If You Need a Hosting Company, Look No Further than HostGator

Posted on March 28, 2012 by Dave

I’m not really the kind of guy who gushes or throws out random ringing endorsements, I’m more likely to be the complainer that the call center gets sick of hearing from lol.

But I’m sufficiently impressed with HostGator to want to devote an entire blog topic to their company. First of all, their plans are quite reasonable, it’s even fair to say they’re service is downright cheap. And as a newbie blogger, I spent a lot of time stressing over whether I should go with such a “discount” company but I read lots of good reviews online and I ended up going with HostGator. And I am very glad that I did.

Since starting up this whole blogging adventure I’ve had a good number of problems, mostly of my own creation being so new at this whole thing, and I’ve used their live chat on numerous occasions at this point. Besides the fact that they held my hand and fixed my mistakes quickly and professionally, I have to say that their friendliness and genuine attention to good customer service is nothing short of stunning.

To put it into perspective, I worked at Disneyland in Japan for many years. And I used to think that Disney had a lock on the number one spot as the very best at superior customer service out of any company out there, big or small. But now, for the first time, I can say without question that the HostGator company matches or even exceeds Disney in terms of genuine customer care. I think that’s about as high a compliment as I can hand out, and they certainly do deserve it. Each and every time I got off the line with their service center I was tempted to send an email to the CEO asking him to give whichever staff person helped me a big raise and a bonus.

So in any case, if you’re looking for a company to host your blog or website, or considering switching out, I can not recommend HostGator enough Just for the record, this isn’t a “paid endorsement” or anything like that (I know such endorsements for pay do show up on blogs from time to time), just an honest review from a very satisfied customer.

The Internet – a Network of Little Fiefdoms

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Dave

I recently had an experience on a small internet chat forum where I was vaguely threatened by the management with banishment if I didn’t conform to their rules.

Oh, and they also let me know that signing in through Facebook (a method they have on offer in plain view) is a way to get myself in trouble because I should’ve used my old handle, one I’d used years ago and had practically forgotten all about.

Couched in friendly language, the meaning was clear. “Watch your step, or there will be consequenses!”. Interestingly in one of the posts the moderator said, quite unnecessarily, “unfortulately we recently had to ban some longtime members for posting about their blogs on this site”, or something along those lines. Had to ban people. “Had” is such an interesting word selection here isn’t it? As if they had no other choice, it was out of their control. You “have” to call the police when someone is threatening you. You “have” to pay your taxes. You do not “have” to ban internet posters because they don’t fall into lockstep with whatever rules and regulations you have set forth for your little vitrual kingdom you’ve got going on.

This whole thing is pretty funny, it smacks of schoolyard politics and it’s so pervasive around the internets that people don’t even really have to check the rules pages on individual sites because they’ve got so much in common. Do this, don’t do that, or you’ll be punished, that’s the gist of it.

You would think the internet would be a place of free thinking and libertarian ideals, but instead it has tribalized to such an extent that it really does mirror the outside world in striking detail, and the world it mirrors is one of juvenile threats and summary retribution. Which makes it comfortable for the masses, I suppose, since most people inherently want rules and regulations to tell them what to do. It is such a function of society for people that entire religions have been founded and based on just such principles on a grander scale. I suppose that compared to eternal damnation, banishment isn’t all that bad. Although when you stop and think of it, aren’t they sort of the same idea?

Pros and Cons to including a Donate Button

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Dave

I’ve been debating whether or not to include a donate button here and on my other sites. I’ve made no secret about the fact that I wouldn’t mind making a little extra income from my blogging efforts, but for some reason this gave me pause. At first blush, it seems like an online version of panhandling to me.

But giving the matter a bit more thought, I suppose it’s more like internet busking. I mean, you’re not asking for something for nothing, you’re providing a service (in this case, news, opinion and info). So if someone wants to chip in what’s wrong with that?

Still, for some reason it makes me wonder about the whole monetizing process and whether or not that’s something I want to do or not. I don’t mind placing ads, I myself am very particular when it comes to selecting ads to click on, it has to be a website I like plus an ad that I actually find interesting, thus paying my karmic dues to both the publisher and the advertiser by not giving any false leads so to speak.

I expect the same from anyone considering checking out ads on my sites. I leave the option up to the consumer, and I’ve tried to place the ads strategically both from a marketing standpoint as well as an esthetic one.

So anyway, that’s a no-brainer as far as I’m concerned and I don’t mind making a little extra scratch from it, but I’m still reluctant for some reason to go that extra step and ask for donations directly. Maybe I shall and maybe I shan’t, but in any case it’s something I feel requires some careful consideration before deciding one way or the other.

Any advice or thoughts would be, as always, greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading!

What if I don’t really have a ‘niche’?

Posted on March 7, 2012 by Dave

Having been at this blogging game for about a month now, I’m finding myself frustrated by the constant barrage of advice ordering me to “find my internet niche” and other advice to that effect. Seems to be everywhere I turn.

As far as my other two sites are concerned, that works out well enough. One, upbeatrhythms, is a music site, rhythm to be more exact, and so the niche is built in so to speak. I just have to create some good content. Similarly, the lulzjapan site is a photo blog and the angle is humorous observational photos from Japan. A small niche, perhaps, but still a niche.

But then we come to Mindbla. My personal blog. And it is rather personal, although I do want to create a site that can be useful to others and a place for exchanging ideas and stuff like that. But what is the niche?

In researching other blogs, I find that a lot of bloggers’ internet niche is, well, blogging. They write about blogging, they offer advice on blogging, they give handy tips about the tools of the trade and that sort of thing. But what it all boils down to is people talking about what they’re doing. Not really a niche per se, more like a general discussion about how to do what you’re doing. Sort of like authors all getting together to talk about book formatting or something. Do they do that?

So I guess I’m still sort of up in the air. I want this blog to be useful, fun, funny, helpful, and most importantly successful. Perhaps I’m putting the cart before the horse by saying that, but if I didn’t want it to be a success why bother? I could keep a diary in a notebook all for myself if I just wanted to write down my thoughts and feelings, why make something like that public?

I have given some serious thought to making this more of a current events space, and I might go ahead and write some articles with that in mind, but even so I hesitate to call that my niche. It’s just something to talk about right? Water cooler stuff.

I wonder if other bloggers have gone through similar feelings. When it comes right down to it, if I really wanted to find a niche I don’t really think it would be a blog sort of focus at all, in a blog I feel as though writing about “stuff that’s on our minds” is really the main point. I guess it all comes down to what my readers are looking for, perhaps that will give me some direction, trying to keep in mind the sort of stuff that a likely reader would find appealing. Am I writing for bloggers? For people just looking for stuff to read? Stories? Events?

I guess time will tell. If you have any ideas or suggestions, please feel free to give me a shout out here. I promise I’ll read all the comments, even if they threaten to overwhelm me out of sheer volume lol (I’ll cross that bridge, right?).

Thanks for reading!

Either I need to win the lottery, or figure out programming for myself

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Dave

Coping with Drupal

Having only been at this whole blogger/webmster thing for a few weeks, I’m starting to realize that what I want to do is not really within reach unless I have the cash to pay for a web designer or else figure it all out for myself.

WordPress is great for blogging, I love it. But, as far as my percussion site UpbeatRhythms.com is concerned, I want to max it out a lot more and include some cool graphics and maybe some flash and make it all cool and user friendly-like. The blog part is fine, I’ll probably keep it as is even if I change the rest of the site around. But for the main page and for the video content portions, I really want to do something more.

Unfortunately, I’m realizing the limitations of WordPress when it comes to that sort of stuff, so I’ve turned to Drupal for some ideas. Indeed it is a powerful platform, seems like you can do pretty much anything with it. However, right off the bat I’ve started getting error messages and grumpy responses from the bowels of the software whenever I try to do something as simple as set up a menu! And unlike the user friendly widgets and plugins you can find in droves for WordPress, the whole Drupal scene seems much more geared towards programmers and other people who generally speaking have more of a clue. So stupid questions are none too appreciated, and you get a lot of “read the manuel” replies when you try to ask around.

Er..I think I've got some errors to deal with here!

Heading over to the Drupal community forums, I figured maybe I could find some “for dummies” info or something. No such luck. No dummies there, quite the opposite. I have no idea if they’re nice people or whatever, I’m sure they are, but I was too intimidated to even attempt a feeble “hello” in that online mecca. Just the topic titles alone were enough to make my head spin, they might has well have been typing in Greek for all I knew. I found “Theme Development”, and figured that might work. I didn’t even end up clicking on a topic though, being far too intimidated by headings such as “in using the drupal view with attachments, how do I defer the initialization..”, and “I created a view with many fields of one node type,”. Gack!

I can appreciate why programmers make so much scratch, they deserve it!

Still, I really feel as though I want to figure it out and get to work on a more maxed out site (though with my limited skills I’m probably better off figuring out how to max out WordPress as much as I can, or else save up my pennies to shell out to a true computer guru and tell him or her what I’m looking for). If I can figure some things out, I might even consider incorporating them into the Mindbla site as well, although for a simple blog I suppose all the bells and whistles could end up detracting as easily as enhancing. I need to come up with a load of great content first, and worry about that stuff later.

Anyone who has any thoughts on Drupal or other alternatives is welcomed and encouraged to chime in, I can use all the help I can get! Or, for that matter, any advice on maxing out WordPress would be appreciated as well. That’s definitely the alternative avenue I’m seriously considering at this point, assuming I don’t suddenly figure out Drupal by osmosis or something lol.

This week on the Mindbla blog

Posted on February 26, 2012 by Dave

Hi! Just a quick update here to let everyone know that I haven’t been forgetting about the Mindbla blog, I’ve been working fairly feverishly behind the scenes as it were, getting some reciprocal links going on, or trying at least, signing up for some blog directories (although according to Technorati, this is not a blog..go figure), and setting things up as far as chiclets for sharing and wordpress plugins and all that kind of good stuff I never knew existed until a few weeks ago.

However, I have also been working on some blog topics I think will be fun and interesting for everyone, including a Disney related topic with lots of neat pics (for a preview, check out the gallery at the link above), another topic which I can only consider to be an ‘only in Japan’ sort of story (it’s a good one!), and a few other odds and ends as well plus whatever happens to come up between now and then. So keep watching this space, more fun and excitement is on the way!

Thanks for stopping by.

What’s in a Name?

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Dave

What’s up with this “Mindbla” blog title, anyway?

Now that I have my very own space, bought and paid for, I figured I’d spend a few posts discussing the particulars of how I ended up with a self-hosted wordpress site, what I’m aiming for with this blog, and maybe a little about some of the ins and outs of setting up as I’ve run into my share of snags and it might be useful for others to hear about them and how I worked my way out of them.

First, a little info on the blog title. Originally I was going to name this site “NavigatingWaters” or “NavigatingtheWaters”, as in Navigating the Waters of Life and the Internet. And I almost got as far as to buy it. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought it sounded fairly haughty, not to mention potentially confusing. “Hey! Where are the links to onboard speedboat navigation? What’s the deal?”

I was giving the matter some thought, and I just happened upon a keyword generator and I started randomly generating nonsense words and for some reason when “Mindbla” came up it stuck in my head. I mean, it isn’t completely nonsensical, in fact it’s quite to the point when it comes to blogging. Blablabla about what’s on my mind, right? A fitting enough name for my blog title, albeit a bit random and weird (as am I lol).

So, I decided to go for it. Time will tell whether or not that was a wise decision. If you remember the name of this site without pen or bookmark, and better yet tell all your friends about it so the site really takes off, then I can go ahead and call it kismet. If I shut down in a few months, well it was only 10 bucks anyway. And there’s always another blog title to be found, although coming up with decent dot-coms that haven’t already been snatched up is quite a chore!

And there ya have it. Hope you enjoy your time on the site, and if you like it, please share it. It’s all about stuff that’s on my mind, and hopefully stuff that’s on your mind, too.

On tweets and twitter, navigating the internet

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Dave

Getting ready to chirp

Along with firing up this blog over the last couple of weeks, I also signed on with twitter (I’ve had an account in the past but never made much use of it) once it became fairly clear that was one of the ways to ‘get your message out’ as it were.

However, the more I’ve been using it the more confusing things seem to have become. There’s the retweet thing and the reply thing and then you’ve got tweet deck and some site called justretweet that seems to be geared towards driving traffic. All neat and good, but it’s a pretty confusing bunch of stuff for an internet idea that began with such simplicity (and brevity, more about that here).

To anyone who’s been following me or will be doing so (I invite you to please do, I’d be happy to hear from you, the link is just to the right of this post at the moment though I’m still tweaking the blog setup as well so your milage may vary), I must apologize if I’ve committed any faux pas or missed the point or anything else as far as twitter etiquette (twitiquette?) is concerned. I promise I’m a fast learner, I hope that being able to give shout outs in brief form will prove to benefit this blog and my readers, and I will attempt to get the hang of it as quickly as I can.

The focus of this blog has been morphing, somewhat organically which I’m rather pleased with, as I get a feel for what kind of content might be valuable here online, and I’ll be talking a lot in the coming week about that revelation along with several other life and internet related topics. Suffice to say my original title idea, “On Writing and Music”, doesn’t quite express the fullness of what I’d like to delve into here. I’ll get more into it and I hope you’ll subscribe and come on back to read about it, because in any case I’ll be broadening my overall tone while at the same time hopefully bringing my niche into focus by including my observations on life in today’s crazy fast, twitter focused internet world and some ways in which I’ve found to navigate through it, or in some cases just sit back and smile at my own reactions to it. Until then, hope you’re having a great weekend!

The more I delve into this whole online presence thing the more I realize that my niche on these internets is right in front of my face, staring me down with tiny tweets and fast paced confusion.

I am, middle-aged.

Whew. That was harder to write than I thought it would be.

Well, I don’t consider myself old, to be fair. I grew up with a remote control in hand and all the latest star wars toys like everyone else.

What’s Star Wars, you ask? Okay, leave.

Seriously, just go.

This blog is not for you.

This blog is for the pre-facebook,pre-twitter, oh-so-relaxing pace of the good old 1980′s, when Moscow nukes scared us a lot more than fanatics plotting from caves ever could, and when the price of a CD (yeah, like I said, I ain’t that old lol) meant you got the whole album WITH cool cover art and something to read along with it.

My name’s Dave, I grew up with computers but no internet (and certainly no twitter), and I speak for all us over 35ers who are still, we hope, relevant in this crazy super-fast world of ours.

Regarding our wacky crazy internets and how frustrating the lightening, twitter fast pace and constantly changing trends can be for the rest of us non-teenagers that didn’t grow up with it all. But in a way we did grow up with it, or a primitive version of it anyway, at least mostly. I’ll explain further on down, but it has to do with remote controls, the Brady Bunch (the show, not the movie), and The Force sans midichlorians. Here’s part one if you missed it or would care to refresh your memory or either found this page via hyperlink (yup, new to me too!), or else just don’t feel like scrolling (are you that lazy?).

So I’ve been thinking a lot about what this website is going to be all about, what my angle will be, that sort of thing. The more I’ve discovered just over the past couple of weeks the more I realize that my niche on these internets is right in front of my face, staring me down with tiny tweets and fast paced hecticism (yup, made it up. if it’s good enough for politicians it’s good enough for me, and doesn’t that word just sum it up perfectly anyway?).

Oh, and by the way, I do like twitter. I don’t ‘get it’ yet, but I like it. It’s neat, and you can connect with a lot of peeps all at once, and the fast pace can be entertaining, exciting even. I actually just learned about a new feature, the buffer I think it’s called, from a reader and I tried it out and it was pretty cool. But I think I’ll stick with Tweetdeck for now, it’s pretty simple and the graphics are like something out of STNG (if you don’t get that reference, you get a pass because you have to be a real Trekkie to get it and it’s a pretty old show at this point lol).

So anyway, give me a shout out on Twitter or, if you don’t bother with that stuff, feel free to leave a comment here. And do subscribe, because I’ll be updating this blog a lot and I hope to bring new and interesting commentary (and a few rants like this one) and would love to hear form you about what you’re interested in reading. Thanks!