Blogger’s Block and Better Blogging

Some tips for beating blogger’s block.

Patience -Everyone gets blogger ‘s block. This too shall pass .

Fermented Idea -When your ideas are hot , don’t publish immediately. Use the draft posts – they are there for a purpose.

Timing -Use and manipulate time stamps to space out your good posts.

Make your blog better by doing the following

Think and invest-Use free software for analysis at lower traffics and higher ,cost softwares for higher traffic.

Dos-Use wordpress – it is good. Or any software .But do avoid big big links.

Earn when you burn-Use ad sense or Yahoo or at least 1 ad software even though your blog is non commercial.

 Dont kid yourself-Free Blogging in my view is against the principles of economics as your time and your readers time has a value ” There is no such thing as a free lunch”

Work smart is better than work hard-Use basic Search Engine Optimization (also known as GBO or Google Bot Optimization after the Yahoo-Google deal).

The simple little things-Avoid spelling mistakes. .Use spell check.

First Impressions-Titles should be catchy but to the point.

Give The Reader a break-Use the RSS or Email subscriber to avoid hit and run visitors.

Parting Shots-Sum up the post in last two sentences.

Pictures vs a 1000 Words-Use at least one graphic per page to increase appeal. A thing of beauty is a joy forever.

Uh -Oh—Trust in God but use anti spam software.

Network on the Net-Read other blogs , comment . Praise lavishly and avoid criticism-leave that to the rest of the world. What goes around in the online world often comes around in the offline world.

 Techie Tip-Use the more <—-> tag in WordPress to build suspense in reader if he reads just the first four sentences. First impression will be the last impression.

Now that you have a better blog, get back to blogging….:)

Pretty Fly for A Website Guy

And so we decided one day , that our website is going astray.

We brushed off our HTML help, only to mess up website ourself

CSS,Java, Widgets, Themes,linkware,Copyright Policy

Ever felt so overwhelmed by trying to create a website that you

1) handed some hard earned money to smoother talking web designer

2) didnot make the website at all.

I am not talking about professional or organization websites who truly deserve the aesthetic value that comes from customized design , and functions. I am talking of people who need more serious platforms than blogs and wont ever , ever make money out of it..and didnot want to earn money from the website anyways.

Well basic steps to make a website are in the January 2008 Post— https://decisionstats.com/2008/20-steps-to-creating-a-website-business/

This new  post  now talks about revamping design of neglected websites without neglecting too much quality time for yourself and family. We are assuming you used wordpress because its the fastest SEO enabled content software for smaller websites.

Select and upload your wordpress theme from the official site itself- http://themes.wordpress.net/

A) modifying wordpress themes-

Its painful but should be done.

Try going the widget route.

If your new pretty wordpress theme is not widget enabled ,try these three steps

superbly mentioned here-

http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/2007/11/how-to-widget-enable-wordpress-themes-in-3-easy-steps/

1) create functions.php by pasting these lines

<?php
if ( function_exists(‘register_sidebar’) )
register_sidebar();
?>”
AND

into a notepad file and

saving it as use qutation marks “functions.php”    “

And then upload to the wp-content/themes/”pretty theme in this case” folder .

upload using the filezilla software mentioned in https://decisionstats.com/2008/20-steps-to-creating-a-website-business/ .

2) Add Widgets to Dynamic Sidebar – go to design -theme- “pretty theme in question “-widgets using the new wordpress dashboard. Now use whatever widgets you want including pasting custom stuff like adsense,feedburner forms , in the text widgets.

3)Add Dynamic Sidebar to Template -go to design -theme- “pretty theme in question “-edit theme

Paste this in the sidebar.php

<?php if ( !function_exists(‘dynamic_sidebar’)
|| !dynamic_sidebar() ) : ?>
<?php endif; ?>

B) Using some HTML help for tweaking fonts within the theme

The following site is good for basic HTML copy and paste tweaking. http://www.w3schools.com/HTML/html_fonts.asp

3) Knowing when to stop designing the pretty website. If you need more help, call a professional but with more money. If you are taking more than 1 week with dedicated 1 hour daily or 7 work hours, call in a pro or change to a new wordpress theme.

And speaking of fun and simple websites please check out www.thadguy.com who have great cartoons and very nice linking policy as well.

Statistically Speaking

To call in the statistician after the experiment is done may be no more
than asking him to perform a post-mortem examination: he may be able to
say what the experiment died of.
~ Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher

The plural of anecdote is not data.
~ Roger Brinner

The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not
ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of
data.
~ John Tukey

In God we trust , All others must bring data

Statistics are like a bikini, what they reveal is not as important as what they hide.

There are three kinds of lies- lies, true lies, and statistics.

Three statisticians went to hunt deer. On finding a deer, the first statistician shot a bullet but hit  3 ft to the left,the second statistician shot a bullet and hit 3 ft to the right. The third statistician shouted and said ” We got him , We got him”.

Numbers dont lie, people do.

You may choose your opinion but the facts must remain the same for all.

Copytight Laws and Lawyers

Dear List,
 
There has been a surprising development. ABC corp , the top contributor to election campaigns of John McCain, Obama, Barr and Ralph Nader have managed to establish copyright on the definition of arithmatic mean, median and OLS regression. Anyone using these terms would have to either pay a very very small royalty or give some harmless personal privacy information to get nicely targeted ads.
The copyright was established using ABC corps legal body which is headed by a direct descendent of Isaac Newton and other mathematicians.
 
ABC corp has promised to help support the customers because their slogan is “do not be a evil donkey or a bad monkey”. Anti trust investigations against them were dropped some years ago, and this latest victory is expected to boost Wall Street, giving banks much needed relif so they can lend money to spend, even though they dont really need to spend that much.
 
For further breaking news , and other “analysis ” please visit www.iwannacrib.com. Do not click on the ads.
 
Regards,
Ajay Ohri
 
-Not paid by the campaigns of anyone .
The views are personal. Disclaimer- It means if I wrote something stupid , it was mine alone. MINE.

Tribute to a Politician

A politician who changed parties two times . Who started a soldier, lost wars as First Sea Lord, then quit to fight as a soldier again in World War 1 (Donald Rumsfield ?) Who opposed a country till he had lowest favorable ratings ever during the 1930’s. Who finally at age 65 led the Free world to War. Who then lost an election but won the election again (after turning down every honor or award thrown by his country including the Duke of London”

Winston Churchill. If you thought all politicians were all bad, think again

Some of his words below are still true so read with care, and no offense because HE wrote it..I didnt.

  • We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
  • There is no such thing as a good tax.
  • Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon.
  • The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
  • We contend that for a nation to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
  • An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile—hoping it will eat him last.
  • The problems of victory are more agreeable than the problems of defeat, but they are no less difficult.
  • From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I shall not put.
  • A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject. Bessie Braddock: “Sir, you are drunk.”
  • Churchill: “Madam, you are ugly. In the morning, I shall be sober.”
  • Nancy Astor: “Sir, if you were my husband, I would give you poison.”
    Churchill: “If I were your husband I would take it.”
  • A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
  • Once in a while you will stumble upon the truth but most of us manage to pick ourselves up and hurry along as if nothing had happened.
  • If you are going to go through hell, keep going.
  • It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
  • You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.
  • If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law.
  • You can always count on Americans to do the right thing—after they’ve tried everything else.
  • History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
  • Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.
  • The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.
  • A sheep in sheep’s clothing. (On Clement Atlee)
  • A modest man, who has much to be modest about. (On Clement Atlee)
  • I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
  • The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is.
  • A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
  • To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
  • Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.
  • Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.
  • Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.
  • Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
  • The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
  • It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.
  • Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others.
  • The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.
  • From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. -“The Sinews of Peace” speech, Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, March 5, 1945
  • If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.
  • Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.
  • Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all the others.
  • If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival.
  • There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves. You ask, What is our policy? I will say; “It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.”
  • You ask, What is our aim? I can answer with one word: Victory—victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival. We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and the oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be.
  • We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fall, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.
  • Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour!”

Thanks to Param Ghosh for pointing  this to me.

http://www.solarnavigator.net/history/winston_churchill.htm

Free Software is Dying Out

When nearly everyone offers products for free (besides Microsoft) or just as downloads, for ad revenue.Linked In has been a pioneer not just in professional social networking , but in its pricing strategy. This has enable it to keep it a very loyal base, beat off lots of challengers , and command a 1 Billion valuation.

I find that sometimes people who charge you a transparent fixed fee , are better than people who sell your identity to lots of advertising companies but charge nothing. Both free pricing (with zero privacy) and expensive monopolistic /early bird premium pricing are bad pricing strategies for retaining customers . Here is much more renowned blog that argues that google analytics is much more expensive despite being free (http://www.mymotech.com/google-analytics-can-be-more-expensive-than-webtrends/)