NorthWest Miscellanea

For my non-Blog sites, it’s not even an issue of how to upload images since I use XSitePro, so everything is uploaded seamlessly including images, and I don’t have to bother with FTP programs whatsoever, or opening explorer windows.

However, when adding images to this blog, I wanted to avoid having to do all of this:

Printscreen key
Paste into paintbrush
Saving as jpg from paintbrush
Open Ftp Program
In the ftp program, taking the time to navigate to the correct directory on the local side of the ftp program’s screen.

So I’ve had to come up something like the following

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Though I use Treepad a lot (as the main headquarters for all planned projects, and for things such as taking notes when I listen to an MP3 or view an instruction video), I decided, for listing the web hosting and registrar accounts for my web sites, to try using a database utility for this specifically.Even though I hardly use my Palm Pilot, I still decided to use a Palm pilot program called: “SmartListToGo” for these accounts.. It comes in two pieces:

- The desktop, windows-based program
- The palm pilot utility that syncs up with it.

I really only use the desktop-based side of it, and decided to open a new Database to track my accounts:

You can do this with MS Access too, but I don’t have Access.

By clicking on the “Time Left” column (field), I can sort by that field, and at the very top, I know instantly how soon I will have to dish out some cash to keep the account running.

So when I have spare time, and I want to, At-a-Glance know if any of my accounts will run out soon …

1. I start SmartListTogo, which loads quicker than any of my other apps.
2. Click on “Time Left” to sort by it in Ascending order
3. My eyes go directly to two places:
1. The Time Left field, and 2. The Hosting field is checked, and I make sure I renew the account.

(The next account coming up that I will have to do something about is Spunkyworld which will expire in .1 month.)

Note: The fields: “Time Left” and Amount of time elapsed are both “advanced expressions” that are possible in SmartListToGo.

- “Time Left” is: Months paid for - Amount of Time Elapsed

- Amount of time elapsed” is (Today -(Start Date of Account))/30

( This one is hidden from all of my DB views, it’s just there to play its role in the first calculation )

I only have three affiliate sites, so this obviously comes in more handy for someone with a couple of dozen or more.

I’m going to add another entry to describe how I use SmartListToGo for tracking my Merchants later.

It seems like the trend toward actually having to provide real value for your web visitors, is gaining bigger wheels and travelling faster.

Between

seeing blog posts by Matt Cutts (Google search engineer) explaining Google’s steps towards ranking sites for honest to goodness value versus other manipulated link-attaining

and …

reading pdfs/emails from guys such as Ken Evoy concerning Google’s continual quest to render SEO techniques a lot less useful to spend time on,

.. I am really starting to see this trend taking shape.

A quote from a pdf emailed from Ken Evoy:

“Frankly, it’s the height of ego and self-delusion for any “outsider” [someone not at Google] to pretend that they know how any major search engine determines what a Web page is all about.

And yet, post after post in SEO forums are all about that. It’s really just speculation, a waste of time“

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If you are using wordpress, a useful tool is to use the sidebar quick-post to either capture information you need, or to simply start a draft that you will submit later, or of course to post something now.

Just create a bookmark to this URL:

http://yourdomain/wp-admin/sidebar.php

(sidebar.php is already in there, this isn’t an extra plug-in you have to get anywhere)

This is what appears on the left:

And you just click the upper-right x to close it when you’re done, no interruptions or opening up a new firefox tab or a new I.E. window

Notice a peripheral-bonus: It makes it seamless, if you come across a website with a quote you want to copy and save, like the above image.

You don’t have to make a blog post, just save it into a draft for the purposes of saving the quote.

I’m going to miss Oy.
Oy is a “billy-bumbler”, a character in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. It’s an “other-worldly” type creature, very much like a dog, but also very capable of emotions and cries with real tears, and he laughs if you’re of its “ken”, but many times more vicious than even a pit bull if you’re not on his side.

This is not a spoiler by any means. But I am reading the few remaining Dark Tower books in the series, and so there’s no choice regardless, in saying adios to all the characters.

Note: It’s almost a curse that each time a D.T. book came out, I was also in the middle of learning something new, or otherwise already busy. When I bought both book 6 and 7 of Dark Tower I was knee-deep in Internet Marketing ebooks (95% of which is total crap - i just wanted to learn how to optimize my for-fun-only sites) and forums.

When book 5 was out, I think I was I trying to learn Python.

Book 4: I remember having to refresh my MFC (C++) knowledge for job interviews, but I chose to read Book 4 instead. I don’t remember what happened with the particular jobs. But Wizard and Glass was pretty good (that was book 4).

I will need to say “no” to fiction for a long time, now that I’m finishing this series.

If you work at home, an easy thing to let happen is massive clutterage surrounding the desk. And this includes music CD’s.

If you use your computer CD player to play music once in a while, you might avoid putting them back on their holder stand.

I use RealPlayer for my AUDIO CDS’s, because RealPlayer prompts you when you insert the CD if you’d like to save tracks. When you save the tracks, you never have to use your CD again (and save CD Player wear and tear).

Here’s a good sequence to go by to, little by little, to save your entire collection of CD’s onto your hard disk.

1. Go through the next couple of weeks, (or 6 months if you’re an audio freak, but you’d better have a huge HD), just playing your CD’s on your computer cd player as you naturally desire to do so.

2. Always click Yes for saving to tracks.
( I’m pretty sure that Windows knows whether or not you’ve already saved the tracks for this particular CD, by going over to this folder
C:\Documents and Settings\\My Documents\My Music
and checking if the name of the album isn’t in there already, but I might be mistaken )

3. When you think you have saved the tracks for all your CD’s, and all they’re on your hard drive, you need to create playlists in RealPlayer:

Under the “Tasks” area, click “New Playlist”

Click “Browse”:

4. From then on, any time you want to play a CD, just click on the RealPlayer icon on your tasktray or taskbar, whether that little icon is, click on “My Library” wherever you can can get to it, so that you have this displaying:

Click on Playlists of course

I’m yet another person who moved from blogger.com to Wordpress (and I’m already very happy about this move, loving this interface), and I haven’t yet tackled the import-blogger.php script to begin the process. A major impetus to doing this, is not just to gain a more secure feeling against the issue of: Putting in a lot of time posting, and not having control over whether blogger decides to delete the blog, … or even to gain much much more flexibility.

The motive is also from that geek in me that really loves to learn a new technology, api, whatever.

Print out those powerful Ebooks that have been sitting on your virtual bookshelf, in that dusty “ebooks-I-havent-read-yet” folder.

I wanted to mention in this first “post-Migrate To Wordpress” message that Printer Ink could be your best friend in improving the quality of your life. (It’s too bad that we tend to have negative associations with printer ink, due to the abundance of spam email from printer ink peddlers)

If you know that you have a lengthy ebook or two containing valuable techniques, ideas, know-how in a particular field, and you definitely don’t crave the thought of sitting at your desk chair to read a little bit at a time, then print that puppy out.

We love to stay un-aware of our fears sometimes, including myself. When you see that ink level drop on the little graphic simulated “ink-gauge” on your screen, depending on your printer software, all you can think of is having to prapare for another 20 dollar plunkage at the office supply store.

But if you re-evaluate what’s really important, it will then dawn on you that fussing over losing a Andrew Jackson can prevent you from gaining 500 times that amount from an idea in an ebook that is so hard to embrace sometimes on a screen.

Here are books that I am so glad that I have printed out, because I am actually reading them, making notes in margins, and enjoying them as well as getting a whole lot of value because I took the time to turn them into hardcopy and placed into a binder:

- How To Gets Lot Of Money For Anything Fast by Stuart Lichtman
Tthis sat in my ebook/mind folder for the longest time and I didnt’ realize how potent the exercises were to really super-expose subconscious conflicts that prevent action - Cheesy title, yes, but powerful techniques.

- Perry Marshalls Definitive Guide to Adwords book - I probably won’t use advertising until I have my own product to sell on the internet, but I might change that. This ebook contains some solid stuff on marketing, period, even if you were never to use adwords itself.

- Happy Pocketful of Money by David Cameron
A thorough treatment of what abundance really is. A quick way to summarize this is that it “un-Matrixes” you out of your belief that money is the end-all and be-all of abundance. The recognition of the fact that the dollar in itself — or currency as an object — is just a human invention and a type of energy, is enough to shift you into a mindset that flows that physical stuff/energy to you because your main motive in life is now to produce value and express what is unique inside you, instead of collecting what the mass media and realitytvshows think you should. ( Cameron’s book is run-on-sentence-less as a bonus. )
It’s a paradox: Just unleash what’s inside you that you enjoy doing without groping for cash, and abundance returns to you.