Fasting is the willful act of abstaining from some or all food, drink, or both. Various dictionaries and encyclopedias describe it a little differently, but that's what it boils down to. The length of time for fasting depends entirely on the purpose for fasting or the intended results.

The English word "breakfast", meaning the first meal of the day, actually means to "break" the "fast" caused by sleep. Many people associate it with the morning meal, but a true breakfast can occur at any time of the day and depends on the sleep habits of each individual.

Religious and Spiritual Fasting

Since the dawn of mankind, people have been fasting for religious and spiritual reasons. When fasting for these reasons, it's usually accompanied by prayer. Religious and spiritual fasting can last for periods of up to 40 days.

Religious and spiritual fasting is the type of fasting most people associate the term with, but fasting is accomplished for other reasons as well.

Diet and Weight Loss

Modern research suggests that fasting is a viable alternative to reducing caloric intake. Studies on mice show that fasting for a day between two days of normal consumption is more effective than attempting to control what's consumed.

Clinical trials with humans confirm that fasting in this manner can lead to improved insulin and blood sugar levels, as well as numerous other health benefits.

Medical Fasting

Medical fasting is a 20th century method of setting a baseline for medical tests that need to be performed during or prior to a patient examination. These fasting periods can last from 8 to 24 hours.

Food is normally restricted for medical fasting, with liquids being constrained to water, unsweetened black coffee and unsweetened tea. Particular tests may require additional or different restrictions.

Other Health Benefits

Research suggests that the benefits of fasting can result in resistance to injury, prolonged lifespan, reduced risk of cancer, stress resistance and (of course) weight loss. Some research suggests that some diseases can actually be cured by water fasting.

Fasting should never be attempted by an individual who isn't eating nourishing foods on a daily basis. Doing so can actually cause health problems instead of benefits. As with any lifestyle change, fasting should start out with short periods of time and gradually increase to longer periods.

If you have any special health needs, consult a doctor before starting any regular fasting regimen.

Testimonials

An amazing story of fasting for other than religious and spiritual reasons is provided by Bernarr MacFadden. You can read his story of "A Seven-Day Fast. An Experience Of One Of The Authors".

You may also want to consider reading "Jim's Story: From Near-Death to Amazing Health in One Week". If the story is based on facts, it truly is an amazing story.

I have completed periods of 24-hour fasting many times myself, but I've never experienced any significant physiological changes. Of course, I don't have any unusual medical conditions that may or may not benefit from it. Well, I have one. I seriously doubt that fasting would have any beneficial effect on it, but I'm willing to give it a try.

As soon as I'm prepared, I'll be starting on 7 single-day fasts leading up to a single 7-day fast. I'm doing is as a test of theories and to prove people either wrong or right. Do you think I'll be successful? Do you think I'll suffer any ill effects? I certainly hope not.

It may not be discussed as openly as it was perhaps a year ago, but piracy in regards to downloading is still a hot topic. How do I know it when I'm not seeing new articles about it splashed across the different news sites? It's quite simple. The search history of my analytics service shows it to me every single day.

Search Terms

The most frequently used search term that hits my blog is "shaved pussy", a social experiment I started in February of last year. It's totally harmless and the searchers should know what they're going to get from the optimized title ("Shaved Pussy | Just Cats | LOL") that appears in the search engine results. Of course, it's now getting searched for "lolcats" as well, but I'm not complaining.

All digressing aside, the number 2 search term is actually a combination of terms that leads to my "Downloading Pirated Anything Is NOT Illegal" article, my zombie post from hell.

Just to give you an idea of how prevalent this is, here is a sample of the hundreds of searches done within the last 3 days:

1. download movie illegal upload
2. downloading from torrents is piracy
3. downloading illegal
4. downloading is not illegal
5. downloading pirated music is the same as stealing from a retail shop
6. downloading pirated videos
7. fines for downloading pirated movies
8. games download torrent legal piracy or pirated
9. how do authorities know about pirated music?
10. how do they prove you download illegal movies
11. illegal downloading
12. illegal pirated films
13. is downloading illegal if you own the cd
14. law for downloading pirated movies
15. make a copy of a pirated movie and pass the customs
16. not illegal to download movies…
17. penalty for downloading pirated material
18. penalty for downloading pirated videos
19. pirated dvd without downloading it
20. public domain torrent search
21. public domain torrents
22. torrent searches
23. why it is downloading illegal

There are a lot of misguided people out there and it's no wonder. The United States copyright laws have been changed many times to suit the entertainment industries, with other laws thrown in to confuse them even further.

IP Blocking

If you're in a country that doesn't follow the copyright laws of the United States, don't worry about it. If you're in a country where they do, but they don't enforce it (like here in the Philippines), don't worry about it. If you live in one of the other countries, including the United States, you don't need Big Brother spying on you. Protect yourself with software that's designed strictly to keep the "authorities" away from your IP address. If you use Windows, I recommend the Blocklist Manager from B.I.S.S. - Bluetack Internet Security Solutions be installed for use with whatever BitTorrent software you're using.

Even if you're downloading files that aren't pirated, like open source software, you still don't need people spying on you. Keeping people from spying on your IP address is a basic security measure that everyone should employ. I'm willing to wager that if everyone used one, the scourge of spam and viruses would decrease tremendously.

Torrent Sources

I'm probably going to get rapped in the teeth for this, but there are some good torrent sites where you can get the music, movies, and even television episodes you want without worrying too much about viruses or spyware. They are, in no special order:

• Super Fundo — Movies
• EZTV — Television
• The Pirate Bay — Miscellaneous
• Public Domain Torrents — Legal (and old) movies, which I previously mentioned with "Public Domain Torrents".

I'm sure there are more, but I'm not actively looking for any. I'm not going to condone downloading anything you think is pirated, but I'm not your mother and I'm not Big Brother. You do what you think is right.

The Answers

I hope I've already answered, indirectly, numbers 9 and 10. I can't answer the rest. The laws are too convoluted for me to interpret and have been interpreted differently by judges in different jurisdictions. If the legal system can't get it right, how do I even stand a chance?

I'm a little slow on the uptake today. While going through a website for a review on my Blog & Article Reviews blog, I remembered that this PC needed to be updated with service pack 3 for Windows XP.

I stopped what I was doing, closed all my open windows and proceeded with the update. Well, at least I tried to do the update. Before I could, Windows Update forced me to upgrade to Microsoft Update (because of my Office software, I suppose) which took well over an hour. Then another hour passed while service pack 3 was downloading and another half of an hour waiting for the installation to be completed.

Even if I'm offered the ultimate Windows Vista edition at a dirt cheap price, would someone please remind me to never buy Windows again?

Yes, I have ended my ongoing comments contest. To be honest, my heart was no longer in it. I skipped a week, planning to combine them into one award, and I still didn't have any desire to do it again.

It has nothing to do with the number of comments. Hari of Hari's Corner and Sandee of Comedy Plus are almost daily visitors. Other people like Ray of Place of Stuff and Steve of Asian Ramblings visit a few times a week. There's a long list of people who visit once or twice per week, once every couple of weeks and even once a month. The list would be unmanageable if I tried to list to them all.

The point I'm trying to make is that the comments contest was not having any real effect on the number of people commenting. Most, if not all, of the visitors would have commented regardless of the contest. Anyway, the Comment Royalty page is retired but still accessible in the right sidebar (at least it's over there for now — I could move it later on).

I won't continue doing anything on a regular basis when it doesn't interest me. If it doesn't interest me, how could it interest any of my readers? Consider the comments contest yet another blog casualty.

Why would you want to rewrite and republish an old article? When should you or shouldn't you do it? Can you do a rewrite without republishing? Before I get into the answers to the questions, a little background is in order.

In November of 2007, I recommended you should rewrite, republish and redirect old blog posts. Then in January, I recommended you should expand and expound while rewriting those old posts. A couple of days later, I recommended that you stay focused on specific topics in each post. Each recommendation was designed to get more and better traffic to your new posts.

Since I wrote those, my own search traffic has doubled. Using some more techniques, such as link clustering and controlling meta information, I expect my search traffic to double again in another month or less.

When should you rewrite and republish an article?

There are a few indicators that can tell you when an old post isn't doing too well. It could be positioned very far from the top 10 in the search engine results pages (SERPS) for the main search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN, or not at all. It could have 0 or very few comments (I would consider anything less than 3 as very few). Perhaps no one is linking to it, including you with your own internal links.

I'm pretty sure the search engines index newer posts more often than the older ones. If your old post is past a certain age, and depending on how many posts your blog contains at the time, you would probably be much better off rewriting and republishing rather than just rewriting. I'm using a year as my cutoff date because I have an average (right now) of 100 posts per month.

When should you rewrite but not republish?

If an article is only a month old, for example, a rewrite probably wouldn't require much effort. It usually only means minor editing to include more keywords or rewording a sentence or two. In my opinion, you wouldn't want to republish anything that's fairly new.

Again, it boils down to the age of the post, but there's another factor to be considered. Usually, the more often you write, the more the quality of your writing improves. That's not always the case, but it seems to be the rule and not the exception.

Questions you have to ask yourself.

Before you attempt to rewrite an article, whether you're going to republish it or not, you have to ask yourself some hard questions:

• Could I have written it better?
• Have my writing abilities improved enough to make a difference?
• Did I leave something out, intentionally or unintentionally?
• Is the topic worth revisiting?
• Can I rewrite it without making it look like a rewrite?
• Can I handle it if the rewrite ranks as poorly as the original?

Those are the questions I ask myself each time I do it. I've done it several times and I'm pretty sure you can't guess which articles are which.

The Art of the Rewrite?

Writing is an art form. In my opinion, rewriting is more of an art form. Which is more difficult, writing or rewriting? The answer is probably as simple as the fact that I see very few people rewriting anything, even when it's warranted by updated references.

Have you considered rewriting or rewriting and republishing your old blog articles? If not, why not?

I believe in the power of mind over matter. I don't mind and you don't matter. Well, some of you anyway.

I'm 47-years old and I'm still learning. I'll still be learning if I live to be 107-years old. My brain is like a sponge; a not quite worn out sponge, but a sponge nonetheless. I'm also teaching. I'm passing my knowledge on to family, relatives, friends and anyone who takes the time to read or listen. I'm not a genius and I'm not infallible, but I am unique. I am a legend in my own mind.

What is it that I don't mind?

I don't mind if you don't read my blog. I write a lot of useless nonsense. Really, I do. In between all of the articles of useless tripe, however, you'll find nuggets of gold. I have knowledge and wisdom you won't find anywhere else and it comes with age and experience. If you're reading blogs written by young people, the knowledge and wisdom coming from their blogs is more than likely coming from people like me. They're just very good at copying plagiarizing using the knowledge and wisdom in a way that doesn't make it look like it's coming from someone else, someone older, wiser and more knowledgeable.

I don't mind if you learn absolutely nothing from my blog. What good does it do for you to read my blog when you don't learn anything from what you've read? You have to practice the things you're reading about or what you've read isn't learned. Knowledge is gained through usage, practice and repetition.

I don't mind if you don't take advantage of things I'm offering for absolutely nothing in return. You're wiser than I am. You know there's nothing free in life so I can't possibly be offering you anything without strings attached, right? Wrong!

Why don't you matter?

You don't matter if you're not learning. Continuous learning is the only way to succeed in life.

You don't matter if you're not using what you've learned. The old saying (over 400-years old) that practice makes perfects is 100 percent true.

You don't matter if you're not teaching others what you've learned. Education is a continuous cycle. If you break the cycle, you're not doing your part for humanity.

No Strings Attached

There are several things I offer free-of-charge. Each item is valuable in one way or another:

• Blog & Article Reviews.
• A Simple and Fun Twitter Contest. See "Terminator: The UV Chronicles" as an example.
• Digging and stumbling on request — requests by email, the StumbleUpon toolbar and even Twitter.
• One-on-one email assistance — about almost any subject you can think of.

The most valuable thing I offer is my time. You can't put a price tag on it and it's irreplaceable. You need to take advantage of all that I offer while you still can because we won't live forever. Well, at least YOU won't.

As evidenced by some of my post titles and blog content, I have an affinity for zombies. Posting about zombies is one thing, but what about a post that keeps coming back from the dead, just like a zombie?

The Zombie Post On Piracy

In March of 2007, I wrote "Downloading Pirated Anything Is NOT Illegal", the article that started it all. It was nothing more than a rant (even if it didn't appear that way), one of my many random articles about something I'd done some research on. HMTKSteve of Ramblings from the Marginalized, another blogger who was contending with the entrenched members of Plime, submitted it to Digg and all hell broke loose on the crappy web host I had at the time. I followed it up with a followup to the previous article in a futile attempt at slowing down the "diggers". More than 11,000 diggers viewed the first article in less than 24 hours.

A few days later, I wrote about the almost universal hatred of the RIAA and American copyright laws in response to a comment from the first article. I left the subject alone from then on.

Four months later, I wrote about another banner day due to getting stumbled for the first article. It was stumbled more than 4,000 times. Another month later, it got stumbled again, bringing in more than 400 stumblers before I stopped looking at the count.

A stumble stampede started again today. More than 500 (and I refuse to keep looking) have stumbled it so far and it's still ongoing.

Like any good zombie, the post simply will not die and stay dead. It has a PageRank of 4 and is high in the SERPS, so I don't think it's ever going to die unless I do something stupid like deleting it.

Some Zombies Are Cool

In February of 2007, I asked "Is your PC a zombie?" and explained some simple measures to stop it from being one. Just last month, I published a zombie work of art and a music video for "Zombie - The Cranberries" over at VideoTyme.

The zombie post from hell isn't that cool, okay, but my blog wouldn't be in the position it's in today had I not written it.

Time may change me,
But I can’t trace time.
…Changes

Over the last 24 hours, I've made some changes. I've made changes both because of something I discovered and because Google changed AdSense for search.

The Discovery

I entered site:http://www.untwistedvortex.com/ in my Google search bar and found the beginnings of many of my posts were indexed with the date at the very beginning of the excerpt used for the description. The date of a post is worthless, in my eyes, as part of a search description.

As I've made plainly clear by mentioning HeadSpace a few times, I'm changing descriptions of particular posts when I find they don't convey what I intended.

AdSense For Search

The old clunky, sidebar-consuming Google search box has been replaced by a new form. Google AdSense for search is now powered by their Custom Search Engines (CSE). I'm not sure what kind of effect it will have because it still works pretty much the same as it did.

Visible Changes

Let's start with the header. The vortex, logo, and Google search forms are now spaced and centered correctly. It was impossible to do with the previous Google search form, pushing the logo over by a few pixels to the left. The vortex not being centered on the left sidebar was my fault and I fixed it at the same time.

The date and time bar above every post is gone. So is the author byline below every post title. The date and author are now included in the meta information at the bottom of the posts. I didn't bother with the time. Okay, so now that information shouldn't show up in any search descriptions after they're re-indexed.

I'll be making more changes, but I probably won't be mentioning them. Oops! I forgot to mention I removed the tagline above the navigation bar. I actually did that a few days ago to see if anyone would notice and nobody mentioned it. I have to assume it wasn't noticed, so it wasn't important.

I'm attempting to make things more pleasant to look at, especially for me since I spend the most time looking at my blog. If you see anything you think I should change, don't be afraid to pipe up and tell me.

Under The Hood

Ripping out useless code, unused plugins, and plugins superseded by something else along with installing new plugins and writing custom code is really time consuming. Besides running errands for my wife (it's a really long story that I don't want to get into right now), I've spent every waking hour since my previous post doing all of those things, for all 3 blogs!

In the process, I've learned a few things I can and can't do with WordPress. I had to turn off caching until I figure a few things out.

The Kentucky Derby is not only a sports event, it's big business. It involves horses, jockeys, trainers, owners, television networks, Internet websites and videos, gamblers and consumers. The latest race occurred on May 3, 2008. Stay tuned until the end and I'll tell you why I'm writing about this. If you don't care for the sport, feel free to skip straight to the end.

Horse Racing in General

I don't know what fascinates people about horse racing, although it's obvious that gambling has been intertwined with horse racing for a long, long time. Horse racing dates back to the chariot races of the Roman Empire, well over 1,000 years ago. In America, it predates the establishment of the United States, dating back to 1665.

I'm not a gambler in any way. I don't even play cards for fun. I'll never understand gamblers just like I'll never understand horse racing, dog racing or anything like that.

What is the "Kentucky Derby" exactly?

From the Wikipedia article on Kentucky Derby:

The Kentucky Derby is a Grade I stakes race for three-year-old thoroughbred horses, held annually in Louisville, Kentucky, on the first Saturday in May, capping the two-week-long Kentucky Derby Festival. The race is one and a quarter miles (2 km) at Churchill Downs. Colts and geldings carry 126 pounds (57.2 kg) and fillies 121 pounds (54.9 kg).[1] The race is known in the United States as "The Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports" for its approximate duration, and is also called "The Run for the Roses" for the blanket of roses draped over the winner. It is the first leg of the Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing in the US and typically draws around 155,000 fans.

The 2008 Kentucky Derby Winners

1st Place: Big Brown
Post Position: 20
Time: 2:01.82
Odds: 5-2

2nd Place: Eight Belles — Runner-up Eight Belles breaks front ankles, euthanized on track
Post Position: 5
Time: 04 3⁄4 Behind #1
Odds: 12-1

3rd Place: Denis of Cork
Post Position: 16
Time: 08 1⁄4 Behind #1
Odds: 26-1

The 2008 Kentucky Derby Coverage

Official Website: Kentucky Derby 134
Video: The Official Website and YouTube
Television: NBC

Why did I write this?

I don't normally write about anything sports-related, so why did I do it this time? I want to show you that you can increase your website and search engine traffic with current events topics as well as answering the question, "What are they searching for?".

I answered the question for myself by looking through the Google Hot Trends for the last 10 days. At least 5 percent of the searches were related to the Kentucky Derby, the Kentucky Oaks, the names of the horses and even the state of Kentucky. You may not consider 5 percent a whole lot, but rarely do any of the search topics even reach that amount. Even rarer is when they reach the top 10. A lot of these did.

What am I looking for when I write an article like this, social traffic or search engine traffic? It should be obvious that I'm looking for search engine traffic. What may not be so obvious is that I'm not really looking for search traffic from what has already transpired. The Kentucky Derby will take place again next year. I'm willing to be that I'll get boatloads of traffic for two weeks prior to the 2009 Kentucky Derby. Blogging success includes long-term goals like this.

I'm breaking my self-imposed rule of one post per day, as I wrote about in "Producing Quality Versus Quantity", because I still want to capitalize on as much as the residual search activity as possible. Google indexes my blog nearly every day and I'm crossing my fingers that this article will show up in the SERPS within 24 hours.

Here are some more blogs with articles about the Kentucky Derby for 2008:

• Eight Bells euthanized on the track
• PETA AND THE KENTUCKY DERBY
• Kentucky Derby overshadowed by death of horse
• Experiencing the Kentucky Derby Infield
• PETA shows up at Kentucky Derby. Tries to have Jockey Suspended
• THE KENTUCKY DERBY WAS… BLAM!

(Image source: IT'S POST TIME!)

If you use any type of analytics service or application, such as Google Analytics, Clicky or Mint, you can see what's being searched for on your own website. How do you know what people are searching for when they're not hitting your website? What if you could tap into one or more resources to increase your search hits? Google offers two resources, one requiring nothing but your eyes and the other requiring you to have a free account.

Google Hot Trends

This isn't a secret, but a lot of people seem to be ignoring it. Google Hot Trends has been providing the top 100 search queries per day since May 22, 2007 — nearly a year's worth of data. How do you put this data to use?

Since the top 100 search queries change dramatically from day to day, the best way to use it is to look for repetitive terms across a short time period. I use 10 days, starting with yesterday. I leave today's data alone because it's not complete until midnight, in the United States Pacific time zone. Why 10 days? I don't know. I could use 5 or 7, but I like to round things to the nearest 10.

Google Webmaster Tools

You have to have a Google account to use this one. When you first arrive at the Google Webmaster Tools, you're sitting at the dashboard where all of your domain URLs are listed. Click on the URL you want to work with and you should arrive at the overview. Unless you're site is really new, or hasn't been indexed yet, you should see a link to "Top search queries".

When viewing the top search queries, you should be looking for the items in the left column that aren't resulting in clicks, which would show up in the right column. Straight from the horse's mouth:

If a relevant search query appears in the first list, but not in the second, you should work on making your site more compelling to users so that they click it when it appears in search results. Your page title appears in the results, so make sure it's relevant and accurate. Google can take the text in your pages' meta descriptions and display it in search results, so review your meta descriptions to make sure that they contain useful descriptions of your pages' contents.

Putting The Data To Good Use

You can use Google Hot Trends to not only get ideas on what to write about that may potentially draw a lot of search traffic, but you can use the terms as add-on terms for your existing content.

The top search queries from Google Webmaster Tools can identify where your search queries are strong, but where the results don't contain the descriptions to entice a click.

You need to be able to edit your HTML titles, your meta tags and your meta descriptions. For WordPress users, my previous article about HeadSpace hints on how to do it. For non-WordPress users, you'll need to learn how to do it with your current CMS, blogging, or static site platform.

Normally, the title tag will match the post, article or page title. If you do something as simple as adding extra terms to it, without overdoing it, you can increase your search exposure dramatically. Here's an example:

I have a post with a post title of "Economic Stimulus Payments for Social Security Recipients". I noticed in Google Hot Trends that people were searching for different combinations of "IRS", "tax" and "rebate". I added " | IRS Tax Rebates" to the end of the HTML title. The "|" is a separator that the search engines ignore. The HTML title for Economic Stimulus Payments for Social Security Recipients now looks like "Economic Stimulus Payments for Social Security Recipients | IRS Tax Rebate" and that's what appears at the top of the browser.

Google isn't keeping any secrets about how it gets the data it displays. If the first 100 characters of your post or article don't provide sufficient information, Google will look at your meta description and meta tags. All search engines behave differently, but Google has over 50 percent of the search market, so it makes sense to make your site Google-friendly.

I haven't begun to scratch the surface as far as how to use tools like these to your advantage, but I hope I've provided enough information to set you on the right path.

Those of you who know me, know I wouldn't recommend a WordPress plugin that isn't worth using. HeadSpace is not only worth using, it's worth using immediately.

What exactly is HeadSpace?

From the plugin page: HeadSpace is a powerful all-in-one plugin to manage meta-data and handle a wide range of SEO tasks. With it you can tag your posts, create custom titles and descriptions that improve your page ranking, change the theme or run disabled plugins on specific pages, and a whole lot more.

I've been working with this plugin for the last hour or so. It does everything John (the author) says it does. It's an incredible plugin! Previously, I was using the Add-Meta-Tags WordPress Plugin, but it was limited to meta tags and descriptions and didn't offer per post or per page customizations. I'm very happy I found HeadSpace.

Why use HeadSpace?

The primary reason is so that you don't have to edit your theme files all the time. Another reason is that you have all of the information you need to change everything in two places: The "Settings/HeadSpace" and the "Manage/Meta-data" administration panels. The "Settings/HeadSpace" panel is for the initial setup and additional modules. The "Manage/Meta-data" panel is the override for the defaults, and it's pretty sweet.

Courtney Tuttle, of Court's Internet Marketing School wrote a guest post over at ProBlogger called 10 Ways to Improve Blog Traffic in 30 Minutes or Less. One of the 10 ways is optimizing the HTML title ("<title>your post title</title>"). The "Manage/Meta-data" panel lets you do it easily.

Features I especially like.

• Global Settings. You can use the special tags shown to customize the page titles, descriptions and tags/keywords. These can be overridden independently with the "Manage/Meta-tags" panel. If you're properly categorizing and tagging your posts, %%category%%,%%tag%% will use them all as meta keywords.
• Site Modules. I wish there were even more! I'm using the "Google Section Targeting" already and exploring others. Perhaps I'll create some new modules for myself.
• Manage/Meta-data panel. It's a very easy interface to work with.

I'm sure I'll find more features that I like as I go through every option.

The final verdict.

I know for a fact that my search engine traffic has been abysmal considering how many posts I've written (around 1200). I attribute part of that due to poor SEO optimization of post titles, meta descriptions, and meta tags. It's going to take me a while, but I'm going to change all that and this plugin will help me do it easier than several other plugins combined.

So… I have only one question for you and it's a two-parter. Are you using HeadSpace? If not, why not?

I was sitting on a curb, drinking my morning coffee about a hundred meters down the hill from my house when an electrically-charged, transparent orb appeared in the middle of the street. As it faded away, a naked man appeared who looked suspiciously like Arnold Schwarzenegger. I was shocked when I saw him punch the lights out of nearby Filipino, just to take his clothing from him. I'll bet you didn't know there were Filipinos as large as Arnold. Well, there are.

Wishing to avoid trouble, I stood and started walking up the hill toward my home. The person who looked like Arnold yelled out for me to stop. I stopped. He looked at me and asked me if my name was "RT". I said it was. Wow! He sure sounded like Arnold. He then said, "I am from the future. I have been sent here to give you a warning." Remembering all of the Terminator movies as well as the TV series, I replied, "I think you're in the wrong place and looking for the wrong person. I mean, you're a Terminator, right?" He replied, "No, I am a Bloginator. I am a cybernetic blogger hand-picked for this mission." Terminator, Governator and now Bloginator? What the heck? I need to get out more.

"I'm curious. What exactly does the future look like?"
"I am from 2012 and it looks almost exactly like 2008. The global economy doesn't get any better and more people than ever are out of work."

"Okay, so what's the warning?"
"You must upgrade your WordPress software to version 2.5.1 immediately. You must upgrade or die!"
"But I already did!"
"Really?"
"Yes."

"Damn it! Someone is playing Google tricks at the Bloginator facility again. Our alternate timeline search results showed you failed to upgrade your software, remained a nobody, and then died of boredom. I was sent back to ensure you completed the upgrade so that you could continue on your path as a successful and outstanding blogger and change the course of events in 2011, altering our own timeline for the good of all mankind. I must return to 2012 and find out what really went wrong."

Timelines confuse me. Quite frankly, I was just glad I wasn't going to die soon. As a new, transparent orb started to appear around the Bloginator, he asked, "Why do we blog?" "For many reasons" was my answer. Just before he disappeared, he told me he was designed to develop market insight but would like to be programmed for more. After he was gone, a pile of clothing was all that remained on the street.

I don't know quite what to make of that encounter, but at least the Filipino dude got his clothing back.

* * * * * * *

This is first time I've linked out to other blogs using a short, fictional story. Only a few of the outbound links came from my ongoing simple and fun Twitter contest. Okay, I know it's lame, but I hope you enjoyed it enough to consider participating in the contest so that the next one will be better.

The "UV" in the post title is short for Untwisted Vortex, just in case you didn't figure that part out.

As many of you have probably noticed, I've been writing practically nonstop (except for unusual circumstances) for well over a year. The problem I'm having with it now is that I can't expand into other areas if I spend all my time writing for this one blog. I can't even keep up with my other blogs. There's just too much real world stuff going on.

I'm attempting to write articles in advance. I'm working towards having 7 or more articles in the queue at all times so that I can budget my time more wisely. Back in January, I wrote that the road to success is paved with stones of failure and put forth my intended goals.

I have yet to reach any of my goals and I don't believe reaching them will happen any time soon.

Niche Blogs

I managed to start my Blog & Article Reviews blog, yet I'm having difficulty keeping up with it. Another blog I started months ago, VideoTyme, is suffering as well. Soon I'll be launching yet another blog, this time specifically for humor. I won't give the title away yet, but Matt of Wild Bluff Media unwittingly suggested it to me. Unfortunately, this new blog will require time, at least until it's beefed up.

My goal of launching a series of niche blogs hasn't even started and probably won't start until my wife returns from the United States. The primary reason is my lack of time, time that's required to research the appropriate topics. It doesn't do any good launching a blog on basket weaving, for example, if there isn't a market for it. The point is that I've failed to start on this goal.

Website Traffic

I'm getting some good feedback from many sources, but my website traffic hasn't been increasing. My search traffic numbers are up, but my social traffic numbers are down. I'm not really concerned with increasing the social traffic numbers, but I am with the search traffic numbers.

Increased search traffic numbers are required in order for me to meet my monetary goal. Until I can get the niche blogs going, I'm afraid I'm stuck with the numbers I have for the time being. The blogs I have in place now will never draw the traffic numbers I need to be seeing.

My Monetary Goal

One of my goals is to earn a specific monthly amount by the beginning of 2011. I want to reach that goal, without it being noticed, in order to be in a position where I can make the most effective use of the money behind the scenes. The bar I've set for myself is high but I think I'll eventually reach it.

Again, I'll never begin to reach my monetary goal until I can get some niche blogs going. Earning good money requires a lot of website traffic.

How Do You Define Success?

Some of you newer bloggers would already consider me successful in many ways. I get an average of 300 unique visitors per day and an average of 500 page views per day. Many of you are stuck at 50 unique visitors and 50 page views per day and think 300/500 is a lot. I assure you it isn't.

I won't consider any blog of mine a success until I'm getting 10 times that amount of traffic on any individual blog. Even then, I won't consider it a success unless it's reaching my monetary goal.

Some of you seasoned bloggers who are already getting the ridiculous traffic numbers are probably laughing right about now, but I have one simple question to ask of anyone reading this: How do you define success with your blog (or blogs if you have more than one)?

God only knows, God makes his plan.
The information's unavailable to the mortal man.
…Slip Slidin' Away

About a year ago, I mentioned how I was giving until it hurts by supporting one brother-in-law and his family here in the Philippines. Soon after that, I started supporting ANOTHER brother-in-law and his family. Charity never ends.

Just this week, my wife decided to help her cousin and her cousin's husband by buying them a house. Che and Gani will be responsible for making the house payments. Now that I have all the details from my wife and the realtor, I realize she didn't make a bad decision. After you read what I have to say about it, please continue to read and see what I have to say about another person who needs some help.

Their Problem

Che and Gani have extremely bad credit. While I don't know all the details, I know they can't even get a credit card. Despite the fact that Che's income alone is more than me and my wife's combined income, they can't qualify to buy a house.

While I was staying with them back in March, I found out the bank was foreclosing on the house they were renting. I seem to remember the foreclosure was to be completed around May 20th. Why they waited until almost the last minute to do anything about it is beyond me.

Our Housing History

The house that I and Josie sold in 2006 was the first house we owned. We lived in it for almost 12 years. When we sold it, we paid off everything and still ended up with over $100,000 in profit due to the inflated housing boom. My wife says I'm a genius because I foresaw the housing slump, and the economy downturn as a result of it, and made the decision to sell when we did.

Because of my foresight, we now own our house in the Philippines and are making no payments of any kind. Even though our combined income is low, in my opinion, we qualify for a house up to $140,000 in Phoenix. A house that two years ago probably sold for over $200,000.

The House

The paperwork for the house is at the title company and they're waiting for a $1,000 whatever payment. There's no down payment required because the house is being bought from another foreclosure. Josie will be making the payment this coming Monday.

The title company has to mail me a power of attorney, via FedEx, which I have to sign in front of a notary recognized by the United States and send it back to them. It looks like I'll be making a round-trip to Manila pretty soon. Once the sale is complete, Josie will get the $1,000 back from the title company.

I don't know where the house is, what it looks like, or any of the details. Do you want to know something? I don't even care.

Besides the money required for the FedEx mailings, the round-trip to Manila and the notary fee, there isn't any real risk. If Che and Gani fail to make the monthly payments, and the house goes into foreclosure, that small amount of money is the only thing we'll really lose in the process. Josie and I have no intention of owning property in the United States again, so the massive black mark of credit caused by a foreclosure doesn't bother us in the least.

Another Blogger In Need

Charitable acts for family and relatives are all well and good, but I'm always looking outwards to people who are strangers to me. I recently found that Lisa of "Got No Dough" is in serious need of help.

Their 1991 Nissan pickup truck was stolen about a week ago, with her husband's guitar inside. The guitar was her husband's means of income because he's a music instructor. When Lisa wrote that she needed a miracle, I suggested she put up a PayPal donation button and a Scratchback widget. She did and then wrote about her attempt at making a miracle happen. I was, of course, the first person to test both of them out.

I submitted her latest post to BloggingZoom, Digg and I stumbled it. Here's hoping it does some good!

Dealing with life in general can be frustrating in itself. Dealing with someone else's life can be even more frustrating. I and my wife are extremely close, more so than the average couple in my opinion. Despite our language differences, and I won't get into that right now, we've had no serious relationship problems in almost 25 years (more than 23 of that as a married couple). Still, the events of the last few years have been taxing on both of us.

I'd like to give you a rundown of these events so that you can see where I'm coming from. This will probably end up being one of my longest posts.

Prior to moving from the United States to the Philippines in 2006.

My wife suffered from and was hospitalized when she was a pre-teen for bronchitis. She spent nearly 6 months in the hospital. Even though the bronchitis didn't bother her after that, she suffered from chest pains through adulthood and still does on occasion. After I had her examined thoroughly (and I don't remember when), we found out the pain was caused by inflammation of the sternum. Taking ibuprofen seemed to alleviate the pain and reduce the inflammation.

Sometime in 2003 or 2004, my wife started complaining of a numbing pain in various parts of the left side of her body. After numerous doctor visits, the cause of the pain was never discovered. At the same time, my wife was being seen for left breast pain. The doctors she saw told her it was due to fibrous tissue and had her taking ibuprofen as well as Evening Primrose oil to help alleviate the pain. I can't tell you how many mammograms and sonograms she endured during a period of at least 3 years. In hindsight, I'd say that most of the doctors she saw were either quacks or they just didn't care about anything except the money.

My wife loves fried fish, including the head, as do nearly all Filipinos (there are some rare exceptions). In 2005, she had small fish bone get stuck in her left tonsil. With my help, she managed to get it out and the tonsil only bothered her for a couple of days. Of course, that was the FIRST time.

Just prior to us leaving the United States, one of the doctors she saw was a neuro-something specialist and he told her that after all the tests she'd had, it was determined that she had arthritis in her neck. There was nothing she could do about it except to continue taking anti-inflammatory medicines and in extreme cases, surgery.

In the Philippines from April 2006 to May of 2007.

My wife continued to suffer the left breast pain and the numbing pain symptoms in the left part of her body. Sometime in 2006, she got another fish bone (a rather LARGE fish bone) stuck in her left tonsil and managed to get it out, or so she thought. There was a small hole visible in the flesh of the tonsil. In the early part of 2007, she went to see a local doctor about it. He prescribed antibiotics without even looking at the tonsil. She was justifiably upset about that and we talked about her heading back to the United States to have a better doctor take a look at it.

When I announced that my wife was leaving me in May of 2007, I purposely didn't mention her health problems. I considered things like that to be personal and not really something to publicize to the whole world. I had my own health ordeal to contend with the following month and I did publicize that because it affected my blog. That ordeal started with being sick for hours and still isn't completely resolved. I'll write about my ordeal in another post.

Anyway, my wife went back to work in the United States, primarily to pay for the doctor visits. Saving enough to buy the things we need over here in the Philippines was a secondary goal. A goal, I might add, we have been unable to achieve so far.

In the United States from May of 2007 to January of 2008.

I've written bits and pieces, here and there, about things my wife was doing in the United States, how we communicated, and things that affected me here in the Philippines in relation to it all. I didn't go into great detail about what she'd been doing because I didn't want to get too personal. In my opinion, people don't want to read about every little thing that happens in life.

My wife has chatted with me nearly every day via Yahoo Instant Messenger since she's been in the United States, except for the period when I was there with her, which I'll talk about in the next section. She let me know about every detail of every thing that happened every day and I told her about anything of importance on this side of the world. She continued to complain about her left breast pain, the numbing pain in various parts of the left side of her body, and throat irritation stemming from her left tonsil. I can't even tell you what else she complained about, though there was a lot.

She went to many doctors, and spent of lot of money on co-payments, over the course of time. She had so many chest x-rays, mammograms, sonograms, MRIs, and other tests that I couldn't keep up with them. She found out she still had part of a fish bone lodged in her left tonsil and was prescribed antibiotics to handle the infection that took place as a result. She found out she had a cyst in her left breast. She was treated for the arthritis in her neck with traction, which seemed to nearly eliminate the numbing pain in the left part of her body, at least until recently.

January 15, 2007

This is when it all came to a head. My wife called me to let me know she would be having dual-tonsillectomies sometime within the next 2 months. The surgery wasn't scheduled yet. I was justifiably distraught because of her age and other health problems and I wrote about a possible disappearing act that I might have to perform. I had very little money saved and probably had barely enough to buy a plane ticket, which turned out to be true as I later found out. I posted my story to BloggingZoom as a way to let people who don't visit my blog regularly know what was up and what I was contemplating doing.

That was the day when MY LIFE was turned upside down. Victor Franqui, one of two people behind BloggingZoom, read my story and reacted by writing "A Blogger In Need". He encouraged others to harass me into putting up a PayPal donation button and contacted a lot of prominent bloggers. Vic had a lot of readers (and has even more now). Darren Rowse wrote "Help a Blogger in Need" and he always had a lot of readers. It all snowballed from there.

I put up the PayPal donation button and removed it the very next day because putting it up was the hardest thing I've ever done, even to this day. I had collected $3004.00 in about 24 hours. You see, I believe in the circle of life, to never take more than you give. I still feel like an incredible schmuck for accepting donations, even though I know I've given much more than that amount to others over the course of the last 30 years (since entering military service).

February 18 to March 21, 2008.

While I was preparing for my trip to Phoenix (in the U.S), the only flight I could get was via Continental Airlines and the ticket ended up costing me $1198.00. I also ended up paying an additional amount of about $75.00 at the Manila (Philippines) airport for miscellaneous fees not included in the ticket price. I found out, just last month, that the workers at Philippines Airlines were on strike at the time and that's why I couldn't get a cheaper and more direct flight itinerary.

I arrived on February 18th, about an hour after my wife had the cyst in her left breast drained, but I was with her when she had her tonsils removed the next day. I wrote about it in "There's no place like home!" I wrote other details in "10 Days of Misery" and "My Wife's Health Update".

After my return to the Philippines.

Until the last few days, the only problem I and my wife had was paying off all the medical bills that had accumulated. We spent the $3004.00 and then some while I was with her and she still has at least $2000 more in expenses to deal with. Co-payments and deductibles really suck. Not only that, but she and her cousin's family have to find a new place to live really fast because the house they're renting is in foreclosure.

Josie has been complaining of the numbing pain in various parts of the left side of her body again. At least now we know the cause (her neck arthritis). Until she returns to the Philippines, she's going to treat it by taking anti-inflammatory medicine. Since ibuprofen doesn't do the trick for her anymore, I suggested she switch to naproxen to see if it helps.

She knows of a chiropractor here in the Philippines who can do the traction for her neck. That will take care of the continuous pain, although she'll have to make regular trips. Our plan is for her to return here in August, before her 47th birthday.

You know, I can handle almost any curve balls that life throws my way, but I can't handle it when my wife cries.

There are some things in life where I will accept no substitutes. Coffee and tea are two of these things. Recently, I was reminded by Claire (A little piece of me) that while some people like lemon in their tea, others do not. She, like me, does not like lemon in her tea. She needs "proper" tea, whatever the heck that means.

Tea, Cold or Hot

I've noticed, at least locally, that much more tea is sold with lemon added than without. In fact, I can rarely find instant tea that doesn't have the added lemon flavor. Yecch! At times, I have resorted to doing the tea bag drill and making my tea that way. I prefer iced tea, but when it doesn't feel like a sauna in my house, hot tea works just as well. The instant tea brand I always look for as unsweetened, without any added flavoring, is Nestea (a product of Nestlé). If I can't find any, I resort to buying the Lipton tea bags.

Local restaurants like to stick a slice of lemon in with the iced tea when it's served. The first thing I do is toss out the lemon before it ruins the flavor of the tea. I love the natural flavor of tea. I am guilty, however, of sweetening tea with sugar, but not too much. I don't want the sugar flavor overwhelming the tea flavor.

Black tea (an American all-time favorite), oolong tea, or green tea, it doesn't matter. They're all good to me. What a lot of people don't know is that all three are produced from the same plant. See "Tempest in a Teapot" for more information.

Coffee, Hot or Cold

Growing up, I was enticed into becoming a coffee drinker by the strong aroma wafting from the coffee pot percolating in the kitchen. I can remember my mother putting coffee grounds into the pot, letting it perk for however long it took, and then people sitting around the dining room table drinking it. Back in those days, the coffee pots were tempered glass and it took more than just a few minutes for the coffee to be ready. Nowadays, we have automatic-drip coffee as well as instant coffee.

I prefer instant coffee, but not just any instant coffee. It has to be either the Folgers or the Nescafé (another product of Nestlé) brands. Other coffee brands just don't seem to taste right to me.

While I was in the military and stationed in Japan in the eighties, I had to settle for iced coffee, usually arriving as a can from a vending machine. When Starbucks started marketing cold coffee, it was already old news to me, so I didn't get suckered into buying it all the time.

When I was young, non-dairy creamers like Cremora and Coffee-mate (still another Nestlé product) didn't exist. It's a good thing they didn't because partially hydrogenated oils are bad, okay? Everyone that didn't drink it black used condensed milk from a can. I drink coffee with sugar only these days.

Carbonated Beverages

It doesn't matter what you call them. In some places they're called soda. In other places they're called pop. In yet other places they're called soda pop. I can't drink any of them. When I was much younger, I drank soda because it was convenient. The vending machines were everywhere. It didn't matter which brand I preferred because it changed from month to month. As I got older, I realized that soda (while not knowing how bad it really is for you) just didn't do the trick in quenching my thirst.

A couple of months ago, I found myself drinking a soda because it was the only thing available at the time. We were out of bottled water and I was thirsty. I poured the soda over ice cubes and it still didn't water it down enough to tame my thirst. I ended up driving 11 miles to buy bottled water. Don't get me started on the tap water. The tap water where I was at was worse than the water you find in swimming pools, it had so much chlorine in it.

What Are Your Favorite Drinks?

Aside from alcoholic beverages, what do you like to drink? Coffee, tea, soda, other kinds of drinks or just water? Can you tell me why? If you're a beer-aholic (someone who drinks beer for the taste, not the alcohol), can you tell me why you prefer it over anything else?

(Image sources: The "What's in Your Pot?" Swap and Well of Illusions!)

There is what seems like a thousand plugins available to reduce comment spam from appearing on our blogs. If any single plugin worked, why would there be so many different ones, each attacking comment spam in a different way?

As I remarked in "Four Ways to Provide Convenience to Your Readers", a post at The Reader Appreciation Project, commenters go for the path of least resistance.

What comment reduction methods create resistance to real comments? Any form of CAPTCHA, including math problems. Anything that slows the commenting process down is resistance. Many potential commenters will choose not to comment rather than go through any process other than a normal form-filling process. Even though we don't want to discourage comments, we still have to do something about the comment spam.

Comment Moderation

The most effective way to filter comment spam is also the most time-consuming. If you have only one blog to deal with, comment moderation is probably the best solution, but only if you check your moderation queue frequently. The last thing you want a returning visitor who commented previously to see is that his or her comment is still awaiting approval.

Spam Blockers

There's a myriad of spam blocking plugins and services available to stop spam bots from ever touching your comment forms. The problem with all of them is that they also block legitimate visitors, even if the number of false positives is very low. In the past, I used a spam blocker for a short period of time. After getting email from a few people that said they were blocked, I got rid of it as fast as I could.

Spam Filters

I three spam filters on this blog. Since this is a WordPress blog, the spam filters may not be available for your particular blog. They are:

• The Simple Spam Filter for WordPress. This one contains a list of spam words and phrases to compare the comments with. If a commenter gets caught by this, a confirmation link pops up and all the commenter has to do is click it and the comment goes through. Spam bots won't click it.
• The Simple Trackback Validation Plugin. The plugin lets me control suspicious incoming trackbacks (and pingbacks).
• Akismet — it's bundled with WordPress. It's like a final catch-all for spam bots. The previous plugin sends suspicious trackbacks there so they're easy to check. Very few real comments end up in the queue.

I check these spam filters daily to make sure nothing is going awry. Are they perfect? No, but using filters is better than blocking. I've heard reports of success with WP-SpamFree, but I've never used it.

Human Spammers

The biggest problem with comment spam is no longer the spam bots. I rarely see them. The biggest problem is with human spammers. There are services in existence now that will pay people to visit blogs and leave comments. Sometimes it's very difficult to spot the human comment spam, so I always err on the side of the commenter.

The Final Word

If you value comments on your blog, you'll do what's necessary to keep the comments flowing. Anti-spam measures should be used with extreme caution because what keeps spammers away can also keep legitimate commenters away .

Comment spam must be filtered, however, or your blog will soon be overrun by it. As blog owners, it's our responsibility to use what's most effective on our blogs while still providing the path of least resistance for our legitimate commenters.

If you don't value comments, and your blog is a social blog, then why are you blogging?

Other blogs are pinging your blog and your blog isn't receiving them. Have you ever wondered why? Do you care? If you don't know or you don't care, how do you know anyone is pinging you? Are you relying on a 3rd-party service like Technorati or are you waiting for them to appear on your dashboard? Technorati doesn't always respond to pings and your dashboard relies on Google's blog search (although this can be changed in the later versions of WordPress). Wouldn't fixing the incoming ping problem be a better solution?

This is a follow-up to both "WordPress Bloggers: Fix Your Incoming Pings With WP_PingPreserver" and "A WordPress Guide to Pingbacks and Trackbacks". This time, the emphasis is on your theme code.

There are only 4 reasons your blog wouldn't be receiving pings:

1. Your theme is missing some code.
2. The incoming pings are getting stuck in your spam filter (probably Akismet).
3. You unchecked "Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks.)" in Settings/Discussion Settings.
4. You're unchecking "Allow Pings" before publishing your blog posts.

Missing Theme Code

WordPress blog themes require two critical pieces of code, one of them in the header.php file and one of them in the index.php file, in order to process incoming pings.

In the header.php file:

<link rel="pingback" href="<?php bloginfo('pingback_url'); ?>" />

or

<link href="<?php bloginfo('pingback_url'); ?>" rel="pingback" />

It's the same code, just in a different order.

In the index.php file:

This function has to be somewhere within the loop, preferably just after the line with "while" or just before the line with "endwhile".

<!-- <?php trackback_rdf(); ?> -->

The surrounding comment code is required to prevent a certain error from appearing.

Pingbacks Stuck In The Spam Queue

Akismet is notorious for marking pings, processed into pingbacks, as spam. Part of the reason is that some blog owners mark them as spam when they aren't. Check your spam queue and de-spam as appropriate.

Unchecking The Options

If you're wondering why your not receiving pings and you're unchecking the options that allow them, I have nothing to say to you.

A Real World Example

I stopped by a blog I read regularly, "ShanKri-la", to see why my pings haven't been showing up as pingbacks on his blog. I viewed the source of his home page. Sure enough, the function needed in the index.php file was missing.

I don't blame K for the missing function. I blame the theme designer. I've found 3 themes (including his) with the relevant code missing. My guess is that some theme designers are copying templates without checking to make sure all the code is in place. I seriously doubt they remove the code intentionally, but I could be wrong.

Ray of Place of Stuff is once again the winner for last week, with 7 comments. Sandee of Comedy Plus and Breakaway of the Link Building Bible were close contenders with 6 comments each.

Here's another badge for you collection, Ray:

The image does not include the border. You can add the border by including this in your image tag: style="border:1px solid #800000" (or any color)

* * * * * * *

Ray's last blog post was "WordPress 2.5.1".

This is a really simple Twitter contest and it should be a lot of fun (at least for me). Who are you competing with? You're only competing with yourself and my time.

This is a challenge for you to write your best. It's a writing challenge as well as a conte