FINALLY - Bladam 2.0! :)

I finally took the plunge.  After blabbing about moving my blog over to Expression Engine software over a year ago, I’ve finally done it.

So what does it mean to you?  Here’s the skinny on the major new stuff:

• Comments post almost instantaneously.  And even non-members can opt to get e-mail-notified when someone posts a new comment in an entry they’ve replied to.
• No more three-column circus.  Everything’s less cluttered and manically colored now.
• Lots of miscellaneous goodies for “regulars” (see details)

If you’re interested in knowing more about the impetus behind the many, many changes and what it took to achieve them, read on!  But before you do, just one humble request: PLEASE do let me know if anything is clearly not working or looking right. I’d really appreciate it!

More info about the changes

• I’ve de-emphasized large date headers and eschewed a side-calendar; the focus is on my writing content, not the arbitrary dates I post things.
• Search and other navigation options have also been moved out of the main fold.  Most folks just visit my blog front page and individual entries they find via search :-).
• I chose Expression Engine over Movable Type because I felt that customizing and managing BLADAM would be much easier for me with the former.  MT’s a great program, but I wanted to try something new.
• EE also offers better blog-spam protection out of the box than MT, IMHO, and certainly more flexible and cool membership options.

There are some downsides to the changed infrastructure, however.  Since every page is literally written on the fly (via php) AND I’m altering page elements based on many variables, page accesses—especially initial ones—are slower than before.  Additionally, the nifty menu thingy I’ve put up top is also not very dialup friendly (a handful of javascript files have to be loaded the first time each person visits).  And lastly, MovableType is definitely the dominant player in the blogging space… with a larger community, more plugins, and so on.

Still, though, I’m admittedly pleased with how things have worked out so far, and I would indeed highly recommend Expression Engine to others based upon my experiences.

*  *  *

I still have a *TON* to do as part of the transition, but at least now I have the basics all set up :-)

I do appreciate your support, your feedback, and your patience, and am always delighted to hear from you.  Like the airlines say… I know you have a choice of pages on the Net to read, and I’m honored you’re reading mine :-).

Take care, and best of the New Year to you and yours!

(Now I’m finally off to bed.  It’s 6:21am here, and it’s high time I caught some zzzz’s!  Hopefully nothing goes too haywire in the meantime… eek!)

Google RSS ads: Either foiled by anti-ad bastards or...?

I have run a single Google AdSense ad in each entry in my full-text RSS feed since May of this year. I'm apparently not allowed to discuss clickthru rates, so let me just say this:

Despite getting a rather decent amount of traffic for a personal blog, I cannot buy a pack of bubblegum with the revenues I've earned from ads in my RSS feed. In fact, I'd be surprised if I could buy a single gumball.

This comes as rather a surprise me, not to mention a disappointment.

The ads were unobtrusive but still noticeable. And more importantly, I found them to be generally pretty relevant (nicely targeted) as well.

Since I've now removed the ads from my feed, I am free to talk about them without worrying about incenting clicks and jeopardizing my account. So a few questions come to mind:

1) If the ads had been less subtle, would more people have clicked?
2) Is it a demographic thing (people reading RSS feed = geeks = non-ad-clickers)?
3) Was the presence of these ads annoying enough to some to get them to unsubscribe? (Probably not, since I don't show any drop in subscription or clickthru rates)

I recall reading on the Web that many others were having similar bad luck with their AdSense feeds for RSS. I wonder if anyone has actually had GOOD luck with these ads.

BLADAM has both full and summary feeds available

Hi there,

After noticing that most of my faithful readers who catch my blog via Bloglines and other feed readers are grabbing my summary feed, I wanted to make sure you all knew that I have a full-feed available as well. For those in the un-know, here's the difference:

- SUMMARY FEED: Contains the first paragraph or so of each entry.
Choose this if you'd just like to skim my entries and visit my site for the full shebang.
- FULL FEED: Contains the entire entry.
Great for those folks who'd rather read it all in their feed readers.

For the URLs (including one-click access to both my summary and full feeds for My Yahoo and Bloglines), please visit my blog's homepage at http://www.bladam.com/. You'll see the XML and other icons on the top left.

I am happy and flattered that 400-500 of you visit my blog each day via my site or my feeds! Thanks so much for reading :-).

Feed Fabulosity (Atom, RSS, Full, Summary... oh boy!)

I'm at least temporarily offering both summary full feeds via FeedBurner... which delivers Atom, RSS, whatever your newsreader likes :-). Just look on over at the lefthand-side of any BLADAM page for the links.

Since I do like people to actually visit my site, however (for both selfish and unselfish reasons) I'm debating on whether to keep the full feed or perhaps just run with the summary feed in a bit.

If you have any strong opinions -- heck, ANY opinions (:cough: comment whore :cough:) -- please speak below or forever hold your peace.

Or is it piece. I never did figure that out...

Argh. Blasted late night foggy ramblings ;-)

Got business aspirations? Neuter your blog or suffer the consequences.

What would you think if you saw a blog from Bill Gates or Carly Fiorina or Sergey Brin or even your boss with musings about their personal life... fears, hopes, dreams, quirky friendships, frustrations, and so on?

You'd gawk, of course. And then you would -- along with, perhaps, the press -- freak out. "Wow, what a weirdo. Why's [such and such powerful person] writing about their personal life?"

Real (serious) businessmen and businesswomen, after all, admit no vulnerabilities. They're not even really human, except in limited, PR-approved ways. Indeed, it's okay for angsty teens or coding geeks or others to ramble about life, love, liberty and other personal stuff, but whoa unto the current or future business leader who dares tread into the realm of personal disclosure online.

And thus we come to my conundrum and a challenge no doubt faced by any blogger with a brain and management aspirations.

I'm hardly a business powerhouse yet; no big backroom deals in my calendar, no CEO positions being offered to me lately. But the time will come. And then, written for all to see, will be snippets of my vulnerable musings. One negotiates, ideally, from a position of strength. Expressions of inadequacy -- even temporary -- are not the sort of thing one wants his rivals or potential partners or, God forbid, underlings to see.

Revealing myself as human, therefore, is clearly one of those things that perhaps I shouldn't have done in a public, Googleable way.

After all, my blog has already apparently been a deciding factor in being turned down from one prestigious job. And who knows how many other jobs or relationships my openness has cost me?

* * *

Of course, there are exceptions. Note the blog of Bob Parsons, founder and CEO of the extremely popular domain registrar "Go Daddy." He unreservedly talks about Vietnam, Janet Jackson's breasts and censorship issues, and, yes, his company and its mission.

But I can't think of any other high-powered exec bloggers, and certainly not in non-tech industries. The day I see personal bloggy musings from a senior manager of Coca Cola or Amtrak or Disney... well, I won't eat my words (there are far too many!), but I'll be extremely shocked.

* * *

So, um, what to do. I like pouring out my heart publicly on occasion, and I do humbly know that others enjoy -- and perhaps even learn from -- reading my commentaries, so I don't feel like simply discontinuing my personal writing on the Web. On the other hand, I feel it's just becoming too much of a liability... careerwise and otherwise.

One simple idea I had was to simply remove all traces of my last name from my blog pages, so that at least when people typed my name in a search engine, my blog wouldn't be the first thing they see. But no dice. Too many people have linked to BLADAM as "[my full name]'s blog."

I could move past and future personal musings out of this blog and into either an anonymous blog, or at least one not linked to my full name. That way, I could still 'get credit' for my techie and marketing and other non-personal bloggings while not having any of my personal, vulnerable side attached to my name.

But beyond being an inconvenient and frustrating copout of sorts, I worry about the grander scheme of what such compartimentalization and capitulation means. It perpetuates the societal view or even insistence that those in positions of power aren't subject to the same doubts and worries and anger and uncertainty that the rest of us are. We end up prolonging, then, a nation or even world of bloggers who embody the worst combination of a macho gun-toting George Bush, an invincible Ahnold, and a neutered Bill Gates. It further accentuates our society's stupid belief that real men don't cry, that strength trumps consensus, and that sharing equals weakness.

Personal blogs written by Leaders threaten our comfortable, made-for-TV view of life as zero-sum, black and white, good and evil.

* * *

Alas, even after thinking out loud above, I'm no closer to coming up with a solution that fits my ethics and my realistic concerns about my future career and dating life.

What are your thoughts?

* * *

ADDED 2/12/05
Robert Scoble -- a popular and prolific blogger who isn't afraid to touch upon emotional personal issues AND controversial subjects dealing with his employer -- offers some worthwhile musings on the dangers of blogging. In particular, I like this:

Every blogger has a knob to turn when he/she writes. One direction is "more interesting" and the other direction is "safer." You gotta decide where to turn that knob.

Well said.

Disclaimers (no, I DON'T speak for [x])

My blog has helped me get new jobs. It has also lost me at least one job.

Additionally, as I've seen my comments here and elsewhere on the Web alternately praised and skewered, I've become increasingly concerned when seeing "...and he works for [x]" attached.

So it's long overdue for me to set the record straight, and I'll make the best effort possible to update this entry as my affiliations change.

Disclaimer about this disclaimer:
Everyone has biases... even some they're not aware of. When uncertain about my preconceptions or affiliations, please ask before assuming. Thanks.

My affiliations

• Google
  I am not an employee or contractor at Google and I do not speak for them. I make money from their AdSense program as a Webmaster, and -- both privately and via Intrapromote (see below) -- I earn money by offering AdWords strategy and implementation assistance. I enjoy playing with Google's Lab (beta) products. And lastly, I am friends with several Google employees (certainly not uncommon for those living in the Bay Area :D).


• Intrapromote
  I was the Director of Paid Seach for Intrapromote, now I'm a mere consultant, assisting clients with their AdWords and Overture campaigns. I do not speak for Intrapromote, nor do my comments posted here or elsewhere (in the past or in the future) necessarily match those of my employer.


• Plaxo
  I have done consulting for Plaxo. I do not speak for Plaxo, nor do my comments posted here and elsewhere (in the past or in the future) necessarily match those of my employer (noticing a trend here?).

You can learn more about my ongoing projects here.

I hope this puts an end to (or at least reduces) speculation about any ulterior motives or conflicts of interest I may have.

Thanks for reading.

This is likely my last post

...using MovableType. It may be a week or so until you see my new ExpressionEngine-powered site, because tweaking is taking a bit longer than I had anticipated (more due to my fussiness than any EE problems).

In the meantime, this gives you (yes, YOU!) a great chance to offer me feedback.

- What have you enjoyed on this blog?
- Are there various options (navigation links, etc.) that you like? Others that are a waste of space or annoying or confusing?
- Are there certain features that you'd like to see? (a full text Atom/RSS feed option is in the works, for instance ;-))

As I work hard to implement new blog templates and features and so on, I would love to hear from you! Please take just a moment to drop me a note at adam at the domain bladam.com, or via my contact page (which includes my IM addresses, and so on).

Thanks so much, and have a great weekend :-)

Changing blog software... new Adam site, and more

Hi there :-)

Before I skedaddle off to a going away party for a friend, I thought I'd share a few brief tidbits with you:

1) For a variety of reasons, I'm moving from MovableType (the software that currently powers this blog) to ExpressionEngine. More info on that later... but now, I'm warning you that there may be some (not-so-fun) funkiness with this blog over the weekend. Sorry!

2) For the whopping two or three of you (hi Mom, Dad, and Sis!) that are interested in more personal AdamDetails and would like to, say, listen to music I've composed and stuff like that... I now have a new site, lasnik.net. Come visit and let me know what you think :-)

3) On a geekier note, I've learned that link rel="stylesheet"... seems to be a better choice than the style type="text/css" @import url(Style.css)... method, which for some reason makes the (same) stylesheet be reloaded upon every page (on IE, not Firebird, interestingly enough).

Anyway, I'm off! Have a great weekend, everyone! :-)

Looking to chat about Life, Liberty, Love and stuff?

While I always LOVE seeing your comments here (hint hint hint!), I do also want to shamelessly plug my humble SmileZone Conversation Corner.

Topics include: Friendship, Books & poetry, School, Work, Humor, Riddles, Society & Politics, along with :ahem: Sex and Sexuality (discussions, you pervs, not pics... sorry ;-).

We have some of the world's best looking, er, scintillating moderators, fun and varied topics, and much more. And the claim to fame of the Conversation Corner? Flame-free discussions. Trolls are deleted mercilessly. Jerks are kicked out swiftly. It's not all love and cuddles but the forums always have a respectful and welcoming tone. So if you're sick of rude and mean-spirited discussion lists or forums, this will be a pleasant respite for you :-).

Plus, for a limited time, you can get a SmileZone Conversation Corner account for half price! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that means that as a loyal BLADAM reader, you're entitled to one (1) free account. Use it wisely, and enjoy :-) I look forward to seeing you there!

Community participation on this blog and SmileZone

I'm honored and grateful to have many thousands of you each month reading my blog and participating on my related SmileZone Conversation Corner but I'm saddened that my writings haven't stimulated as much discussion as I would have liked.

I don't plan on changing my writing style or what I write about, but if there are certain factors (usability and otherwise) on my site that'd encourage you and others to participate here more, please do let me know... either via the comments feature of this blog, or via other means.

Thanks!

Edited to add:
There's also that handy-dandy "Mail to friend" link which lets you send a link to any article to -- yeah, you guessed it -- a friend! :D

New SmileZone blogging section!

I'm very pleased to announce the beginning of a new Blogs and Blogging section on my SmileZone, designed to be interesting and useful for blog newbies and experts alike.

I humbly invite you to check it out :-)

New message forum

Just wanted to give my loyal blog readers a heads-up that I installed a new message forum here on my site. :-)

This replaces the older and once-very-popular Conversation Corner (run by outdated software), but all the 6,000 or so posts will remain in a read-only archive.

I may, from time to time, link notes I post here to my Conversation Corner, though I understand there could be some fragmentation between the comments here on the blog and the separate forum postings. Hmm.

Anyway, I do hope you'll take a moment to check out the new Conversation Corner and maybe post a note or two to say hello (perhaps in the Introductions area :-)).

And yet further proof of "selling out" -- but in a good way :)

Well, I've done it again! I just signed up with the new Google AdSense program and will be adding advertisements served by Google into my pages. You can read my more detailed (and now, updated) thoughts concerning advertising on my SmileZone here.

Overall, I must say that I'm impressed with the quality of advertisers and thoughtful targeting achieved from AdSense. Though of course, the proof is in the pudding, or, in other words, "Show me the money!" :D I don't expect to make enough money to retire off of these new ads; heck, I'll be thrilled if I get enough to buy an extra steak-and-prawn burrito once a month (yum!).

But in a larger sense, I think it's really neat what Google is doing; they're not only enabling sites like mine to potentially earn a little bit of extra pocketchange, but they're also offering a useful opportunity for mom-and-pop sites on the Web to reach a broader audience via their AdWords program.

I've offered a few suggestions to the Google folks on their new AdSense program, and it appears as though they're quite receptive. Stay tuned! In the meantime, I'd welcome your feedback on the ads. Are they interesting and relevant to you? Are they intrusive, or do they blend into my site reasonably well? And does the presence of these ads (and others on my site) change your impression of me or what I have to say?

SmileZone / Bladam brief update

Thanks for sticking with me even through sporadic updates and occasional technical hiccups. Below, I offer a few details on the (former) posting-comments-results-in-error (eeek!) problem, and the new Travel and CanonS400 sections on my site and so on.

• When posting a comment, it takes up to 20 seconds once you hit SUBMIT, which still isn't right, but it beats getting an error screen. And please post lots of (interesting) comments anyway! Eventually I'll get to the bottom of the delay :|
  
• I just started a new Travel section. I figure I have a wealth of knowledge about traveling and online travel resources, so I might as well begin sharing it!
  
• I bought the domain CanonS400.com to serve as the new info center for the neato popular camera I recently purchased -- a Canon Powershot S400 digicam. Not much content yet, but feel free to offer feedback on the structure.
  
• Music clips should now work for Mac users. But heck, I've had these music clips up for years, and just now someone tells me Mac-ees couldn't access 'em? Have you no love for us overburdened and well-meaning webmaster folk?!
  
• Lots and lots and lots of new pictures! 'nuff said :-)

Sorry, we're experiencing technical difficulties

[ UPDATE: I think things are working more or less normally now. ]

Hi there,

I haven't added updated in a while because I'm battling some technical difficulties. Haven't yet been able to discern whether it's due to MovableType issues or stuff involving my Web host provider. Ack!

Just wanted to reassure you that I hadn't thrown in the towel on my blog yet! :-)

In the meantime, you may get an error when posting comments, but they'll still show up, I promise!

Thanks for your patience.

On privacy and disclosure in blogging

See that disclaimer above?

I've often mentioned something similar on personal-type posts in the past, and I figured I might as well save myself some typing and have it automatically displayed above all posts that are in my "Personal" category.

I'm curious to know your perception.

Does it change the way you view me or my blog to know that I'm often using fake names when referring to friends? Or that I'm also sometimes engaging in 'time-shifting' to foil those who might otherwise be able to more easily link up my stories with specific events?

I personally feel that the sliver of my life I present here is pretty sincere and representative. But at the same time, I can understand that the above bold disclaimer may sow some regrettable confusion and distrust.

Tell me what you think.

Words worth reading

I've lately added quite a few links to the "Cool Blogs" section on the righthand side, and I encourage you to check out the new additions.

In the not-so-near-but-hopefully-not-too-far future, I'll be starting a Sites to Savor blog -- featuring both blogs and other useful / interesting / fun Web sites. In the meantime, you'll just have to at least occasionally peek at my blogroll ;-)

Looking for WHAT?!

Like most Webmasters, I'm able to see what search terms people use to get to my site.

Some are pretty understandable, like "funny jokes" or "costa rica pictures" or "friendly smile," etc.

Some, however, are rather strange.

I thought I'd reached the peak of weirdness, or more appropriately, the bottom when someone found my site via a search for "stinky toes." Was this person looking for treatment? A new odiforous social network?

But tonight I think I got one search that trumps that:

underage nerd pics

Assuming this is a buxom teenage babe looking for a suitably (intellectually) endowed peer, all I can say is... where the hell was I (and the Internet, for that matter) when I was in high school?!

Getting googled goofily

Back in early December, I wrote an entry about feeling rather small and invisible in the local Lindy Hop (swing dance) scene. In an effort to highlight my feelings of insignificance -- and well in advance of any Chicago movie hype -- I cited some lyrics from "Mr. Cellophane" of Chicago the musical, which I'd seen performed on Broadway earlier last year.

My seemingly innocuous action resulted in a rather strange and unintended result:

My blog has captured the number one position for the Google search on "Mr. Cellophane." I only discovered this by seeing this search term rank up towards the top in my server logs.

This really amuses and surprises me. I had just casually quoted a few lines from the song more than halfway down in a random blog entry... and this trumps mentions of the song in reviews from established newspapers and movie sites online?!

I found that this isn't all my site is Googly known for, though!

You can discover "sexy mirja" on the SmileZone, and on a slightly more esoteric note, I'm proud to note that I'm obviously the foremost authority on Lindy Hop Muppets.

I can get even more contrived of course, and highlight google'd questions, such as "Is Adam Silly or Strange"?

Given this yet-another-late-night-blog, I think the answer to that is pretty apparent.

New SmileZone stuff: Humor House, Comments Leaderboard...

The Humor House is now fully functional and already seeded with a bit o' humor. Check it out!

In other 'Zone news, there's a new feature midway-down on the right-hand column that features those who have contributed the most comments.

I'm sure there's other new and/or improved stuff, too, but as usual, I'm workin' on my site WAY too late in the evening, er, morning (5:40am)... so I'm not all here. Goodnight :-D