Blog Exercises: If You Wouldn’t Do It In Public, Would You Do It Online?

If you wouldn’t do it in public, would you do it online? Unfortunately for many, the answer is a resounding YES! However, most of us have some…whatever you call it…oh, yeah, class, ethics, moral fiber, manners – etiquette. I’m not the Dear Abby of social norms, but I’m first in line to tell you that […]

Annual Thanksgiving Orphan Party

You’re invited to the VanFossen Annual Thanksgiving Orphan Party Saturday, November 30, 2013 For many years we’ve gathered together anyone missing home, left out of Thanksgiving celebrations, or eager for more social during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. You are invited to join the craziness. It starts around 2PM. We eat about 6PM, if things go […]

Blog Exercises: Volunteer

I’ve spent years contributing in many ways to WordPress including on the WordPress Support Forums, WordPress.com Forums, and WordPress Codex. The other day I was cleaning out tabs in my browser and stumbled upon an open WordPress.com forum post. I wondered if the user’s question was answered. It was, but not well. I added a […]

Blog Exercises: If I Were to Teach a Class

If you were to teach a class, what would you teach? Today’s blog exercise is to teach a class online through your site. This blog exercise does not have to be complicated. Do you have a favorite recipe? Share it with your readers with the techniques involved in preparing and serving. Do you have a […]

Blog Exercises: Things I Wish I Knew When I Started

“9 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started.” “6 Things You Need to Know Before You Begin.” “The 10 Lessons You Need to Know Before You Take that First Step.” “What I Wish I Knew Before I Knew.” These titles show up in my feed reader on a regular basis. In this blog exercise, […]

Blog Exercises: If You Don’t Make Mistakes, You’ll Never Learn

I’ve long believed that if you aren’t making mistakes, you aren’t learning. That philosophy is part of what these blog exercises are about. I want you to stumble. I want you to destroy your site. I want you to make a mess of everything because that is how you learn. How did I learn what […]

Blog Exercises: Blog Your Hobby

The following blog exercise is inspired by Janet Williams of Janet’s Notebook and her post on “Unique British post boxes: share your hobby.” Who would have thought that an article on UK post boxes would bring post box enthusiasts and historians out of the woodwork to her blog? My interaction with Ruby brings me to […]

Blog Exercises: Sharing Without Context

I got a trackback to one of my posts yeseterday. I was so excited that someone thought what I wrote was worth sharing. Eager to read what they wrote about my article, I paused in my busy schedule to race to their site to find out if I’d changed a life, influenced them in some […]

Blog Exercise: Inspired by Photography

We are all inspired by photography, a picture that motivates and inspires, that moves us, sometimes to the point of changing our perspective on a subject or on our life. With all of the power found in photography, over the next few weeks I will be offering Blog Exercises with the emphasis on getting you […]

Blog Exercises: How to Write about Something Someone Else Wrote

In the early development of the web, blogs were classified as echo chambers, vessels of redundant content as every original idea was shared, reshared, quoted, and spread across the web at rapid speed. Some estimates state that less than 2% of all the content on the web is original. It’s mostly regurgitation of the same […]

Blog Exercises: List Your Resources

In “Blog Exercises: What Are Your Reference Articles” your blog exercise was to identify your reference articles from within your site and list them on a Page or in a post as a reference list. Today’s blog exercise is to identify and publish your resources beyond your site, the reference material and sources you count […]

Blog Exercises: Weekly Link Roundups

Many bloggers publish weekly or monthly link roundups, highlights of some of the interesting sites they’ve found on the web. Most use a variety of automation techniques to generate this link list, bookmarking the web pages to a bookmarking program that helps them generate this list and release it once a week. It’s a lazy […]

A Day of Healing and Suffering at the Clackamas Mall

“I feel greedy.” We stood in the cold outside the Clackamas Mall, arms wrapped around each other, watching the crowd expand to release individuals and couples to step forward and place their candles on the memorial stage. The faces of the two deceased smiled over the mournful group gathered before them. The photographs were snapshots […]

Blog Bashing: Beware Complacency

In “5 Ways to Rid Complacency From Your Blog” on Daily Blog Tips, Bob Bessette writes about how to mix things up in the new year on your blog: If you’ve owned a blog for a while there’s a good chance that complacency may have already set in. Dictionary.com defines complacency as “a feeling of […]