Dec 29, 2008 | blog
I’m catching up on feeds and have run across a number of posts and articles on personal plans, goals, or predictions for 2009. It’s a good exercise, and one that I’m working on for this week as well.
However, I’m amazed (nay, dismayed) at the number of people who either do not understand what a goal should be or at the goal that they’re fixated on. Especially in relation to blogging. There are a number of great posts around outlining what people are planning to do, but I’d like to see folks really focus their energies when writing them.
For example, I’ve seen a number of people taking about increasing their blog posting schedule, or about getting 100, 200, 300 RSS readers, or hitting 1,000,000 page-views. This doesn’t tell me what they’re purpose is, however. It doesn’t tell me why I should come back tomorrow to read a post. It doesn’t tell new readers why they should spend time reading their blogs. This is simply a lack of understanding of what makes a good blog – in short, numbers don’t count. It’s about the quality of information rather than the numbers of clicks you can run through Google AdSense.
Another theme I’ve seen in some of these planning post for the new year are more lower-level task specific items rather than broad visionary goals for an individual. New or casual bloggers who are interested in growing their blog should look at things that bring value to themselves and their readers. An example of this would be something like "Revise and rejuvenate my blog’s theme to reflect it’s focus, and for easier reading" would be better than simply wanting to "get a new blog logo".
These more far-reaching goals help us stretch outside our comfort zones for the year. It gives us something to strive for, something to attain… hence "goals". I hope more folks take the time and really go through a good personal growth exercise for 2009. It doesn’t have to take long, and if a person allows themselves an hour or two to really think about what they want to accomplish in one year – and what just may be possible in one years time, they may surprise themselves and really accomplish more than they think they can.
So good luck to you on your goal quest for 2009! Watch for my 2009 goals post in the next day or so.
Jun 3, 2008 | blog
Just want to share a bit of news. I’m in the process of updating the theme & design of the ol’ blog tonight, so if you see anything odd, broken, or inoperable it’s probably being worked on. A teaser thumbnail of it running on the development system is included just for fun. 
However, if you want to let me know of specific things that aren’t working and such, please feel free to do so. You can ping me on Twitter (I’m @rickmahn) or via email (rick {at} rickmahn.com).
This is pretty exciting for me as I’ve been planning on a new design for several months. I’m very glad to have had Mykl Roventine heading up the redesign based on a free theme called WP Premium. The look & feel is clean and simple and suits me quite well. A big thank-you to Mykl for the great work.
That’s it for now, I’ve got a couple of things to finish up before flipping the switch so I’m off to get those done! Talk soon folks!
Rick
Oct 25, 2007 | blog
I’m not a software developer, even though that’s what I’ve always wanted to be when I grow up. 🙂 But I see that VirtualHosting.com has an exhaustive list of tools, guides, and applications to assist in writing that killer app for the iPhone.
Whether you’re developing for the iPhone or just want to find more ways to play with your shiny new toy, there are loads of resources out there designed to help you out. From cool apps, to helpful tools, and easy to use guides, we’ve found 100 of the best. Read on to discover some of the most fun and useful developments for the iPhone.
If you’re interested, check out The iPhone Development Roundup: 100 Apps, Tools, and Guides by Jessica Hupp.
Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, Software Development
Jan 26, 2007 | blog
I’ve been using some very nice (I think) themes from very creative developers in the WordPress community. They all have had some design component that I really like, maybe the full use of space on one, the clean uncluttered look of another, the graphics on a third, the font/type/CSS creativity of a fourth, and so on.
However, I’ve not found that one theme that I can be happy with and just leave alone. Sure, I could hire a professional designer to create a real professional theme just for my site, but I can’t justify paying a couple thousand for a good design. Not that they are not worth the money, I just am too cheap to do it.
The nice thing about all these different themes that I’ve tried or tested, is that I’ve learned a lot about CSS and a little about PHP. Each one has taught me a little more about how to manipulate each section, where to place an add, how to wrap objects in the proper tags, and much more.
So with that said, I’m going to start work on my first custom WordPress theme, complete with custom graphics designed by yours-truly. Though, the graphic part is probably the only area that anyone should be worried about – I’m not a graphical designer, nor played one on TV – :). It might look really bad – guess we’ll find out.
So, in short, there may be a few posts focusing on the trials and tribulations of theme development as I blow off steam. Or there may be cryptically giddy posts about something working. Either way, I would really enjoy feedback about what your likes/dislikes about the sites you visit, or the themes/layouts that you use yourself and, of course, your opinion of how the new theme is turning out.
I’ll be developing the theme on a separate development blog that I’ll post about later, so it won’t effect the day-to-day usage of my main site. Maybe from there I can work on a few others for another site or two I work with.
Thanks for stopping by today!
Dec 14, 2005 | blog
Typical Microsoft event, though larger than previous events in Minneapols. They supposedly had over 4000 people sign up for the event, though with the snowstorm that came through today it did make many people late. It was crowded, something I can’t normally say for Minneapolis event for Microsoft.
Anyway, it was typical marketing fluff in the beginning followed by some semi-technical/executive overviews of the major benefits of Visual Studio 2005. I liked it and picked up the free version (Standard) at the end of the day. Nice day out of the office!
