Things are finally getting to a point of slowdown…somewhat anyway. Still very busy at work and at my personal business, but finally getting unburied to the point that I actually had time to write this. I do miss it, and there have been so many things happen and change. So many new blog start-ups, a lot of people struggling like me to find the time or post as often. I’ve done my best to still read here and there but I’ve really in the end have had to just read a few of the *favorites*.

So how do you unthaw a dormant blog, especially one this dormant? I’m not really sure to be honest. Hopefully I still have some of my good readers here and there.

Things to say or things I have not commented on yet:
No more Nice4Rice!!! Yeah, I know, its really old news by now, but I have not been blogging. That is definitely a blog I miss. I definitely understand Spud’s reasonings, but that type of article writing and his absolutely great reviews, I will sorely miss.

I do still plan on creating more PHP Hero cards. I am still a very active PHP programmer, although I have not been able to touch the notes in forever. I mentioned the next upcoming card being one to honor Ed, but then to go without creating one, what kind of a** am I? Just a busy one, I apologize. That will still be the very next card I create, and then, after that, you will see the very first PHP Hero card for a lucky lady…I can say no more…

I still struggle with keeping a blog that is a WordPress blog. It really makes no sense for a php developer to do so, I guess in the end it is just a convenience factor. A matter of convenience in regards to making it easy to post as well as just my pure laziness of not wanting to migrate to something else. Perhaps if I had more time I would look into the other options out there. WordPress really has the ability to be something so much greater, I really wish they would take in all the advice and ideas in a non-hostile manner. I definitely understand why WordPress is number 1 – I just wish the responsibility they have as being the most popular would lead them towards some very needed improvements.

My family is doing quite well. I have the greatest times with my Wife and kids. Really, every free minute has been going towards spending time with them. And it has definitely been the most valued moments in my life.

I hope all of you out there are doing great and if you are reading this, thank you very much for hanging out there, keeping subscribed, or just stopping by. I appreciate all of you probably more than you know.

So, first off, a big sorry to the masses that read this blog. Especially you 118,207 readers out there that have figured out a way to subscribe without it being tracked by feedburner and somehow bypass google analytics when you visit, but I still know you are out there. I have taken a great deal of time off from blogging so I can devote every free moment I have with my family and its new addition. Things are great at home and just catching up on everything at work after my leaves and such.

So, turns out, I’m a nice guy, after all, Polli of Polliwog’s Pond seems to think so. She even gave me a fancy shmancy “Nice Matters” award. You can read about it here: Crash … Aaa-ah!. So some link-love back to you in return – Thank You Polli for the award and the mention on your blog!

Back Story:
Polli contacted my via my contact page asking for some PHP help. Her needs were very minor that I would feel guilty charging her for any of the help I offered. However, I did agree to a price first, and just ended up not charging her in the end. That way, it gives her “fun money”. You know, that money that was budgeted for something else, so you don’t really expect to be able to use it, but then you get to use it on whatever you want. Polli is a mom of 6, so I told her to take that money and go have a fun day with her kids instead. I hope she took that chance after such a hard time recovering her wiped computer. I’m anxious to see if the edits I helped her with work out and see them in action on her site.

I am a proud father once more over today! My first son was born today. My last name, which was my grandfather’s, can now live on… I was the only male left in my family with that last name so a big “woo hoo”!

Fischer, welcome to this world my little buddy. I will do my best to guide you through the crazy things that life can bring and will always be there for you when you need me. Thank you for being another piece of the best part of my life. I love you, your sisters, and your Mommy more than anything else in this world!

Not here! Pfew! So lets time travel here for a moment. About 2 months ago you are anxiously awaiting the arrival of your newest addition. But all of a sudden you notice a good sized lump down below on one of your boys. With this following post you are going to be whisked through my journey on what happened to me and what all I had to go through.

So first off, let me say that occasional self examination is very important. Breast or Testicle, either way cancer can spread very quickly so it is important to be on top of these things. For me, it was just by some kind of random itch that I noticed it at all. If you have any abnormalities it is very important to schedule a doctor’s appointment right away. Chances are likely that it is nothing, but because of the chance of spreading, procrastination is not an option.

So now you have gone to the appointment. After waiting in the lobby 45 minutes past your appointment time you finally get to be taken to a room where you wait another 15 minutes for your doctor. Oh well, thats the way things go. So you talk about what is going on and eventually you get the examination. This goes beyond the typical “turn your head and cough” that you would get with a physical. This will involve a lot more hands on squeezing and prodding by the doctor. Once the doctor confirms your suspicion, you must now have an Ultrasound. Yes, the very same thing they do on Pregnant ladies to see the Babies in their tummies.

So now you make a separate Ultrasound appointment that is so overbooked due to all the pregnant ladies and such that it is about another month before you can be scheduled in. Again, another very important reason to be very ahead of the game. If it is cancer, the sooner you start this process, the sooner it gets dealt with. If there is any worry at all, they Ultrasound both Testicles and your Scrotum. I know, you almost just want to sign yourself up for this just out of how fun it sounds so far right?

So the month+ finally goes by and you finally get in for the Ultrasound. This part really disappointed me. In my case, I was taken into a room. Got naked and put the frock on. Unlike with pregnancies, they do not allow you to have a “viewing” monitor. So everything is done and you get no point of reference or anything to look at while it is being done. This stuff was really interesting to me but to just lay there and have no participation other than the object being scanned, thumbs down. I know I’m sure it is just to save time and prevent a billion and 1 questions from the worriers, but come on, this stuff is interesting, show me! How often are you going to be in a predicament where your boys are getting scanned, might as well make the most out of it…

So anyway, the Ultrasound process consists of the following. You know that gel that they put on the woman’s stomach? Well guess what, you get a whole lot of it squirted down on your boys and elsewhere. In an effort to not displease the ladies that normally get it on their tummies for pregnancy, they keep the gel heated so that it will not make them cold. Well heated gel may feel okay on a tummy, but on my boys, yeah, not so much. Could have been a few degrees cooler, however, I do appreciate the fact that it was not cold. The situation is embarrassing enough so the last thing you need is shrinkage. So like I said, she sprayed that on me and then the exam started. Basically other than being asked to “bear down” a couple times, it was really just laying there for 30 minutes while she sensored me left, right, and down…she works her way all around saving images here and there for the file.

After that process is done, all of your Ultrasound images are sent off to a Radiology Expert that analyzes the images. 2-3 business days later that Expert contacts your doctor with the findings. If good, your doctor sends you a letter saying you have nothing to worry about, if bad, well, needle biopsy does not sound too good to me.

I got the letter on Friday, saying that everything was benign and that the lump attached to my buddy was actually cysts. So as cancer goes, I am in the clear! I am extremely glad that I did not ever have to describe what a testicular needle biopsy feels like. Overall, the experience was alright, I mean, it had to be done. Nobody wants to have all their “parts” touched left and right by strangers and such, well, at least in this way. But you have to set aside worry and such, better to go though this kind of stuff than have to find out you waited too long and now you have it in your lymph nodes or brain…

An FDA page I just googled real quick. If you want to do any further reading on the subject:
http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/196_test.html

This post was my experience. Your experience may be much different than mine, however I did want to share mine with all of you.

Its PHP Friday!
The PHP Friday Series

It is time once again for another PHP the Language playing card, the third of its kind. I really loved collecting trading cards way back when in my youth. So I decided that if PHP had a trading card game, perhaps the cards may look just like this. We honor our Baseball and Football heroes with collectible trading cards, lets do the same for our “PHP Heroes”. If there was such a thing as real cards, the people I create cards for are the ones I would try to track down and collect.

The PHP language has some excellent personalities backing it. One of the personalities that sticks out all the time to me is Terry Chay. I had heard his name originally as it was associated many times with Plaxo back when he still worked for them. But the first time I knew he was an Engineer I needed to keep an eye out for was when I heard about his OSCON presentation titled “The Underpants Gnomes Strategy Guide: An eCards Case Study”. Anybody with that kind of sense of humor is somebody worth listening to.

I am a subscriber of his blog and always look forward to his next post. His blog is always entertaining as he mixes in technical posts right along with everything else. He has a way with mixing in comical antics along with technical posts where he still comes across as an experienced developer, intelligent, and hilarious. You can tell that Terry is so passionate about what he does. These type of people are what make us and the PHP language itself so lucky to have.

Next planned PHP the Language Card: Ed “Funkatron” Finkler

“PHP the Language” Playing Cards Credits:
The overall card design is based off of the card playing game Magic the Gathering
“Poker” style cards have already been created – Check Them Out

Terry Chay Card Credits:
Original image located here: georges flicker

Terry Links From Card & Elsewhere:
http://terrychay.com/
http://terrychay.com/blog/

So lets dive into my little world and find out some more about me…

Ms Danielle was the winner of the John Chow Zune contest. She is now “White Elephant”‘n the thing and offering her own Zune contest.

Ms Danielle’s blog is one of the feeds that I keep in my Blog Reader because she writes great posts all the time. It is definitely a very interesting blog site.

As I have previously stated, the content on her site is just absolutely great. Contest or no contest, if you have not been there before, go check it out. Another blogging site that has this great blogging community wrapped around it.

David Culpepper from PureBlogging has been very good to me. He welcomed me in as a co-author and I was able to make his first guest author post. I’m definitely due for another entry so hopefully I can post another one soon. I was the winner of one of his previous contests so I received my new Apple 8GB Ipod Nano that I have always really wanted. Through some talks with David here and there through the contest win and just comments back and forth, you can tell that he really is a good guy.

So I wanted to help spread the word on a couple contests he has going. It truly is 1 contest split up into 2 parts.

Part 1 (1000th Comment):
Whoever posts the 1000th comment (excluding me, our guest bloggers, and trackbacks) will win $100 CASH via PayPal. During this time, comments will be strictly moderated and short irrelevant comments will be deleted. That means no comments like “Hey, nice site.” or “Yeah, me too.”, or “You’re so cool!”, etc. Only comments that contribute to the discussion will be counted.

Part 2 (Spread the Word):
Anyone who writes a blog post about this contest will be entered into a random drawing for $100 CASH via PayPal.

So go check out his site for for more info about the contest and remember his site is always packed full of great blogging tips.

Personally, since I won on the last contest, I’m going to sit this one out even though I am making this post. It would not be fair to win 2 in a row and I wouldn’t want David to take any flack from it if I did. However, David is an honorable blogger so I still wanted to help spread the word…

So we all know that Wordpress had a recent update that was also required to fix some security issues. One of the issues that caught my eye was the fact that the default theme had a security vulnerability. After reading that I decided that although I did update Wordpress and the problem default theme files, I wanted to get off a theme that potentially could have other security issues if they are just now catching this one. My theme was not strictly the “default” theme, I had done a few appearance changes here and there that made it my own, however, all that back-end code was still the default theme.

So, me still never having any time to design my own theme, I decided to work with a theme of a designer that I have a lot of respect for. I decided to work with the GlossyBlue theme designed by Nick La, located on his N.Design Studio website. It gave me a great “template” to start off of to make it my own. He has such a great set of icons (small gifs) within his themes that just make your page look great.

Making it My Own:

So as you can see by that example picture above, the left side is what this theme looks like by default and after all the image and css changes, what I have made it look like. All and all it was about 45 minutes worth of work to “Reformat” it to my liking. For such a drastic color change there were quite a lot of image adjustments and edits that I had to perform as well as quite a bit of standard css edits. Really not a big deal though. Even though it was already a great design to start from, I do like it much better now! One of the things I just had to do right away was clean up that HUGE HEADER!

So after all the image and css edits, I plugged in all the plugin coding where needed for all the plugins I use. Bob’s Simplistic Navigation suited this theme quite well since there were no single navigation page links coded into it. So always remember, if there is a theme that you come across that you really like but aspects of it do not fit you, well if you know some basic coding you can really dig in and “make it yours” like I have done here.

If you have not already been to Nick’s N.Design Studio website, you are really missing out. This guy is an amazing graphic artist and to top it all off, takes the time to show you some things you can do. Check out his tutorials that he offers and browse other parts of his site. With his more recent iTheme Wordpress Theme becoming so popular (you can see it on Saman’s site), he had troubles keeping his site up after all the Diggs.

So you tell me, what do you think about the new ReformatThis look…thumbs up?…thumbs down?…comments?…compliments?…original better?…free money? I will take either or all…

It makes for much cleaner code if you use the switch statement rather than if() followed by multiple elseif() statements. I have read many performance tests articles and switch() does process faster over if() + elseif()’s. But how does it look? How do you code it? Well below are some examples.

First, lets set a variable just to have it as an example:

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$example_var = 7;

Now in most apps, you have most likely seen something similar to the following:

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if ($example_var == 1) {
	// action 1 code here
}
else if ($example_var == 2) {
	// action 2 code here
}
else if ($example_var >= 3 && $example_var < = 6) {
	// action for 3 thru 6 code here
}
else if ($example_var == 7) {
	// action 7 code here
}
else {
	// for any other value do this
}

Those very same options can be coded into a more efficient switch() statement as follows:

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switch($example_var) {
	case 1:
		// action 1 code here
		break;
	case 2:
		// action 2 code here
		break;
	case 3:
	case 4:
	case 5:
	case 6:
		// action for 3 thru 6 code here
		break;
	case 7:
		// action 7 code here
		break;
	default:
		// for any other value do this
		break;
}

or as another switch() statement alternative that gives you an interesting perspective or way of looking at it:

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switch(true) {
	case ($example_var == 1):
		// action 1 code here
		break;
	case ($example_var == 2):
		// action 2 code here
		break;
	case ($example_var >= 3 && $example_var < = 6):
		// action for 3 thru 6 code here
		break;
	case ($example_var == 7):
		// action 7 code here
		break;
	default:
		// for any other value do this
		break;
}

As you can see by that last example, making the value in the switch() function to true or false and then loading switch cases that involve statements that are either true or not work just the same.

Summary:
So the variable enclosed in the switch() statement is what you are comparing its value to all the possible cases in the switch() statement that you have assigned. You assign each case a value or operation to see if its result matches the value of that variable. Everything located under that very case will be performed until it reaches the break statement letting it know to stop. Multiple cases can be brought together to all include the coding below it. It will keep performing all code below a matched case so long as a break statement is not met. default is the equivalent basically of just else. Its basically the "catch-all" and will always perform in the event that no other case above matched and had a break placed below it.

Definitely check it out over there on the wonderful packed full of information -> php manual:
PHP Manual: switch()

In the end, switch() may seem to be a little more difficult to code if you are not used to it, but if you look, it is a much easier code to read and know exactly what is going on. If the speed/benchmark tests that I have read about are true, than of course you want to use switch() as your primary function for this sort of coding anyway. ]]> http://blog.reformatthis.com/2007-06-22/php-using-switch-instead-of-if-elseifs/feed/ 3 http://blog.reformatthis.com/2007-06-22/php-using-switch-instead-of-if-elseifs/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ReformatThis/~3/E6wxbi-9f8o/ http://blog.reformatthis.com/2007-06-16/bobs-simplistic-navigation-update/#comments Sat, 16 Jun 2007 20:24:32 +0000 RJ Matthis http://blog.reformatthis.com/2007.06.16/bobs-simplistic-navigation-update

I requested my plugin to be added to the Wordpress Repository back in April when I created it. I heard back yesterday that this request was approved. Upon hearing that, I decided to upload my plugin to the official repository and now “Bob’s Simplistic Navigation” is available straight out of Wordpress Repository! I am hoping that this will very likely up its exposure and usage. Its so great that such a simple plugin can be so useful to many people.

Or you can go view the Wordpress pages for it by clicking this image below. So go on and check out the Wordpress plugin page, if you look real hard, you may notice I mentioned a few people in the plugin documentation:

Its PHP Friday!
Long ago, when I was discovering the language of PHP, I was very interested in finding out the security issues that I may come across and things I can do to prevent them. There is a name that is basically synonymous with security in PHP, and that name is Chris Shiflett. Chris wrote the O’Reilly book “Essential PHP Security” in 2005 which is often referred to in many security articles and posts. Chris has also contributed to many other PHP publications.

One of his biggest contributions to the PHP community is the PHP Security Consortium that he founded. This Consortium houses many key projects including the highly recommended: “PHP Security Guide” free to download and a must read.

I want to close this by saying, if you choose to code a web language, you need to take responsibility and learn how to code securely. Nobody is incapable of mistakes, but you need to absolutely do your best to code secure applications. Security needs to take the front seat and always be in your mind when coding an application. The first step to preventing bad code is education. Read articles, books, and warnings. There are many very common mistakes that you can educate yourself on how to prevent.

“PHP the Language” Playing Cards Credits:
The overall card design is based off of the card playing game Magic the Gathering
“Poker” style cards have already been created – Check Them Out

Chris Shiflett Card Credits:
Original image located here: georges flicker
Chris quote found here: RioSec: Chris’s Quotes

Chris Links From Card & Elsewhere:
http://www.shiflett.org
http://www.phpsec.org
http://www.brainbulb.com
http://omniti.com/people/bios/chris_shiflett

Quick Bio:
PHP started out as a personal project of Rasmus Lerdorf. Originally called “Personal Home Page Tools”, PHP’s first 2 versions were authored by Rasmus. Future versions have been core developed by many, but of course Rasmus is still well involved in development and the community. He is currently employed by Yahoo, an extremely PHP friendly employer. This offers him much opportunity to still be quite active in all areas that are PHP. He is constantly invited to conferences around the world. I have read and heard many times, if you choose to code PHP, you need to know the name Rasmus Lerdorf. You need to know PHP’s history and you need to know the man who originally brought it to us.

Being extremely security savvy, Rasmus decided to point out a security flaw in every single Open Source CMS program when invited to speak at OSCMS 2007. In a recent podcast, I remember hearing Ed Finkler, a key php securing developer and member of the PHP Security Consortium, saying that he would never show code around Rasmus, too scared what Rasmus would point out. Rasmus will not hold himself back anywhere when he sees a insecure application, it could be mid-conference and he will out you. I really like this about him, doing all he can to improve PHP’s overall security. For instance, if he ever commented on this post, he would probably tell me to stop using Wordpress Wordpress is PHP based, but it has a wide and long history of bad coding and security flaws.

Rasmus was the first big name I heard in the PHP community when I started to get involved in it years ago. There are many big names now and loads of developers out there doing very important things, so I will be able to write many of these, but let us never forget this first one. Rasmus, the man who started it all! Thank you Rasmus!

Its PHP Friday!
The first here at my blog. In an effort to knock the dust off my blog, I wanted to create a standard that I will do my best to live by. Every Friday I will be posting some kind of PHP related post. It is only appropriate that the first PHP Friday post be on the first PHP developer. I have just been so incredibly busy working at work and home. However, what I am busy with is coding PHP. Because of this, I come across interesting PHP items all the time. As you know from my previous posts, the PHP movement and community means a lot to me. So I also have a lot of heroes in that community that I would like to write quick bios about and even create these silly cards for. Its been many years since, but as a young teen I was really into the card playing game “Magic the Gathering”. I thought these card layouts would be kind of a cool way to honor some of my PHP Heroes.

“PHP the Language” Playing Cards Credits:
The overall card design is based off of the card playing game Magic the Gathering
“Poker” style cards have already been created – Check Them Out

Rasmus Lerdorf Card Credits:
Original image located here: chrys flicker
Rasmus quote found here: Matt Wade Article

Rasmus Links From Card & Elsewhere:
http://www.lerdorf.com/
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/rlerdorf
http://toys.lerdorf.com/

A New Honorary Blogroll Inductee…
Cast down ye peasantly squire attire young one, for you have been welcomed to my table of Knighthood. I’m sure you always wondered what you would look like with mid-evil armor.

2Perfect is amazingly participative on many a blog. He has put his input in on my blog many a time, added me to his favorite blogs, and also participates on a couple of my Knights ["friends"] blogs all the time as well. He does truly honor me and more importantly, this community of ours.

So…BJ…2Perfect…it is my honor to honor you. I knight’th thou’th Sir BJ “2 Perfect” Nodora of Canada. A place of honor will always be held here for you.

My Honorary Blogroll is just that, a thing of honor. It is the way I can honor my readers and community with the greatest thing possible, a permanent linkback. I am constantly keeping my eye on all comments, actions, and linkback posts that involve this site. If I feel truly honored, than I return the favor by honoring you! Thank you all so much for stopping by!

I am not a true King and although I knight you, it is only valid in the state of unconsciousness. Whenever you are in the state of unconsciousness, feel free to pretend you are a knight and while you are at it, feel free to pretend that I am a King. In fact, I like that. Offer becomes invalid when receiver enters the state of consciousness…

Guestblog Post Link:
Get New Readers and Keep Them

Read it and be sure to comment in, let me know what you think…

I HAVE A SOLUTION!
When you are in a rough situation, say “Dam it!” from a new phrase based off of an unruly river needing a dam. This situation you are in or the noun in reference is unruly, so it is an association of an unruly river, and thus this association is referring to a Dam which is anything but Damnation…TA-DA…no longer a curse phrase. That is right, you read it here first. With this new form of thinking, I’m sure we can come up with new ways to uncurse certain phrases and forever break them of their evil powers .

Even after this thorough disclosure of the facts to my wife which truly state that I am not cursing, I am still in trouble . I guess I could just change and stop saying it, but perhaps changing the whole worlds perspective of the phrase may be a little easier

Sorry I have not written in such a long time. I assure you that blogging is something I am still very interested in and passionate about. This was not just a temporary thing for me. I will be back to posting daily as soon as all of these extremely time consuming projects are over. I was only even able to blog this because the Family and I went away for the weekend. So I can work a little less. I still miss the community very much and hope all of you are doing well!

I’m Freaking Jones’n!
Wow, you start twitching a little bit when you go a little while without posting! I have just been so incredibly busy at work and at home (more work) that I just have not been able to fit in any blogging time. We have opened up a new branch at my employer, plus my company has a good sized project going. So I basically go to work, work for 9 hours, go home, and work another 3-4 after I lay down my youngest daughter. So basically looking at coding or other I.T. work for about 12-13 hours a day

So instead of you all thinking I dropped off the face of the earth, how about I just write this quick message and say “I miss you”

I’ve read many blogs lately that have removed Kontera links for a various amount of reasons. Primarily the biggest reason being the links not having anything to do with the content. There are also a few blogs that say the amount of links sway readers from the content. I’m not sure if any of these bloggers gave the time they should of for Kontera to settle in.

I have to say that I was getting close to agreeing with all of these people and coming very close to removing it off of this blog. But suddenly, after being installed for a couple weeks, it starting working as you think it should. Every day that goes by, I personally think that it works better than it did the previous days. And what I really like is that lately it seems to be linking to less phrases as it hones in on what your blog is truly about.

To me blogging is about blogging and any income derived from it is an extra bonus. If the community that makes this blog possible hated those links, I would do something about it. But there has not really been any kontera-link-hater comments. I even changed the color of my kontera links to try to improve the reading experience.

I think in order for Kontera to be successful on your site, you need to be patient. What do you guys think about the Kontera Link issue?

*Update – 2007-06-06
In the end, really, Kontera served no purpose on my site. Not really profitable and my blog is not about profit anyway. So like many others, I have removed it. I just found the chosen links to be annoying and not related to the content. I gave it the time, and in the end, not happy with it. Goodbye Kontera…

Wow does that thing come down fast with all the trains. I am so thankful! As of 10 hours ago my rank is: 28,863. I see this new rating and I just feel nothing but happy. Blogging is really a great thing! The lower ranking does wonders for your site, that is very true. However, that is not what I am so happy about. Its very nice, but what I love most is you, the readers. Its great to have an excellent rank that may bring more readers your way, but it means most to me that you take this time out of your day, stop by here, and take a look at my [2 cents]. I value you all so much and this community is really the best!

Thank you all for participating! If you ever have any suggestions, questions, comments, or nonsense on top of mine, please just post’em. I am indebted to all of you and if ever I can help you with anything that I am capable of helping with, please just let me know!

Thanks to my turn of fortune and me winning an iPod Nano via a contest held by PureBlogging.com, I get to try something out that I have been dying to try for a very long time. Back in August of 2006 I read a blog post on Rasmus Lerdorf’s toy page titled *”Nike+iPod Goodness”.

Rasmus Lerdorf is the original creator of PHP. A huge hero of mine, so I always keep an eye out for his posts although they are very few and far between. He also has his own type of “toys” blogging page [*toys.lerdorf.com] as well where he talks about little web apps that he likes to play with as well as fun tech stuff he buys. Definitely a great place to stop by and take a look.

At the time Rasmus posted about Nike+, I had never even heard about it. To sum it up quickly, its basically a very advanced pedometer. It comes in 2 pieces, an expansion for your iPod Nano and a sensor for your shoe. It tracks how far and fast you walk or run and how many calories you have burned. The sensor sends data to the expansion piece connected to your iPod Nano and the iPod Nano stores the data. All this while you are listening to your favorite songs while running around. The next time you dock your iPod it can download all that data and of which you can choose to upload it to the Nike+ Website. There you can store and track your runs as well as set goals for yourself. Rasmus even wrote a php script that processed the data so he could keep track of his runs as well and display it on his toys page. Rasmus went into a lot of detail in his first post about it, so I highly suggest checking it out if you are interested. He later blogged in January saying that he had completed *”100 runs” for a total of 620 miles and burned off a total of 80,000 calories! He basically said that he went from a 205lb fat slow geek to a 175lb slow geek. Whether it was just from the running or whatever else, that is an impressive weight loss in just 5 months!

It is important that if you decide to invest into one of these as well, be sure to not get suckered into the Nike+ shoes. You do not have to have the Nike+ shoes in order to use this. There are plenty of cases out there designed to weave the sensor through your laces and have no loss of proper sensing. The Nike+ shoe puts the sensor in the sole of the shoe, but a pair of these can run you $100! Unless you have the money to spend for the cool looking shoes, just go with the sensor case.

So David Culpepper of PureBlogging.com sent me a couple emails yesterday and today showing me that my new iPod Nano will be arriving tomorrow. I can’t wait to play with my new toy and I am really excited to try out this Nike+, after all, I’m a fat slow geek

[*note: Rasmus' website is down for whatever reason at the time of this post, however these are normally valid links. I really really hope that he has not decided to stop his personal site!].

PureBlogging.com recently held a blog review contest and my name (via a number) was randomly chosen as the winner! I am so excited about this! I’m usually not a very vain person, so if I ever buy something for myself that is nice, chances are it took months to years to save up for. I have wanted an iPod Nano for a very long time, so to win one, means so much! Its really kind of funny, at the time I wrote the review for PureBlogging, I was doing it free of charge to basically anybody that asked. David stopped by my MyBlogLog page to let me know that he was running a little contest. I jumped at the chance because it was a nice little side item on what I would have done for him anyway.

I really like this contest that David setup & I am very glad that he contacted me about it. Not just because I won, but because it helped me find his site. I think his posts are always valid and worthy content, so it is definitely in my google reader. You can tell I am truly hooked to a blogging site when I subscribe to the comments feed as well, and yes, I have subscribed to that too on David’s site. What I really like most is David did not just use this contest for linkbait, but he also took in the suggestions given to him in the reviews. He already redesigned his logo and changed his tag phrase. These are 2 things that I suggested to him in my review. He took in what we all wrote and acted upon it, that is really something! I feel like I’m on top of the world right now with this turn of luck and I have truly been honored to receive this prize so…

A New Honorary Blogroll Inductee…
In the face of danger, all he did was laugh. He showed his bravery by starting a contest where the risk was high. For this great feat of courage and honor bestowed upon me, I knight’th thou’th Sir David “PureBlogging” Culpepper of Mississippi. I honor you with this David, not because you prized me with an iPod, but because you have shown great honor. I am humbled by this great act, no matter who would of won. A permanent link on my site is all I can do to say Thank You!

My Honorary Blogroll is just that, a thing of honor. It is the way I can honor my readers and community with the greatest thing possible, a permanent linkback. I am constantly keeping my eye on all comments, actions, and linkback posts that involve this site. If I feel truly honored, than I return the favor by honoring you! Thank you all so much for stopping by!

Don’t think giving me iPods will buy you an Honorary Blogroll spot, it will not, although, you are more than welcome to try That and loads of cash will always be worth a shot…but I can not promise anything…

So as a parent, you get to say awesome things like that all the time. Over the last 2 months my youngest daughter has just become affixiated with Winnie the Pooh. So of course my Wife and I try to get a couple things for her here and there that are related to Winnie the Pooh. But I find myself saying the funniest things. I think the best one was Last night when I asked my daughter if she was “brushing her teeth with Pooh”? We purchased a Winnie the Pooh toothbrush for her this weekend. But it doesn’t just end there, you get to say things like “Do you have Pooh on your ball?” or “Is that Pooh on your sock?”. If you figure out how to say these things at the right time, you get some really weird looks come back your way if you are out in public.

*Personal Side-note:
I really love being a Dad! I could not picture my life any different. I have a level of pride that I think could never be broken, but it only grows every day. I am just so so proud! Everything I do is always about trying to make a better life for my family and making sure that my kids have a good life. I have another little one on the way and I can’t wait!

Today it is my honor to welcome Kelly of KellyCho.com into my Honorary blogroll. Kelly, an amazingly active blogger, has honored me many times over. She has tagged me and/or backlinked me on more than one occasion and even has added me to her blogroll. She has been active on my site since pretty much the beginning. Honor calls for honor so it is my turn to return some honor back to you. Besides, I personally know that Kelly is super-psyched about all the benefits that come along with being an honorary blogroll member of my blog. Read more on that towards the bottom.

And here is the best part, the first female knighting ceremony of my blog’s history! So did you know that a female knight’s surname is a “Dame”. If you are the wife of a knight, than your surname is “Lady”, but to be a female knight you are titled “Dame”. If you didn’t already know that, you know that now

Are you ready Kelly? Tingling with anticipation and excitement? Forever waiting for this moment to come…Kelly, I knight’th thou’th Dame Kelly “Star Gazer” Cho of California.

My Honorary Blogroll is just that, a thing of honor. It is the way I can honor my readers and community with the greatest thing possible, a permanent linkback. I am constantly keeping my eye on all comments, actions, and linkback posts that involve this site. If I feel truly honored, than I return the favor by honoring you! Thank you all so much for stopping by!

*this planet that I know of refers to the planet Mercury just in case you were wondering. All jewelry discounts apply to any items purchased at a jewelry store located on the planet of Mercury. This is a limited time offer and therefor may be discontinued at anytime. I have to throw that last sentence in or else all of you readers will devise a plan on opening up a jewelry store on Mercury and then getting Kelly, Saman, & Nick incredible discounts. Thats right, I knew exactly what you were thinking

“Uh Oh!” as my daughter would say. I was tagged to write a poem, yes thats right, me. Kelly Cho tagged me in her poetry post that was originally started by Stretsh’s meme to see how poetic bloggers are. Lets see, its been somewhere around 10+ years since I had to write a poem, so lets see if I can put something together here. This will be an original piece, and I do mean piece, by RJ “Bobs” Matthis. I definitely know I am not a poet, but lets see if I can have fun with this anyway

The PHP Tree…

From your roots that were planted by Rasmus Lerdorf
To your expanding branches fed by Coder’s hard work
Oh why do people refuse to use strtotime()?
The correct function for the job makes your app sublime

Using substr() I can return chosen partial strings
Or I will start a while() loop that returns many things
Always use a switch() statement if options are many
Too many elseif() statements will drag you down plenty

Filter the input and always escape output if User Entry
Security is most important, not just complementary
Preventing MySQL injections is a very important thing!
So always be sure to use mysql_real_escape_string()

My PHP Tree, how beautiful are your functions
Since finding you I have never felt any compunction
Using your objects & functions makes me a happy fellow
Oh PHP, you have had me ever since typing echo()

by RJ “Bobs” Matthis

So thats it, that is my poem. Basically the logicalness you would expect from a programmer, you’re just lucky I didn’t throw in some binary chains (010101010101) in there somehow. So if you are interested in sharing your poetic spirit, I would like to tag the following 3 people: Saman, 2Perfect, & Melanie

I’m guessing MyBlogLog is getting so much traffic at the moment that all their fun little items are starting to crash. I’ve been to a couple websites and the recent readers widget is failing to load which is causing a huge delay in page loads. Because of this, I have decided to temporarily remove the widget from my sidebar.

I also noticed that even the avatars are having trouble loading. Definitely a busy day at MyBlogLog! But as some would say, traffic crashes can really be a good thing! It means you are successful.

So I decided that I would add a few more possibilities of bringing in some income from this blog today. To me, this is just a side feature of what I am blogging for. I’m blogging for my readers and for myself. The opportunity to make money from it is just a side bonus!

Although I have added more ad links and such on my site, I think I did it in a very non-obtrusive way. If you are in single view, each post will have a google adsense banner placed at the bottom of it. On the main screen, every other ad will have a google adsense banner at the bottom. Other than that, all I did was I increased the number of monetary links in my Credits & Plugs sidebar section.

Please let me know if you find any of this to be annoying or if you have any comments or compliments about these changes at all. After all, I’m more interested in you than I am anything else.

Shawn Knight has started up his own new version of Mr Gary Lee’s Technorati Train. This new “train” will pretty much work exactly the same with the exception of it will involve MyBlogLog communities rather than technorati favorites.

I have to participate in something like this. And you definitely should too! The number of backlinks that these train lists bring in is just phenomenal! I’m going to tag 3 blogs and add it to this list, but don’t let this stop you. I really wish I could add more than 3, but that would not be fair to who this gets passed on to. If you do not ever get tagged, feel free to start up your own branch of it, just follow the directions below. These things bring back amazing traffic and backlinks to your site.

Please feel free to use the “MyBlogLog Bandwagon” graphic I created above in your post about it. I think this quick graphic turned out pretty good!

***Start Copying Here:***

Here are the rules:

1) Write a short introduction about how you found this list and include a link back to that blog.

2) COPY the rules and ENTIRE list below and post it on your blog.

3) Take “My New Community Members” and move them into the “The Original Community Members” list.

4) Find 3 new blogs, join their MyBlogLog Community and add them to the “My New Community Members” section. Remember to also add the “Join the Community” link next to your new blogs. ( Example: http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/community/ReformatThis/ )

5) Join as a member to each Community listed here by clicking on “Join the Community”. The goal is that all of the new Members listed will join your community, and you should do the same!

My New Community Members
2Perfect – Join the Community
PureBlogging – Join the Community
Dietriffic – Join the Community

The Original Community Members
Shawn Knight – Join the Community
Reformat This – Join the Community
Kelly Cho – Join the Community
Ms. Danielle – Join the Community
The Man of Silver – Join the Community
Nate Whitehill – Join the Community
Leo Chiang – Join the Community
Garry Conn – Join the Community
Samanathon – Join the Community
Mr. Gary Lee – Join the Community
Feats of a Chilean Dot Com Entrepreneur – Join the Community
Jon Lee – Join the Community
Everyday Weekender – Join the Community
Bryan’s Rants – Join the Community

***End Copying Here***

Previously I had a blogroll category called “Friends” with just 1 entry, Saman Sadeghi. Don’t let that just 1 entry fool you, I have at least 3 times that many friends

Actually, I just don’t have that many friends that blog, so instead of having that category, I decided to remove it and add Saman to where he belongs, my honorary link list. I feel that if you have a category called “Friends” and it only has 1 entry, this can fall into the “scare factor”. You know the whole this guy only has 1 friend, must not be interesting! So since that is not the case, I decided to pitch that category, I highly suggest you look that way at your site all the time, look for anything that may scare away a possible future reader.

The simple fact is I would not be blogging today if it were not for Saman. His blog captivated me so much and introduced me to this great blogging community. I do not mention Saman’s site all the time just because of how great a friend he is, its more than that, his blogging site truly does have nonstop great content. Whether it be from him, his fellow authors, or the community that has developed there, it is a very entertaining blog.

So Saman, I knight’th thou’th Sir Saman “-athon in a thong” Sadeghi of Colorado. Feel free to use the title wherever you go, even England!

My Honorary Blogroll is just that, a thing of honor. It is the way I can honor my readers and community with the greatest thing possible, a permanent linkback. I am constantly keeping my eye on all comments, actions, and linkback posts that involve this site. If I feel truly honored, than I return the favor by honoring you! Thank you all so much for stopping by!

All members of my honorary blogroll get 20% off their purchases at a store that does not exist! 15% off all parking charges at a parking lot that does not exist and to top it all off, buy 1 get 1 free on all shoe items if I were to sell shoes, but I don’t.

It’s already been mentioned on a couple other sites, I really need to mention it on my own
One thing you may notice on my site reviews is I may call out the fact that there is no way to navigate forward and backward through your single posts. To me, when reading blogs, I really appreciate a way to navigate through your posts without having to go back to the main page, scroll down, and than continue reading the next. To me, it just has to be easy to get to the previous or the next post. This especially makes it easy on your active Commentators to travel from post to post and keep actively commenting on your site.

I noticed that there are a good amount of great looking themes being produced these days that look great, but do not include these links. I know that a lot of bloggers out there are not necessarily coders, and may not no exactly how to add nav links in the posts easily. So I decided to create a plugin to make it very easy to do. If you are currently using a theme that does not include nav links, I highly suggest you add some. My plugin makes it very easy to do! You can even include them multiple times if you wish! If you look at my site, currently I have the links at the very beginning and at the very end (when you are in the single post view of course). Both of these link sets are generated from my newly created plugin.

This plugin also works great on themes that perhaps do have nav links coded into it, but maybe just once and you would like to have more.

My WordPress Plugin is located at this page:
Bob’s Simplistic Navigation

If you use the plugin and like it. I would love you to add a mention about it in a post with a linkback to the plugin’s page.

Thanks for stopping by today and please let me know below if you have any questions or comments about it at all. Have a great day!

Stop the Presses!
I was going to post a different kind of announcement today, but that has to take the backseat to some exciting news! I just found out that I received my first site review! And better yet, it was by the site Nice4Rice.com. The review of my site, the photoshop chipmunk creation of my head, and the joking about my critical side can all be seen here: Reformat this Bobs.

I have found that I have really become very passionate about blogging and the overall blogging community. So to be honored with a review meant so very much to me. I’m sure my Wife could tell you that I was jumping off the walls when I found out about it. I really like Nick’s writing style and his type of reviewing that is all his own. The man focuses on the content and does a great deal of research for his reviews. I am very glad that he took notice of my site. Nick, if you ever want a review of your site, just ask….although as you know, I can be critical

So please be sure to stop by Nick’s site and Please Give Me Some Rice! By giving “rice” and participating on Nick’s site, you may end up getting noticed and getting one of these excellent reviews written about your site too!

So today marks the inaugural entry into my Honorary Blogroll. An Honorary Blogroll is something I have planned since the start of this blog. Just a way for me to say “Thank You” in the biggest way possible in the blogging world, with a sidebar linkback. I shall exercise entry into this blogroll when warranted and of course, my site’s first review is a definite yes! So without any further ado, I knight’th thou’th Sir Nick “Spud Oregon” Ramsay of Japan and congratulations, you are the first entry into this new blogroll.

So I just spent about 10-15 minutes going through everybody who has added me as one of their favorites in technorati. Wow this Technorati Train thing really took off! This one simple train took my blog from a 350k technorati ranking to an 88k ranking last I checked.

I have to let you know though, it has nothing to do with the actual favorites themselves. As Nick “Spud Oregon” Ramsay has pointed out in his post: Technorati Favorites. Its not about the favorites, its about all the back-links that are being created by this train.

I got in on the train fairly early, so I can rest assured that my name is being spread around quite often as long as it keeps going. With the combination of that and the favorites themselves – Well – I didn’t let that stop me from still trying to be active. Why did it take me 10-15 minutes to go through all those that favorited me? Well that because I went through every user and every blog of that user. They all now have me favoriting them, not just the blog from the train, but every blog of that users. If by chance I missed you, please post a comment here to let me know. Heck that comment even comes with a free back-link

Huge Piece of Advice:
For those who have not started any Technorati Train action of their own, you really should. Look at the numbers above, it really does help. If you would like to continue the train and create your own branch, just simply follow this link: Technorati Train. It has all the directions there.

Please feel free to use the little title image above that I created in any of your Technorati Train posts.

As I said in my last post, I recently purchased Half-Life 2 so that I could not only play it, but also play a Source Mod called Goldeneye Source. Goldeneye Source is based off of the old Goldeneye 64 game for Nintendo 64. Everything has been completely rerendered using todays graphics that Source makes possible. It is an online multi-player first person shooter.

Goldeneye Source is still currently in BETA release, but from my little playing experience I have found that it is free of defects. There are choppy connections sometimes, but I’m sure that is all related to the Server that is running at the time. I hear and read players sometimes talking about bugs they are coming across, so perhaps it is just that I am so new that I don’t notice anything wrong.

So I remember how crazy things would get when there were 4 of us playing on one Nintendo 64. Now, you can have loads more than that. I think the most that I have ever seen on one server at any given time was around 12. But most servers set their max user limit to around 20 – some even as high as 40! When you have that many people playing, it really no longer matters whether you are a novice or an expert, its just loads of online characters running around and shooting everywhere!

I have taken a few screenshots of my online adventures. Click any of the below pictures for a bigger size.

Picture 1:
As you can see, I set my user name to my URI. I’m not exactly trying to ‘advertise’ directly, but I’m more just taking advantage of the opportunity, after all, my name has to be something right? So live or die, it still displays it

Picture 2:
In this picture if you look to the bottom left you can see me changing what character I’m playing as. Currently the options are not many, basically just a few of the main from the old Nintendo 64 game. I hope this is something they continue to develop on, I really miss the “Scientist”. That was who I always played with. In fact, I was the “Scientist” one year for Halloween.

Picture 3:
And finally this picture shows the mic icon. If you have a mic, you can talk online while you hand out justice served up cold. I have not mic’d it up yet. But from my playing experience, I can tell you that cursing is a must. You will often see players changing their user names if they are currently mad about something. The other night I saw a player change his/her name to “_____ can suck my _____”. I will let you fill in the blanks.


I was never as good as some of the Dogs in Goldeneye, but man, I’m even more rusty now. I basically connect and have my behind handed to me on a shiny golden platter. I’m not going to hold that against the game though, its my aging skills. I’m very happy with where this game is going. Considering it is only BETA and is already such a great Mod, I can’t wait to see what the future holds!

What or Who the heck is that?:
I was feeling like posting a real personal post. Something that helps you all dive into my personal world and is not just about Tips, Tricks, Comments, or Nonsense. So I wanted to let you all know about a tight group of friends I have.

Saman, myself, and a few of our friends refer to ourselves as the “Goldeneye Dogs”. Its just a name we gave ourselves many years ago. The 5 of us were constantly getting together to have Nintendo 64 Goldeneye sessions that would last pretty much the majority of the entire day. Every party, get together, pretty much anything always involved the Nintendo 64 and the video game Goldeneye. Its funny that a simple thing like a video game could impact and strengthen friendships as it did. This simple game helped create a “bond” that will last our entire lives.

The friendships are much older, but I think it was sometime around 1998 when we first called ourselves the Goldeneye Dogs. Of course it didn’t just come with a group title, we each had our own nicknames. Straight out of Reservoir Dogs of course. Saman is Mr. Brown. I am Mr. Blonde. Theo is Mr. White. Kyle is Mr. Pink. And Matt is Mr. Orange. Eventually we of course outgrew the majority of all that silliness. But it has always remained special to all of us. In fact, at my wedding, all the Dogs were my groomsmen and I had all the Dogs wear hankies with their designated color. This is why from time to time you may see Saman and I refer to each other with our nicknames in comments or posts.

Saman has recently informed me that a Half Life 2 Mod was created called Goldeneye Source. It is modeled off of the old Goldeneye video game. Completely updated and beautifully designed. When I found this out, I went and purchased a copy of Half Life 2 so I could play this mod. I will be posting a review about it soon along with a couple screenshots.

Here are a few funny pics of the Goldeneye Dogs as [kids] for you all to enjoy:

Goldeneye Dogs 1998
Holy Crap that was 9 years ago! I was just a punk kid working at Blockbuster
L to R: Brown, Blonde, Pink, Orange, White

Goldeneye Dogs 2000
This was taken at Saman’s goodbye party. He was leaving Colorado for California. Normally, you would think I accidentally transposed those, but for some reason Saman actually was going back to California – who does that? He wised up and came back.
L to R: Pink, Orange, White, Brown, Blonde

Goldeneye Dogs 2004
My Wedding. Brown was unable to attend but was there in spirit
L to R: White, Pink, Blonde, Orange, My Buddy Kory

The above top left logo image was designed by Saman to represent the Goldeneye Dogs. He did such an amazing job on the graphic. You may wonder why the logo has Saman with an afro. Maybe if you razz him enough on his site about it he will post a picture of the most beautiful afro ever grown.

Stephen’s link to post with same video: Save a Life. Drink a Beer.

A horribly tragic event occurred yesterday at Virginia Tech. An extremely troubled young man by the name of Cho Seung-Hui was the gunman in a very deadly shooting rampage that has left at least 33 people dead.

Events when so unbelievable like this one occur, everybody of course starts asking the WWWWH’s (When, Where, What, Why, How’s?). I’m not sure if you have also been hearing it on the radio and such, but when callers call in to talk to DJs, so many have been saying “Its because of Video Games”. We so want to be able to blame something other than the perpetrator. It is so hard for us to believe that a human being is capable of such acts so we always try to find what MADE THEM DO IT.

We have to stop this blaming behavior that goes off on obscure tangents. When you go off on a major tangent, you are losing sight of what is important. The families and loved ones of the poor victims. Your cause is no longer about supporting them, but rather a cause that is just about your cause. The simple fact is there are just some crazy people out in this world. I’m not saying some are not MADE crazy by events in their life. I’m just saying that crazy people do extremely crazy things.

I can guarantee that even if my Nintendo Wii started glowing with a heavenly Aura and God’s voice came out of it and told me to do things I felt were not right, than I would check myself into a treatment center, because I’m not crazy. If somebody did act on what they were told and had seen, but they knew them to be wrong, and still did them anyway, that is a crazy & troubled person. Playing Video Games does not set you up to be a bad person now or ever in live. If it did, could you imagine the chaos our world would be?

So please, instead, focus on the victims, their families, their loved ones, all involved. Please after reading this right here, put them in your thoughts and have a moment of silence for a short period of time and let your cause be them.

I’m so new to WordPress that I had no idea that it threw in the NOFOLLOW tag in all the comments by default. Its funny, I have read many articles about how bad this is, but never even checked my own blog site. I just never thought that would be something WordPress would have coded into by default with the Akismet plugin available by default. Its funny that they do that isn’t it? Here is a great tool to keep out SPAM – but just in case – here is the NOFOLLOW tag for that .0001% that gets through. The community on your site is far more important that that very obscure .0001%. So I have removed the NOFOLLOW tag and I would very much like to credit Saman’s post titled “Say Goodbye To The NOFOLLOW Tag At Samanathon.com!” and/or “I Follow List” for pointing this out to me.

If you are interested in getting rid of the NOFOLLOW tag, be sure to check out Saman’s post about him removing it from his site. It will give you the information and links that can make it happen for your site. Blogging is about community and sharing what you build. If you have not already removed the NOFOLLOW tag, you really should.

Today I will be writing a review about PureBlogging.com. David Culpepper of PureBlogging.com came by my site thanks to the recent John Chow post after I informed John about a problem with Brian’s Threaded Comments. When David browsed my site, he noticed that I write site reviews and requested that I write one about his site. He also mentioned that he has an excellent Blog Contest going right now where you can Win An 8GB Apple iPod Nano. I would have reviewed his site with just him asking, but still, that iPod nano is one heck of a great incentive. What a great prize offer! If you are comfortable with writing site reviews, I advise that you definitely take him up on such a great opportunity!

Okay, so lets begin the site review of PureBlogging.com.

The Good:
Wow, what a great site to obtain blogging information! Here is a couple items that I want to spotlight.

• Valid & Worthy Content – There are definitely no “fillers” on this site. Every post I read was useful and/or well researched. The writing style is exactly what you are looking for from a site directed at providing you information.
• Maximum Use of a Basic Template – Really loving it. David has really maximized the potential of his site’s “real estate”. He uses a very basic design, but everything is placed so efficiently that it all flows really well. I really like how the AdSense on this site is placed, a lot of the time you will see that it is obtrusive on most sites. That is definitely not the case with PureBlogging.com.

The Not-So-Good:
I am very impressed with PureBlogging.com. It was not easy to fill this section.

• Site Logo – although it serves its purpose, it really is unimpressive. I think on a information site you want something a lot more grabbing. Something that sticks out and will have its own associative look. Current design has elements that are too commonly used.
• Site Tag – “Make Money Online with” is being so commonly used these days. I’m not sure if this is a good angle to approach the net with so much well established competition.

Summary & Advice:
Really, please, keep doing what you are doing. Your content is great and well formed. Your site structure and setup is one that definitely makes me happy as a blog reader. I do recommend a logo redesign. If graphic design is not something you are comfortable with, many logo designing services are available. Perhaps if AdSense or anything else brings in some good income you can reward the site with a shiny new logo. “Make Money Online” is not a bad tag, just so widely used. I would go after a similar phrase that is used often in search strings and make it your own!

* My reviews are based on my own opinion of different matters. I can be very critical of some items, but that is just because I am trying to help. If you would like me to review your blog or website, now is a very good time. For a limited time I am offering my review services for free. Only requirement is that upon receiving the review, you can either review my site on yours or add me to your blog roll.

I don’t think there has ever been a better moment in MTV Movie Awards History. Was there any special moments from those awards shows that you remember?

Also, once you favorite everyone, make sure you actually click the Add to my Favorites button!!

***Start Copying Here:***

Here are the rules:

1) Write a short introduction paragraph about what how you found the list and include a link to the blog that referred you to the list.

2) COPY the Rules and ENTIRE List below and post it to your blog. To avoid duplicate content and increase the amount of keywords your site can accessible for, go ahead and change the titles of the blog. Just don’t change the links of the blog.

3) Take “My New Faves” and move them into the “The Original Faves” list.

4) Add 3 Blogs that you’ve just added to your Technorati Favorites to the “My New Faves” section. Remember to also add the “Fave Me” link next to your new blogs (i.e. http://technorati.com/faves?sub=addfavbtn&add=http://www.yourfavesdomain.com)

5) Add Everyone on this list to your Technorati Favorites List by clicking on “Fave the Site.” Those who want good kharma will fave you back. If not, you will for sure get the benefits of faves from the bloggers who continue this list after you.

My New Faves

Kelly Cho – Fave the Site
Shawn Knight – Fave the Site
Tyler Ingram – Fave the Site

The Original Faves

Bobs [ReformatThis] – Fave the Site
Everyday Weekender – Fave the Site
Armen’s Blog – Fave the Site
Gary Lee – Fave the Site
Dosh Dosh – Fave the Site
Nate Whitehill – Fave the Site
Ms. Danielle – Fave the Site
Jeff Kee – Fave the Site
Scribble on the Wall – Fave the Site
Jimi Morrisons Head – Fave the Site
Jon Lee – Fave the Site
Samanathon – Fave the Site
Eat Drink & Be Merry - Fave the Site
The Man of Silver – Fave the Site
Hannes Johnson – Fave the Site
My Dandelion Patch – Fave the Site
Nathan Drach – Fave the Site
SiteLogic – Fave the Site
Julies Journal – Fave the Site
Stephen Fung – Fave the Site
Ed Lau – Fave the Site
QMusings – Fave the Site

***End Copying Here***

So you want to know what really grinds my gears?
Most Online Return Policies for Defective Items and those Copy and Paste Emails!

I purchased a stick of memory online a few months ago. The memory stick finally got to me and sure enough, it was a bad stick. I contacted the company from which I purchased the stick from – ZipZoomFly.com – and told them about the defective product. I requested that they send me a replacement stick along with a prepaid return label so I could return the defective product back to them. A few days later I received an email from someone in that organization that was just a copy and paste of their return policy, other than that no real attempt at solving my issue. It stated that returns have to be paid for by the customer, the returned product would have to go through testing, and then they would send me the replacement after they found the memory I received to be bad. I repeated my request, after all, they sold a defective item and I was not wanting to pay shipping for an item that was defective and not my fault. It wasn’t the cost of shipping, its the principles I hold dear on business transactions. You sold me a part that was claimed to be a brand new working part, thats what I bought, thats what I want, so take this back and give me what I bought from you.

Now I know I’m spoiled normally when it comes to good service, the majority of the technical buying I do is for my employer. When products are for a business rather than an everyday consumer, vendors bend at every request most of the time. “Something wrong with that part, sure thing we will get you a new one out right away, please just return the bad part with the included shipping label”. When it comes to my employer, this is what happens about 98% of the time, you are a business and a vendor does not want to lose you. But as an everyday consumer, you will see that most Online Companies treat you like dirt when it comes to defective returns.

So long story short, I just kept getting copy and paste emails back from ZipZoomFly.com. The memory stick was a Corsair memory stick and had a lifetime warranty. I decided that if I was going to pay to ship it anywhere, it would be to Corsair. I didn’t want to have any further dealings with ZipZoomFly.com period. Corsair on the other hand was great. I received constant email updates about where in the process my new and old stick were. I think there were about 5 update emails all together that I received from them. All typed out by an actual person. Now that is service and I was very grateful for that. That brightened up an overall bad experience. Oh by the way, they confirmed that the stick was bad, so I was not making it up.

The Outcome:
I will try to buy Corsair more when I can, both at home and at work, that service experience was excellent. I will never ever buy another thing from ZipZoomFly.com again. If they come in cheapest on a pricegrabber or whatever, they are not going to get any further business from me. They had the opportunity to save my business, but copy and paste emails are not the way to save a customer.

Tyler Ingram just posted this great joke called “Magic Beer” on his website! It reminded me of an old joke that I had heard before. I always loved this joke so I figured I would share it with all of you.

Superman is flying over Metropolis keeping his eyes vigilant for anything that he may be of need. Suddenly, a naked figure laying on top of a roof in a complete spread eagle position catches his eye. He has super vision after all. Then he realized that it is his girlfriend Lois Lane! He pondered this for a short minute and decided he may swoop down there, do some super fast and fun “super-action” and swoop out. He is faster than a bullet so of course Lois wouldn’t even know he was ever there.

Suddenly – a very fast wind and loud swoosh noise catches Lois’s attention and she says “What on Earth was that?”. The Invisible Man says “I have no idea but my @$$ is killing me”.

Saman tagged me from his Obsessive Thoughts post. I kind of like these posts that spread from blog to blog, but I have to admit, figuring out 5 people to tag that have not already been tagged is going to be quite hard. Also changing mine from Saman’s is kind of hard, we have a lot in common.

1. My Family – E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G to me! I wouldn’t be the man I am today without them. I work harder and longer everyday to make a better life for my family. So you could say I obsess over everything for this biggest obssession.
2. Trying To Be Funny; Even Though I’m Not – The personality I have just tries to find humor or the light side of any given situation. I usually come up with these awful jokes that take 5 seconds to tell and 10 minutes to explain why it was funny. All good moods start with a laugh.
3. PHP – Its nice when you come by something that you understand. I have been programming PHP code for many years. I enjoy being part of the Documentation team and helping out anywhere I can to push forward the PHP movement.
4. Food; Especially Mexican Food – If it was an option, I could rotate a diet of Taco Bell and Chipotle everyday. But for health reasons and to keep the weight off, I’m usually very good about only eating at 1 of these once a month. Its always very hard to decide which one out of the two. My wife hates Mexican food so I don’t get to eat it as much as I would like (you know, 8 days a week!)
5. Blogging and Participating – This is a newer one of course, but it definitely qualifies! I love participating in all the blogging communities and doing all I can to get the community booming here. It really has become an obsession and a happy one.

Okay, choosing who to tag is kind of hard, because I know most people I participate with in the community have already been tagged and/or posted theirs.

So here is my tagging list:

• Samanathon.com’s Angry Networker – I think I’m almost doing this just to piss him off. I can’t wait to see what kind of tyrannical rant he might shoot off on this subject.
• Samanathon.com’s Derek – Derek writes some quality tech articles, lets see what he has to obsess about.
• John Chow – I could be wrong, but I don’t think anybody has tagged him yet or he has not written an article about this yet. I’m guessing one is going to be expensive meals
• Everyday Weekender – was one of the first to stop by this site. Please share with us your 5.
• Armen – always has interesting comments on the sites I read. I noticed he just recently stopped by here. Consider yourself tagged!

But I don’t just hate it for me, I really hate it for you too!
If you currently don’t have the huge header, you may still want to read this just in case you may think about it someday. I have noticed that some of the most popular wordpress themes these days come with the absolutely huge header areas. Sure, there is no argument that it looks cool, but why take up so much of your important screen space?

I was thinking about this, and I came up with what I think to be, a very good analogy. If you were a land developer, that sold land and properties to people, would you build a sign that took up half the property that you are trying to sell? That sign hides all of what you are trying to sell below it. Sure, you know people would definitely see your sign every single time they come by, no doubts there, but would they necessarily see the properties you trying to sell below it?

I personally think a header can be shrunk in height, width, or both and still be designed to look great! Just as long as it is placed right. Even if you are just extending one of your sidebars to shift your items up, I think that is a huge accomplishment. That original screen that you see which requires no scrolling is seen more than any other on your site. It is important to have content there that you want to be seen every time.

I personally have not monetized my site much as of yet, far too new. But what I have done is tried to give credit to the participants and commentators of my site. The community that is starting to form here. As you can see I have them all very high in my sidebar. Everybody who stops by here is sure to see everybody else that is participating. I like giving credit to all of them in that way.

Someday I may monetize my site even more, which is why I will always keep my header as small as possible to maximize the possibility of return and viewings.

I think Saman needs to move back to the Denver area! We should hook up a couple sheds and *BAM*, a Video Arcade!

The quality is kind of bad in the above version, for a much better version you can go see it here: High Quality Version

So John Chow has started up a new “Evil Blog Contest” in which he is giving away a brand new 30GB Microsoft Zune. Any blogger has the opportunity to enter in the contest. You just have to fill out a blog similar to this one of mine. Follow the contest link above for further details about the contest.

I have never seen the actual Microsoft Zune in person, just have read a few articles about it. The only mp3 player my Wife and I have is one I bought her years ago. Its a 512MB player, really, really sad actually. I hope I win!

John Chow is a leader in the blogging community that can help you make money on the internet and much much more. If you have never heard of him or have never been to his site, you are missing out on so much important information and tips. Visit his site today!

“Its a Schooner!”

“Ha ha ha, its not a Schooner, its a Sailboat!”

“A Schooner is a Sailboat stupid head”

“You know what! THERE IS NO EASTER _ _ _ _ _! Thats just some guy in a suit!”

Don’t ever let your kids be around Willam near the holidays when he is trying to see the hidden picture.

Sorry, for whatever reason this year when I think about the Easter Bunny, I keep thinking about the one in the great movie Mallrats. The very same Easter Bunny that gets accosted in a dangerous mall, far too dangerous to host a game show in. If you have never seen the movie Mallrats, add it to your list, its great! Basically any movie by Kevin Smith needs to be on your list, the guy is a genius.

My Daughter and I created the following Easter Creations.

Obviously this was one of those Egg Kits you can buy. But my Family and I had a great time dying these eggs and setting them up to share them all with you. Have a great Easter and may all your Easter Bunnies/Gorillas/Jaguars/Salamanders be real!

If not, you better hurry!!!

Look at that – I’m pointing to my post!

I liked this plugin so much I just had to fix it and use it!
Brian’s Threaded Comments is such a powerful tool to be used on a bloggers site. It really encourages interaction between yourself and all of your Commentators as well. In fact, on Saman’s site I was able to get into a great Haiku/Zen fight with Natron that was easily readable thanks to this plugin. I have seen the successes of it many times over on many blogs including the great Saman Sadeghi and the great John Chow.

So what on earth is my problem with this plugin? Well its really very simple, I’m a “tabber”. When I fill out a web form, I use my tab button to tab from one field to the next. I fill out my name, press tab, fill out my email, press tab, etc…. Well the problem with Brian’s Threaded Comments is once you hit tab after the Comment box, you are sent to the top of the page rather than being sent to the Add Comment Button.

Example:

The Problem:
Is actually very simple. When putting the code and output together, Brian assigned a tabindex to the four text input fields, but not the button. So your browser being the good little trooper it is follows in the tab order given, then resets back to its default for the remaining items. Your page itself is typically the first tab, when you override that, it waits its turn and than takes the soonest opportunity. Thus, that is why right now when you tab from comments hoping to be sent to the button, you get sent to the top of the page.

The Solution:
Or should I call it “a solution”. There are many ways to fix this, but perhaps the easiest way is to just assign a tabindex to the button. What you want to do is find the following line in your custom comments.php code:

<input onclick="if(typeof(onAddComment) == 'function') { onAddComment(); } else { alert('ERROR:
It looks like the website administrator hasn\'t activated the Brians Threaded Comments plugin from the plugin page'); };" name="addcommentbutton" type="button" id="addcommentbutton" value="Add comment" tabindex="5" />

Due to limited space, the above wrapped, but this will be just one line in the code (unless your coded editor wraps text). The location of it will most likely be different for everyone as we have all added custom code for avatars and such, but for me, this was at line 203. So my guess is it is in that general neighborhood for you too. As you can see by the code example above, I just added tabindex="5" at the very end. That fixed the tab order issue and now all the “tabbers” like me will love posting on your site again!

*Update – Turns out I was not the only one who was annoyed by this error. Ryan J Parker had also written a post about it too, it can be found here: Fixing the Tab Index with Brian’s Threaded Comments

I think one of the first things you will see about MsDanielle.com is that it is more than Just another ego blog site. She has decided to start a Back Link Promotion involving blogger reviews of her site. I know Danielle is very active in the blogging community and I am happy to review her site. Blogging and Site reviews is something that I feel may be a great strong point of this site in the future, after all, I’m honest.

The Good:
Her site has a great appearance to it. All the colors mix well and basically bring you into this “Danielle World” that you can only associate with her. I can’t recall any other blogs that look similar to hers so her design and colors really do stick out on their own. Her posts are mainly focused on marketing blog tips, but she does not just stick to that. She expands into many topics but it all does flow great together. There are a couple posts of hers that I wanted to pull attention to. If you have never been to her site before, these are a couple that I have enjoyed immensely: Google Operators: What Are They and Why Do I Care? & Is There Such a Thing as Blog Ethics?.

The Not-So-Good:
Site Navigation:
This is something I am just picky about. Once I open an individual post, I really like to go straight from one post to the next or previous without having to go back to the main page. To me, having the next and previous links is something so basic that all blogs should just have. It makes it easier for the “active commentators” of your site to comment more.
Header:
“Thats a huge header!” It really looks great, I like the design of it and everything, but combining the image together with the rest of your header content and its easy to see that you are taking up around 40-50% of your opening screen space (on a standard 1024/768) with just the title of your page. Opening screen space is something very important. You want to be able to show a lot more content here to the reader as they will see this quite a bit before they scroll. Remember, the header area is the one thing you can guarantee they will see on every page load. However you have no idea if they will scroll the full length of your page. This space being used could be showing more props to your commentators or perhaps have more monetization without requiring scrolling.

Summary & Advice:
I think the layout, colors, and content of your site mixed into this wonderful recipe and became what it is! I honest can’t find a lot wrong with your site, its great! I would really throw in the navigational links, it really helps people comment more when they can jump directly to the next post. And I would also work on shrinking down the header, even if it was just width so that your sidebar could run longer. And finally, as your sites content goes, well, you have another RSS Subscriber and his name is – me

* My reviews are based on my own opinion of different matters. I can be very critical of some items, but that is just because I am trying to help. If you would like me to review your blog or website, please comment below. I am trying to get my feet wet on technical reviews and I am willing to review yours for free. Only requirement is that upon receiving the review, you can either review my site on yours or add me to your blog roll.