2015 Is Here

moon

My One Resolution For 2015 –

I want to write one thank you letter each week.

People are always quick to make a complaint when items purchased do not perform as expected but how many of us take the time to write positive notes to the companies who make the reliable products we use constantly?

I won’t be posting all the notes here as I write them – 52 letters of mine might be a bit boring for everyone to read. However I will take the time to keep you updated on who I have written and any replies I might receive – maybe once a month. If I do that as a thank you gratitude style link up, then anyone else reading who feels in the mood can join in too..

On The Blog In 2015

I’m not sure about the amount of time I’ll have to blog in 2015 so I’m not going to make any firm commitments – I will try to keep to my Mon – Wed – Fri schedule. I am not sure if I will keep doing Shoe Sundays but I do intend to spend some serious time in January writing posts here and on Rewatch Breaking Bad for the next few months, so I may well write and schedule Sundays for 3 months in advance and then see how I feel in March/April and how busy things will be.

Why Will Things Be Busy?

I’ve made the decision to go back to school this year. I’m not going to give you any of the details today – I will post a protected post next week for those who want to know more and the password will be available to anyone who emails me asking for it, as I will put in some details which I do not want made public.

What About This Blog?

I do want to keep the blog going and I will be making a very determined effort to write things ahead and schedule them out. That worked really well for me in November and if I can get some blog posts written and scheduled before school starts.. well, I know myself, and I know I’ll do a lot better if I don’t have the pressure of having to write something 3 or 4 times a week

What About A Blog Redesign?

This has been on the cards for a while now. The Other Half and I just have to find a spare weekend to sit down and make it happen. I still love the current design enormously and any new design will keep the same colours. However the base template is really old now, and I am wanting to move in another direction.

adaption1

I’m loving the Adaption theme which I am using over at Rewatch Breaking Bad. I’m hoping we can take that and bend it to suit my purpose. We’ll give it a good try, anyway. I am not sure when this will happen – I’d love to see it in the first 3 months of this year.

One Thing I Will Not Do

I will not allow the blog to go dark for a long time again. Blogging is important to me. The friends I have made via blogging are important to me. Even if I cut back to posting twice a week or take a couple of weeks off, I will make an effort to have something scheduled at least once a week, and I will try to make that something worth reading. :)

Over To You?

Is there anything you would like to see here? Any subject you would like me to write about? More recipes? More chickens? More links to things I am reading? Book or movie reviews? Food reviews?

Would you like me to do (or would you mind if I did) a week of Lite N Easy food posts – I still get a lot of traffic for those posts and I feel a bit like a 2015 update might be in order. Plus, I miss those Fishermans Pies.

You can’t get Fishermans Pies in the supermarkets at all – once upon a time you could. I even wrote a letter back in the day to the company that made them, saying how much I loved them. An actual letter, on paper! I’d eat those things for dinner every day of the week for an entire year, without complaint. Seriously they are that good. :)

I’d maybe try making Fishermans Pie myself though I am not much of a fan of cooking fish. I’d probably use leek and onions, a boneless form of fish – Check out Good Fish Bad Fish – Barramundi might work – and use my white sauce which I make for Chicken and Bacon pasta, then bake it with a cheesy potato mash on top..

I’d like to do some Jane Austen adaptation reviews this year. I am a huge Jane Austen fan and I know I have some readers who are also big fans.

blog design, blog housekeeping, blog template

2014 Wrap Up

jeffprobst

Many people arrived here looking for images of Jeff Probst standing on the helicopter skid from the Survivor season 29 premiere.. and rightly so, seeing as these were my own screencaps which I took and these images cannot be found elsewhere on the web.

jeffp2

But he was not just filmed standing there – he was filmed standing there WHILE the helicopter BANKED! Man I want to do that, it is at the top of my bucket list..

On this our last day of 2014, is that time of year for looking backwards, so let us take a look back at some of the most read posts here at Snoskred Life In The Country.

Top Five 2014 Posts

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Fake Lasagne

Costco Food Court Australia

Shoe Cleaning Station

NaBloPoMo Bundles – Final Edition

Popular posts from past years –

You can find some of the most popular posts over in the sidebar under Selected Snoskred but here are a couple not listed there yet which received thousands of hits this year –

The Much Awaited Miele Condenser Dryer Post..

Lite N Easy – Some thoughts & wrap-up

Popular Pages –

Who is WhoAboutLinkup

Funny Search Terms –

i need 5 million dollars – Don’t we all!
can i have a million dollars – Me first, kthx!
how do cows know when to come home – Signals from outer space
mccain combover – This is still being searched for!
hot feeling in leg – This has long been a popular search term

bbs01e071

Rewatch Breaking Bad

Over at my other blog Rewatch Breaking Bad, the most read post there was Pilot which was the first ever episode of Breaking Bad, and an excellent place to start a rewatch – or even a first viewing of the show – if you are a bit bored during the holiday season.

I formatted Rewatch Breaking Bad in a different manner to a normal blog in order to avoid people being spoiled – you have to click on the post in the sidebar to visit each post and the blog url takes you to a static page rather than the most recent post.

Since the first post went live on August 28, 2014 I have posted 30 episodes there – the most recent being season 3 episode 10, “Fly” which is one of my all time favourite episodes of Breaking Bad. There are 32 episodes left to post.

Search Terms For Rewatch Breaking Bad

the song when jesse pinkman was slinging dope – for the record, the Jesse slinging crystal montage appeared in episode 6 of season one “Crazy Handful Of Nothin'” is set to “It is Such a Good Night” (on youtube)

breaking bad skyler breaking bad skyler nakednaked – I do not believe that Skyler ever appeared naked in Breaking Bad. I know that Bryan Cranston certainly did appear naked at least once – and you can see a screenshot of that in this post – and in his tighty whities many many times.

A Big Thank You –

To all my readers. Thanks for hanging in there even when the blog went dark as life got busy on my end. Thanks for all your wonderful comments, your emails, your friendship.

If you read this blog and you’re not sure if I read your blog, please leave a comment with a link, or shoot me a private email because I want to read all the blogs of my readers.

What Is Next?

That is a blog post for tomorrow. :) I have some big plans for the blog, a possible blog redesign, a HUGE blogging resolution for 2015, and I’ll tell you what my future plans are work wise.

Over To You –

Leave a link to your 2014 wrap up post, if you wrote one – or leave a link to your blog with a quick hello, so that the readers of my blog can find their way over to your blog.

About Snoskred, blog housekeeping, television shows

NaBloPoMo 2014

bh9

November is National Blog Posting Month. To participate, you write a blog post each day for the month of November. The home of NaBloPoMo can be found here. Though, it does not seem to be run by the same people it once was, and they are doing monthly NaBloPoMos there.

Snoskred will be participating this November – so now is your chance to suggest topics or ask questions you might want answers to, and Snoskred will work them into a blog post in November!

Also, Snoskred will be trying to comment on as many NaBloPoMo blogs as possible. I’ve set up a google alert for NaBloPoMo to help me find bloggers taking part as I am not so sure the “home” site will help me do that. Each day I’ll drop by as many NaBloPoMo blogs as I can to leave a comment..

This is a great way to find awesome new bloggers and new readers, so if you have a blog and you want to take part, get on board the train! ;)

You can link up via this link up tool if you plan to participate, so that other bloggers can easily find your blog – Snoskred will be inviting bloggers participating in NaBloPoMo to join this link up when leaving her comments, and will post the link up at the start of November, midway through, and at the end..

Unlike a regular link up – Please link to your BLOG URL, not to a post. :)


get the InLinkz code

blog housekeeping, NaBloPoMo

Quickly Testing A Thing

daryl1
So, with the return of The Walking Dead, I wanted to write a TV post or few, but I do not want to spoil anyone who has not seen the episodes yet..

I’m just testing a plugin that will allow me to put a read more tag in, so the entire post will *not* appear in the RSS feed or my emailed posts, and then you have to click through to read the rest, in order to avoid being spoiled.. Continue reading

blog housekeeping

Changes

ss9

Just some blog housekeeping notes –

1. Updates –

have been made to the about and contact pages. Plus I added a whole new page for the Shoes link up.

Recently I was trying to send some of the bloggers I read an email – to say hi, and mention my new Shoe Linkup feature in the hope they might join in. I was dismayed to find some bloggers do not have any way at all to contact them privately – no email address, no contact page, nothing. Other bloggers do have a way to contact them but they make finding that way pretty difficult..

So, given that experience I have tried to make it easier for people to reach me privately if they so desire. I’ve always had a contact page and now I’ve added – Email Me! snoskred {at} gmail {dot} com to the sidebar and contact page. This means if anyone has trouble with the contact page they can now send me a direct email just by changing the at to a @ and the dot to a . :)

As a blogger you should test these things from time to time – some contact pages I tried to use didn’t work – some people I emailed I got a bounce back saying their mailbox were full or even worse, that the account did not exist! :(

2. Scheduling.

I try to schedule posts two weeks in advance for posting Mon-Wed-Fri-Sun here on the blog. I think 4 days a week is a reasonable schedule I can keep to, and it does not overwhelm readers with too much content.

Coming up in November is NaBloPoMo, which I will be participating in this year. This will mean a switch to a post every day for 30 days. I will try to keep the Tues/Thurs/Sat posts fairly light in content so they will not be overwhelming.

blog housekeeping

Rewatch Breaking Bad

bb1

This is a project I have been meaning to do for over a year now. YAY ME!

Back before the Final 8 episodes of Breaking Bad began, I was a part of a Rewatch Breaking Bad thread on the Whirlpool forums, where I hang out as TarynK.

I started out just noting my favourite lines each episode but eventually things like links to music used in the show, various trivia , links to the official podcasts, stories and sometimes transcribing things said during the podcasts as well as lists of who was on each podcast and various other information was being posted for each episode. These posts were fun – although some hard work was involved – and people seemed to like them.

So I wanted to take the basics of this concept and turn it into a blog, with screenshots, links to music and musicians, info about DVD extras, links to other recaps and discussion of each episode, links to the official podcasts when they begin in Season 2, my random thoughts and various other things.

brba80

It does not read like a normal blog because I do not want anyone to get spoiled by reading the post for an episode they have not seen yet – there will be a link to each episode in the sidebar. However if you read by RSS you will get each episode weekly and I am setting them to publish at 8pm Thursday AEST.

I’m committing to one episode a week because putting together these posts is a bit time consuming and I have a lot of other projects on the go at the moment as well.

The first episode has just been published so if you want to join in and re-watch, feel free to venture over to Rewatch Breaking Bad. And here is the link to the pilot episode.

Given that the Breaking Bad team just did a final victory lap of the Emmy Awards, I cannot think of a better time to re-visit one of my all time favourite tv shows. If you have never seen the show but you want to give it a try, one episode a week is not a massive commitment – I did one episode a day last year. :)

Some people binge watch entire seasons in one sitting – you could probably do that with Season One which is 7 episodes long but 2, 3 and 4 are all 13 episodes long. Season 5 is split into 2 8 episode arcs.

If you think this is a great idea and you have your own blog, please share this post with your readers – the more the merrier! ;)

blog housekeeping, television shows

Feedburner Is Dying. Update my feed link please!

feed-icon-blue

Like many Google products – sadly Google seem to be letting Feedburner die.

Stop Using FeedBurner – Move to FeedBurner Alternatives

Feedburner to Feedblitz – Why We Migrated Our RSS Feed

Google Reader Is Dead, Feedburner Is Next

The Feedburner Deathwatch Continues

Which considering they bought it for $100 million back in 2007 seems incredibly idiotic, especially if they are not going to offer a service to replace it. But then a lot of their decisions are idiotic, like killing off Google Reader which so many people used in conjunction with other Google things.

You have to wonder about whether Blogger is going to exist, long term. They’ve killed off the feedreader program Google Reader that they provided, they are not supporting feedburner anymore, how long until they say to the many people with blogs on Blogger – kthxbai and don’t let the door hit you on the butt on your way out!

So, I’m switching the blog back to the WordPress feed and when feedburner does eventually die, if you want to keep receiving my posts you will have to resubscribe. Probably best to do that now by replacing the feedburner link in your feedreader to this address – http://snoskred.org/feed – Sorry all!

I have also added a new mail subscription service. I sent an email to everyone who has signed up for email updates from my blog with a link to resubscribe to the new service. If you want to sign up for email you can click here or use the new form in the sidebar.

This was a hellish process that took me about 5 hours to try and sort out yesterday, first of all trying to log into feedburner which is not very easy anymore, then trying to work out whether people would still get my feed via feedburner if I switched it back to in house, then sorting out the mail subscriptions and emailing all the people who have subscribed by email to give them the new subscription link, then looking at wordpress plugins I can use for the feed here..

Does it ever seem to you like you get lost in the internet? I’m having a lot of days like that lately..

Delurk?

So, all you lovely people reading me via feeds, why not delurk and leave a comment to say hi, and give me a link to your blog so I can read you back? :)

blog housekeeping

Quick Test

feed-icon-blue
Because Feedburner is dying, this is a test to see what happens with the feed.. More on this shortly with an actual post!

My feed is available here – http://www.snoskred.org/feed – if this is not the address you are using, probably best to switch to this address.

Also I have a new email subscription service with Mailchimp! Subscribe here –



blog housekeeping

A quick note

20121121-220035.jpg

I’ve had an evil flu, so despite my best intentions the wardrobe post part 2 has not materialized. :(

This may have been the worst flu I can ever remember having, I do not count Pneumonia 2003 because for most of that I was totally delirious and remember nothing other than demanding garlic prawns at 4am in the morning.

I wish that I had been delirious for this one. It was so.bad.

It might take a little time to get over so I’m just not going to make any promises on when things might appear for the time being..

In other news, I found some strawberries which were decent *and* not covered in mould before I even bought them! Major score!

blog housekeeping