I scored 98!

It must be visually appealing to look at- “Oh no, it’s three pages long!” Keep it short and simple.
[I have a two-minute attention span!]

Each blog post or chapter should have one overall focus or objective. Every post should have an opening, a body, and a closing [basic English 101; also ingrained into salespeople].

A paragraph should convey only ONE idea at a time. I like one that starts with a headline OR bold first line, phrase, or word. Each paragraph MUST logically connect OR lead into the next one. A sentence MUST be readable aloud in one breath, unless separated by a punctuation for emphasis. In fact, have someone read it to you out loud and see if YOU understand everything! Best someone who has no idea what the subject is. Added Nov 23 Useful Rules

Unless it is a non-formal form of communication [e-mail, text message] where characters and time spent typing is at a premium, use precise wording. Don’t use smileys, emoticons, or other forms of short-hand. Avoid highly technical words. Use Spell Check and Dictionary Look-up for ANY word more than seven letters long. Readers stop mid-sentence to check a dubious spelling or context of a word. Do it enough times and they will doubt the content of the whole post!
“I stopped blogging because people always criticized my grammar.”
see 24 Things You Might Be Saying Wrong

Striking out words can be fun, if used sparingly. Personal anecdotes should be in italics, inserted words, in brackets or parentheses, for emphasis. Do not go off topic. If you have to, put in italics “see [subject, location] like the anecdotes. But keep the main idea rolling! Don’t post something that will be misconstrued as an endorsement, unless that IS the idea you are pushing. Bulleted items or lists help to move the eyes along. Avoid graphics as breaks. One photo is enough per post. And NO animated graphics…so tacky!
In all cases, don’t overdo it! It will become monotonous!

Side bars are nice, if not overdone to be a distraction. It keeps gadgets handy. Too long a post leaves a lot of empty space.

To summarize, think of it as fishing. Lure them in with a shiny format. Bait them with a single tasty concept [your goal in mind]. Tug at them a few times using your ideas. Reel them in with your closing statement.

Oh, I almost forgot…You MUST MAKE IT INVITING FOR THEM TO COME BACK AGAIN AND AGAIN!
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WagnerWrites

We're about to revamp a nonprofit's website, so I appreciated seeing this today via BlogAid. Consider watching the original video (linked in this note). Even somebody who is 26 prefers larger fonts (14 pt or 16 pt) and other design elements to improve readability on websites.
Rodney Rivera I like the concept of "one site, one goal." Color, placement of what I call 'hooks', seeing the point right away, all of these are important to catch those 'just looking.' True for pages as well as in-store. I really miss GeoCities where templates or codes are not necessary to make a personal page. There was a 'Web Pages That Suck' that was a great tool like this one promises to be. That one went commercial. Font size I don't see as being important in this age of zoom control. What IS important is proportions. Does the sponsor ad at the side-bar 'yell' louder than the real content? You want to catch 'just looking' skimmers. Not be tacky or boring.
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6 Surefire Ways To Piss Off Facebook Fans- This may also apply to blogs.
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re 10 Things I Learned in 2010 About the Pitfalls of Blogging

Being a non-commercial blogger, a few points don't apply to me. But 1-3 is certainly true. Being interesting, posting regularly [every Wednesday for example] insures that when you DO have something important to say, they'll be there to read... it.

Don't alienate your readers with ads not related to you. I posted once that a writer is as interesting as the width of their column...the rest is somebody elses garbage, or worse blank [half way down the article].

Don't lose touch with your friends, family, and your own health...texting and bio-rythm doesn't count.
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The Language of Social Media | Social Media Today
Rodney Rivera The second point is a great morale booster! I like “Keep it short and sweet” and “don’t take it too seriously.” Also “For the best results, keep it honest and authentic.”
What I like about this article is that it is short and to the point. It states its sources at the end instead of links not needed in the body. Also, unlike some journalists, it doesn’t just copy and paste whole paragraphs from those sources. 6/4/2011 a Saturday
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WagnerWrites 7/21/2011, a Thursday
Want to look at some great website designs? Clean, colorful, and optimized for social media. These are nonprofits but the same principles apply to anyone. Let me know your favorite.
11 Nonprofit Websites Designed for the Social Web
#1 is a simple whole page banner to draw you in, without 'other news' along the edges or bottom. What I do not like are when the big picture slideshows into an ad...tacky. If I didn't click the hyperlink, I wouldn't have known it was a slideshow.

I hate web pages that distract you from the Message.
Sidebars that take up 1/3 of the page width total is my biggest problem. Followed by a Like or 'invite' pop-up before I have a chance to read anything.
Mysteries...more follow...
Web Pages That Suck on Google search [their page sucks because it doesn't show nuthin']

Page one, screen one should be simple and eycatching in itself. Without ads, pretty slideshows, list of sponsors, and flashing animations in smaller squares. Yes you should have your photo at the top, but keep your bio 'down below.' This page should be no bigger than one sheet of paper if printed out, landscape or portrait.

Following pages can be 'anything goes' within reason.
Mystery meat refers to anything invisible until you move the cursor over it OR doesn't really say what it is about (i.e., an icon).
A page should be no more than 'four clicks down' when scrolling [that's what I hate about FB. There is no 'back to top' button].
Grammar and spelling IS important! Nothing distracts more than a dubious word I am tempted to look up.

This not about slowing down skimmers. It is about keeping everyones attention (and awake). Thanks to Lori Randall Stradtman and Claire Wagner for showing me how it should be done; and James Jimbo Denny on how it shouldn't. Humor helps :-)
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I HATE when FB allows only 420 characters in the status space. There is SOMETHING about that number that seems significant. What follows is a disclaimer of sorts...
Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data, ability to repeat discredited memes, and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Also, be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor even implied. Any irrelevancies you can mention will also be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.
- I like this quote, now that I've seen it a second time. I don't remember where the first time was