Well if you have been wondering where I have been lately - head on over to Olorinpc.com to see my post about fireschool.
First, let me say, if you haven’t heard about the HP Magic Giveaway contest yet… go look at it! HP is having 50 different bloggers around the world give away $6,000 worth of computer equipment. It is a pretty cool (and fun) contest. I have entered a few of the contests, though haven’t won yet. (We can all hope right?)
Really the best part of this contest for me has been discovering some new blogs. This has been probably my favorite discovery so far. As you will see by the name, and looking through the site, they are a “fire family.” The husband (called FireDad on the site) is a 26 year old career firefighter. The wife (aka FireMom) is a 27 year old freelance writer and mother of 2. So seeing similar ages, interests, blogging, and loving all things department related, perked my interest to the site right away.
They are starting their contest today: Stop, Drop, and Blog. Here is the post for the HP contest. (Each site has their own rules, so make sure to read the contest rules before commenting.)
Disclamer: this post counts as an additional entry to the contest… but I also thought it would be fun to share how winning (if chance likes me) would impact my family, friends, and readers.
First, I would replace our aging family laptop, but more importantly I would give one to my wife so she can finally have her own computer. (Neither is in the Christmas budget this year.)
Secondly, I would see if anything would be of use to my (fire) dept. – I am guessing the photosmart the guys would have a lot of fun with and actually use productively. (Well sometimes.)
Last, I would share online as well by having a contest of my own on supergeekblog.com – not only would it be a blast, bring a lot of new readers, but someone I don’t even know would have a better holiday season as well.
So winning would have a positive, lasting, impact on myself and others. I encourage everyone to head on over and check out the Stop, Drop, and Blog site. It is a blast 
I just thought I would do a quick 100th post. Actually for Supergeekblog it is the 287th total post.
Supergeekblog first went live on September 1st, 2005 with three editors. Olorinpc (me), ThatEdeGuy, and Irrision. Due to different projects and whatnot, SGB kind of withered away for a year with minimal posting. A few months ago I resurrected it and have been working on building it back up since.
Here is how the site has looked in the past:
Nov. 2005
Jul. 2006
Jul. 2008
Nov. 2008+
You are looking at it! I am still making tweaks to the template. I started with one I liked and then I am ending up rewriting chunks of it as I see fit. (I have rewritten quite a few of the pages/functions at this point.)
Well I hope you enjoyed that little look back at SuperGeekBlog and I hope you continue to visit in the future! If you have seen all 4 revisions of the site – you clearly have and it is appreciated!
Greetings new visitors! I have noticed a significant amount of traffic (for existing readers, think factor 10) coming in due to the “YouTube virus? Actns/Swif.T” post. A lot of people are wondering what to do about it. The best advice we can give is to update your AntiVirus as often as possible and don’t click on “install this” items if you do happen to be redirected to a different site. The redirection is annoying but harmless, it is the actually voluntarily installing malware that is what causes the problems.
I would like to take this post to welcome all of the new visitors and encourage you to subscribe to SuperGeekBlog. This is a tech and geek site. We sometimes are a bit random, but try to come up with interesting, helpful, or just plain fun posts for you to read.
Take a look around the site, bookmark it, and let us know what you think in the comments! As for my existing readers and visitors, I certainly haven’t forgotten about you folks! Thank you as well for your continued support to this site. It is exciting to see the growth and increased interaction – both on posts here and on Twitter. (Along with other social networking sites.)
This morning, I read a post by ThatEdeGuy on his twitter reflections. Now around a month ago we had been discussing Twitter and how we didn’t really see the point, but let’s give it a shot. I personally had tested Plurk before, but found it clunky and just didn’t keep up with it. So like Ede, I anticipate having issues with keeping updated with it. I use text enough, but I tend to notice a long lag time between txting in a tweet and actually seeing the update. So don’t often.
I have found myself using Twitter much *much* more than I thought I would. Twitterfox has had a lot to do with that of course. Firefox is always open, whether at home or at work. I have discovered that it isn’t as disruptive as I thought it would be to getting actual work done. That being said, it is fairly addictive as I try to make sure I keep updated and follow along with other conversations.
ThatEdeGuy out it well:
Twitter is somewhat addictive. It’s way more conversational than a blog or any other website. It’s the closest thing to a IM client that there is currently available. The nice thing is that you can “follow” several conversations at once without a separate window open for each and also, without the clutter that having all those conversations would be in one place. They are still in one “stream” but, with the @ reply function, it makes it much easier to find the twits that are aimed at you and those that belong to a different conversation.
I have noticed moderate trafic from Twitter URL’s, so I believe there is potential there the more one grows their followers. Growth from 1 follower and 1 post to 42 followers and 189 posts might also have something to do with that. I am finding it quite enjoyable… there are a number of people who are not only fun to follow, but extremely helpful as well. (@wilw and @problogger being a couple persons of note.)
If you haven’t already found my Twitter via the sidebar… here is the link:
http://www.twitter.com/olorinpc
Ede’s Twitter:
http://www.twitter.com/thatedeguy
I have yet to create a custom background for my Twitter page. However being on my second week of really diving into Twitter, I have noticed other bloggers and big time Twitter folks take the time to customize their background.
There seems to be a basic convention to it, and I have to admit it makes it look more professional/more information/and generally more appealing.
Here are some great resource links that I found while researching this:
Twitter Background Using Powerpoint
Twitter Background Using Photoshop (template)
There are quite a few more out there. I am thinking I will start with something fairly basic using the PowerPoint methedology, and time permitting work on something a little more flashy via Photoshop.
I normally don’t plug (pun intended) too many WordPress plugins, but this is the second one I have discovered this week that I installed right away. This stats plugin impressed me with it’s layout immediately after installing. It is called CyStats.
It integrates right into the WP-Admin section and starts recording data right away. As a stats junky (my day job is reporting/business advisor/analyist/report development) I really like having this information at my fingertips. Now I do use Feedburner, and there are some stats available there, but I like this built in site-wide stats viewing. I encourage you to check it out and possibly install it yourself. (Feel free to leave reviews or other recommendations.)
For fellow bloggers out there, I found a pretty nifty plugin/app. It allows you to moderate your comments right from your desktop. (Instead of either logging in manually or waiting for the queue email.)
Depending on the volume of comments, may or may not be worth the time. However it certainly is worth taking a look at to see if it would be useful for you.
Well – I have finally given up and gotten sucked into Twitter. I had tested Plurk for a little while, but just found I didn’t use it and didn’t know that many people on it. However, I have a few people I already follow on Twitter, so have started to make use of it.
Anyone else out there using Twitter or Plurk? Like it, Hate it, or just eh?
Here is my Twitter page – check it out, follow, etc (Original post from olorinpc.com)
The “Geek Dad” blog has a great post today on the “5 Signs President-Elect Obama is a Geek.” Now whether or not you were an Obama supporter, I think some of the are both funny and good.
I think one thing all of us geeks can agree on, we have been horribly lacking in elected officials who understand tech, techies, and the web.
I had forgotten that Obama is a trekkie… that one brought a smile. Anyways, head on over there to take a look. It is worth the time.
