Wednesday, September 30, 2009

One last one for September

My aggressive blogging strategy was thrown into chaos by the untimely death of the Lappy. Yes, the Lappy tried to take the Pepsi challenge and couldn't taste the difference between Coke and a horrible, fiery death. A quick examination revealed the Lappy was dead as a door-nail. Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade.

But I have trained a new replacement- the Lappy Mark IV, codenamed "The Quadinator".

I will post pictures and go into more detail eventually, but for the time being, I will field a much simpler question. Why would I call the Quadinator "The Quadinator" when it is significantly longer than "laptop" or "netbook"? And why did I call the old computer the Lappy? Well, to be honest, I called it the Lappy as homage to Strong Bad's computer. However, I've dubbed the new one the Quadinator because I want to be endeared to the little guy from the get go. Hopefully, that will contribute to getting this guy a lifespan longer than two years.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Blogging 101

Greetings, once again, to my old readers and to my new readers who are being forced to read this for class credits. While reading one of my dozens of updates, you probably asked yourself "How can I be a blogger as awesome as Hunter is?" Well, you can't. I had to steal the powers of a Norse god in order to blog this well (long story short, I had to use a diamond-tipped spear made in the forge of Hephaestus).


Hephaestus owed me a favor.

However, I do have several tips on how to create and maintain a blog.

Step 1: Register with Blogger/Google

This is a very important step but it will also be the one I spend the least time on, largely because the good people of Google have already created a comprehensive guide on registering and creating a blog. Instead I'd rather focus on what you should do once you have your blog, which there is no helpful corporate step-by-step guide for.

Step 2: Come up with a Distinct Name

This step is critical for your blog because it's what sticks with people. However, coming up with the right name is difficult. If you go with, say, "Professor Ludwig von Krappenstein's Fantabulous Learnotorium's Blogometric" or "PLvKFLB" for short, then no one will ever remember that name because there are medical textbooks less complicated than it (ironically, one of those textbooks was authored by Professor von Krappenstein). Likewise, you want to avoid something so generic that it will never stick out, such as "Steve's Blog". As you might imagine, I have far more experience with the former problem, rather than the latter. I would recommend whatever title you find clever and is less than six words long.

Step 3: Filling your Blog with Content


Once you've picked your blog's name and matching address, it's time to start posting to your blog. I believe it's important to maintain your blog. After all, nothing kills a blog faster than sporadic updates, half of which promise more updates. As for topics, the glorious part about blogs is you can talk about whatever you feel like at the moment, although Dr. Witherow's students probably have stricter guidelines than that.

Step 4: Pictures and Paragraphs

So now that you've picked your topic, there are two important tips for keeping your post readable: pictures and paragraphs. They both accomplish the same basic goal: keeping your blog readable. Specifically, it doesn't matter if you have one of the greatest ideas ever, no one will enjoy reading it if it's a wall of text. Paragraphs are okay at providing much-needed white space but pictures are the real aces of making blog posts interesting. Unfortunately, it can take a good deal of time (i.e. longer than it takes to hit the "Enter" key) to find the picture you want and to properly format it for the blog.

Well, that's all the advice I have for you today, readers. I hope it was both informing and not the most boring blog post I have ever made.