Category: Weblogs

WordPress 3.3

Jimmy does technologyI’ve upgraded to WordPress 3.3, it makes very little difference to those of you reading this blog, but it’s changed the world that I see as the author.

The upgrade was seamless, slick and fast.

Thanks wordpress.org

Top 30 for 2011

I tend not to write many list posts mainly because I’m not a big fan of them.

One I have taken to doing is the occasional ‘Top’ list, and I’ve noticed others have already started the top lists for 2011, so here’s my Top 30 posts by visits in 2011:

  1. Rich PicturesHalo - Haslingden
  2. Team Development: Forming – Storming – Norming – Performing
  3. A Lack Of Planning On Your Part Does Not Constitute An Emergency On Mine
  4. Ignore Everybody – and other quotations
  5. Modern Office Etiquette
  6. Facebook Productivity Impact
  7. Office 2010 on App-V: Known Issues and Limitations
  8. I love what I do – because – I’m good at what I do – because…
  9. Technology is making us rude
  10. Organisation Charts
  11. Because it’s Friday: Humorous Sign Graffiti
  12. Concept of the Day: Cultural Plasticity
  13. Connection, Interaction and Human Rights
  14. Dilbert on Multi-Tasking
  15. Windows Live Writer Dictionary – Hack
  16. Because it’s Friday – Razy Gogonea
  17. In the same room, but not together
  18. Are tablets already changing the workplace?
  19. The Future: A Day Made of Glass
  20. Social Currency
  21. My (Former) Job No Longer Exists
  22. Because it’s Friday: Dilbert and the PowerPoint Summary
  23. Rich Pictures – Showing The Peoples Perspective
  24. UK Identity Card Database Physically Destroyed
  25. The Four Ages of Remembering a New Password
  26. Naked on the Fourth Plinth
  27. Email is broken (and my embarrassment)
  28. Single Instance Storage in Windows Server 2003 R2
  29. New Banner Pictures
  30. Tension Headaches: My Journey So Far

Generally they are posts that I’ve written in the last twelve months, but there are two items on the list from 2006!

Am I running slow?

Sometimes when I go onto this site it appears to me to be running rather slow.

Caernarfon Castle ViewsBut I have access to a set of metrics that tell me that everyone else is getting a good performance.

Perhaps it’s just my level of patience, but it might be that all of the metrics are wrong and I’m really giving people poor performance.

Please don’t expect Google type performance from me, I only have a limited budget, but it shouldn’t feel like you are using a dial up connection all of the time (if you remember what that felt like).

Does it all look a bit slow to you?

I know that for many of you it’s an irrelevant question because you read my wittering via a reader or an email client and the performance of the actual site isn’t visible to you.

Top Posts for Quarter 3 2011

As we move into the fourth quarter of 2011 I thought I’d highlight the top posts for the third quarter:

  1. Rich Pictures
  2. Team Development: Forming – Storming – Norming – Performing
  3. Ignore Everybody – and other quotations
  4. A Lack Of Planning On Your Part Does Not Constitute An Emergency On Mine
  5. Organisation Charts
  6. Because it’s Friday: Humorous Sign Graffiti
  7. Facebook Productivity Impact
  8. Office 2010 on App-V: Known Issues and Limitations
  9. Modern Office Etiquette
  10. I love what I do – because – I’m good at what I do – because…
  11. Connection, Interaction and Human Rights
  12. Finding my mobile – a story of location software
  13. Do I really look like Eddie Murphy?
  14. The Four Ages of Remembering a New Password
  15. Because it’s Friday: Dilbert and the PowerPoint Summary
  16. The Talk Normal Challenge
  17. Because it’s Friday: Danny Macaskill
  18. Because it’s Friday: iPod Magician – Marco Tempest
  19. Because it’s Friday: A message for Pacdog
  20. Tension Headaches: My Journey So Far
  21. Going +1 with AddThis
  22. Naked on the Fourth Plinth

I was only going to post the top 20, but I really enjoyed writing #22 so wanted to give it a bit of a knees up.

The top 4 have been the tops 4 for a very long time now. Rich Pictures is from 2009.

It’s interesting to see some older posts making a come back. I wrote my post on Tension Headaches back in May 2010, which reminds me, I really must do another update on that subject.

Flickr Views Pass 150,000

I recently passed 150,000 view of my Flickr photos (I’ve actually got to 160,000 but it doesn’t seem like as big a milestone as 150,000):

image

I know that these aren’t huge numbers for some people, but for me it’s just another day in the ‘long tail’.

My WordPress Plug-ins – Thank You

Christmas is a time for saying thank you, so I’d like to say just that to the people who make the WordPress Plug-ins available for use that make this site what it is.

Jimmy and Granddad Explore the Lake DistrictThis is the list of plug-ins I’m currently using on this site:

AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget

I use this to add the various icons for sharing onto the bottom of posts and in the sidebar.

It also provides some tracking analytics for people who use it.

By The AddThis Team – Visit plugin site

Akismet

The must-have plug-in for comment spam. I’m sure this site is like many that gets a regular intake.

It’s seldom wrong at picking out the rubbish.

By Automattic – Visit plugin site

All in One SEO Pack

My preferred Search Engine Optimisation tool. I’m not that fixated with SEO but as over 40% of the visitors to this site come via search it’s important enough to care about.

By Michael Torbert -  Visit plugin site

DandyID Services

I do more than blog – Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc. all feature in my online experience. DandyID is a great tool for creating an single point of reference for all of my presences. This plug-in makes all of those presences visible on this site.

By Neil Simon, Sara Czyzewicz, Arron Kallenberg, Dan Perron, Anthony Dimitre -  Visit plugin site

FD Feedburner Plugin

I use Feedburner (now Google product) to provide the best possible feed to people that I can. Feedburner did seem to be in a bit of hiatus, but it seems to be picking up now.

This little plug-in redirects everyone to Feedburner for me, it’s one of those that you install and forget about.

It also provides another point for analytics, something that you’re never short of in the blogging world I find.

By John Watson | Visit plugin site

Flickr Photo Album

I am a big fan of Flickr and like to show off my photos on this site too. This plug-in makes everything I put onto Flickr available here too.

By Joe Tan – Visit plugin site

Google Analytics for WordPress

Google Analytics gives great insights into the what, where, who of a site. This plug-in sends all of the data from this site over to them.

By Joost de Valk – Visit plugin site

Google XML Sitemaps

Another way of making sure that you get visitors from search engines is to give them a good sitemap in the standard XML format. This plug-in creates a sitemap for me, again another set and forget plug-in.

By Arne Brachhold – Visit plugin site

MaxBlogPress Favicon

The natty little icon that you get in the browser for this site comes via this plug-in. It does a really simple thing, that’s nearly as easily done by copying a file to the right place. This is just that little bit easier.

By MaxBlogPress – Visit plugin site

Post-Plugin Library

This is a plug-in library used by a couple of the other plug-ins.

By Rob Marsh, SJ – Visit plugin site

Recent Comments

I like to show the recent comments in the sidebar. This plug-in gets them for me.

By Nick Momrik – Visit plugin site

Secure WordPress

Security is a big thing for a site that’s out there in the scary world of the internet. This is one of a couple of security plug-ins that I use, as well as some manual hardening of the site.

By jremillard – Visit plugin site

WordPress.com Stats

I’m a bit of an analytics and statistics junky. The WordPress.com stats are great to see in your dashboard. They also provide some things in a better way than Google Analytics

By Automattic – Visit plugin site

WP Security Scan

Another security tool that I use to keep this site nice and secure. I use more than one because they secure different things

By Michael Torbert – Visit plugin site

WP Super Cache

Assuming that one day this site gets inundated by a referral from a much bigger site and the traffic starts to spike this plug-in ensures that people read a cached copy of the information rather than read it out of the database each time. t’s never actually happened to me, but I’m being prepared.

By Donncha O Caoimh – Visit plugin site

Thank you everyone.

New Banner Pictures

I’ve added some 2010 pictures to the banner on this site. They come up randomly and you may not fortunate enough to be the one to see them, so here they are all together.

These are some of the flowers from the garden:

Spring_Flowers

This is Buttermere taken from in the lake:

Buttermere

This is Northumberland where we spent this year’s summer holiday:

Northumberland_Beach

Grassmere and some more lake swiming:

Grassmere_Evening

Chatsworth and some interesting sculptures:

Chatsworth_Sculpture

A very cold Derwentwater:

Derwent_Snow_1

I like looking back over photos it reminds of the great times we had.

My top 50 posts for 2010

Even though 2010 isn’t over yet I don’t suppose I’m going to write anything that’s going to radically change this list over the next few days – so here it is, in order of the number of individual page hits:

  1. Rich Pictures
  2. Team Development: Forming – Storming – Norming – Performing
  3. A Lack Of Planning On Your Part Does Not Constitute An Emergency On Mine
  4. Windows Live Writer Dictionary – Hack
  5. Why am I wound up by this?
  6. Friday is no longer the end of the working week
  7. Look out – the Millennial are coming
  8. Tension Headaches: My Journey So Far
  9. Technology is making us rude
  10. Concept of the Day: Cognitive Surplus
  11. Brabantia: Excellent Customer Care
  12. The unwanted results of Social Networking
  13. Let’s hear it for the New Dorks
  14. The New Work-Life Balance
  15. Social Networks – Unexpected Results in the Snow
  16. Single Instance Storage in Windows Server 2003 R2
  17. Slow Logon v Slow Applications
  18. Playing a new game
  19. The IT Vendor – Pen League Table
  20. Top 10 – Lazy Blogging Tips
  21. Procrastination
  22. Where’s the Whiteboard?
  23. Conference Call Meetings
  24. My Tools: Office Clip Art
  25. Top 10 – Communication Tips
  26. Story, Biography and Metaphor
  27. What do I know?
  28. Why is IT changing? Why does it have to change?
  29. Blogging – 5 years on (well nearly)
  30. I love what I do – because – I’m good at what I do – because…
  31. Random Thoughts for the Bank Holiday Weekend
  32. Stress and Information Addiction
  33. Business Networking – Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and the Cigarette Shelter
  34. Designed on the back of an envelope
  35. Speak Clearly
  36. Is the devil really in the detail?
  37. Adding more people won’t fix the problem!!!
  38. The Conversation Prism V3
  39. 2009 Top 10 (sort of)
  40. Branding Colours – on the Web
  41. Write something!
  42. Learning About Me – Learning Agility
  43. I could spend hours doing this…
  44. Caffe Business Observations
  45. Confessions of an Information Addict
  46. The need for exposure
  47. Feeding the Fire of Expectation
  48. The Power of WordPress Infographic
  49. Statistically Predicting the World Cup
  50. Who’s Suing Whom In the Telecoms Trade?

The reality of the situation is that the Rich Pictures post is by far the most popular one which is primarily because of a lot of visitors from educational establishments.

It’s interesting to me that the posts I am most proud of are rarely the ones that get the most visits. There’s a certain irony in that.

Windows Live Writer 2011

Really enjoying the new Windows Live Writer 2011.

I was a little concerned that the development team might decide to take this nice sleek stripped back tool and give it some “features”. Thankfully they haven’t gone after the spec. sheet and added in a whole load off new things.

The ribbon interface is most welcome and it looks a bit neater, but apart from that it does what it says.

And I don’t want it to do any more than that thanks.Smile

Top 10 – Lazy Blogging Tips

Here are some tips for the lazy blogger – but remember “lazy” doesn’t necessarily mean “good”.

The aim of the lazy blogger is to get as many updates on their blog as possible – with the minimal amount of effort. Here are some great ways of getting the most output for the minimal amount of input:

  1. Write about the same subject over and over again. There’s no need to find something new to say, you can just regurgitate the same old stuff under a different title.
  2. Get systems to post stuff you are doing in other places. Delicious, Twitter, even Facebook can be made to post the updates you make there into your blog. It’s really annoying for the reader because the value is very low indeed, but at least it keeps your blog updating.
  3. Top and tale someone else’s content. Find a post you like, copy most of the content out of it into your blog, make a comment at the beginning and the end, done.
  4. Embed. As with above, just embed someone else’s picture, video, etc. in order to create a post of your own. You can do this without even topping and tailing.
  5. Just write infrequently.It’s a balance between laziness and neglect.
  6. Split your posts into multiple posts. If you do get an idea of something to write about, don’t put it all into one post so that it’s easy to read. Instead split the updates across a number of days by writing multiple posts.
  7. Write trivia. There’s always something useless that can be said, but probably shouldn’t be said.
  8. The “popular posts” blog. Just cut and paste a list of the most read posts from your WordPress statistics and post it. This list is highly unlikely to change very often partly because you’ve increased the popularity of the popular posts by posting them as popular posts.
  9. Write Top 10 lists. They are very poplar, they’re easy to write, and often only contain a couple of really valuable insights. I’ve never really understood the phenomenon myself.
  10. Why does there need to be 10?

Write something!

This site has had 11% less visitors this month – but why? What’s happened?

ClimbingIt’s simple – I haven’t written anything since 26th July. I’ve not been lazy and I’m not loosing interest, I’ve just been on holiday and as part of my effort to frame a new work-life balance I decided that I wasn’t going to write anything while away, not even on my blessings site (and not facebook, or twitter either). It was also part of my leaving for a while and my ongoing relationship with information addiction.

The result is not surprising – less visitors.

One of the reasons I don’t try and glean any financial benefit from this site is because I don’t want to feel under pressure to keep the visitor numbers up. I have enough pressure to deal with without giving myself any more.

Look out for an update on my journey with tension headaches, I’ve been to the doctor again this morning after some interesting experiences on holiday.

I’ll also be posting some pictures from our trip to Northumberland when I’ve sorted through the multitude. Look out for some new Jimmy and Granddad and many, many floral shots (a project being undertaken by another member of the family).

So, we’ll see how long it takes for the statistics to recover – or perhaps they won’t?

Lists of Stuff

Some people’s blogs are full of lists of thing – I’m not a huge fan of lists for lists sake, but thought I would make an exception. An exception for no particular reason other than I thought I would, and it’s my blog, so I get to decide.

Jimmy and Granddad Explore the Lake DistrictThese are the top 10 posts for the last 90 days:

  1. Rich Pictures
  2. Team Development: Forming – Storming – Norming – Performing
  3. A Lack Of Planning On Your Part Does Not Constitute An Emergency On Mine
  4. Friday is no longer the end of the working week
  5. Tension Headaches: My Journey So Far
  6. Let’s hear it for the New Dorks
  7. The New Work-Life Balance
  8. Concept of the Day: Cognitive Surplus
  9. Windows Live Writer Dictionary – Hack
  10. Playing a new game
  11. What do I know?

For anyone listening – the one on Windows Live writer hack is no redundant and has been for a very long time.

and these are the top 20 search terms:

  1. rich picture
  2. rich pictures
  3. rich pictures examples
  4. graham chastney
  5. forming storming norming performing
  6. a lack of planning on your part
  7. group dynamics forming storming norming
  8. nice quotations
  9. rich picture symbols
  10. “a lack of planning on your part”
  11. ssm rich pictures
  12. lack of planning on your part
  13. forming in team development
  14. rich picture example
  15. quotes about reading
  16. cultural plasticity
  17. “lack of planning on your part”5
  18. focussing on work
  19. forming storming norming performing diagrams
  20. forming team development

Interesting to see that people were searching for me by name.

and this is the top 10 list of visiting countries for the first half of 2010:

  1. United Kingdom
  2. United States
  3. Australia
  4. Canada
  5. Germany
  6. India
  7. Malaysia
  8. South Africa
  9. Singapore
  10. Russia

and in that time this is the mix of browsers used (which has changed significantly from the previous 6 months):

clip_image002

1.

 

Internet Explorer

42.25%

 

2.

 

Firefox

34.44%

 

3.

 

Chrome

13.74%

 

4.

 

Safari

6.73%

 

I could continue but I can sense, already, that you’re not really that interested.

Although I’m not a huge fan of lists – I am quite a fan of statistics.