Thank you to all my new blogging friends and commentators for a great 2007! Sorry I haven’t replied to all of your recent comments, but hopefully I haven’t missed you for some link love. If I have missed you, I hope to make up for it in 2008!

So, let’s close the year with some more links!

Making extraordinary art out of ordinary objects. Neat, but not sure I like the idea of cutting up books. Just. Seems. So. Wrong.

The Greatest Action Story Ever Told. A lot of times, humor involving Jesus is just so poorly done. Either purely tasteless or just plain bad. But, this one is funny without belittling Jesus. A few years old, but this is the first time I’ve seen it.

Can you guess the song? I was able to figure it out, even before the middle of the video. Can you? Sounds like he has a Russian accent in both halves. You can also watch him do 200 impersonations.

Is the next Internet gold rush going to target the grammer school-aged kids? Companies want to grab kids earlier and earlier in the hopes of keeping them as life-long consumers. Is it just me, or do others think that advertising is just going too far these days? Advertising is certainly necessary, but too much of it just makes people blind to it anyway. I hate how so many backgrounds of interviews and special events now have a bunch of sponsor logos in the background. At some point, I hope to do some videos, and I already have some nice looking backgrounds and they are logo-free! Anyway, I am of the mind that perhaps parents and schools should do more to encourage kids to learn stuff rather than prepare them just to be future consumers. But, I don’t have any kids, so what do I know, right?

Was Osama bin Laden murdered? In an interview with David Frost, Benazir Bhutto casually mentions a man “who murdered Osama bin Laden.” That’s quite an assertion, yet the interviewer never asks about it. Was he not paying attention? Maybe she meant someone other than the Osama bin Laden. If not, how did she know who killed him? You would think this is one question that you would inquire further about, to learn more of its veracity to determine if the claim was true or false. But, no, she was never asked further about it. Other than YouTube and digg, I’ve not seen this mentioned anywhere else. I guess if we want to find out more, we’ll have to start eMailing our friends about this video. At least that way Snopes.com will investigate…

Using Photoshop to make a political point. This example is pretty good. Some of the others are a little more obvious.

If you’re into affiliate marketing, you might want to read “Three Things All Affiliate Marketers Need to Survive Online.” Though I have a tendency to think the “free report” thing may be a passing fad. Then again, I do occasionally read them…

Finally, if you need some Hot Naked Chicks in your life, and you find humor in chicken cannibalism, you might want to pick up one of these Hot Naked Chicks aprons. They would make a great gift idea too!

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Chris Bloczynski had this link to share this past week: “Introduction to Keyword Sniping.” It’s better than sniping on Ebay because here you could make some money instead of spending it.

Aside from the obvious, here’s another reason you should try to treat other people well.

About 33% of people with cable or satellite TV would drop the service if they could download their favorite shows for a flat fee. On the other hand, when you pay by the show, like you do with iTunes, maybe you’re a bit more selective about what you watch. When you’re paying a monthly fee, you don’t think about cost when you sit down and watch a show. There are many shows that are good entertainment to just sit and watch for a half hour or an hour, but when you need to pay something like $1.99 to watch an individual show, well, there are a great many shows that aren’t worth spending $1.99. Then you can use that hour of time for something more productive.

Quantum dots? Quantum dots may allow data to be stored for one million years. Of course, by that time, computers won’t be able to access something so old. Just try reading a 5-1/4″ floppy disk on your modern computer.

Optimus Tactus keyboard. Wow. A keyboard that’s a rip-off of the iPhone. Mind you, nothing new about this concept. I had the idea for this kind of keyboard years ago. Of course, it wasn’t an original idea; I saw it on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Once again, science fiction has created our future.

Thomas Edison made a “Frankenstein” movie. Neat color changing technology for 1910. I’m sure that’s the result of the deterioration of the film, portions of which were, apparently, not well-preserved.

Money from nothing. A good read on how a government agency can take something defined as “public” and turn it into something only a very small fraction of that “public” (i.e., corporations and/or the wealthy) can actually control.

Pete hasn’t posted anything new in the past week, but he did try to sneak in a new blog theme.

Nina stole a Christmas story while Jeanne offers some inner resources for writing success in 2008.

Jon wants you to show off your stuff. Pop on over to his blog and post about your best photo of the year.

Mark offers a post without direction.

Joanne is AWOL, Rolando got an award, Erina is back, and Mike refuses to make resolutions but Doug makes some and posts some NSFW* pictures. Doug also seems to have a thing for Natalie’s, especially Natalie Dormer, who, if you look up her IMdB profile, apparently has only two facial expressions.

Meanwhile, Mike explains where he’s been and Michelle suggests herself as the mom you want to have and, aw, look at the kitties. I said, “LOOK!“

Beth had a busy week while Chris ponders offering a freelance writing course.

*Not Safe For Work. Or Church. Or around children. Or around your parents, the old lady next door, your landlord, your spouse’s parents, your grade school teacher that popped over for a visit, the local prosecuting attorney, your mother’s bake sale sisters, your grandparents, your weird uncle that shouts everything he sees and announces it to the room, your in-car web browser that can be seen by the police officer tailgating you, or the blind salesman.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Do you read your own blog with an RSS reader?

You should.

Subscribing to your own feed in a feed reader can help you keep an eye on your own blog. Here are some good reasons for self-subscribing:

1. Make sure your feed is working. You can also see whether there is a delay between the time you post and the time the post appears in your feed. If there is a significant delay, you might need to do some troubleshooting.
2. Make sure your feed appears the way you intended. You can make sure your entire post, or a partial post if desired, is showing up in the feed reader. You can also make sure any headers or footers you added are being appended. Also, make sure any ads or links are showing up properly.
3. Make sure your time-stamped posts are appearing as scheduled. Keep an eye on your time-stamped posts without launching your browser and checking your blog.

Even if you don’t use a feed reader yourself, if you are offering an RSS feed for your blog, you should be reading at least your own blog with a feed reader. Do a search online and you’ll find free and fee RSS readers.

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My Goal

Back on August 9th, I wrote that my goal was to make $300,000 by December 31, 2007.

With 3 days to go, I am $299,994.75 short of that goal. So, unless I manage to earn about $100,000 per day for the rest of the year, I am not going to make that goal.

Back then, I had figured that I would have my eCommerce site completed by the end of September. That would have given me three full months (October, November and December) to earn the $300,000 both with my eCommerce site and also with other ventures I would begin to work on.

The eCommerce site remains under development. I admit that I have not worked on it at all, aside from some mental ponderings, in these past couple “holiday” weeks. I hit another minor stumbling block, and I just haven’t spent a lot of time working it out.

I haven’t been too worried about it either. I have work to complete for a client by year’s end, so I need to work on that more so than the eCommerce site. I am, of course, anxious to complete the site, but it is also a welcome break to not dream in code for a while.

This weekend, I’ll be working on the aforementioned client’s job, as well as putting away the Christmas decorations, so I probably won’t get back to work on my eCommerce site until next weekend, the first weekend of 2008.

So, I will revise My Goal’s deadline once I complete my eCommerce site. What I’ll probably do is figure on about three months past the completion date.

New Blog

Earlier this month, I announced that I would be starting a new blog. I registered Sciphon.com, which I thought was a cool name. The topic of the blog would be Science Fiction, and I pictured a siphon that would siphon up science fiction news and stories. So, it was “sci” instead of “si” in siphon.

Mind you, this was not going to be a “scraper” site. After proofreading the previous paragraph, I just realized that the siphon description might give the wrong impression. It would not be running on some bot-script or anything. It would the same as this blog here, except I would have been writing about or linking to science fiction related news and stories.

I’ve decided, at least for the time being, not to start this new blog. I already have a science fiction site, and I think it’s probably best just to revamp that in some way rather than to start up yet another blog. Another option was to just have a “blog within a blog” on this blog, where I would post all the science fiction topics. Instead, I’ll just work on the current site.

My Flagship Website

Also, after completing my eCommerce site, I want to overhaul my flagship site, which currently earns some pocket change with Google AdSense. When I was updating it regularly, I had some decent traffic and positions in the search engines. But, I haven’t updated it in two years.

The problem is that I had painted myself into a corner. I had decided to go bilingual with the site: English and Spanish. I also had a goal of releasing new content simultaneously in English and Spanish, so that you could seamlessly switch between the two and so that both language readers would see the same content.

In the coding of the site, I had designed it to handle multiple languages, and had even gone ahead and had one story translated into French. I was definitely optimistic!

Then, I lost my Spanish translator. He just dropped off the face of the Earth, apparently. Shortly thereafter, I found a new Spanish translator. After a while, she got busy with other things and put her translation services on hold, and apparently never got back into it again. The second translator was more expensive than the first translator and subsequent translators that I have found are significantly more expensive than the second translator.

Thus, I have not had anything translated since the loss of the second translator, which has meant the site has sat idle. My hope was that, as I built traffic, I would earn enough from the Spanish side of the site to at least cover the translation services. At the first and even the second translator’s rates, I could afford to continue to invest in the translation services in the hopes of generating a greater income once the site began to take off. But, that’s not too feasible at the current translation rates that I have found.

I see now that there really isn’t much of an option but to set aside my goal of simultaneous language releases, and just publish new content in English only until I can earn enough from the site to pay for the Spanish translations too and start building up content on the Spanish side. English-only is certainly a better option than no updates whatsoever. I have a better chance of earning money with new content than with a site that doesn’t get updated.

My Secret Project

I previously mentioned my secret project here and here. Thankfully, Mike Aragona appears to be still on board.

I would like to go with Option C (as mentioned in this post). To do that, I estimate I would need to have a minimum of $20,000-$25,000. A far cry from $300,000, so it should be easy, right? Ha! If I want to bump it up to Option D, which was not mentioned, but would be like Option C on steroids, it could easily be a minimum of $100,000 or more. Heck, I could run it up into the millions…

Yeah, I have big dreams.

Hopefully, 2008 will be the year I start making some of them happen.

What Will 10,000 Bloggers Do?

I briefly hinted at this one in this post. I have the post written. I just need to change the dates and set up a special website. I am eager to give this one a go, but I have had it on the backburner behind the eCommerce site. It’s simmering, but I have to finish my eCommerce site!

Insert Closing Header Here

Yeah, that was intentional. “Conclusion” sounded lame. Anyway, that’s my brief little update. I don’t really do New Year’s Resolutions, and I don’t necessarily set my goals in a neat little 12-month calendar either. But, it’s as good a time as any to update my goals, especially since the end of the year is drawing to a close and people are no doubt wondering if I’ve forgotten to update my “Goal” section in the sidebar. (I haven’t forgotten, sadly.)

Anyway…

Believe. Act. Achieve! And Be Ubiquitous too. And try to get some sleep.

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As the year draws to a close, it’s time to take a look back. Since I didn’t start this blog until July, I only have six months (well, five and a half actually) to look back on. Perhaps I could have waited on this until the actual end of the year, but I doubt the numbers will change much, so let’s just get it out of the way now!

Some things, like the Top Commentators, will be cleared out the first part of the new year, so everyone will have a chance to start fresh. Otherwise, no one could beat Joanne, who already leads everyone else by more than double the number of comments.

Top Commentators

1. Joanne (104)
2. David (45)
3. Deborah (45)
4. Lewis Empire (42)
5. Alex (41)

Most Commented Posts

1. Viral Stories How-To
2. Seven P Antonyms
3. Awards Night
4. Color Tag
5. For the Sentence Was Wrong and I Have Typed It Rightly
6. We Are One
7. Lost Links
8. Bloggone Branding
9. My Goal
10. Pirate Links

Need Ideas for Topics for Your Blog? Visit Blogger Memes.

Most Popular Posts (overall)

1. Lost Links
2. Awards Night
3. Viral Stories How-To
4. For the Sentence Was Wrong and I Have Typed It Rightly
5. Drunken Virals
6. Seven P Antonyms
7. We Are One
8. Pirate Links
9. Google Slaps Bloggers… Yawn
10. Color Tag

Most Popular Posts (by permalink views)

1. Drunken Virals
2. Google Slaps Bloggers… Yawn
3. Lost Links
4. Pirate Links
5. Awards Night
6. My Goal
7. Six Reasons Why You Need a Full Feed RSS
8. Explode Like Sodium, Flow Like Water (Curiously, its prequel “Are You Salt or Sodium?” did not make the list. But note how I just snuck it in.)
9. Viral Stories How-To
10. Back to School

The Millionaire Mind: Offering the Keys to Real Wealth Today.

Most Linked Posts (trackback)

1. It’s 11:00 p.m., Do You Know Where Your Blog Post Is?
2. My Goal
3. Smunpfu Piy Yjrtr?
4. What’s In the Box?
5. 3 Things You Haven’t Let Go
6. Improve Your Blog with a Sparring Partner
7. Wordy Wednesday: Darnella
8. How to Maintain Your Focus
9. Pirate Links
10. Lost Links

Start Selling Online Now: Find wholesale suppliers and dropshippers. Sell on your website, blog or auctions.

All Tied for Archive Views

1. Alternative Child Care Solution
2. 3 Keys to Successful Blogs
3. How to Maintain Your Focus
4. Another Blog Bites the Dust
5. Proofread Your Comments

In the new year, I will no doubt change my sidebar, most likely eliminating the near-dead blogs and adding bloggers like Jon, Pete and Rolando. Possibly Mike as well, who you may be hearing more from if I get my secret project up and running again in 2008. And others too. Which means I’ll need to do some kind of rethinking as to how I manage my sidebar, because there are many people I want to add, yet I don’t want to clutter the thing up.

Who Was in My Sidebar?

1. A Blog About Nothing
2. A Blog that Lies
3. Almost a Billionaire
4. Beyond the Rhetoric
5. Chris Bloczynski dot Com
6. ChrisBlogging.com
7. Daily Web Ideas
8. DeboHobo.com
9. Exit 78
10. I Do Things
11. Net Business Journal
12. The Laidback Buddhist
13. Unusual Business Ideas that Work

Who Was on My Blogroll?

1. Barry Austern - Who I know from the TSO days.
2. Douglas Hoffman - Who Taught Me What NSFW Meant
3. Matthew Laznicka - Who Does Great Art
4. Phil McDonnell - Who Was on the Board of Directors of Our Company that Never Got Off the Ground

Make Money with Surveys: Yes, honest participants can earn extra money with online surveys!

Blogger vs. Blogger
These were popular back in the day, but apparently the posts didn’t have staying power as none of these made any of the top lists.

1. A Tale of Two Chris’s: Chris Bloczynski dot Com vs. ChrisBlogging.com
2. There Can Be Only One: One Man’s Goal vs. One Year Goal (I never anticipated the firestorm this one would set off!) Note: One Man’s Goal was sold a month or two ago.
3. Hustle Hoedown: My New Hustle vs. Net Hustlin’

Zensation: Forbidden Secrets of Mind Power: Learn to achieve your goals and manifest your desires.

There are a lot of firsts with a new blog. Most people don’t keep track of them. I know I don’t. I had to wade through my past posts to dig all this stuff up. Mind you, I have some great content in here, hidden among some posts that are none too exciting, but it seems I had more quality posts early on than of late. Then again, I didn’t post every freakin’ day like I do now. You can’t win them all.

Sure, maybe I shouldn’t post when I don’t have something of quality to say. Were I to do that, you’d be looking at a blank page on many days. Okay, so there wouldn’t be a blank page; it would just show the last entry, which could be days or weeks old, and you would think I just didn’t care anymore. So, rather than that, I would post a blank page. But, why annoy you with a blank page when I could annoy you by throwing some words on a page and hopefully providing some level of amusement?

You see my point, no? Quality beats quantity, but quantity bests a dead horse. There is just no way you’re going to get that dead horse to drink and, even if you do, it’s a little too late, seeing as he is already dead. Where was I? Oh yes, here are some firsts:

Firsts

1. First Post: Hello World!
2. First Photo: Look Upward!
3. First Commentator: Michael Kwan on Blogging for Money
4. First Prize: Spread the Word for a Chance
5. First Review: A Review of Dan Blogs
6. First Change: Bloggone Branding
7. First Drawing: Spread the Word Drawing
8. First Winner: Alex
9. First Blog Battle: A Tale of Two Chris’s
10. First Mention of Hot Naked Chicks: Linkbait Extravaganza!
11. First Post Not Posted Here: Sodium and Water
12. First Poem (Not Mine): How Did You Die?
13. First Goal: My Goal
14. First Q&A: Spam Q&A
15. First Link to Joanne: Are You Free? Joanne’s link text: “pervert“
16. First(?) Blatant Self-Promotion: Where to Register
17. First Win: What’s in the Box?
18. First Viral Links: Drunken Virals
19. First Mention of BAA: Not So Secret
20. First Test: How Nerdy Are You?
21. First Mention of Car Spam: Dan the Car Man?
22. First Soda Contributor: Phil McDonnell
23. First Lunch Photo: It Works for John Chow
24. First Awards: Award-Winning Blog (Awards from A Nice Place in the Sun and Erina Hart.)
25. First Animation: Seven Things You Don’t Know But I Do

I had the Buy Me a Beer plugin (which I changed to Buy Me a Soda) for a while. I eventually decided to drop it, but it was fun while it lasted. Thanks to everyone who bought me a soda! I’ve since fallen off the bandwagon a bit, but I’m still drinking iced tea regularly, for the most part, except when I’m not. Yes, winter should be time for hot tea, but I need to get myself a nice mug, and I think I’ll design my own, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.

Soda Contributors from August 2007

1. I Do Things
2. Debo Hobo dot Com
3. Phil McDonnell

Are you in the Cincinnati-Dayton area in Ohio? Get listed on my Daytonnati blogs page!

Thank you to all of my readers and commentators! Best wishes for a Happy New Year!

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Little known is that Google searches were available back in the 1960s. Linked here is the submission form users needed to submit.

Admit it. You still have yours too. View-Master collection.

Did you know there could be six different types of giraffes?

Seven great medical myths revealed. Your doctor and Doctor Mom were both wrong.

Science Fiction

• Completely out of new ideas, NBC looks to its archives for new shows. “New” next year: Knight Rider. Still no word on the status of The Bionic Woman. In other news, Dune is going to be made into a movie, again.
• Oldies but goodies. Doctor Who.
  1. Lets begin with the “Pitch of Fear.”
  2. Next, “The Web of Caves.”
  3. Finally, “The Kidnappers.”

  Mark Gatiss who wrote the skits later appeared in an episode of Doctor Who, “The Lazarus Experiment.”

• Legos Star Wars as rendered in Carrara.

Amuse Your Friends

• Make a Glowing Ice Bulb
• “Print” a Business Card with Your Hands

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I’ve given this much thought (about 4 minutes worth), and I have come up with a foolproof plan to be elected President of the United States in 2008.

If I legally change my name to “None Of The Above” and get myself on the ballots in all 50 states, I will win by a landslide.

Who wants to sign my petition?

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Christmas Morning Past & Present

Sadly, this is pretty true.

Often, it does seem that the spirit of Christmas is long gone. Adults fight over toys at the store to get the “in” gizmo which usually seem to be in limited supply–toys which their children will likely be bored with by the time Christmas vacation ends.

Then we have the “politically correct” mumbo jumbo which has pretty much trampled any spirit of the season. Say “Merry Christmas” and you’ll get accused of proselytizing. Say “Happy Holidays” and you’ll upset people too.

Run a store or other business? Offer Christmas specials and you’ll get blasted for the commercialization of Christmas. Offer Holiday specials and you’ll get blasted for ignoring Christmas. Don’t offer any specials at all and you’ll get blasted for not trying to save people money at this time of the year.

Maybe for children the magic of Christmas still exists. But, in the adult world, it often feels like the spirit of Christmas was packed away years ago, and no one pulls it out of the attic anymore.

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Hopefully not this guy! I don’t think you want to meet up with him in a dark alley, or your home.

This one was modeled in Silo and rendered in Carrara. The room scene is an included scene with Carrara 5 Pro. The head was completely created by me, so don’t blame anyone else for it.

In case it wasn’t obvious, I’m still learning Silo. I have a 30-day demo, and I think I have 27 days left to give it a good whirl and see if I want to buy it. Liking it so far, just a matter of learning it.

Popularity: 6% [?]