commenting on blogs

Blog Keeping & Art Update

7 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

Wow, it’s been a busy week here. Just a few bits of housekeeping and an art update.

As far as the commenting goes, I’ve decided to take my time with it because after going through just 25 blogs, I’ve added 5 excellent ones to my google reader. These will be linked in the weekly wrap up.

So you might be wondering what makes me add a blog to my google reader? 95% of the time it is because the blogger has “it” – it being a mysterious thing that makes me want to know more about them and read more about them.

What are some of the annoying trends in the blogging world that I have picked up after just 25 blogs? There seems to be a new plug in where you hover over a link and it pops up a preview box. This sounds nice in theory but it makes everything go very slow here on my system, and to be honest is just really annoying. If I want to click on a link, I’m going to click, I don’t need a preview. :) It also seemed to make those blogs very slow in loading, to the tune of anywhere between 2-5 minutes. I think it’s called snap or snapshots. Say no to it, bloggers. It seems to be evil.

In other blogging trends, you may have noticed a trend towards “monetize your blog”. I’ve been to some blogs with more ads than blog content. That’s not going to happen here, however.. That money has gone toward an important new project which I can’t announce yet. ;) Believe me I am hanging out to launch it, so as soon as I can say anything I’ll let you know.

WordPress blogs look fantastic. Sephy and I have been considering setting one up for some time now to try it out and play with it, so we did. On closer inspection it seems to be some kind of elaborate scam to get people to pay money for things blogger does for free. I could be wrong about that and WordPress people don’t line up to hit me over the head with things, but it seems like everything costs money, even down to how much space you get for your blog unless you want to host a wordpress on your own space – which you also have to pay for. Blogger does this for free :) we’ve got it good blogger people. If you’re using WordPress can you take a moment to comment on how it all works?

I’m seriously considering a blog template change. I’m not in love with what I have now however it is functional and it works. If I can get a larger picture up there that might be enough to make me happy. I don’t like that the images have to be so thin.

While in keeping you up to date mode, I currently have many art works in progress. You can click on any of the photos for a bigger view. In this picture you can count 9 paintings in progress.

paint0806_600x400

You can see 5 stacked on top of each other – the pink one completes the set of 5 which I am doing as cardboard dragging. I’m going to take some pics of how that’s done so that I can write a post about it. You guys out there might be inspired to do some works of your own. It is so simple. ;) Here’s a close up of the pink one, which I am seriously crazy about already and this is just the base coat.

paint20806_600x400

The painting below is the final completed version of the painting for my nephew, which had just been freshly sealed when I took the shot so the flash reflected a little. There’s nothing white on the painting. I asked you guys for opinions on this 69 days ago, wow, how time flies!

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So what am I up to for the rest of the day? I have to cook dinner, I am going to watch some West Wing, comment on a few blogs, and most important of all, look at some hotel packages in Sydney. This month is my Birthday month and Mum is going to pay for us to visit Sydney for a weekend (or midweek might be better value, because I am not my sister) and also IKEA. YAY! I’m seriously writing a huge list of things I want to get there. Laundry Baskets are number one on the list right now, followed closely by AA batteries. They had packs of 10 AA’s for $2 and they last for ages, and my cordless mouse chews up batteries and spits them out. Yes, I mouse too much.

I saw a hotel package which includes 30 minutes in a flotation tank. I’d love to try that. It’ll probably be somewhere in the CBD and I’ll take my camera and take heaps of pictures. We might get to the zoo but I’d like to hang out at Darling Harbor and go back to Sydney Aquarium myself – looking at fish without a snorkel. I don’t know if we’d have time for both. For those of you who have never been to Sydney, Darling Harbor is just incredible. There’s no describing it.

blogrolls, commenting on blogs, feed readers, IKEA, Snoskred Art

Freshblogger guest post from me!

3 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

A few days ago Sephy pointed my attention to a post (Call for Guest Posters at Freshblogger) at Freshblogger, a blog which I am a huge fan of – the pretty to look at color scheme and title bar graphic in my favourite for the internet shade of green – as well as the content. I thought maybe I could write a semi-decent article about commenting challenges, and so I did, and it got published there today. It’s not a bad article even if I do say so myself. You can take a look here –

Challenging Yourself to Comment at Freshblogger

And of course if you would like to inspire people reading your blog to comment it might be worth linking to the article. Thanks to Ray from Freshblogger for putting my article up. :)

It’s been a pretty busy day here at Chalet Snoskred – and cold, too. We just got home from shopping and there’s a huge misty fog happening. I’m just going to cook dinner and then settle in to do some commenting and take some screenshots for a post I’m writing soon. My to do list right now is longer than you’d believe but I hope to get some commenting done today.

If you’re new to my blog, have a look around. I’m going for a “longest sidebar in the history of the blogging world” type of look, but a lot of the stuff there is somewhat relevant to me, some of my scambaiting, some of my previous posts with info about me, a lot of blogs I read, and some nice photos too.

commenting on blogs

My new blog commenting task.

8 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

I’m going to set myself the challenge of visiting all the blogs in the blogging chicks network, and commenting on as many as I can. I recently joined the network and I can’t wait to get into reading through the blogs on it. You can see the list of blogs in my sidebar. If you’re a chick you should join. ;)

Also, I’ve finally finished adding the blogs I read in google reader to my sidebar. This means I now have some organisation going on here people! And one of the new things I am implementing is a “new blogz” folder in google reader. When I find a new blog I like, I’m adding it to that section and commenting to people that I’ve added them to my google reader. Hopefully depending on the amount of time I have, once a month or so I will go through and add them all to my sidebar.

It might seem like I’m a slave to reading blogs if you look at the amount of blogs there. The truth is quite different. I’m a really fast reader. I always have been. On average it takes me 2 hours to read a book of average size. So when it comes to blog reading, I turn up here with my coffee in the morning and I whiz through 100+ blog posts in the space of half an hour. Any ones I want to comment on (and this is becoming more and more lately) I open them in a new tab. Once I’m done with coffee, I spend a little time commenting, then it’s off to other tasks for the day. From time to time during the day when I have completed a task, I reward myself by checking in on any new blog posts. Not all of the people on the list blog daily, some of the people on the list blog once or twice a month.

commenting on blogs, feed readers, google reader

Holy Cow

9 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

You know, blogging every day myself would actually be easier than reading all the blogs in NaBloPoMo but of course, I was too late to get in on it. So now.. I have to try and read.. wait for it.. drumroll.. 2037 blogs. That equals 101.85 each day.

I managed 22 yesterday. I’ve done 25 today. Why is it taking so long? Because I like to read what these people have to say. And these people are blogging every day! And some of them have been blogging for a long time. So the ones that really interest me, I’ve bookmarked them for future reading purposes.

Reading blogs is something I do a fair bit of. It’s easy when you’re a regular reader – and when you don’t have a job to go to ;) I use firefox and bunch them into little groups in their own folders. I tend to like to try and stick to 8 per folder, and then I just open them in tabs and read them all. I also like to comment a fair bit, usually because what that person has to say speaks to me.

But I kinda set myself this challenge of commenting on *all* the NaBloPoMo blogs I visit, and I don’t just want to leave a copy and paste comment, what would be the point of that? I am copying and pasting the NaBloPoMo thing though, it’s really annoying to type that all the time. :)

But I have about 10,000 unread emails, and lads to hook up with baiting, and a lot of stuff to do, so I don’t know if I’m going to make much inroads into these blogs. But that’s ok – I will just try and get through 20 a day, and keep going till I’m done. Good plan!

But then, some of them are really interesting, and I am bookmarking them to read them later, too. So by the end of this, I might have a bookmark list longer than your average roll of toilet paper. This might mean I have to cut down on the regular blogs I read, and visit them less often. However that’s probably ok too. Many of them don’t blog every day, so I’m not missing stuff by going every few days really.

I don’t have the energy to make a list of the ones I bookmarked right now, but I got through all the number blogs today, and I did Z, X and Q yesterday. In case you’re wondering.

commenting on blogs, NaBloPoMo