Merry Christmas everyone. I’m stopping in to write a quick post on what stuff I got this Christmas. I never write a Christmas list because if I really want something I just buy it rather than wait several months for a birthday or Christmas to come along. However, I rarely buy stuff for myself so I figure it’s fine that I just buy things without waiting ;). In any case, it’s always interesting to see what my wife and family get me without having any ideas to go on.

So here’s what I got:

USB Rocket Launcher check it out here.
NorthFace Jackets and Fleeces (My brother has an REI discount :D)
Geometry Wars Galaxies for Wii
Mass Effect for Xbox 360
A Garmin for my car
Misc candies

And yes, I put the funniest thing on the top of my list hah hah. I’m probably going to bring it into work sometime and shoot at my co workers. What did you get for Christmas? Unfortunatley, the one thing I didn’t get for Christmas was an extra 100 RSS subscribers :(. So if you want to give me a Christmas present subscribe to my full RSS feed! Perhaps I’ll put that on my list next Christmas…

Technorati Profile

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I’ve been getting a fair amount of traffic after being mentioned on John Chow’s front page, so I thought I’d write a post to introduce the new readers to my blog by showing 5 of my favorite posts. I believe these posts encompass what the main focus of my blog is. I love to write about interesting topics that relate to what I do online which is manage online communities and more recently - blog. So if you like these posts you should subscribe to my RSS feed or just come back for more. So without further ado here they are in descending order with number 1 being my favorite of course:

5. Is it worth the money to pay for a new blog design?

While I wrote this recently I think it’s a good way to look at your blog and how serious you are about being successful. I just recently decided that I’m going to pay for a custom design and in fact I just heard back with a quote from Unique Blog Designs. The price tag is pretty hefty though, so it may have to wait until after Christmas

4. John Chow effect on a top commentator

I did an experiment to see just how much traffic I’d receive by being on John Chow’s top ten list of commentators and the results of this little experiment are actually pretty surprising. Check out the post to see what I mean.

3. Favicon’s - use them to improve site branding and professionalism

Favicon’s are easy to make and a great way to add a further layer to improver your branding and make your site look much better. Check out my post on how to make them.

2. Never give up on a publisher program if you’re at first denied

My philosophy is that it never hurts to ask so why not ask if a publisher will manually approve you if you’re at first denied? I’ve done this twice now and been accepted after calling them up to try and get in.

1. Finding time to work as a part time web publisher

For those of you that haven’t read my about page yet, I’ve been a part time web publisher for nearly three years and got my start on the net with forums. The challenges we have as bloggers and web masters are much different than those of the big name bloggers that don’t have to put in 8 hours before they can work on their websites. This post is about finding that extra time to get things done.

The focus of my blog is on my experiences as a part time web publisher and blogger. I share what has worked for me and what doesn’t work. If these topics interest you subscribe to my RSS feed :D!

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John Chow is not just an internet entrepreneur famous for making money online. He is also a savvy investor and fun to hang out with, but I’ll get to that.

So I arrived at Ralphs Grocery & Deli at 6:10 PM, nearly an hour before the Seattle Blogger Meetup was scheduled to begin. I came in so early because I work in Seattle and had a friend drop me off after we went out to eat for dinner. One by one people began to come in until John and his wife Sarah arrived a little after 7:00 PM. There wasn’t enough room for us all to sit at the main table so I sat with John Chow and Chris Bloczynski in a booth off to the side of the main table area.

In the booth we talked about a wide range of topics from trading foreign exchange currency, using life insurance as a tax shelter and we also touched on fun conventions to go to. Some random guy actually came and sat in our booth to talk to John about doing some business with him in the future. John also talked about people that have applied to his TTZ Media network that try getting into the program when the blog still has the “Hello World” beginning WordPress post. There were even people that used their Agloco referral URL or offered a URL that went to a GoDaddy landing page for a site under construction. It makes you wonder what some people are thinking out there.

One thing that I found surprising however was that of the 19 attendees that I saw at the event I believe that there weren’t too many people that really knew who just how influential John is in the blogging world (Chris Bloczynski was the only other blogger I spoke with that had been reading his blog for a long period of time). It wasn’t until later on in the night when he started talking with some of the other attendees that they heard more about his blogging success.

The background stories for all of these different bloggers were incredibly varied so it was fun to talk with all of people about their careers and what they blog about. There was even a couple there that had met each other for the first time at a Seattle Blogger Meetup, began to date and later got married which I thought was pretty cool. Surprisingly there wasn’t as much talk about blogging as there was about what was going on in people’s lives but I thought that was great to. But to sum the whole experience up, overall I had a blast talking with all of the bloggers that were at the event and am really glad I took the time to make it over there. It makes me want to go to the next blogging convention or try and meet up with more local bloggers. Going to a Blog Meetup is a great way to network with other bloggers and get out from behind your computer screen so go do it!

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Update: Both John Chow and Chris Bloczynski have blogged about the experience. Read their take on the meetup.

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My birthday is coming up and so my wife decided to buy me a laptop because the current job that I’m working at is in Seattle so I commute via a train everyday to work. On the trains they offer free wifi so now I’ll be able to turn a boring 40 minute train ride into a super productive 80 minutes of working on my websites (Two train rides there and back). I’m really looking forward to it because lets be honest, I haven’t been incredibly consistent with my blogging or work on my websites. Halo 3 has been a huge factor in affecting the amount of work I get done on my websites because after I get home from work sometimes I just want to sit and play some video games to relax. I’ve also been doing a lot of lessons at $25 an hour over at thehalogod.com so I’m certainly not going to turn that down.

Either way, you can expect to read more from my blog soon.

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Hey, it’s been a little over two weeks since I last posted! I know I’ve commited one of the cardinal sins of Blogging (not updating on a consistent basis), but I’ve been super busy with a new job I just started and playing way too much Halo 3. I really enjoy the job I started and one of the nice perks of the job is free access to the sounder (a commuter train in WA). So I’ll be picking up a laptop soon and will be able to blog and work on my websites during the morning and after work commute so you should expect to see more updates.

The blogging schedule I’m going to focus on maintaining is every other day which will put me at 3 posts a week and 4 posts the following week. I’m sure I can do that and the slip I’ve recently experienced has been a combination of the Master Chief calling my name to come play more Halo 3 and the new job taking up a lot of my time as well.

Who else here suffers from maintaining a consistent blogging schedule?

On a blog related note, I’ve had a lot of trouble trying to get the top commentators plugin working on my site for some reason. It’s been giving me more of a pain than any other plugin I’ve worked with. So if anyone wants to give me a hand with that feel free to post your msn or aim and I’ll get in touch with you.

As for my forums, I’ve been undergoing some staffing woes and am trying the new staff selection process I coined: Have your forum members pick their moderators and here is part two. I’ll be writing one more part after the new staff selection process finishes up on my largest forum, but I’ve seem some positive results so far and I think it’ll be in the best interests of the community by coming up with new staffers by having the members nominate them.

Has anyone else tried my ‘nominate your forum moderators’ idea for your forum(s) yet?

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This is a follow up post on where I wrote about having your forum members pick their moderators. If you’d like to read the first post you can do so here.

It’s safe to say this idea was a success. I wrote a thread on my World of Warcraft Forum where members could nominate themselves or other members on the forum that they’d like to have be moderators rather than simply leaving the task to the administrator. We now have two moderators on the site that are both interested in doing it and received some nominations. I think that from now on I plan to add moderators to my new forums via member nominations because this way the members have more of a say in who helps to shape the community. Even for a smaller forum this tactic worked out well.

Has anyone else tried doing this before?

Side Note:

In the past several weeks I’ve been working really hard on this blogs, my forums, finishing up paperwork and more. So because of the hard work and the fact that Halo 3 came out recently, I haven’t been as active on my blogs and forums. For those of you that haven’t read my about me page, I suggest you read it. One of the primary reasons why I am running websites now is because of my success in using videos from Halo 2 as a promotion tool. I’m obviously still a Halo fan so I was looking forward to Sept. 25th and some time to relax. Now that I’ve taken a solid break I’ll be playing less Halo and getting some more work done

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A month ago I posted about how I was finally getting a new computer after 6 years with an old Dell P4 1.7GHz machine. I know it’s safe to say that all of the little kinks are out of the system after using it for about three weeks now.

When I first stated to build the PC it was really hot in the room so I had to occasionally get up and run my hands and arms under cold water for fear of accidentally sweating onto the motherboard. Now I’ve never built a PC before, but I assume that it’s bad to get any type of liquid on the motherboard so I wanted to play it safe :D. So after several trips back and forth to the sink and my old computer where I was posting questions and various PC building forums I finally got the heatsync onto the processor. Putting the heatsync onto the processor was especially nerve wracking because at the time I didn’t know you had to push down on the screws to mount it in place. So the whole I was trying to mount the heatsync I was worried that I’d hear a snap and have to wait two weeks for a new processor to replace my broken one, but fortunately my fears were unwarranted. I later found out that obviously you have to press down really hard while you’re mounting the heatsync on the processor because they both need to be in constant contact or the processor would get damaged from the extreme heat.

After putting on the heatsync, the rest of the stuff was pretty easy, although I still continuously ran into little problems that I had to solve with the help of some random forum members. Needless to say, I learned a ton of stuff about building computers - most of which came from my choice of PC parts. The next time I build a PC I’ll know a lot more about what to watch out for (like power connectors from the power supply matching up with the motherboard). Now that it’s over and the computer has been running smoothly for a while now without any issues there is a great sense of accomplishment. I also loved the fact that after running into all the little problems while building it the PC started up without issue on the first try

If you want to build your own PC and have never done it before I’d highly recommend having a buddy with you that has built one before. It’s a lot easier to build a PC when you can ask a person a question that can physically see what you’re working on than posting questions on forums. Either way, I’ll gladly do it again as you can save a lot of money by building your own PC than if you buy it from Dell or some other company.

Here are the specs again in case you didn’t see the first post I made about the new PC:

Intel Q6600 - Quad Core 2.4 Ghz Processor
EVGA LGA 775 Nvidia nForce 680i SLI Mobo
EVGA GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB
Antec Performance One P180B Case
FSP Blue Storm II 500 ATX 2.2V 500W Power Supply
G.Skill 2GB (2×1 GB sticks) DDR2 800
Lite On 20X DVD Burner
500 GB SeaGate SATA HD
Zalman 9700 (Aftermarket Heat Sync)

Total came out to about $1200 (before $100 in mail-in rebates).

Have you ever built a PC before? I’d like to hear some of your stories so please comment on this post.

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I’m finally back from vacation. Most of you probably didn’t even know I was gone, and that’s because I meant to write some posts while I was on vacation. Unfortunately, I didn’t end up having internet access where I was staying. Doh! In any case I was incredibly busy up until the time I left last week so I’ll soon post several updates on the progress of my new computer and the server transfer. Next time I’ll make time to write posts and use Wordpress’ time stamp feature to prevent this from happening again.

For now subscribe to my RSS feed so you won’t miss any of the new updates.

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