One of my top commentators, Rolando, left a comment encouraging me to keep blogging and mentioning how useful he finds my blog.

Except, it wasn’t Rolando.

It was a spammer using Rolando’s name but with a different eMail address and blog URL.

While it went into moderation and did not get posted as a comment, it did change the URL under Top Commentators in my sidebar from Rolando’s site to this spammer’s URL. Even marking it as spam didn’t change that.

The only way to fix it was to completely delete the comment. Then, the sidebar URL reverted back to the real Rolando’s URL.

I’ve mentioned this before, and this serves as a reminder to regularly delete your spam comments, especially if you’re using the Show Top Commentators plugin.

I’d bet the change in version 1.05 (”Change: Changed the logic for retrieving a commentators URL from their most used URL to their last used URL.”) has something to do with it.

Before I eMail the author of the plugin, has anyone else experienced this as well? I’m trying to figure out if it’s an actual issue with the plugin, or if it’s something unique to my blog. If you’re using version 1.05 and are willing to let me post a fake comment on your blog to test this (you can, of course, delete the comment afterwards!), please leave a message in the comments.

If you are using the Top Commentators Widget, this does not seem to be vulnerable to this potential exploit. At least version 0.999 appears to be okay. (Thanks Pete!)

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Just like the cat, Little Too doesn’t want her photo taken. Well, she’s a bit less picky though.

You see, I told her the photo was for Pete so he could put it up on MyGPSCameraPhone.com.

She decided to “opt out.” She’ll appear here and on LocoChihuahua.com, but she’s doesn’t want naked pictures of herself appearing all over the ‘net.

Which is just as well, since I took the image with my regular camera anyway, and not my camera phone.

Visit Wordless Wednesday for more.

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Michelle is so desperate for me to not start an Antiques blog that she’s pulling out her own hair, as this surveillance camera footage shows:

As for why I have the surveillance camera watching Michelle, I don’t. It’s part of the new Google Everywhere (beta). Not content to just violate our privacy by posting photos of our homes online, they’re now going to be installing webcams in all our homes, in cooperation with Homeland Security.

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Michael Kwan of Beyond the Rhetoric has a Photoshop contest running until the end of July.

Here is my entry. Click on the image for the full-size version.

John Chow Meets the Even More Evil John Chow

In this image, John Chow is holding the robotic head of Ed Lau as the even more evil John Chow laughs.

Pete likes messing around with Photoshop too, so we’ll see what kind of entry he’ll come up with. Same goes for Michelle.

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Sometimes it’s tough to blog everyday. But, once you’ve made that a habit, readers expect to find something new on your blog everyday. So, not posting for a day could cause a drop-off in traffic. So, you best have new content!

Granted, I could say, hey, sorry, there won’t be a post today, but that would be an excuse post, and those types of things are bad.

Naturally, I should have a “rainy day” post saved up, which I do. Unfortunately, all of them are works in progress. Mind you, I do have two things I want to post but neither of them is finished just yet. One is delayed because I’m waiting on someone else to do something, which I know he’ll do the moment I post the post without the last bit of data, but I’d like to get that last bit of data in the actual post. The other is delayed because I’m still working on it! Trying to go deeper to have something that will be Stumble-worthy.

Of course, if you want to get one of your own posts Stumbled, you’re out of luck. If, on the other hand, you’d like to get one of your posts dugg, then I can help you out. Well, not me per se, but me by way of referring you to this article: “Top Ten Digg Tactics.”

I think that was a fairly decent segue. Other bloggers fret over their headlines, but I think good segues are valuable too. And, speaking of segues, if you’re trying to get more traffic to your site, and just can’t get dugg, you might have to promote your blog through advertising.

Wasn’t that a pretty good segue? I like to think so.

As for endings, well, I’m not quite yet the master of the long goodbye. I just sort of end the post and hope you’ll catch on.

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I know, I know, it’s shocking but, for whatever reason, Pete hasn’t posted any of my camera phone pictures to his site, MyGPSCameraPhone.com. Maybe it’s because I haven’t sent him any. I don’t know. He can be so picky.

Anyway, I’ll just post my little camera phone picture here on my own blog then, I guess.

Visit Wordless Wednesday for more.

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Visit Wordless Wednesday for more.

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It’s not that I don’t want to tell you, it’s that I don’t want to tell you yet. And, that’s especially true since, as many of you are aware, I have a habit of changing my mind.

Experiments in Viral Stories

At any rate, I am trying different things. For example, instead of doing viral links where you just post a list of different links, I do viral stories. It all started with the “Drunken Virals,” which I believe is still pretty much the most popular of my viral stories.

I followed up with “Pirate Links” (and “Lost Links” for those I left out). Next was “Web Trek,” which was followed most recently by “Web Trek II: The Wrath of the Single Blogolope.”

Since I started doing these viral stories last year, the use of viral links has largely fallen out of favor, likely because the search engines were catching on. But, really, what most people were after was the Technorati rank.

Since there was a six month gap between “Web Trek” and “Web Trek II,” I was concerned that even my viral stories were taking a hit. On the first day of “Web Trek II,” the comments weren’t coming in as quickly as I expected. It was beginning to look like a bust…

But, the comments started coming in, and eventually they surpassed the number of comments on the original “Web Trek.” Thus, that tends to validate my notion that viral stories trump viral links.

Of course, viral links were all about Technorati rank. Few people read through those lists. They just copied them, added their links and posted them. We may skim and even check out a few blogs, but after a few rounds, you just pass them along without paying much attention to them. Sooner or later, you get tired of doing even that, which is another reason I think that you don’t see viral links being passed along as often anymore.

But, a viral story is more likely to be read. Plus, it’s more interesting than a list of links, so you get a few more backlinks from them too because people do read them and want to share the link with their readers.

Most importantly, people like to read about themselves, even if it is in a fictional way. Plus, they get a link out of the deal too, and, in my opinion, not a link that’s going to be as easily brushed aside as a basic list of links might be by the search engines.

The downside is that a viral story takes a lot longer to put together than a simple list. The upside is that viral stories still attract attention while not so many bloggers are excited about a viral links post anymore.

Experiments in Content

I’m also going to try some experiments in content. There are, as you know, many different ways of delivering and monetizing your content. Most people pick one. I am trying several.

One is, of course, this blog. Though I don’t expect this blog to be a big moneymaker (though one can hope!), I do have some ads and affiliate programs running, and I have seen a small (very small) amounts of revenue from that, but, while it is increasing, it’s nothing yet to get excited about.

Another experiment is Practical Points in Nursing, which I’ve neglected as of late (though I will have more stuff going up soon–I haven’t been completely neglecting it behind the scenes!). I’ll diversify the monetization on the site once I’ve added some additional content to the site (beyond the content of the book itself).

Another experiment is to do an eBook, which I do have in development. Speaking of which, how many pages do you think an eBook should be? I’m at a little over 150.

What I hope to answer is whether it’s better to give content away freely and hope to earn income through advertising and affiliate programs, or to package the content and sell it to earn income? I’m going to try both and see how things work out.

Mind you, the particular niche may be a larger factor in determining the best way to monetize something than the distribution and monetization factors.

At any rate, once I finish the eBook and start selling it, I can start sharing more information on how things are going and how the content site compares against the eBook site.

And, I’ll expect all of you to buy the eBook and sign up for the affiliate (maybe) program.

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Haven’t done a Brain Power post in a while, so here’s one for you.

Start at the green square. Next, find the shortest path to the red square. I’ve shaded the squares to make them easier to count.

What is the shortest path from the green square to the red square?

Leave your answer in the comments.

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When it comes to blogging, I guess I’m a flip-flopper. I keep changing my mind on how to blog and how to separate my topics. But, that’s okay. There are some very good reasons to change your mind sometimes.

• Things Change
  Things do change. What was true yesterday may not be today. Certain things remain the same. One plus one is always equal to two (in base-10 math). But, other things, especially those regarding human behavior, are more in flux. People may think flashy graphics and music playing in the background is totally awesome one moment, and then become bored or even fed up with such websites months later. So, what was good then, might not be so good now.
• You Learn Things
  Sometimes you need to change your mind because new information becomes available. Or, you begin to see new trends on your website. A new, growing audience demands something different than what you’ve offered before. Or, they are attracted to the things you previously only rarely did, and now you feel you need to do it more often to maintain their interest. And, they may result in cutting back something else.
• You Realize You Were Wrong
  Everything you thought you knew turned out to be incorrect. But, it may not have been your fault. You might not have had enough traffic for patterns to emerge. But, as traffic grew, the patterns the “experts” told you about began to emerge and you have to rethink the way you had been doing things.
• You Have More Time or Motivation
  You may not have done something in the past because you just didn’t have the time or inclination to do it. And, present day, that might no longer be true. You might have gained more time, or you may have become more motivated to do things.

And, of course, it could be a combination of the things above.

With that in mind, I am (most likely and unless I change my mind again) going to start two new blogs.

First, I am going to spin out Antiques into its own blog. For one thing, it doesn’t really fit into this blog anymore, which I’ve said before. And, I even planned to spin it out before. But, then I started posting antique entries here and here. So, once again, I’m spinning…

Second, another blog, which I have previously mentioned, on gardening and houseplants. But, wait a minute, maybe I won’t. Oh, I am so undecided on this one…

Okay, so at least one new blog coming soon. Maybe two. Maybe not.

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