Why I Hate Video Blogs & Video Tutorials

I can't say that this is a new trend, it's been her for a while now... at least it's not new in the online definition of new. Things happen fast here on the good old internet. But anyway - blogs where people post videos of themselves talking, explaining, narrating, huhing, emming...etc are popin' up like zits on prom night.

Why Video blog is cool for them:
- once you get a hang of it, it's less work - at least the boring typing work. Talking is easier than typing.
- you can build up your online personality, wohoo look at me!
- well whatever other good there is - I DONT CARE!

The point of this blog post that I hade to type the old fashioned way is why I HATE VIDEO blogs.

The point of most of the searches on web is gathering information. I am interested in something. I Google it. I scan the page quickly. Decide if its what I'm looking for or not. If it is I read what I need if it's not I move on.

Now if I come across a video blog none of this can be done :/. I cant quickly scan it, I can't even know what the hell info am I going to find in it. To make matters worse - video bloggers never get straight to the point. They try to be funny, the beat around the bush, they make a 10 minute video blog post that gives only one paragraph that could be read in 30 seconds of useful info.

They make my life more difficult.

I am past the stage of finding some online guru that I would want to follow and hang on to his every word. It's a waste of time and one of the things that prevent you from doing something yourself. Reading blogs, looking at video blogs.... get of your ass and do it.

Anyway...this was just one of the things I had to get of my mind and unleash onto this blog.

Oh, if someone likes video blogs, can you please explain to me why?

My Average Daily AdSense Income was 42$ in July

I haven't posted anything in a while. Blogging kind of gets old. You loose motivation from time to time. Especially if you have more than one site to run. It's not that fun anymore, I mean...when I start writing then it suddenly become fun once again but the thought of it - like "I should probably write another post for my Mashed up blog..." feels like work. Anyway, this blog is doing kind of OK. It gets from 20- 30 visitors a day which is cool for no promotion at all. And the visitors come from search engines looking for keywords I tried to include in my posts. Which seems to be working. Now what about that Adnense income, my AdSense earnings?

AdSense is not present on this blog but on a few of my other sites. Sites that don't need any fresh content... luckily lol. It has grown for about 10$ in the last couple of months, before it was around 30$ a day and now it is around 40$.

Is this a lot? It can seem a lot when you are just starting out. Those first cents, first clicks... you feel like you are miles away from your first check. At that time 40$/day would seem like icecream in these hot days.

But when I got here I started to wonder how much income a day would be enough? Enough to quit my day job, pay all the taxes and continue my lifestyle (which is not that expensive ). What do you think?

I know that I could soon probably double or tripple that income if I took in this online money earning thingy full time. In the last half of the year... hell, I think it was even longer I haven't done much more than wrote 2 or 3 blogposts. No new sites, no new links, no work at all.

Thanks to the nature of this bussiness AdSense is passive income. It comes even if you are a lazy SOB that doesn't lift is finger. That is once you start the ball rolling.

What is the purpose of this rant...

Hmm... anyway - what do you think, how high should your average daily internet money income be to quit your job?

How To Upgrade Joomla Easy, Fast, Simple

There is a new version of the Joomla CMS - Joomla 1.5.11. It's just a minor upgrade, some security patches... when you have security patches it is always a good idea to upgrade...and every time there is an upgrade there are security patches so it is wise to upgrade everytime a new version is released.

It is also better to wait for a couple of days so that all possible mishaps the can go together with new release are ironed out.

No, how to upgrade Joomla in 5 seconds?

1. If you don have it already - download and install this component. Ninja Xplorer is at the moment the best file manager for Joomla out there. Since the original Joomla Xplorer got to bulky and complicated, and slow and... whatever. Ninja is lightweight, fast and it doues what it's needs to do and nothing else.

2. Download the latest Joomla version - just download the patch. What is the patch? It is an archive (zip...) of files that were changed from the previous version of Joomla. Make sure you get the right one. If you were a bit slow and forgot to upgrade, you need a different patch that if you are up to date. For instance - if you have Joomla 1.5.09 then you need 1.5.09 to 1.5.11 patch. If you are up to date you need 1.5.10 to 1.5.11 patch.

3. Using Ninja Xplorer upload the patch to the root directory. This is the directory that has joomla in it (the directory with all other Joomla directories and files like configuration.php etc...)

4. Use Ninja Xplorer to extract the upgrade patch and your Joomla upgrade is done!

It takes you less than 5 seconds!

Now every how to upgrade joomla instructions also tell you to backup everything before you upgrade anything but to be honest - I never do. I think it's a waste of time :) and just something you need to say so in case anything goes wrong with the upgrade noone can blame you since you can always say: "Yeah, but did you backup everything?".

So long...

Great looking Joomla templates and sites

I've spilled my guts in the previous post about what the hell is wrong with Joomla templates and why are they all so fugly? But now I would like to ask a reader (if I even have any) if you cold share some links to Joomla sites that dont look like Joomla sites and that do loog nice, original, that do have a template that looks professional, that makes you think - this is an original looking website.

Please help!

Why do all Joomla themes suck?!

I wanted to puke some poison about this topic for a long time. Do you remember phpNuke CMS? Do you remember how all the sites made with this cms looked exactly the same? Now Joomla is going down the same path. I don't know why.

It's just a f...ing template. It's 100% less complicated than Wordpress template. You can not make a Wordpress template to save your life I you dont know php and if you don't know how Wordpress works.

But you can easily make Joomla template if you take 10 minutes and ckeck which tags you have to put in. And you can do that even after the template is more or less finished. But no, all free Joomla templates and most of the paid ones as well just llok the same. Left column, content, right column and some boxes for modules. And it sucks. It's like every "designer" out there is just taking one Joomla template, change the header and the colors and put his name on it and throw it back out there.

How can you recognise a Wordpress template? Most of the time it just looks nice.
How can you recognise a Joomla template? It looks like a f...ing Joomla template from a mile away.

And again - there is no need for this. You could easily take any Wordpress template and turn it into a Joomla template (I would if Wordpress templates would not be such a pain in the ass when it comes to modifying and converting them, Wordpress templating system sucks big time (and still they make beautifull templates))...

I mean, log into any Free Wordpress Template site and you will find lots of great lookgin, original, distinct templates. Then log into a Free Joomla Template site and you will find a pile of amateurish looking templates that all look pretty much the same. Even the paid Joomla templates, Club Joomla templates etc... have a hard time from separating from that Joomla look and only once in a while they produce a template that doesn't have Joomla written all over it and that is not totaly specific for...well I don't know...some stupid hosting company, or e-store o whatever...one that can be used on any website.

So why do all Joomla themes suck?! I have no idea, but I know that it is quite a crutch that prevents Joomla from getting on the next level. Nobody wants a site that screams "I WAS MADE USING JOOMLA" through the template, right? I can' remember the last time that I went to a Joomla site and thought:"Wow, this is an ass kicking nice template!".

Do you?

How much money do I make online?

Money time. I'm not some big shot, internet mogul, a list blogger, big money mofo and this is just a support blog that is kind of close to me because I just ramble about anything and everything...which is not the best thing for a support blog. You want it to be focused on the topic of the website you are trying to support. What...well... anyway...

...still I decided that I will post my highes one day income shot from AdSense, which is 67$. I crossed 60$ a couple more times, but these days I generally earn somewhere around 40$/day. Which is great I think, but nothing to rave about in the general picture of making money in the internet.

Here's the shot:


I hope this turns out OK, I'm still not quite comfortable with this Blogger image system...probably because I don't use it very much.

Till next time.

Ohhh. you are welcomed to tell me what you think :))

A protein rich banana nut bread recipe that is low on carbs and low glycemic

Maybe I should start this post by repeating that making banana bread is really easy. It's harder to mess it up that not to :). I did my first banana bread a few weeks before I started with banana bread recipe site and even the first one turned out great. So this gave me the energy to start a new recipe site that is not doing that well so far, but...well it depends on who would you ask. A few bucks a day might seem linke nothing to someone and a low to someone that is only seeing pennies.

But this is not meant to be a post about me making sites and earning money but about a healthy version of banana bread. A version that is low on carbs and protein rich and has low glycemic index. What does that mean? This banana bread will slowly "leak" glucose into your blood. Slowly and evenly over time. Which is good and healthy. A quick spike and then nothing - this is the opposite - is not healthy.

What is even greater is that this recipe was donated by a reader of my recipe site and it is always a great feeling when this happens.

Anyway... try this or any other banana bread recipe, you will love it.

How To Make Your Own Mobile Phone Ringtone Online - the answer

Yeah, I wondered how to cut the mp3 so you can use it for a mobile phone ringtone. It's pretty easy, thanks to a link I got in the comments of this blog. I promised that if I get any good link, tools, suggestions I'll post them on my other blog so here is keeping the promise - How To Make Your Own Mobile Phone Ringtone Online. Thanks to weeder not only have I found the tool - it's also works online which is great, you don't have to download and install the program just to cut one mp3 file. Thans!

One More Thing I Like About Blogger

So far I have used two hostings for my sites. Actually I am still using them. One is Hostgator (oh, no, no affiliate refferal link lol) and the second one is resellerzoom. First I was with resellerzoom and it was just great. you can host as many sites as you want, no problem. You have your own cpanel, WHM, every site has its own cpanel... when I think of it it's even a bit to many options for me. I mean, I just want to put up a small info site.

Anyway, resellerzoom is turning into a crap hosting. It's cheap but helf the time it works like a dead horse. I used Internet Speed Monitor on my sites a couple of times and the results suck! They suck big time.

I have to install Wordpress super cache on all my wordpress sites just to get them to open. This is also why I think wordpress sucks. It is the slowest and most resource consuming CMS I know. I host Joomla and a couple of smaller CMS sites on the same hosting and at least they open up. Wordpress keeps giving my MySLQ error. Anyway, why don't I move to another hosting?

I AM LAZY :). 80% of my sites work fine since they are not on wordpress and it's just too much work to move everything.

But I did move some wordpress sites to Hostgator and it's 100% better that resellerzoom. Sites work lightning fast. I again checked them with Internet Speed Monitor and the difference is quite obvious.

Yeah. About the Blogger.

It's fast. Faster that resellerzoom and sometimes also faster that hostgator. And it's free. and no cpanel hassle, no hosting problems etc...

long live Blogger. :)

BBQ

There is heaps of snow in the mountains, I've snowboarded the crap out of me this season and it's still not over, but spring is slowly creeping into the land and whyt I like about spring is that this is the time that we start our barbecues (me and my friend), get a few cases of beer, invite some friends over and we sit in the spring sun eating stuff from the bbq.

This reminds me of last year when my friend, who has one of those cheap barbecues, blew up...emm.. well not, he didn't blow op, his barbecue did. It burst into flames. Now I am not sure if I can tell this here...but I don't think that as anything to do with the price of his barbecu, but more with the amount of fire starter fluid that he sprayed all over his barbecu. LOL.

I wanted to include a really cool bbq recipe here but I can't remember one... it must be all that beer from last night. Anyway, just throw some winnies on the barbie and spray them woth some beer and you be fine.

More Food - Cooking Cajun Style

More food :). Yeah, I've been doing some reading on Cajun cousine and cooking and there are quite few few really cool cajun recipes that I want to try ont sometimes in the future. The reason? :) Let's just say that I came across a cool site about cajun cooking, I started reading and...here it is.

Before today the only thing I knew about cajun food was that there is a special Cayenne pepper that is not black or white but a shade of brown and that cajun food must be kind of hot and spicy.

Well that is not really true. A typical cajun dish will be a bit spicey but nothing that would bring tears to your eyes and fire from your mouth and smoke from your ears and .... from your ass lol. 

Anyway, what I have learned about cajun cooking:

Cajun cuisine comes from the French-speaking immigrants that were moved from Canada to Louisiana, USA by the Brits. What kind of food is cajun food? Rustic, simple prepraration (yeah, that's they way I like it), rice, cornbread, vegetables... peppers, onions, celery...

Baah, now all this sound like some history lesson :). What I want are some Cajun recipes. And this is a great site to get them since ALL recipes come with a nice YouTube video of the preparation process. How cool is that?! :) There are lots and lots of recipes but the first one I'm gonna try, bacause it seems so simple that even a lazy cook like me couldn't mess it up...and I like beans... will be the cajun stile baked beans.

I would suggest you check out the site I mentioned but if you are lazy like me I'm gonna give you the recipe here, hope the Cajun chef over there doesn't mind:

What you need is  1-2 cans of Baked Beans, ½ cup Maple Syrup, ½ cup Brown Sugar, BBQ sauce, chopped sweet onion, bacon or ham.

Ready, steady, GO:

Cut onion, cut bacon, cut ham, throw on a hot oiled pan and add beans, sugar, maple syrup, and BBQ sauce after a while and mix. Bake for 30 minutes. Done.

Waffles, waffles, waffles

Yeah, more about food. I have to eat every now and then. Let me begin this waffle journey with a story from my skiing eeek not skiing, snowboarding trip. There was this little waffle stand at the bottom of the ski slope. I didn't even notice it at first. but I noticed the smell of fresh waffles right away. Something smelled really really good and inviting and when you were waiting for the ski lift you couldn't help but to get hungry. And start looking for that waffle stand. Well, after stuffing my mouth full of waffles I managet to mumble that it smells realyl good. So I fell into a conversation with the waffle maker and he told me what his trick was - he bought a special vanilla waffle powder that smelled heavenly when you sprinkled it all over the how waffle iron.

Yeah, the waffles didn't really smell that good, it was a trick, a form of genious advertising LOL. Well the waffles were great anyway. So was the snowboarding. Yeah. Powder.

Anyway, this brings me to my love for waffles. It was discovered only recently after my trip to Holland where I ate loads of waffles and loads of  hmmm.. very thick french fries with mayo or pinda sauce. Pinda sauce is a sauce made out of peanuts and is much better than mayo, at least to me. Where was I... yeah waffles.

Since I like to cook at home, but only things that are fast, quick and easy to make I decided that I will try and make some waffles....as long as they are fast, simple and easy to make. For making waffles you need two things. You need a good waffle maker ad you need a good waffle recipe or even better a few different waffle recipes :).

Anyway, those two sites helped me choose my waffle maker - I got a cheapo waffle iron that looks like it was made somewhere behind the iron curtain 20 years about. It cost me...hel, I an remember. But if the could make waffles in the old times with just two iron grids I am sure this one will work just fine. People are obsesed with features, gadgets... (look who's talking Nokia fan...) "Does your waffle maker have GPS? So you can find your waffles via the bluetooth connection over your phone..crap. Ahm...

maybe I need to put up a picture of my new waffle maker just to show how ugly it is. Ehm, not. This wold be the first picture on this blog. Did I mention that this is just a rabmling bambling blog for supporting my other sites. Ahm.. 

So, got the waffle maker, now for the waffle recipe. I just copied one from the site before, hope they don't mind:

I needed this

• 3 1/4 cups (1 lb. — 500g) all purpose flour
  
• one sachet (7g) instant dried yeast
  
• 4 medium eggs
  
• whole milk (you can also add some sparkling mineral water and make them even fluffier)
  
• two sticks (1/2 lb. — 250g) butter
  
• vanilla sugar
  
• some salt
  

Oh, this will be a full blown belgian waffle recipe. not just your ordinary waflles. What's the difference? YEAST!

1. Warm the milk and mix in your yeast.
2. Melt the butter.
3. Separate the egg yolks from the egg whites. Beat the egg whites until you get snow.
4. Get a bowl and put in all the flour, vanilla sugar (one sachet) and some salt. Then add melted butter, yeast and egg yolk.
5. Mix while adding milk (no lumps). Make it thick.
6. Mix in egg whites snow. Just a little. 
7. Leave the dough to rest and rise at room temperature for a while until it doubles.
8. Grease the waffle iron and put the dough in it. Bake the until they turn golden brown.

Eat. Or add some fruit, chocolate, cream, ice cream, syrup...whatever suits you.

Food: Chocolate chip cookies

From time to time I need to share a recipe. Like right now. I probably already raved about how I only like simple recipes. Recipes that are fast and easy to make. Most of people feel that anything more that potting something into the microwave is to complicated and time consuming but it's not. Like making chocolate chip cookies is not.

At least the way I do it. Keep it simple stupid...

Chocolate chip cookie recipe ingredients

This is the stuff you will need for this recipe, things you can get anywhere...

• Unsalted Butter – 225 g
• Granulated sugar - 150 g
• Brown sugar – 160 g
• Eggs – 2
• Vanilla extract – 1 ½ teaspoons
• Flour – 295 g
• Baking soda – 1 teaspoon
• Salt – ½ teaspoon
• Semisweet chocolate chips – 270 g

Yeah, I'm sorry for the metric system. Use google to convert.

Now for the recipe, what on Earth do you do with these ingredients?

1. Turn on the oven (375 degrees F (190 degrees C))
2. Take a bowl and mix in the butter, and all the sugar, eggs and vanilla.
3. Throw in all the dry ingredients (flour, soda, salt).
4. Mix, halfway through add chocolate chips.

Oh, I got this recipe here on the chocolate chip cookies recipe site. There's more recipes there if you want...

Emm...right.

Take a spoon and drop your cookie dough on baking paper and put the cookies in the oven. They will be done in 12 – 14 minutes. They should turn golden brown around edges. If they are black get of your PC and pay more attention to what you are cooking. I usually just set the alarm on my phone to remind me to take them out.

How to cut and split mp3 files?

I know my phone can play normal mp3 and has enough memory to hold plenty of songs. So this in not the reason why you would want to split mp3 files for your phone. The reason is, that I want to set a certain mp3 as my ringtone. And I want only the favourite part of the song to be a ringtone, not the beginning etc...

So how do I split my mp3?

Crap. I tried and search the net for a mp3 splitter cutter whatever and all seem like crap and are not free. I can understand that people that program want something in return. I just feel there is an open source alternative to this that I just can't find?

I'll use a trial version, it's just one song, but if you have any ideas for a cool little mp3 cutter let me know. Or if I find out about one I'll post it...probably on my technology blog, when I think about it this is why I opened it, why am I writing this here...

New blogs on the block

LOL, are those New Kids On The Block still around? Yeah, I'm that old that I remember them. Right, enough about that. And more about a few new blogs. Why would you want to start a new blog? More blog is always better that less blogs. If you want to do some bussines online, why would you only have one? I mean, setting up a new blog takes like..well, it depends where and how you set it up..not that much time and definitely not that much money. If you do it on Blogger it's free.

If you get your own hosting and domain it costs a few bucks but it is a REALLY SMALL INVESTMENT if you consider that this very blog can also be an online bussiness. Well not this one, the hypothetical new blog.

If you want to earn something online than you need to get as much unique quality content online as possible. Build yourself a newtwork of blogs, sites, lenses, accounts, hubs, directories, forums... whatever. And next time you will want to promote something you will be miles ahead of the ordinary on blog guy.

Now to the two new blogs. The first one is about FOOD! Yeah, I love a good meal and I kind of like to cook, but I do not like to cook for very long time since this is time I would rather spend doing something else. So I created a blog about recipes that are simple, quick and easy to make - a Quick and Easy recipes blog. This means recipes that are not made out of some exotic plant or animal that only lives on Christmas island in the Pacific and only one store in New York sell. These are also recipes that do not require you to use all of your pots and pans and have a mountain of dishes to do later. These are just the kind of recipes that I like. Yeah, simple, quick,easy...

And the next one is a technology blog. I like gadgets, I own gadget, so why wouldnt I share some of my experinences with them. I used this blog a lot for blogging about my Nokia N85 and I think I will probably take this to my new blog that I have called The Stupid Technology Reviews Blog. Why Stupid? Because the name without stupind was already taken LOL, and because if I screew something up I can say - hey this is a stupid technology blog, what did you expect? LOL. Right, what I would like to point out is the beautifull template this blog has. At least to me :). I love it that is clean and simple without any crap and I love the color combination. It's just soooo much better than this white & blue over here.

I might change all my other blogs to that template...I'll see.

Anyway, guy (no guys, guy as in singular) get of your ass and start a blog yourself. Reading about it won't make it happen.

Claim and That's It That's All

I have strayed away from one of the topisc of this blog lately. Sports! Especially winter sports. Deep snow, deep powder snow, and lots of it. Snowboarding, skiing. Yeah I am doing a lot of that lately. But this will be a review of two movies that I watched recently. A ski movie called Claim and snowboard movie called That's it That's All. I think they can both be found also on blue ray, at least for Claim I am sure. Here is a great way to find blue ray movies. HD makes a lot of difference.

Anyway, back to the movies. THEY BOTH FUCKIN ROCK! I stopped watching snowboard movies a while ago. The all kind of seem the same, you see 10 of them you have seen them all. And I never watched skiing movies. Back in my skiing days skiing was boring. so I started snowboarding and when the new school skiing revolution came I was sliding sideways and I didn't care. So Claim is the first ski movie i have ever seen. LOL.

Anyway, back to the movies.

Claim

They say this is the best movie of the year or all times or something. It's about how action sports are to cool for people to show joy when they stomp a big trick etc.. and how that is wrong. So in Clain eerybody claims everything. Yeah, I am the best skier out there. Everybody else sucks. Hillarious.

And the tricks rock. And the footage is AWESOME! Mountain shots look like the jumped out of the Lord Of The Rings. Soundtrack is also pretty cool with Final countdown at the begining. Gay? Whatever, it works :).

That's It That's All

Even more amazing footage if thats even possible! These two were really high budget films with helicopters, railroad track for the cameras...the whole shit. And it shows. Its not just lets put the camera here and do some jump. It's just beautifulllll!! The nature, the animals, snow, trees, valleys, mountain ridges... the tricks are just a smaller part of the movie...well not really, but at least 1/3 is just the setup for the tricks.

Anyway, if you will only watch to snow movies ever, watch these two! You wont be sorry.

Nokia N85: How to Deactivate Power Saving Mode?

This is another ting that I had to solve lately. Nokia N85 has this great feature that when your battery drops below 15% or something it swithes into power saving mode and is shuts down all un-necessary programs activities and your phone will work for quite some time longer.

You can deactivate power saving mode if you press power button and choose to deactivate. But sometimes for some reason you can get stuck in the power saving mode even if your battery is fully charged. And you can not deactivate it by using power button.

How to get out of power saving mode if your battery is full?

Turn off the phone, turn on the phone. Done! Now all I need are some comfortable earphones. I'm not sure...maybe my ears are shaped funny but all the earphones keep falling out of my ears. The cheap ones that you get on the plane, the iPod ones, the not so cheap ones, the best ones... Maybe I need to get some headphones.

A new and eco way to wash your clothes

LOL, this blog really is about everything. Sorry about that. I know this is the worst thing you can do seo-wise, readers wise. But since this blog is nowhere in the SERPS (though I do get 3 or 4 visitors on my Nokia video is freezing problem post) and there are no readers whatsoever on this blog I can write about the latest thing in doing your laundry. :)

The latest eco fad in washing your clothes is using wash balls. I got them a few days ago and so far so good (meaning my clothes are still clean hehe). I searched the net for some info about them and all I could find was this website dedicated to wash balls. As they say there is quite a heated debate amongst the stay at home moms if these wash balls really work or not. 

OK, what's the deal here, why would you use these washing balls? The replace washing detergent! The cost like around 20 bucks and you can use them for 3 years every day before they need to be replaced. So if they would really work they would be a HUGE money saver and a HUGE relief for the environment. And they would also be a HUGE pain in the ass for the P&G, Johnson and Johnson, Henkel and other big companies that pump us with ads about how their detergents get rid of even the thoughest stains.

So I recomend you visit Eco wash bals website and cast your vote in the eco wash balls review - do they work or not. If you use them of course. Or just to find out more about them...

Until next time...stay squeeky clean.

How to disconnect Nokia (N85) from PC suite?

This goes from any mobile phone, any Nokia phone that uses PC Suite. If you connect your phone to the PC as if it is a USB mass memory drive, a flash drive then you will get the standard icon in your taskbar that shows you that some kind of external memory is connected to the PC. Here you simply click on the icon and select safely remove + your Nokia phone.

But what if you are connected with PC Suite? How to disconnect Nokia (N85) from PC suite?

If you are connected to PC Suite then there will be no icon in the taskbar and no way to click the safely remove option.

First let me explain what is the purpose of safely remove option - it is just a simple precaution that you would not disconnect your external memory (your phone in this case) while data is being written to it. If you disconnected in that moment then you could have some problems. So safely remove just waits until there is no data transfer and then tells you its ok to unplug your usb drive.

So if you are connected using PC Suite then do the following:

1. Finish what you are doing in PC Suite
2. Close PC Suite - so you are sure no data is being transfered between your Nokia phone and PC and
3. unplug the cable.

That's it.

How to insert/show HTML and other code in Blogger post?

Normaly if you copy-paste some code into the edit HTML or Compose window in your Creat post form in Blogger the code will render and show what it is supposed to show. But what if I want to show you the code, not the result of the code. 

How do I insert HTML or PHP or Javascript code into a Blogger post?

I want something like the code in this poste where I wrote about the ugly and simple Blogger templates. The solution is simple.

1. Copy the code into your NOTEPAD!
2. Use Edit->Replace (or Ctrl+H) and in find all the < and replace them with & l t ; (delete the spaces between the characters, without spaces you would just see another < here) 
3. Use Edit->Replace (or Ctrl+H) and in find all the > and replace them with & g t ; (delete the spaces between the characters, without spaces you would just see another > here)
   
4. Copy the code from NOTEPAD into the Blogger post
5. And you are done

What have you done? The & l t ; is another way of telling the browser to shov a <.

Simple!

How to get a crappy ugly looking Blogger template like I have?

First let me explain why would you want to have an "ugly" looking template like this one :)? First of all, I don't really think this temaplte is fugly. It's simple, clean, without all the stupid bells and whistles that contribute NOTHING to the blog itself. All they do is distract. Booohooo, look at my shiny blog, at least it's beautiful if the content is not woth reading....

Minimal. Simple. Think Google. Why is Google so successful with their simple (ugly?) interface? Because it works!

Besides that - if you want your website to bring you some money using Adsense or whatever, there are two benefits of having an ugly clean template:

- people that are used to all the shiny blogs will come to your website and think that your content can not be very good and worth anything if the template is so spartan. So they will probably leave a bit faster that they otherwise would and they would preferably leave by clicking on one of your ads. And second...

- is distraciton. Every element of the screen is a possible distraction for the visitors eye. If you want your ads to stand out you want as little distractions as possible. No badges, no widgets, no link, no colors, no pictures, no twitter crap, no blog catalog, no who is online, no who is following who and who is whos friend and how am I feeling at the moment, no favourite songs, bands, movies and other lists, no favorite books, celebrities...none of that crap. You want good content, simple navigation through your site and that's it.

So how to get an ugly simple minimalistic template on Blogger?

The minimal template is a good start. Select minimal template. Then enter your dashboard -> layout and fonts and colors and play with your colors. All you want are the following colors: black for the text, blue for the links and white for everything else. Then enter page elements and throw away all the unnecessary Gadgets/Widgets/page elements...whatever. 

And you are done. Or you can just have the same template as me nad just copy this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

<html expr:dir='data:blog.languageDirection' xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml' xmlns:b='http://www.google.com/2005/gml/b' xmlns:data='http://www.google.com/2005/gml/data' xmlns:expr='http://www.google.com/2005/gml/expr'>

  <head>

    <b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/>

    

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>

<title><data:blog.pageName/> - <data:blog.title/></title>

<b:else/>

<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>

</b:if>

    <b:skin><![CDATA[/*

-----------------------------------------------

Blogger Template Style

Name:     Minima

Designer: Douglas Bowman

URL:      www.stopdesign.com

Date:     26 Feb 2004

Updated by: Blogger Team

----------------------------------------------- */

/* Variable definitions

   ====================

   <Variable name="bgcolor" description="Page Background Color"

             type="color" default="#fff" value="#ffffff">

   <Variable name="textcolor" description="Text Color"

             type="color" default="#333" value="#333333">

   <Variable name="linkcolor" description="Link Color"

             type="color" default="#58a" value="#0066CC">

   <Variable name="pagetitlecolor" description="Blog Title Color"

             type="color" default="#666" value="#0066CC">

   <Variable name="descriptioncolor" description="Blog Description Color"

             type="color" default="#999" value="#333333">

   <Variable name="titlecolor" description="Post Title Color"

             type="color" default="#c60" value="#0066CC">

   <Variable name="bordercolor" description="Border Color"

             type="color" default="#ccc" value="#ffffff">

   <Variable name="sidebarcolor" description="Sidebar Title Color"

             type="color" default="#999" value="#0066CC">

   <Variable name="sidebartextcolor" description="Sidebar Text Color"

             type="color" default="#666" value="#333333">

   <Variable name="visitedlinkcolor" description="Visited Link Color"

             type="color" default="#999" value="#0066CC">

   <Variable name="bodyfont" description="Text Font"

             type="font" default="normal normal 100% Georgia, Serif" value="normal normal 120% Verdana, sans-serif">

   <Variable name="headerfont" description="Sidebar Title Font"

             type="font"

             default="normal normal 78% 'Trebuchet MS',Trebuchet,Arial,Verdana,Sans-serif" value="normal normal 70% Verdana, sans-serif">

   <Variable name="pagetitlefont" description="Blog Title Font"

             type="font"

             default="normal normal 200% Georgia, Serif" value="normal bold 266% Verdana, sans-serif">

   <Variable name="descriptionfont" description="Blog Description Font"

             type="font"

             default="normal normal 78% 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Arial, Verdana, Sans-serif" value="normal bold 78% Georgia, Times, serif">

   <Variable name="postfooterfont" description="Post Footer Font"

             type="font"

             default="normal normal 78% 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Arial, Verdana, Sans-serif" value="normal normal 69% 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Arial, Verdana, Sans-serif">

   <Variable name="startSide" description="Side where text starts in blog language"

             type="automatic" default="left" value="left">

   <Variable name="endSide" description="Side where text ends in blog language"

             type="automatic" default="right" value="right">

*/

/* Use this with templates/template-twocol.html */

body {

  background:$bgcolor;

  margin:0;

  color:$textcolor;

  font:x-small Georgia Serif;

  font-size/* */:/**/small;

  font-size: /**/small;

  text-align: center;

  }

a:link {

  color:$linkcolor;

  text-decoration:none;

  }

a:visited {

  color:$visitedlinkcolor;

  text-decoration:none;

  }

a:hover {

  color:$titlecolor;

  text-decoration:underline;

}

a img {

  border-width:0;

  }

/* Header

-----------------------------------------------

 */

#header-wrapper {

  width:800px;

  margin:0 auto 10px;

  border:1px solid $bordercolor;

  }

#header-inner {

  background-position: center;

  margin-left: auto;

  margin-right: auto;

}

#header { 

  margin: 5px;

  border: 1px solid $bordercolor;

  text-align: center;

  color:$pagetitlecolor;

}

#header h1 {

  margin:5px 5px 0;

  padding:15px 20px .25em;

  line-height:1.2em;

  text-transform:uppercase;

  letter-spacing:.2em;

  font: $pagetitlefont;

}

#header a {

  color:$pagetitlecolor;

  text-decoration:none;

  }

#header a:hover {

  color:$pagetitlecolor;

  }

#header .description {

  margin:0 5px 5px;

  padding:0 20px 15px;

  max-width:700px;

  text-transform:uppercase;

  letter-spacing:.2em;

  line-height: 1.4em;

  font: $descriptionfont;

  color: $descriptioncolor;

 }

#header img {

  margin-$startSide: auto;

  margin-$endSide: auto;

}

/* Outer-Wrapper

----------------------------------------------- */

#outer-wrapper {

  width: 800px;

  margin:0 auto;

  padding:10px;

  text-align:$startSide;

  font: $bodyfont;

  }

#main-wrapper {

  width: 550px;

  float: $startSide;

  word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */

  overflow: hidden;     /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */

  }

#sidebar-wrapper {

  width: 220px;

  float: $endSide;

  word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */

  overflow: hidden;      /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */

}

/* Headings

----------------------------------------------- */

h2 {

  margin:1.5em 0 .75em;

  font:$headerfont;

  line-height: 1.4em;

  text-transform:uppercase;

  letter-spacing:.2em;

  color:$sidebarcolor;

}

/* Posts

-----------------------------------------------

 */

h2.date-header {

  margin:1.5em 0 .5em;

  }

.post {

  margin:.5em 0 1.5em;

  border-bottom:1px dotted $bordercolor;

  padding-bottom:1.5em;

  }

.post h3 {

  margin:.25em 0 0;

  padding:0 0 4px;

  font-size:160%;

  font-weight:normal;

  line-height:1.4em;

  color:$titlecolor;

}

.post h3 a, .post h3 a:visited, .post h3 strong {

  display:block;

  text-decoration:none;

  color:$titlecolor;

  font-weight:normal;

}

.post h3 strong, .post h3 a:hover {

  color:$textcolor;

}

.post p {

  margin:0 0 .75em;

  line-height:1.6em;

}

.post-footer {

  margin: .75em 0;

  color:$sidebarcolor;

  text-transform:uppercase;

  letter-spacing:.1em;

  font: $postfooterfont;

  line-height: 1.4em;

}

.comment-link {

  margin-$startSide:.6em;

  }

.post img {

  padding:4px;

  border:1px solid $bordercolor;

  }

.post blockquote {

  margin:1em 20px;

  }

.post blockquote p {

  margin:.75em 0;

  }

/* Comments

----------------------------------------------- */

#comments h4 {

  margin:1em 0;

  font-weight: bold;

  line-height: 1.4em;

  text-transform:uppercase;

  letter-spacing:.2em;

  color: $sidebarcolor;

  }

#comments-block {

  margin:1em 0 1.5em;

  line-height:1.6em;

  }

#comments-block .comment-author {

  margin:.5em 0;

  }

#comments-block .comment-body {

  margin:.25em 0 0;

  }

#comments-block .comment-footer {

  margin:-.25em 0 2em;

  line-height: 1.4em;

  text-transform:uppercase;

  letter-spacing:.1em;

  }

#comments-block .comment-body p {

  margin:0 0 .75em;

  }

.deleted-comment {

  font-style:italic;

  color:gray;

  }

#blog-pager-newer-link {

  float: $startSide;

 }

 

#blog-pager-older-link {

  float: $endSide;

 }

#blog-pager { 

  text-align: center;

 }

.feed-links {

  clear: both;

  line-height: 2.5em;

}

/* Sidebar Content

----------------------------------------------- */

.sidebar { 

  color: $sidebartextcolor;

  line-height: 1.5em;

 }

.sidebar ul {

  list-style:none;

  margin:0 0 0;

  padding:0 0 0;

}

.sidebar li {

  margin:0;

  padding-top:0;

  padding-$endSide:0;

  padding-bottom:.25em;

  padding-$startSide:15px;

  text-indent:-15px;

  line-height:1.5em;

  }

.sidebar .widget, .main .widget { 

  border-bottom:1px dotted $bordercolor;

  margin:0 0 1.5em;

  padding:0 0 1.5em;

 }

.main .Blog { 

  border-bottom-width: 0;

}

/* Profile 

----------------------------------------------- */

.profile-img { 

  float: $startSide;

  margin-top: 0;

  margin-$endSide: 5px;

  margin-bottom: 5px;

  margin-$startSide: 0;

  padding: 4px;

  border: 1px solid $bordercolor;

}

.profile-data {

  margin:0;

  text-transform:uppercase;

  letter-spacing:.1em;

  font: $postfooterfont;

  color: $sidebarcolor;

  font-weight: bold;

  line-height: 1.6em;

}

.profile-datablock { 

  margin:.5em 0 .5em;

}

.profile-textblock { 

  margin: 0.5em 0;

  line-height: 1.6em;

}

.profile-link { 

  font: $postfooterfont;

  text-transform: uppercase;

  letter-spacing: .1em;

}

/* Footer

----------------------------------------------- */

#footer {

  width:800px;

  clear:both;

  margin:0 auto;

  padding-top:15px;

  line-height: 1.6em;

  text-transform:uppercase;

  letter-spacing:.1em;

  text-align: center;

}

]]></b:skin>

  </head>

You see that this ends with /head tag? Enter your Blogger Dashboard / Layout / Edit HTML and delete everything from the top to the /head tag and replace it with the code above.

Voila! You have something that some people might describe as an ugly Blogger blog. 

But I call is simple is beautifull.

Till next time...

Why use Blogger for a new blog?

The big "smart(ass :))" majority of people will have the same answer to the following question:

Q:"Should I use Blogger to start a new blog or website?"

A:"No, if you are serrious about your site get a hosting, buy your own domain and install Wordpress. Blogger is for spammers and you can never make a decent site with it ect..."

Crap.

First let me explain why you really would not want to have your blog/website on Blogger and they why you would want to:).

Blogger review, why not use it:

- you want to sell your website sometime in the future, you will not be able to sell your Blogger blog. This is correct, kind off, but it can be fixed if you plan ahead - get a new Google account that you will only use for one Blogger blog and you will be able to sell it together with your account.

- branding, it's kind of no cool to brand URL that says mashed-up-blog.blogspot.com LOL

Blogger review, why use it:

- having your own hosting and domain is cool but it is also a waste of time. Because with Blogger blog you eliminate all sorts of problems. Problems like:

- hosting bill

- other hosting problems, like server being down, your site getting hacked, bandwidth problems, space problems, unresponsive support problems... you do not have to do any of these. All will be taken care off by Blogger.

- spript problems. I don't really like Wordpress that much, read my cons on Wordpress in the review. Anyway, most of the websites probably run on some sort of CMS script. This again means a waste of time for:

- installing the script

- configuring the script

- upgradeing the script and making sure its up to date so your website doesn't get hacked

- etc.. it work, work, work.

As I said. If you have one website you have lots of time to run it, to do maintenance etc.. it's cool, it's fun, it's a hooby, it's why you do this in the first place. If you have 20 websites this will soon become a pain in the ass.

All you have to do with Blogger is login and write. Everything else is taken care of. And if you tink you are worse off SEO wise because you are using a blogspot blog - you are not.

How to copy SMS from your Nokia to PC using PC suite?

I played with this a few days ago. You have to connect your Nokia to your PC, when it asks for the type of connection choose PC suite.

Then start PC suite and choose the SMS icon to start the communications center (or whatever it is called).

When it opens there will be a list of all your short messages and you can read them, write new ones, delete them (much faster than on the phone) and also save them.

The other was is to backup your whole Nokia phone to your PC. You also use PC Suite for this, just choose backup feature. Don't worry, your phone will not be changed and nothing will be deleted from it.

So this is pretty much it. I really like my N85 Nokia, before i bought it I was kind of undecided. I wanted to wait for the G1 Phone to arrive to my country, but since I kind of felt that this could take a while lol, I decided to get N85. Well, these two phones (N85 an G1 phone) are not really that much alike, but anyway... I am not sorry, I am happy with my choice.

Uh, sorry for the spelling. Here nd in other posts, i'm a fast typer and i hate to re-read what I have written lol.

My short explanation of SEO and a few tips

I mentioned a few times that I have a few websites the earn a few bucks. And I have mentioned that this blog was started to be some kind of support blog for those websites but I kind of enjoy writing on this blog, because it's so simple... all my other sites that I work on and SEO them are on their own domains. This means several time-wasting problems, like server, hosting, scripts... uh. I see I could dedicate an entire post to this. I think I will :).

Anyway, I strayed away from the purpose of this post - what is SEO, what does SEO stand for?

SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

It is a process of tuning your website in such a way that it will appear in the top of the search results (mostly on Google) for a desired keyword. 

I divide SEO in 2 fields - it's what you can do on the website itself - this means how to opzimize the text, titles, heading, internal and external links etc. This is kind of important, but it's pretty simple because you have 100% control of your website and you can do whatever you want on it.

The second field of SEO is what you do off your website to optimize it. Here we are basically talking about geting backlinks. Links that point to your websites. Good links that point to your website. This part of SEO is more important (it has more weight, a bigger influence on the final results) and more difficult because you do not have control of the other peoples websites - websites from which you want to get links from.

A lot can be learned about SEO from different blogs and websites online. Like you can get free SEO tips or something. The problem here is - too much information. So you spend all your time reading instead of working. You need to find a website that you are 100% sure that they know what they are talking about and stick to them. 

People post stuff all the time, to keep their blogs frest, to I don't know why. Most of it is crap or most of it is just rewriten stuff that other people wrote... By not doing something yourself there is no way to know if some SEO tip works or not.

Besides some general thruths all SEO is pretty gray area. Because noone really knows what makes search engines tick. Except the ingeneers that work there off course.

So set your own path, work and you will see what works. Yeah I know the point here is pretty obvious lol. But it's true!

How To Put The Blogspot Post Title Before The Blog Title?

If you want your blog to be more SEO friendly than try this trick. It is important what stands first in the title field. The title field determines what will be visible on the top let corner of your browser and what will be visible in the search engine results. Words that are closer to the beginnig are considered more important and also - if your title is very long it can be clipped at the end. This can happen pretty fast if your blog name is long and is always in the first place. So how to change that, how to put the post title first and blog titles second on Blogger / Blogspot?

Open your template HTML and find the first line of code (the first title...), then replace it with what is written under it:

And save and you are done! Now your blog post title will come before the blog title.

When will Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, sNews, 19Pages... be updated?

I hope Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, sNews, 19Pages... will NEVER be updated!!!!!!

Why?

Because! :)))

1. If a script needs to be updated it means that there were bugs in it, there were security risks, there were problems, there were sites getting hacked, possibly my sites. Sites that I made, optimized, sites that are making money, sites that I might have forgotten to backup. So any security risk is a direct risk for my passive income :). Now who want a lower paycheck raise your arms! That is the firs reason I hate updates. I know update is also the time for new features and options but still... if it aint broken - don't fix it. And second and (more) important thing...


2. Time wasted! If you have one website that is your puppy, that you know every character of code personally... then you I guess can not wait for an update. Weeeee, let's see what is new, what new features are there, weeeee they changed the admin template, now it is soooo cooool. Weeee... Great. I have 30 websites and I need to update 30 websites. Weee? Yeah, right. I need to backup the site (which I don't because I'm to lazyI), update the site, solve the usual problems, solve the unusual problems, try to remember all the modifications I made, how I made them and why are they not working now, fix the extensions that are not working... Arrgghhhhhh. Even if everything goes smoothly it still takes time. and you need to do it so your scripts and CMS are secure and upto date.

And this is why I hate when Wordpress is upadated, whene the new version of Joomla comes out etc...

What CMS do I use for making websites - A review!

So I talked a bit now and then that I own a few websites and that this blog is a...hm... kind of a support blog for these websites. Support blog to get some links out and a cool and legitiamte blog where I could post anyting that I find interesting online or off. Anyway. Forget that. This post is about how do I make my websites and what CMS do I use!

First of all - what the hell is a CMS?

CMS is short for Content Management System. Content can be anything from text, to pictures, to videos... Management means that you use a script, a program, something the helps you write, add, delete, arrange, list, sort etc.. your content. This means that (in theory) you do not need to know anything about things like HTML, CSS, PHP... Everything is done through an interface that is usually simple enough to understand. Why I said in theory? Because sooner or later (believe me, it will be sooner!!:) ) you will want to make some changes to your CMS, use it an a way that was not originally meant to be used...even if it is just a simple change, you will need to know a few things about HTML and CSS. These two can take you a long way. And PHP? I only know so much that I know what I can and what I can not tuck and delete :). And system is well...whatever.

So CMS is something that you install on a server and you have a website. What content management systems do I use?

Joomla!

Joomla! is one of the most popular free and open source CMS out there. It's popular because it's good and simple for beginners to use. Because it is so popular there a tousands of extenstions, plugins, components, free Joomla templates and other things like that that will help you turn your Joomla website into what you want it to be. And because it is so popular it is also very popular to say that Joomla sucks and pretend that you are soooooo cooler than all the people that use Joomla. Well it doesn't suck. The only (maybe) downside to it is that it is quite a large CMS with lots and lots of files. so it is not the best thing if you just want to make a small simple website.
Pro: you can turn it into anything you want, it's free, great community that will help you, great community that constantly pumps out new extensions, it's pretty simple to understand
Con: it's big, so don't use it for a 4 page website.

sNews

I have been using sNews for a while now and its all that Joomla is not. It's soooo small that the whole CMS is packed into one singe file!!! And it can still do a lot of things while it looks more like..well a CMS that is run from a single file. The backend in spartan, but the templates are really easy to understand and modify.
Pro: simple, free, great for small sites, still can do a lot of things, it's not updated regularly (I'll explain later why I like that lol)
Con: it's not very fancy, it's not so expandable, you can not really turn it into much more than a content website, and what I hate most - you have no text editor out of the box.

Wordpress

Some people just love Wordpress and the go and turn it into every possible website out there. But if I tell you the truth - Wordpress is meant for writting blogs. It's perfect for that and it's perfect to make simple websites that pretend not to be blogs. For everything else just use Joomla. Since WP is also very popular you can find lots of free extensions and plugins (check here for top wordpress plugins) that will help you modify your website.
Pro: great for blog, simple to setup, fancy templates
Con: templates look cool but the templating system is WTF? at least if you are a beginner, chaningn wordpress templates for beginners is a pain in the ass, you need to know HTML, CSS and PHP and you need to know how Wordpress works. This sucks. Also admin backed is a bit confusing for me but you'll get used to it.

19Pages

This one is a gem for all niche website makers. Is there a CMS that you install simply by saving it on the server and it works. No creating MySQL databases, no users, no crap... you upload it and it works? Is there? Yes it is and it is called 19 pages (it was meant that there are at most 19 pages on a niche website, if there are more it's not a niche website anymore...but you can turin it into CMS that allows more that 19 pages without a problem). So yes - 19 pages saves your articles into text files.
Pro: it's so simple even a monkey could install it, template system is also so simple that a monkey could teach another monkey how to change and modify your template (the same goes for sNews btw...).
Con: you need to modify the script to post more than 19 pages, since it is so simple it's really simple :) you might miss a few things but hey - if you want something complex use wordpress or Joomla.


That's it! These are the 4 CMSs that I use and all of my websites are made using these. No website is made by hand in Dreamweaver or smthng like that. Then of course there are websites that use free online platforms like this blog on blogger. But this is another story.

I will use the next post to explain why I hate CMS updates. I hope all the updates die and rot in hell :). Stay tuned (who am I kidding, I'm the only one reading this blog).

Will do-follow comments bring you web traffic?

Since this blog is mostly related to websites I make money from and it's a part of the shhhhh...farm of websites, which is still much to small. Right. Anyway... so I thought it would also be nice if I would write a few posts about how to generate web traffic.

As far as I am concerned there are two ways of bringing traffic to a website:

1. Search engine traffic.
2. All the other crap :).

If you want to have a constant surge of fresh people coming to your website, a source of traffic that will not cease as soon as you stop writing, commenting, submitting, kicking and screaming and being an attention whore, a source of traffic that can pretty easy be monetized - then you want search engine traffic.

If you don't want any of the above mentioned things then you can look for other sources of traffic. Traffic like people coming to your website from comments on other blogs, from websites like Stumbleupon, Digg, Reddit and other social bookmarking websites, traffic from your advertising on other websites, bought traffic etc... This kind of traffic is either expensive or it's not worth much if you want to make some money from it.

Getting the first kind of traffic is all about getting on the top o the search engines rankings. There are many (many many many many...) factors that influence where in the search rankings will you appear, but the most important one is links with the right anchor. So getting links should be one of your priorities.

There are many methods of getting links. Some even include links from sites that otherwise fall under the second category of traffic sources. So yes - you can get links from social sites or you can get links from other blogs. Just be aware that if you are getting links from other blogs in the form of comments - most of the blogs today have a no-follow tag on their links.

What the hell is a no-follow tag? It is a tag that tells the search engine spider that this link should not be worth anything, that it should not pass any juice, that it has no value. So if you want to get links from the comments on other blog then look for blogs that have a dofollow plugin instaled. This dofollow plugin will remove the nofollow tag and links will be worth something.

So gettin' links from dofollow blogs will help you get search engine traffic. Yey! (just make sure you include your keyword in the anchor). Comments are not worth much even with dofollow enabled but ask yourself - what is better: A link that is not worth much or no link. Right.Sitting and thinking this doesn't work and that doesn't work means you are just sitting and doing nothing. Get of your ass and be active.

Maybe one more thing - if you own a blog you can get some traffic on it if you install a dofollow blog yourself. People will come to your blog and they will try to make "usefull" comments on your posts that would bring them link juice if you approve their comments. This kind of traffic is not worth much and the comments will be in the range of: "U, great article" to "I like your site" to "I agree" to "Nice template" to "I will look into that, thanks!" to something even more obvious... you can almost always spot a comment that was written deliberately for getting a link.

Well, when you think about it, why not. Give some links, it won't kill you. to bad that Blogger blogs all have nofollow comments that can not be removed.

Til nect time.

How to cancel a PayPal subscription?

It happens all the time. There is some special offer that lets you test drive a super cool service for lets say a month or so for a ridiculously low price. So you make the payment through PayPal and enjoy. What you must keep in mind is that you have probably created a subscription to that service and that only the first month (or whatever that crazy offer was) will cost you peanuts. Next month will be charged full price and you will have to pay it since you are subscribed. So how do you cancel a PayPal subscription?

1. Login to PayPal
2. Go to History
3. Look for the "Show" drop down box and Select "Subscriptions"
4. Select a time frame. You need to select a time frame that is long enough to catch the day when you subscribed. Because only the first payment is marked as subscription. All the following payments are labeled simple as payments.
5. Press submit.
6. You will see a list of entries that are named "Subscription Creation"
7. Click on the entry and click cancel subscription.
8. You get an Are you sure page where you need to confirm the cancelation.
9. And you are done

10. Your PayPal subscription is canceled.

I know this will come in handy sometimes. If not for you then it will for me.. :)

How to format mass memory card on Nokia N85?

I think I'll make a special post about this, since people keep getting lost in my post about the Nokia N85 video freezing. So how do you format mass memory card on Nokia N85?

Formating memory card on your phone:

1. Open Tools 
2. choose File manager (File mgr.) 
3. choose Memory card
4. choose Options
5. choose Memory card options
6. choose Format
   

After format you will see that the memory card is not completely empty. There will be some empty directories already on the formated that are automatically created by the phone. Always format your memory card using your phone, don't format it using your PC.

Nokia N 85 PC Suite vs Mass Memory

I am still playing with my new Nokia N85 phone and I got quite a few questions regarding PC Suite and Mass Memory. When you plug the mini USB cable into your Nokia N85 and the other end into your PC the phone asks you if you want the connection to be PC Suite or Mass memory.

What is the difference between PC Suite and Mass Memory?

If you choose mass memory your phone and your 8Gb memory card will act as it is an ordinary memory stick. You can use your windows explorer, finder..whatever to copy, paste and move the files from and on to the phone. But you can not use PC Suite to operate the phone.

On the other hand PC Suite connection gives you possibility to use commands in the Nokia PC Suite. If you use PC Suite connection type you can backup your phone data, upgrade it, tranfer pctures and videos using pc suite (you can do the same using mass memory and explorer) and the option I like best - you can use your PC to sort, delete and send messages. Ordinary keyboard is still the fastest way to type a SMS...not to mention that you can simply copy paste things from your PC into the message.

So that is the difference.

By the way, I think I wrote about how I wanted to buy a G1 pgone before you bought my N85. I've found some great G1 Phone Accessories. Not saying I am not happy with my choice. N85 ROCKS!!!

Solution: My N85 Nokia Video Is Freezing and Skipping

I have just bought the new Nokia N85 mobile phone and I love it. The love was shortly interrupted the day when I took my first video. The video quality is pretty cool for a phone, but the video froze and skipped and it was unwatchable. When I started the recording the first few seconds went smoothly but then picture froze, skipped, froze again etc... At first I thought that this was only happening in the preview screen and that the video itslef would be fine. But when I uploaded the wideo to PC the problem was still there. Nokia N85 video freezes. Yikes! Now what?

How can I stop my Nokia N85 video from freezing?

I searched the web for possible solutions to this problem and here is what I've found... what follows is a short review and description of solutions to this problem:

1. Upgrade your Nokia N85 firmware

Booohuuu. Some people say that this worked for them, but it didn't work for me. Moving on....

2. Change the video setting so N85 saves the video to your phone, not the memory card

This is the fastes solution if you need to shoot a video that doesn't freeze right away. Since the space on your Nokia N85 is limited this is only a short term solution, you will probably run out of space in no time. And that would be pretty pathetic with 8Gb space on your memory card. So I have found a better, but more time consuming solution. Still, if you want to use this solution follow these steps:

- start your N85 camera in video mode

- choose options

- choose settings

- scroll down and change Memory location from card to phone.

Your video is now being recorded to the phones internal memory and it wont skip and freeze anymore. So abviously the video freezing problem lies in the Nokia N85 memory card.

3. Format the memory card on your N85

I am not sure why, but this works! If you do not want to loose the data you have on your Nokia N85 memory card follow this:

- plug your N85 into the computer using USB cable

- when your phone asks you for the type of connection choose Mass Memory  (not PC Suite), this will make your Nokia behave like an USB memory stick

- open the memory card in Windows explorer and copy all the directories and files onto your computer

- disconnect the phone from PC (I'm not sure if this is necessary but it's better to be on the safe side)

- format the memory card using your phone. How do you format a memory card on Nokia N85? Open Tools -> File manager (File mgr.) -> choose Memory card -> Options -> Memory card options -> Format

- reconnect your N85 to PC and again choose Mass memory

- copy back all the files and directories that you before coped to your PC. There will be some empty directories already on the formated card but don't worry, you can overwrite them.

- That's it.

Now you Nokia N85 video camera is fully functional and ready to roll.

Sports Cookbook

The title of this blog goes food, recipes, sports and so on but these first three are enough to make this post. I like cooking... well actually I don't like cooking that much, I like cooking simple things that still taste great. I don't like complicated meals that leave you with piles of dirty dishes. And I like sports. Food in sports is very... VERY important. You are what you eat and if you want to take your favorite sport a bit more seriously you need a sports cookbook.

I you talk to a bodybuilder he will tell you that hm... (insert a really big % here) of the bodybuilding is food. Another big % is rest and the rest is training. If you are not after your muscles this changes a bit, but still you get the idea.

Professional athletes even bring their own cooks to contest since what they eat is crucial to their success. As a recreational surfer, snowboarder, mountain climber... you wouldn't go that far but it's funny how you can notice a difference in your abilities if you start using a sports cookbook to balance your diet.

Sports cookbook is full of recipes and advice on hoe to use them to peak your nutritional status and performance. How to plan your menus, how to load on the carbohydrates before the contests (or of course before your next trip to the mountains, before your next 5 hour session..whatever you do, this works!), what to eat when training and what to eat when you want to recover after your exercise.

A good sports cookbook will also tell you the dangers that can be results of poor food intake and extreme stress, how can you replace calcium, get rid of tiredness and dehydration and even thing we talk at the beginning - how to bulk up (and lose weight if you want to).

Eating healthy sports food is cool. But being on a diet, any sort of diet is only "fun" if the food you eat is good and there are a variety of meals available. Nobody wants to eat the same stuff every day. Yuck, you get tired of anything, even the best food in town. And no matter what some people think and say, I don't thin eating the same food every day can be healthy. Your body needs variety. So this is where a good sports cookbook comes in - it gives you lots of ideas for meals that you know have been thoughtfully put together to boost your sport abilities.

Next time I'll try to list a few sports cookbooks that you can use.

Wetsuit questions...

Since the wetsuit megastore website has been up they get a lot of wetsuit related questions. Guys over there are pretty cool and they answer every one of them..well if the know the answer :). To help them out these are the questions they answered so far.

1	How to wash a wetsuit?
2	How to dry a wetsuit?
3	How to put on a zipperless wetsuit?
4	How to clean surfing wax off a wetsuit?
5	At what temperature should you wear a wetsuit?
6	How to clean wetsuits?
7	How to dry a wetsuit in a car?
8	Do surfing booties go on the inside or outside of the wetsuit?
9	How to dry wetsuit in the sun?
10	What is the best cold water wetsuit?
11	What is the difference between 5/4/3 and 4/3 wetsuit?
12	Can you give me a 6/5/4 wetsuit explanation?
13	Can you wash wetsuits in washing machine?
14	Where to put your reef booties when surfing?

So if you want to know something about wetsuits, drop by their website and look around.
Cheers

Kelly Slater: For the Love

Kelly Slater: For the Love is the title of the new book about Kelly Slater. Those of you that don't follow surfing so much (well to be honest you could also hear about him from other sources, like dating really hot models, being a celebrity...) Kelly Slater is the best surfer of all times. This year he has won his 9th (NINTH!!!) world title and is at the same time the youngest and the oldest surfer to ever win a world title. By doing this, he is not only the best surfer of all times, he is right there at the top of the best sportsmen of any sport. Who else has won 9 world titles? There could be some dispute that surfing is easier that some other sport or less competitive. Well.. I just invite you to drop into a death pit at Teahupoo and you will be right back playing soccer and feeling safe.

But his wins are not all there is to Kelly Slater. By being who he is he is also responsible for transforming surfing into a sport that it is today. So a new book about Kelly Slater is sure worth reading. His first autobiography Dreams from the Pipe is a few years old now and since then Kelly has won another world title or two :) so For the love has a few more stories to tell.

And a short tip if you are following this blog (muhahaha, this blog is desert within a desert, I know) because of all the great tips I give on how to help your sites perform better... the title of Kelly Slaters book should be pretty easy to rank for, especially since I already have a site dedicated to Kelly Slater. So far we sit somewhere at the bottom of the first page which suck since search volume for this book is mediocre. Which is sad in fact. If a book would come out about Brittney Spear I'm sure it would be all over the news. And who is 9 times world champion :)?

Well maybe it is for the best, we do not need more people in the lineups.

Till next time...taada.