Snoskred on Blogging

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Get you some google reader?

6 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

Christine mentioned in yesterday’s comments that I should stop by her blog as she had lots of new posts.. Well I have a little something to tell you. I’m there, all the time – and not only am I there, I am on 140 other blogs, plus about 120 bumpzee blogs, all at once. How can I manage to be in so many places? Is there magic involved? Click for a better view –

reader1a_600x440

Yes, there is – google reader magic. Anytime you write a post, it comes to me as a surprise in my google reader, usually within 2-3 hours of you posting it. This means I can know what is going on everywhere but the one downside of google reader is, it does not tell a blogger who is reading their feed. That’s why I usually leave a comment to let people know, hey, I’ve got you in my google reader now. Of course unless I fully explain that then people have no real idea what that means, so I hope this post helps to let people know that I’m blog-stalking them all the time without them having a clue. :)

So you can see by looking at the picture above that I have some folders in there – because there are so many blogs I like to divide them up into groups – and that the blog names which have new posts are in bold with a number after them. When you click on the group name (ie group1) you get all the newest posts from that group to read through. It really has changed the way I read blogs – and there is no way I would be able to read so many blogs without it. If you don’t use it, I highly recommend giving it a try.

I do have to apologise though because this weekend was pretty crazy with all the stuff I had going on, I missed out on commenting on about 100 posts which I had something to say but not the time, so please accept my apology for not dropping by on a lot of blogs just recently.

We made pizza, which seemed to take a very long time. We played pool. We did a fair bit of housework because things were getting quite messy and The Other Half’s bathroom looked like aliens had landed in there due to me buying him a new towel and then him getting towel fluff on every surface possible. Do not ask me how he managed this for I do not know! I did some painting. We went beach walking – and I have some photos, coming soon. ;) I re-did the template for this blog, and I also have been working on blogzreview, and I caught up on West Wing episodes, managing four over the weekend yay!

Those members of the Australian Blogs Community as well as the US blogs community may not know that they’re coming through to me on an RSS feed via google reader. This means I can read all the community blogs at once. It only gives me the first 250 characters, then I have to click to read the rest. It is really handy. Here’s a view of that.

readerbumpzee1a_600x440

So, hopefully now you know that even if you don’t see me on your trackers, I’m still reading you loud and clear, and I’ll be dropping by when I get a chance. ;)

feed readers, google reader

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!

nephew_600x333

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

So a bit of an update..

3 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

on google reader. Because if you are not using this, you should be. It’s fantastic. I went into this without having a clue how to use it. The first time I created a folder I wondered what the heck I’d done, and desperately tried to find a way to delete it.

Now I have all my blogs organised into folders (Faves, Nablopomo, Scams, Updated-Often, Rare-updated, and share ok – that’s where the bloggers who have said I can share their posts in my little side window thing are, makes it easier to keep on top of it, am I already sharing your blog? If not, can I share your blog? If yes leave a comment!) and I can read all the unread posts from the blogs in that folder just by clicking on it. This saves me a massive amount of time and effort.

It’s really easy to set up, and once you play with it and get used to it, you’ll grow to love it as much as I have. The only downside is it sometimes takes a little while for posts to turn up there, it can be up to a half hour delay. But what’s half an hour between bloggers? :)

One thing I am going to do, over the next week or so, is visit all the blogs I am reading with google reader and let them know I am still reading their posts. That’s the only downside to google reader – you don’t visit actual blog pages as often unless you want to comment. And for the last 2 weeks, I’ve been all commented out. Sorry about that!

I just made a little cheesecake and a startling confession to the other half who now wants to either disown me, or buy a cheap big screen tv so his is not defiled by me watching Desperate Housewives on it..

feed readers, google reader

I figured this out..

2 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

If you only want a short amount of your post to appear in your rss feed (meaning people have to visit your blog personally to see the rest, so you can get a better idea of how many people are reading you) you can change the settings in Blogger Settings —> Site Feed —-> Allow Blog Feed —-> change this to short. (Select Short if you only wish to syndicate the first paragraph, or approximately 255 characters, whichever is shorter). So I did this today, sorry to be a pain in the rear, but if it’s bugging you let me know in the comments.

What have I been up to? I’ve been working on some scambaiting. The scammers love to hear from me. I’ve got a new copy and paste all set up and ready to go for them which involves a busty blonde lady of European origin who wants them to love her. This should make for fun emails..

I also been doing chores round the house, and I watched The Talented Mr Ripley yesterday, it was really great.. I have not been commenting on nablopomo blogs, I thought I would give myself a bit of a break before getting back into it next week. I needed the me time, seriously!

Pieces of Mind inspired me to volunteer at an animal shelter in a recent post. I wasn’t sure about it and I actually had two other options I was considering, both of which involved animals, but of a more wild variety, Wires or Nana which are both for native Aussie animals, and also the local animal park, I had run into the guy who runs it and mentioned I missed volunteering at the zoo and that I loved reptiles, and he said he had 200 reptiles off display and they love to have volunteers.

So in the end, I’ve emailed the animal shelter, and they’ve put me down for the next induction. I’m very happy with this. I was worried about how I’ll deal with the urge to take the animals home myself, and also how to cope with the not knowing, but I think I’ll be ok with it. And I need to do something, I need to get out of this house!

So that’s the news for now.. and if you are reading me by rss, can you throw a comment on here so I know? ;) I’m going to try and do that this week to all the blogs I am reading by rss.. cheers

animals, blog housekeeping, feed readers, volunteer

NaBloPoMo is over..

Leave a comment Posted on by Snoskred

But the commenting challenge is not. I’m going to continue to comment on at least 20 blogs per day until I finish the list. I’m up to S now. This could take me months but I do not care, it is worth it. I have found some amazing new blogs and enjoyed almost every minute of reading.

Jihanna’s post here reminded me.. I have taken the commenting to a new level this week.

I sent an email off to a website that had pop-up advertising, letting them know it was highly annoying and I would not be returning to their site anymore. This is something I would not have done before the commenting challenge, but now because I’m not afraid to speak up, I did it! And they got back to me –

Thank you for reporting the problem.

Spyware and popups are absolutely not allowed on the site. I will investigate where it came from and shut it down if possible. Ads are served by various third-parties, as we do not handle most of the advertising in-house.

Do you remember and more details of what it looked like or are you able to reproduce a screenshot of a page with the ad in question?

And yes, I had taken a screenshot, so I got back to them and let them know. And I went and installed adblock for firefox, too, and the other half bumped my user setting down so nothing can be installed while I am on the computer (this is a wise move when you’re a scambaiter and visiting sites which might be slightly dodgy from time to time).

Then, I love this salad dressing and I ran out. I wanted to buy more but I was having a lot of trouble finding it. So instead of just keep going to every store, I thought, why not find an email address for them and ask them where I can go to buy it? And I did, I sent them a nice little email. I got an email back telling me they no longer make it (BOO!) but inviting me to be a part of their customer club. I know the other half is going to be annoyed that I said yes, but I said yes. And I’ll stop crying about the salad dressing not being available anymore sometime, probably in 2007. ;)

It’s ok though, he thinks I’m crying because he won’t let me buy more sparkly shoes and handbags, or a gold glitter lamp.

Angry Snoskred, customer feedback, NaBloPoMo

Google Reader

4 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

Have I been living in an internet cave, or something? How did I not know this existed until a few days ago when I spotted it in my referer list?

This Google Reader is going to save me an incredible amount of time checking blogs daily. Now, when you update your blog, it tells me. I can read what you’ve posted in the Google Reader, or I can click one button to be transported to your site to read the post and comment. Wicked! Yes, I am clearly behind the times on this, but I know I’m not the only one.

For Dr Anonymous who posted a while ago about bitacle stealing content – I think how bitacle is doing what they are doing is via an RSS feed. Bloglines do it as well as Google Reader. You can turn this off with your blog, if you like – that way if someone wants to read what you’ve written, they have to physically visit your page. Otherwise, they can use a tool like Bloglines or Google Reader (and there’s probably others I don’t know of too) to grab your posts and read them.

Other options include changing your blog to only show a few lines of your post and then people have to click on “continue reading” so they have to visit your blog to see the rest of your post. I personally don’t love blogs that do that but if I’m a reader of yours already I’m not going to stop reading you just because you do that. ;) However, if I’m visiting NaBloPoMo blogs, I’m generally not going to click on continue reading, I find that I click on the little red cross instead. It’s just annoying, no offense to anyone.

So with Google reader you can “share” posts with others. Have a look, for example, here. So I could put that link in my sidebar, and then people can read the posts of bloggers that I share. It’s done on a one by one basis, you can’t just pick a blogger and share all their posts, by the look of things.

If you’re a blogger that I read often (and you guys know who you are, in general) and you’d be ok with me sharing your posts in this manner, please either comment here or shoot me an email. I’m hoping I can eventually put the shared things into a box on the sidebar, when I work out how to do it, so people would be able to see the title of your post and it would have the most recently shared things.

So, don’t be surprised when I am commenting on your latest posts within nanoseconds, or wonder why you’re not seeing me on your site meter daily. I’ll be there, when you post, cos I love you guys and want to read what you have to say when you have to say it. As opposed to a daily check in like I used to do. ;)

blogging tips, feed readers, google reader

NaBloPoMo Commenting Challenge.

14 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

I am having an absolute ball here, you guys. There’s so many great blogs out there. Almost every one I read I am touched by in some way. And finding something to comment on with every blog I visit actually helps find that connection.

Sephy will tell you, he used to not feel comfortable commenting on blogs. I talked him into trying this, challenged him really. Now he’s setting himself goals of reading so many blogs a day and commenting on all that he can, and he’s enjoying it as much as I am, I can tell.

Thank you NaBloPoMo bloggers, for signing up, and blogging. And thanks to all my usual read bloggers, who inspire me regularly. You make me laugh, you make me cry, and you’ve snuck your way into my life somehow. I hope this post inspires you to comment on the blogs you read in future. It’s like blogging every day – once it becomes a habit, you just do it automatically.

The only problem is, I have bookmarked so many blogs to go back to, when I get around to putting them in the sidebar it’s going to be 10 times bigger than it is now.. ;) I started at the bottom of the alphabet, and Sephy started at the top, by the way.

challenges, NaBloPoMo

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