Useful Concept - blogs

New Blog Design

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 09:02:00 -0400

I made a few goals for 2010 related to my sites and this weekend I finally crossed some off my list. I vowed to work on my online brand, blog more and differentiate my personal portal/brand from just being my out of date and sloppy blog. First thing I did was create a new website. Yes yet another site! It is a one page mini portal of all things me. I put it under joshuacyr.com. The new site aggregates my social media, blog, projects, etc. The idea is that over time I can simply pull in more feeds from sites that I participate in and have them auto populate my page. This is still in its infancy, as I haven't decided if I want to include and or how to include sites such as flickr, facebook, linkedIN, etc. So right now it is just recent blog feeds and twitter posts (filtered) plus select photos. Next I upgraded this blog to the latest version of BlogCFC, and boy was I way behind. As usual I made the process a much bigger deal than it actually was. Mostly because I was dropping the old design anyway. Finally my friend Robert Squier, who works at Harbour Light Strategic Marketing, helped me this weekend with a new design for both sites. I owe him a few beers. There are still a few things I need to do. I am not sold on the image scrolling system at the bottom of my personal page. I still need to add a few more links to projects as well. The headers for both sites are near identical. I think that may be a bit confusing. I also need to add an actual editor into BlogCFC. Just ran out of time. I am very open to constructive criticism, so let it fly.

Seven Random Things - the jcyr version

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 17:36:00 -0400

Kavka tagged me with the Seven Random Things meme, so here you go in no particular order.

1. I once performed music in front of an estimated 1,000,000 people. Yes I can play music. Or used to anyway. I played saxophone (alto mostly) most of my school life. At times in High School I would be in 3 or more music classes. One year we were asked to perform in the Hollywood Christmas Parade. All I remember is that it was VERY cold (unusually so), none of us could feel out fingers and playing music was near impossible. The drill team came with us in their skimpy outfits and as cold as I was, I was feeling quite bad for them. It was a fun trip all around even if we sounded horrible.

2. Even though I live in New Hampshire, I grew up in Pocatello, Idaho. My friends refuse to acknowledge that Idaho is a real state with real people haven't never met anyone from Idaho. When I tell them I am from ID, they claim I am making it up. I love Idaho and visit when I can. Pocatello is a great town, but I fear for the sprawl growth going on with bargain basement big box retailers and chain restaurants taking over. ISU has an amazing music program.

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New Blog Design

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 22:07:00 -0400

Just put up a new design today. I was messing around with Adobe Illustrator (my first time) and learned the power of brushes.

I made a fun background image and decided it was time to mess with my old blog design. Basically I just made a big background, set it to be fixed, then added opacity to a few of my divs.

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Contest Reminder

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 17:37:00 -0400

Just a quick reminder that my contest ends midnight tomorrow. I only have a couple entries, so odds are pretty good for you. Blog about it, comment or do something already. ;-) Maybe everyone who thought of trying WOW is already playing it?

RIA, WOW and a Contest!

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:35:00 -0400

Its time to hold a contest! One winner, and anyone can participate. All to promote my RIAdventure cruise this February. (social cruise for CF/Flex/AIR geeks and family from Miami to Bahamas)

What is the prize you ask?

A World of Warcraft account (created but not played) with ~ 80 days of prepaid time. Yup, the game and about 3 months of prepaid time! It includes the original game as well as the Burning Crusade addition. If you show up on my server I will even help you get started. :-)

If you ever wanted to see what the hubbub is about, this is a good chance to do so. I have created the account for you and added the play time, you just need to download the client software (free download) and enter the user/pass I give you and away you go.

Note, this account is already created, so you can't use it for the Zevrah mount.

How do you enter?

Option A:
Every person who posts a comment on this blog post will get one entry. The comment has to contain 2 things. Yes you must do BOTH to qualify. (plus post your name and valid email though the email wont show).

1) List your top reason someone should go to RIAdventure.
2) List your top reason you want to try out WOW (world of warcraft).

Option B:
You can get a second entry (for a total of two possible entries) if you blog about the contest and post your answers to the two questions above in your blog post and then link back to this post. You must comment here with a link to that blog post so I have a way of knowing about it.

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Warcraftbloggers Update

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 11:38:00 -0400

I thought I would spend a few minutes to update everyone on what warcraftbloggers.com has been up to.

I continue to add a number of warcraft related blogs, new and old. Only now people are submitting their blogs to me, which is great. Sometimes it takes a week or so before I get around to adding your requests. Our only qualification for adding a blog is that it is all about WOW and has at least 5 entries.

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RIAdventure Countdown Badges

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 16:09:00 -0400

I made some badges for people to put on their site for the upcoming RIAdventure cruise.

I used a service called Sprout Builder, which is a flex based app that lets us easily build widgets. I have to say it was DARN easy to make these. I had them done in minutes, which may show, but hey it works right? :-) I could make them multiple views, embed video and audio, slideshows, etc. Pretty darn slick.

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RIAdventure - ColdFusion, Flex and Air Cruise

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 15:24:00 -0400

Yup, you read correctly. Its a cruise. A real one! I am officially jumping into the RIA event ring. If your down with CF, Flex, Air and other web related goodness AND your down for having a nice vacation with family and friends then this is the trip for you.

This will be quite different though. No sessions, no fees. Just a bunch of us getting together to network, be social and have fun.

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My Problem with Blogs, Social Media and Other Such Stuff

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 19:55:00 -0400

Nicknames. Every where I turn there is someone named trnky2fun or something like that. Every social site I belong to I get invited to be a friend by someone with NO profile, or with a description of 'what do you want to know'. Their name? Nothing descriptive. How can I say yes to that?

I have 2 people in my gmail talk alone who I have NO idea who they actually are. I am sure I may have known when I approved 7 months ago, but no memory of it now.

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Want To Replace Feedburner

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:21:00 -0400

I have been frustrated with feedburner for a while now. Not because they don't provide a worthwhile service, they do. But because there has been next to NO improvement in performance or features in a good long while. Features I care about anyway, I don't want to embed ads in my feeds.

The reports have always been slow. Today I noticed that my live stats for my feeds has been at zero for a few days. No traffic for days? On multiple web sites? Oh really? I went to the feedburner forums, but they are 'locked' and have been so for at least a month.

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Photo for CFUnited

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 14:33:00 -0400

JeremiaX had a good idea for bloggers/twitters/plurkers going to CFunited. He suggested posting photos of yourself so we could recognize each other at the conference. While I know many people already, there are some bloggers I read and have NO idea what they look like. In fact there are many bloggers which I have no idea what their real name is.

This is doubly true for twitter and plurk. People have these odd names, and no description. Hard to know who I am supposed to be 'friends' with. :-)

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Comment Moderation Added

Tue, 20 May 2008 17:22:00 -0400

Damn you all. I had to do it. Comment spam just got out of control and I am angry. I don't mind deleting a comment now and then. But the 50+ last night and handful today have just put me over the edge.

I am VERY sorry to do it. Not a lot of you comment, which is fine, but it really is a hassle for everyone.

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Preventing Blog Scrapers

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 15:44:00 -0400

I read Problogger's blog every once in a while as I often find good tips in there. Today I noticed just such a post.

The post is about Blog Scrapers and it is something that I have often wondered about. Scrapers are people or bots that take your RSS feed and use it as their own blog or content. Often with no link or mention of you. They do so purely for the advertising revenue. They hurt us by doing two things. 1) they dilute your web site ranking by causing search engines to think your content is duplicate content. 2) they are making money off your work.

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Blog Design Update

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 23:17:00 -0400

Since so many others had updated their blog for the new year I figured I would get in on the act.

I kept blogcfc and really just modified the CSS and a bit of the layout. I also made room for a 'featured posts' section, which is really just 3 random posts. Blogcfc caches pages, so they are random to when it caches, but they show different 3 posts per page. I figure this will be good for SEO an also for people finding old posts of mine.

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new high tech pr blog

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 18:59:00 -0400

A client of mine just recenly launched their new high tech pr site and blog. The blog uses blogcfc as the engine and I think it turned out pretty well.

As always I am interested in feedback.