Exercise: 7 benefits of regular physical activity

Fitness training: 5 elements of a rounded routine

I was running low on protein powder and had done a little research on other proteins I might try. I thought I’d go for Muscle Milk or something more muscley than my basic protein powder. Found out they had that at Walmart so I went there after work.

At Walmart I was checking out the muscle powders, reading the usage instructions and whatnot, when a stranger comes up to me a says “don’t do it”. I smile and he says, “Don’t do it. That stuff tastes bad. Go to Nutrizone by 7-Eleven and get the more natural stuff that tastes way better.”

Of course it was unusual that a stranger would come up to me and do that. I was inclined to take it as I didn’t want to offend him by seeing me leaving the store with the “bad tasting” stuff.  So I departed empty handed for the place by the 7-Eleven.

Found it. It was packed with different protein powders.  Jackpot.

The guy at the register greeted me. I told him I needed advice.  He was very proficient in nutrition practice and muscle building.  He even gave me a meal plan (!) and told me they were a wholesaler so the prices were cheaper than GNC or whatever retailer.  Plus those places don’t have fitness experts, I’m betting.

His name is Luke.  Smart guy.  How rare to get good help like that these days.  That’s how you get customers!  I will certainly be returning there for my protein needs.  And next time I see a guy at Walmart pondering the Muscle Milk, you can imagine my intention.

Leave it to Smashing Magazine.  Awesome ideas for common CSS challenges with the wonderful float property.

Page load speed has to be a factor in visitor satisfaction. Nobody likes to wait.

Here’s how I made it at least twice as fast.

First, I converted the header of my theme from a bunch of PHP function calls into static HTML. View source, copy, paste, save.

Then I used Firebug to figure out how long it was taking for each HTTP request to happen.

Then I started turning plugins on and off until I found the right blend of utility and efficiency.  Decided there were a few I could live without.

Next step was installing WP Super Cache. That made the HTML kick out at least 5 times faster after the page got cached.

I am satisfied with the results. There is more I could do.  I could remove the ad.  I could remove PayPal.  I could try moving the scripts to the bottom of the page.  I could move all the images to Flickr.  Maybe next time.

What tricks are you aware of to speed up Wordpress?

The last design had/has (still transitioning as of 6/7) some problems.

First was inconsistency.  Homepage, blog and inside pages all looked different.

Second was my fat mug was getting old, even for me.  My profile pics are adding up and it is time to narrow down, find a new, normal-looking profile pic.  Decided to take the picture during my new pastime; both the picture of my head and the landscape shot are from a bike ride this weekend.

Third, the technical implementation of the buttons wasn’t right.  I figured out a more right way, thanks to cssvault, and look I forward to using this method of mouseovers on all foreseeable projects.  Nice blend of real links, unordered lists, image sprites, and popular CSS.  This was the biggest reward of the project.

Forth, I need to keep pushing towards a “Web 2.0 feeling” site.  Even though some would say Web 3 is upon us, better late than never.  Play with the new navigation.  That’s a big part of this attempt.  There is a big orange drop down when you hover over “web design”.  Somewhat reminiscent of vimeo I guess, or one of these.

Fifth, I need to hone my cross-promotion of superwebguy.com.  There was a definite style divergence on the homepage that I wasn’t happy with.  Now the homepage has its own feel and doesn’t try to feel half like SWG.

What I ended up, while perhaps not as in-your-face and a little text-heavy, is solving the above issues.  Like?

Link builders, start your engines.

If you are just getting started, remember to track your ROI by first installing this analytics bad boy.

Big guys

• Give getlisted.org a shot
• If you do nothing else, get in to Google Local Business Center. It ties into Google search and maps.
• I keep seeing DMOZ Open Directory Project being recommended, but I have no personal testimonial for it.. yet.
  
• Yahoo Directory – not free; is it worth it? It is Yahoo, at least.

Physically local directories, chambers of commerce

• One near me would be the Orange County Chamber.  Where’s your Chamber of Commerce?

Customer review sites

• Yelp
• Trip Advisor for the travel-related service

Listen

• Set up Google Alerts so you can immediately see where your business is popping up

Beware

As with all things web, there are countless no-name sites that are probably just harvesting your data for a nasty spam blast.  Be skeptical; I would stick with the big guys.

Just getting started

Getting into web directories should only be one part of your online marketing strategy and ROI’s will vary.  There is no silver bullet with link building.  Keep looking for ways to be visible online.

From here I might progress to popping up in:

• Yahoo Answers
• Squidoo
• Facebook’s Pages
• and, uh, maybe Twitter.  One note about Twitter: it seems whatever keywords are in your  Twitter username will rank favorably in Google for those keywords.  Twice I’ve seen Twitter users be the first results in my searches, regardless of follower count.

I should mention one little thing: your website should be awesome, useful and worth linking to! Good luck with that.

Please leave comments with your own suggestions!

This is what I saw in my Twitter account…

Dude! Mikeyy! Seriously? Haha.
Dude, Mikeyy is the shit!
Dude, Mikeyy is the shit!

What I do know is I woke up and was unpleasantly surprised.  I checked my emails.  A nice and informed person had notified me that my Twitter profile had been hit with the “mikeyy exploit” and I may want to check it out and change my password or something.

He left me this link to read up on the situation.

http://www.sophos.com/blogs/gc/

Then I went to search.twitter.com and looked up tweets people had sent me.  Other people were either asking why I was saying things about Mikeyy, but some knew what was happening and sent more links like this one.

http://dcortesi.com/2009/04/11/twitter-stalkdaily-worm-postmortem/

I don’t claim to understand what exactly happened, other than it seems some temporary Javascript can be applied to a page and funny business can be made to happen on that page by a page from another site.  This is apparently called a cross-site scripting attack or XSS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-site_scripting

The issue can be addressed by Firefox users with the “NoScript” extension.  I hate the idea of installing this.  Seems like there should be a better way.  Indeed maybe one of Explorer’s annoying popups has addressed it over in that camp.  I need to look more into that.

Here is the Firefox solution.

http://noscript.net/

I have installed it.  It is annoying.  I went into the preferences and cranked it down a little.  There is also an “S” logo at the bottom of the browser that lets me change specific preferences for a site.  I turned on a sound effect when it is called up so I can change the settings for a given site and not miss the intended and good functionality of that site.

In this particular situation, I do not believe the code is still in my Twitter profile.  I think last night’s issue has been resolved.

Being someone who makes websites and loves Javascript, this is a troubling fix.  The browsers should step it up here, as they may have already begun doing.

I have exposed some of my ignorance here.  I hope if you know more you will leave a helpful comment below.  Thank you!

PHP filter_var

Thanks again, NETTUTS (tutorial here).

if (isset($_POST['email'])) {
$email = filter_var($_POST['email'], FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL);
if (filter_var($email, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)) {
echo "$email is a valid email address.";
} else {
echo "$email is NOT a valid email address.";
}
}
// also FILTER_SANITIZE_URL, FILTER_VALIDATE_URL

I’ve heard it said this week that social networks are about the network, and the blog is about me.  Don’t go to the network and expect the world to revolve around you.  Get involved.  This feels like wasting time, but sharing keeps good people connected.

On the other hand, people expect my blog to be about me.  How am I doing?  What am I doing?  I’m achieving neither with this blog, but at least I’m thinking about it.   I want to post more, but I can’t get over my problem with posting non-quality content here.

Being that I have multiple types of web 2.0 accounts, I wonder where to post what.  It’s like I want to put things in their place.  Where does “mundane” go?  Where does “nerdy” go?  Where does “quality” go?  Where does “marketing” go?

I might keep Facebook and Twitter for posting mundane content, and the blog for less regular but more quality content.  The blog and Twitter can be super nerdy, but not nerdy on Facebook.  Facebook friends are personal connections that I don’t want to be business targets.  Do unto others.  They should know what I do (“make web sites”), but I don’t want to rub it in their face constantly.  However I’d definitely get out-of-control nerdy on the blog and Twitter.  Non-personal “friends” can always unsubscribe from those.  I’ve thought about loading this blog into my Facebook notes, but it doesn’t seem appropriate for that group.  Maybe I’m way off.  They can find this content other ways if they’re interested in me.

Summary

• Facebook and Twitter: mostly mundane, hints of nerdy and marketing
• Facebook: more personal
• Twitter: more anonymous
• Blog: quality, nerdy, marketing
• Unpublished journal: my real thoughts

My business v. Me

I’ve also heard it suggested that, when faced with what to market online, yourself or your business, market yourself.  Many things could change, but you are always you. If people like you, they might consider your business later.

Be a real person people can share with.  Not an impersonal institution or generic message, which looks pretty but sounds like “bla, bla, bla”.  When it comes to business, I happily become generic and get edited and fake.  This works sometimes, but I admire people who get in front of tons of people and seem comfortable and say anything they want, it seems.  Takes good judgment to find a balance.

And me?

So this is my blog, what does all this have to do with me?  I’ve been thinking more and more about paperless web-only marketing.  Can it be enough? I shouldn’t have to snail mail people things and I really don’t want to go door to door.  Mostly I don’t want to be annoying, should I get a marketing itch.

And maybe I’m listening to too many modern web thinkers.  Here are a few:

• Leo Laporte
• Robert Scoble
• Guy Kawasaki
• David Jacobs

The fact is, I will post content on the web.  Where? and what? and what where? are the questions I hope to square away some day.  And if the economy hits harder, I hope the web continues to give back.

Thanks for reading.  Hope to post again soon.

Come on, man!  It’s the future!  Haha.

But seriously, at the very least, assuming it’s mostly kids, which is it less and less, if that’s how an upcoming generation communicates, it’s not wise to ignore it.  They’ll be running things soon.  Communicating is a big deal.

Thousands of people join social networks every day.  Some are kids.  Some are valuable professional connections.  Some are people who want to know what the hell they’re missing.  Maybe spy on their kids.  Do a little stalking.  Good times for any generation.

75% of my 137 “friends” are with me in their 30’s.  Half my “friends” are from high school 15 years ago.  It was one of them that first encouraged me to join.

The old high school buddies had 2 informal reunions since we all found each other again on Facebook.  It would not have happened without that, or certainly not as soon or efficiently. Especially for some of us less social dudes.

And for those I’ve met recently, it is valuable for maintaining a connection.  Otherwise we all just get too busy too fast to stay in touch.

I make web sites.  If you want to admire well-done, modern web technologies, check out Facebook.  It is striving to be usable, useful, and enjoyable.  It’s an example for us web designers.  I think it’s the standard for designing a social web.

I can’t call myself “the web site guy” if I am not aware of massive web trends.  I need to understand where people are on the web and what they are doing there.  I cannot ignore this world that is growing rapidly. It is both a market and a product.

Where are the markets?  Who is in what groups, who is a fan of what, who has shared their interests.  It is possible to identify some segments.  It is where privacy and advertising collide.  The sites may be free but there’s got to be money in there somewhere, at least some sort of funnel or link building opportunity.

Productivity is very important to me. Without it I get depressed.  Not to mention poorer.  Followed by hungrier.  And I’m a big guy who likes to eat.

I think of social networks like low-priority email.  It’s not important enough to dictate my day, but ignoring it altogether is ignoring opportunity.  If I was a guy who needed to “stay in front of” people, gain some mind share, share some compelling content, and “networking” with people was my thing, it would be a major tool.

It also fills in where my introvert nature is lacking.  It is good for collaborators to understand each other.  Professionals like taking personality tests, right?  That means acceptance of the need for a deeper connection than “business as usual”.  Where I had previously skipped subtly vital interpersonal connections, it has been an effective ice breaker to connect better with people I see online and face to face.

Productivity to non-sales-guy me means doing things, not people.  No one has mistaken me for being especially social.  Why would I obsess over a social network?  (Hell, why would I have a blog?)  Personally, having an online social network at the center of my every thought is toxic.  Introverts cannot actively manage 137 people.  More like 1 at a time.  The more networks can be tied to expanding rewarding influence, the more justifiable they are.  They are doable because most of the time it is very passive socializing.  And passive beats non-existent.

This year I decided to track the amount of time I spend on things. Got a cute new piece of software for doing so.  The software has taught me that what feels like a long time usually isn’t, and vise versa.  Good for clients because they are charged fairly for hourly services.  Good for me because at the end of the day I want more money, which I get by giving more time.  (Yeah that’s not the “rich dad” thinking, but I’d make a sad rich dad.  I need to stay busy.)  Tracking that time makes me keenly aware of it, and I waste less of it.

If you think you’re spending too much time doing unhealthy things, start tracking your time.  Work first, play after an amount of time.  Some people set timers habitually to not lose track of time.  My computer tells me the time every 30 minutes.

I have a feeling that cutting back on social network usage and prioritizing life was a New Years resolution of many people.  If you’re going to do something a lot, make sure you make it worthwhile.

Facebook is a fascinating and mixed bag.  Find opportunity.  Keep friends.  Watch the time.  Balance in all things.

However, as soon as I try to record myself talking about these things, there is a massive break down.  It doesn’t flow at all.

For months I’ve had a podcast where I talk about the stuff I have no problem typing about, attempting to transfer my technical knowledge into the audio realm. Being that I listen to so many podcasts, I thought it would be natural for me to have one of my own, chatting on a weekly basis about stuff I love.

Recording, editing and updating the feed is fun.  Listening to myself is not. I have to play it back and listen to that voice.  That irritating idiot voice.

It was cool finding music – having an intro and an outro.  Almost sounded like a real show.

I hear people like Leo Laporte do it so naturally – talking for a living and getting paid for it.

Man, if you heard the uncut recording of one of my podcasts… it is crap.  Editing takes forever. By the time I’ve removed the out-of-breath pauses, hick-ups, mispronunciations, noises, retakes, … it’s ridiculous.  I record 2 hours of audio, only to cut it down to 10 minutes of something mildly worth listening to.

So what’s up with that?  I can talk.  I can be funny and persuasive with my mouth.

Maybe it’s the mic.  Maybe it’s recording something I’m not confident doing.  Maybe I need more practice. Maybe if I found my podcast talking niche.  Maybe if there was less production time.  Maybe if I was an outgoing talker.

What about the money and fame?  I made $5 thanks to my one donator, who rocks.  I bought one delicious beer with his generosity.  Unfortunately, each episode was fueled by several beers.

I currently have over 100 subscribers.  I think that is a lot of people, considering.  I am honored that those people feel compelled to subscribe to me talking.  I hope they benefit.

And I hope they stay subscribed. The feed will live on.  It will remain. I just don’t plan on advertising it or aggressively adding to it.  And I’ll probably edit the hell out of what’s there because I am agitated every day it exists.

In the end I can say I have the knowledge required for publishing a podcast.  That’s what I’m most interested in anyhow.  And if anyone wanted to do a podcast, I would be capable of handling the technical side of it.

When the mic is on, someone else would just have to do the talking.

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