May 2006 Archives

CommodityTrader.com has evolved into a popular website and now I'm taking the next step, adding a Newsletter. For a long time I've been using the open-source list-management software called PHPList by a group from the UK, it's served me well in lists up to a few a thousand subscribers, which is as far as I've gotten in the last few years, although in 1999 we built Rock-n-Roll.com to 1.2M, however it was done through acquisition rather than 1 subscriber at a time.

So today I've been too busy to blog here because I'm getting ready to launch the first issue of Commodity Trader News.

One great thing about modern day life is the level of communication but it can be a curse if like me you have to delete through hundreds of emails every day just to find the few that were sent by someone you know. Fortunately I use Eudora and have dozens of filters in place and a good junk filter to eliminate over half the spam.

Often I get little interesting nuggets of wisdom, like today from NASA telling me of a most interesting alignment of planets during the next 20 days, or Point of Life Newsletter from Michael Levy, always uplifting. Some people send me jokes and or amusing stories and pictures and occasionally I get a good chuckle, like today's message from my friend Carl of Pompano Beach.

You know you're living in 2006 when...

You think your city has tough traffic? Take a drive in Sao Paulo, this city of 18 million. First there's a big disparity between vehicles because many wealthy inhabitants are driving luxury imports, and then there are multitudes of cheap wrecks that may or may not even be registered. Volkswagen has factories in Brasil that have been pumping out vehicles for decades, these little cars being famous as reliable are like cockroaches in that they're hard to kill and seem to come out from every crevice. So it's not uncommon to see old VW Combi-vans, Beatles and Golfs lined up beside Mercedes and Land Rovers at an intersection.

I'm enjoying this blog more everyday, although I don't know who reads what I write or if it serves any purpose. Today I added some advertising under the heading "Propaganda", which is a great word isn't it? Maybe you know that I publish other blogs and web sites? and perhaps you've figured-out that this one is a personal project and not really commercial. However, there's a purpose to every page that I publish and that's to improve my communication skills, so it's all just propaganda.

My first web page designs (from scratch) were published sometime in 1994, very crude but made with a simple Notepad editor. I consider that I was very fortunate to have had an excellent teacher in RJ Sullivan he'd been trained in college about commercial art then went on to work for major advertising agencies and for big design firms in NYC. Bob was much more passionate about fine art and music but figured commercial art was a good means to pay for those pursuits.

We became business partners and Bob shared many art design philosophies with me, one of his favorites saying's was that often "less is more".

Today I was accepted in the Yahoo beta program to test out their new publisher network, for displaying contextual ads that they serve for my pages. I've always been a big fan of Yahoo, so shouldn't have been surprised that I already had an account because I once used services from Overture, which is now owned by Yahoo. Most people think Google pioneered the idea of brokering pay-per-click (CPC) advertising but I remember Overture selling CPC advertising services long before I knew that Google was involved, however it was Google that improved upon the concept, broadened the scope by including all web publishers (instead of just the major news portals) then made it really user friendly to the masses.

I arrived in Darwin, Northern Territories from Denpasar Indonesia (Island of Bali) with $8 dollars and change to my name, on a one way ticket. It was the early '80's and I was crazy, fearless and naive. My Australian adventure began without my even knowing that I was in the Outback, or for that matter what the Outback was.

Despite having landed illegally, since you're suppose to have the means of support to match the 6 month visa I was granted, you're also supposed to have a departure ticket. My rationale was that Canada and Australia were practically sisters and my country had hosted many a vagrant Ozzie, besides I had a job lined up in Queensland, wherever that was.

After an entire lifetime of conditioning to excel, consume and compete, to be the best and show it by having the most and best stuff, how does one go about getting to the core of who we are and why we're here? Is there a reckoning at some point in life where we realize that we lost the meaning or missed the point of living?

Do those of us who communicate with modern technology, such as these blogs, owe it to those who may be reading, to think out loud and attempt to solve the oldest riddle on earth - why do we exist?

One of the funniest men alive, wearing a shirt that say's "I love NYC" in Arabic, delivers a stand-up comedy routine to the troops stationed in Iraq during a USO tour.

Note: It's been brought to my attention that Robin Williams may not have said any of the following suggestions and that this blog article may be derived from a hoax email sent to me. However, some very pertinent points are made in this monologue, you decide whether it's funny or not? or if Robin Williams said it?

BTW: Here's a quote from an interview with Robin Williams by USA Today about his USO comic routines;

Williams said he's "never been censored," but the USO has asked him to tone down off-color jokes. He said his stage banter is "something from home that's kind of wild, not your standard USO show."

"I see a lot of people yelling for peace but I haven't heard of plan for peace yet. So, here's one plan for peace"

My favorite occupation is designing websites, trying to match the best look and style with the subject focus of the website. Of all the things that I do using my computer, it's the initial design of a website that comes most naturally to me and therefore the task where the most amount of time can go by without my even thinking about the time. When the correct design is applied on a topic or subject it's like a light goes on and immediately I know that the design is on track. Sometimes it can take dozens of attempts to get to that point.

I made my first trip to New Orleans in 2000 with my brand new wife to celebrate our Honeymoon. We stayed at the Fairmont Hotel in a wonderful suite overlooking the French Quarter, close to the mouth of the Missippi river and a very short walk from Harrah's Casino. I adore New Orleans and my bride and I enjoyed the historic city during perfect spring weather. We drove all the way from Ft. Lauderdale, some 14 hours but it was worth it to then have the car at our disposal for touring around the great city and it's then undamaged neighborhoods.

The hardest category I created on this blog was "body" but it seemed like a good idea at the time and was intended to serve two purposes. First; for me to not neglect my body, since by having to write about it I would have to think about it. Second was to practice writing about topics that were more of an assignment than a pleasure. After-all this blog is more about my evolution as a writer, designed by me, for me to improve and have to consciously make an effort. Plus, good health is a precious commodity, perhaps the most important factor in both success and happiness, so I included the category for these reasons.

One of my friends just returned from Argentina to Sao Paulo and told me how impressed he was with Buenos Aires, how continental and European-like the city was, with nice wide tree-lined boulevards dotted with clean old-fashion coffee shops, restaurants and stores selling reasonably priced goods, as it seems that the dollar has more value there than in Brasil. My friend has been living in Brasil for 10 years and now has asked his wife to consider moving to Argentina.

the city of Sao Paulo was under siege for these past few days by gang members. The problem is related to prisons, over crowding and the fact that the crime bosses are in jail and continue to manage the crime syndicates with cell-phones from behind bars. The governor promised to correct this problem, so developed a new super-max prison about 600 km from Sao Paulo then when he started to move the crime bosses they rebelled because they knew they were going to lose control of their syndicates since cell phones won't work from the new prison.

Have you ever met anyone that didn't think Panda Bears were cute? Is it possible that just the image, our thought, of a baby panda bear could change our mood. If you're curious about the effects of Panda Bears on the human mind keep reading.

A friend sent me a very cool website today, designed in part by the Canadian Government. The reason this particular website appealed to me so much, was because I've travelled through the "Great White North" of Canada and worked as a prospector near the borders of Alaska and Yukon in my home province of British Columbia. Yep, go figure? I've been a rock-hound, worked open-pit mines, mineral exploration and built pipelines inside the Arctic Circle - and you probably thought I was just a web-geek..

Life of a Rock Star wesite tells the story of an extraordinary group of scientists who tramped, paddled and rolled across Canada in the nineteenth century to study the geology of Canada's varied terrain.

On my birthday back in February I decided to improve my health, stop drinking alcohol and attempt to get into better physical shape. I've been running consistently for years so I'm not unfit, just not totally happy with my upper body strength as well as a small recurring, nagging strain in the calf muscle, so I realized that it would be a good idea to embark upon a strength training regime.

Well now I'm a few months into the program and pleased with the results but an interesting bi-product has become apparent to me and that is the peace of mind I get from the hour long session. Plus the time to think while driving to the club and then the long walk from the parking lot all the way to the gym.

On my very first day of joining Text Link Ads I made money, not a jackpot at $7 for the balance of the first month but 'what the heck!' it's a good start considering I can sell up to 9 more links, on a 50/50 revenue share. Potentially I could earn $100 per month (on average) per web site and I own 11 web sites.

Their system is simple, very clean and easy to understand. Seems fair and as I proved to myself, it works fast. So I say to you "go for it!" Monetize Your Site

The more hours I pour into publishing web pages and programming the more it becomes evident to me that content is King. You can create the best looking website in the world, load it with the coolest utilities to make it look like a division of Netscape but without interesting content that people are interested to read about it'll atrophy and die. Sure all the cool utilities will get used but not by anyone you would care to associate with, as you'll find links and posts for sex and drugs by people with no-real name or email address.