I Might Be Down But Not Out

It's been a few weeks since I've posted anything and it feels really weird because I had been on a roll publishing something everyday. But alas years of neglecting my body has caught up with me. No one can sustain themselves on all night binges and running non-stop for the twenty years. So I must slow down and smell the roses as it were.

Ironically my problems began about the same time Marc Orchant passed away (please visit the site for a donation link). I didn't know Marc personally but knew him him online. It was very sobering to know he wasn't much older than myself. This has been a personal wake up call. The past week or so I've tried to remove myself from stressful situations, reduce my work load and move a little slower. My doctor has put me on a good healthy routine and says my future is up to me.

I appreciate all the well wishes I've received, but I am doing fine. I may not be as vocal as I've been in the past but I'm still here.

I also wanted to apologize to those who have not been able to get to my site over the past week. Not sure what happened but I think I finally got it all ironed out yesterday. Feedburner also removed all of my RSS subscribers, just when I was trying to increase them. Anyway, if you can, please reconnect to my RSS feed, it should be working now.

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Props To My Peeps

This weeks prop is a little late but I want to send it out anyway. I've followed this person on Twitter for some time and I just enjoy what she has to say. Her cheery attitude and comments are always uplifting. Unfortunately we don't really know each other but I know her family and friends are better for knowing her. The reason I wanted to throw a prop out to her was for her continued positive affect on my life.

She goes by Hooeyspewer which I thought was an interesting name. Take some time and get to know her a little better.

• Read her blog at hooeyspewer.blogspot.com


• Follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/hooeyspewer

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First Snow Of The Year

Salt Lake City and they surrounding areas received a welcome guest yesterday, snow. The first storm dropped some white stuff a few days earlier but it melted just as fast. But not this time. It snowed for at least 24 hours.

This is the good stuff. The stuff Utah is famous for; powder. I took a few more photos around the outside of my house. Take a look.

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November Was A Big Writing Month

During the month of November I tried to tackle two writing projects at the same time. I knew I would be blogging so joining the National Blog Posting Month group would be pretty easy. The other project I was attempting was National Novel Writing Month. Arguably the most difficult task to complete in 30 days. So here's how I did:

I managed to write 40 blog posts in the month of November. Those 40 posts garnered 38 comments. Not quiet 1 per post but hey at least someone is reading what I write.

I managed to write 2893 words of my 50,000 word novel. I had reached about 9000 words when I realized the story was going no where and I needed to start over. I know, that was a stupid idea but the story was making no sense and it wouldn't have made a difference. I wanted something that you could read rather than just a bunch of words on paper. So while I didn't write a complete Novel I started one that I hope will end up in as a book one day.

I wrote a flash fiction story for a fellow writer to review. It needs a lot of work, in fact I will re-write the whole thing. Flash fiction is difficult to write. A complete story in under 1000 words. That doesn't give you much room for fluff. But I like what flash fiction teaches; to be concise and to the point. I did learned you can write very creative fiction in a small amount of words.

So in summary I had a pretty good writing month. My goal has been to increase the number of words I write both in blog posts and stories. I haven't even counted the number of words all of my blog posts have captured, but it's over 80,000, close enough for a Novel all by itself.

This month I'm focusing on these areas:

• A few series I want to write on digital photography and Lifestreaming.


• Social Media sites like Facebook and Ning. If you've never checked out Ning you need too. It's incredible. I love the layout and the community building. Ning has a strong platform and is pushing the new OpenSocial platform.


• OpenSocial and Android (mobile API)


• New Media posts that coincide with PodCampSLC.

So December ought to be fun. What are you doing this month?

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Facebook Alters Beacon System

Changing the way Facebook handles the Beacon system was inevitable based in user concern. While they are trying to calm the waters with this change, they still need to take a few more steps. At the very least they need to provide a page of companies using the Beacon system and let Facebook users choose who they want to share data with. This is what Facebook has chosen to do:

Users must click on “OK” in a new initial notification on their Facebook home page before the first Beacon story is published to their friends from each participating site. We recognize that users need to clearly understand Beacon before they first have a story published, and we will continue to refine this approach to give users choice.

What I find amazing is as of this writing nothing is on the Official Facebook blog. All I've found are reports from bloggers who follow technology and Facebook. Why is that? Why hasn't Facebook just come out and publicly said they have made changes to Beacon? What I know is they have made an effort to improve the service and give their users more control over how and what is used.

I still think Facebook rocks. I think the entire social network platform has many positive advantages. I also think its great the community can come together and police itself. These are the types of issues that should be taken serious by community builders.

Do you think Facebook went far enough? Is the Beacon system too personal?

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