Ronalfy.com

Organizing Blog Comments and Topic Ideas With G-Mail and Google Reader

This brief tutorial will walk you through the techniques I use to organize my WordPress comments and potential blog topics. As far as blog topics go, I use a combination of WordPress drafts and G-Mail labels. Logging into WordPress and setting up a quick draft isn’t as convenient as e-mailing a blog topic in my opinion. I also use Google Reader to e-mail myself potential topic ideas. I will show you how I use Google Reader and G-Mail to automatically label topic ideas.

The Google Mail Settings

Most of this tutorial will be spent in the Settings section of Google Mail. See below for a screenshot.

Google Mail Labels - Organizing Your Blog Topics

The first thing I did when I wanted to organize my blog topics was to create a ‘blog topics‘ label. This label acts as the storage container for all of my potential blog topics. Setting up a label is rather straight forward.

For this example, I created a new label called ‘blog topics‘.

Google Mail Labels - Organizing Your Blog Comments

The next thing I wanted to do was organize my blog comments under a common label. I chose the label ‘Comments‘.

Continue Reading…

A Salvation Analogy - Debt and Gift Cards

My friend cetroyer and I were having a discussion about salvation. I told him that one of my friends had asked me to describe why salvation was such a big deal. My best analogy was about gift cards. However, cetroyer pointed out that gift cards are a reward — something above and beyond. Cetroyer then proceeded to provide what I thought was a better analogy. I have combined both our analogies in what I hope is a good explanation of salvation.

The Debt Begins

A long time ago, a husband and wife were set up in a nice little house run by their landlord. However, the husband and wife caused much trouble and the landlord was furious. He bound them to a debt so high that the couple had no chance in a lifetime — much less a thousand lifetimes — to pay the debt off.

In order to pay off this debt, each of the couple’s children (and there were many) had to help pay off the debt. However, the debt wouldn’t ever go down because of the interest. No matter how hard the children tried to pay off their parent’s debt, the debt wouldn’t budge. Continue Reading…

Blog Anxiety Part 2

This post is a continuation of a previous post regarding blog anxiety.

After talking with several bloggers, I have come up with some more symptoms and causes of blog anxiety. Continue Reading…

I’ve Switched Hosts

I just switched hosts to Media Temple. There shouldn’t be any issues, but if there are, please let me know in the comments.

Two Strikes Best Buy, One Strike Fall Out Boy

I went to Best Buy today to buy the new Fall Out Boy CD. So when I got home, and opened up the CD to import it into iTunes, a bright yellow card said I could download two “exclusive” songs from Fall Out Boy.

First Strike Best Buy

On the card, it said to go to www.falloutboy.islandrecords.com/bestbuy.

Unfortunately, the real address was falloutboy.islandrecords.com/bestbuy. C’mon Best Buy.

Second Strike Best Buy

When I downloaded the songs, they were in the protected WMA format. Um… I use iTunes. I can’t import protected WMAs into the most popular music player. So now I have to go into Windows Media Player to play the songs? I know the songs were free and everything, but you couldn’t pay me enough money to voluntarily open Windows Media Player to play music.

C’mon Best Buy!

Get the web address right, and give us some files that can be imported into any music player.

One Strike for Fall Out Boy

I personally think the Fall Out Boy CD should have come with an explicit lyrics sticker for their song “This Ain’t a Scene.” They use the phrase GD way too much. Granted, I don’t exactly expect Christian lyrics from a band like Fall Out Boy, but I don’t expect a band to disrespect a religion either.

We All Know How it Feels to be Discriminated Against

I grew up in a very racist environment. I spent four and a half years of my childhood in the Philippines. Being white — much less an American — was a strike against me. We lived off-base, so we constantly had to deal with the racism (or perhaps angst) towards Americans.

When I moved to Las Vegas when I was ten, the situation wasn’t any better. My brother and I were a very small minority in a neighborhood that was primarily black and brown. I still felt the racism, but I didn’t think too much about it. It didn’t really bother me a whole lot that I went to a mostly black school where I was called “cracker” all the time even though I was also half Mexican.

My story isn’t unique however. We all know what it is like to be discriminated against. Just think back to when you were a kid. You weren’t allowed to go to certain stores because of your age. You also were looked upon with a suspicious eye in various stores because of the potential of shoplifting.

What about appearance? When I had long hair, I got the most horrible service at restaurants. What about somebody with a bad case of acne, or someone with a lot of tattoos? What about someone who is overweight, or speaks with a unique accent?

What about at church? Did you ever feel like you didn’t belong? Perhaps it was because you didn’t. Continue Reading…

New Anti-Spam Plugin Installed

I just wanted let me readers know that I have installed a new anti-spam plugin called WordPress Comment Spam Stopper.

Basically the plugin asks you something that every human should know. For example, right now the plugin asks, “Is fire hot or cold?” The obvious answer is “hot” right? If not, I suggest you get your senses checked.

The purpose of this post is to solicit feedback from my readers. I personally think this plugin will help my readers in the long run. There is one more step to make a comment, but the plugin decreases the chances of you hitting my spam box significantly. Furthermore, if you do happen to hit my spam box, there is a high chance I’ll be able to retrieve your legitimate comment.

As of right now, I will still moderate first-time comments. There is still a chance that a spammer will go through the trouble and manually enter a comment. I moderate first-time comments because I don’t want any of my readers involuntarily seeing any Viagra ads.

Please weigh in (leaving a comment of course) and let me know if the plugin should stay or if the plugin should go. I’ll test out the plugin for a week and then toss it if there isn’t enough support here.

As a sidenote, my contact form doesn’t seem to be working. I’m not sure if this is due to the plugin or not, but I doubt it. I’ll try updating it tomorrow (Wednesday evening).

As another sidenote, I have 12 more Virb invites if you would like one. Virb could very possibly be the next MySpace. I certainly hope it is because MySpace sucks. Anyways, leave a comment if you would like an invite.

Thanks for your feedback in advance.

A Month Without the Cancer Sticks

I wrote on January 10th that I was trying to end my love affair with cigarettes.

I must say that it has been an interesting month. Some who know me well would say I picked the absolute wrong time to quit in my life. I have probably never been more stressed and I don’t see the situation improving anytime soon. However, I’m glad I made the choice to quit.

For those who smoke and are skeptical of Chantix, I can tell you that it has worked so far. I stopped taking the drug after three weeks, mostly because I forgot to keep taking the pills.

I have been in several clubs so far (that have smoking allowed) and have been able to resist the temptation to light one up.

Since quitting, I have seen a marked increase in my running ability. It’s only been a month, but I can definitely see that quitting helped out quite a bit. I still have cravings, but they lessen every day.

I truly hope I never pick up a cigarette again, but I know that once you are a smoker, you are always a smoker. There’s always the chance of reverting back to past behavior. Hopefully I have ended my love affair with cigarettes for good.

500 Words - It’s Okay to Give Illegals Credit

Say you’ve illegal crossed into the United States illegally from the Mexican border. You begin to establish some kind of residency and even try finding a job. However, the country you are in is very unfriendly towards those who don’t have social security numbers. As a result, the jobs you get have to pay you under the table. If you are unhappy with the job, then tough. There is no appeal system or suggestion box. If you don’t like it, go back to Mexico.

So what’s an illegal immigrant to do considering that this country won’t consider them part of the system until the illegal has those magic nine numbers? Well if I were an illegal, I would be in the market for purchasing an identity. I would acquire my magic nine numbers and get a job. I would then try establishing some type of credit.

However, what about the poor guy whose identity has been purchased? What if the illegal defaults on a debt? The victim of identity theft is left hanging out to dry. Continue Reading…

More Falling Pixels

I think I’m done tweaking my blog for a while. Here are some of the features I added in this weekend:

• A footer on every page shows recent posts, top commenters, archives, and popular posts.
• People with more than ten comments have the “no-follow” in their link removed.
• Tags are on every post and link to a tags page on this site.
• Announcement bar at the top shows the last 7 days of announcements/news.
• Updated the top-level navigation.
• Added a links page to showcase my favorite sites and friends’ sites.
• Added subscriptions for comments.
• I turned off Spam Karma. Too many legitimate commenters were getting blocked. As a fail-safe, I have added back in comment moderation. I did this to reward frequent commenters. If you have commented before, your comment will not be moderated.
• Turned off pagination on the main page. Nobody was using it anyway.

Do You Get Blog Anxiety?

A couple of days ago, I asked if you get cubicle anxiety. I was surprised by the response because sometimes I feel like I’m alone in my suffering.

Following up on my cubicle anxiety post, I was curious if any of you out there get what I call “blog anxiety.” Blog anxiety can apply to bloggers and those who visit blogs. It’s just like regular anxiety, however, it more-or-less centers around the blogosphere.

Anxiety for Bloggers

There are several causes of anxiety that I will describe that apply to bloggers.

Negative Comments

My blog anxiety more-or-less centers around what other people think. In real life, people always tell you, “Don’t worry about what other people think.” But in the “blog world”, you are basically putting something out there and asking what people think. Continue Reading…

So I Married a Footer

I recently wrote over at Devlounge about being in love with a website footer.

Here’s what I said about the website footer:

If I could marry a website footer, this would be the one I would take back home to my mom.

And here was the response:

So I followed the link and to my surprise, what I read actually made me blush. So I just wanted to write this quick post and say thanks and to quote Sally Field from her Oscar acceptance speech, “You like me, you really like me,” er, or, ahh, my footer anyway.

As a sarcastic gesture, I’m going to assume I could actually marry a footer, and give you some details about our life together. Continue Reading…

Beware of Falling Pixels

Over the next week or so I’m going to be making some tweaks (some minor and some major) to the design of this blog. You may have already noticed that I’ve shuffled the dates/comments/categories around on the posts. As always, your feedback is appreciated on any aspect of my blog design.

I plan on making it so that the News/Admin/Contest type posts will show up smaller and somewhat out of the way compared to the regular content. I also plan on making use of my website footer to include the recent posts, popular tags, comments, and more.

One other feature I have added is the website should now stretch to roughly 90% of your screen. If you don’t like this width, you can easily resize my layout.

Thanks.

Ronald

Contest Lessons Learned

I learned a lot from the comment contest as far as lessons learned. Some of the lessons dealt with several assumptions I had, and some of the lessons dealt with things I learned from helpful people pointing stuff out to me. This post will go over the lessons I learned and will hopefully lead to better contests in the future. Continue Reading…

Comment Contest Winner

I have exercised my right to end the contest prematurely due to a rather hectic schedule this weekend. This weekend was when the contest was likely going to end and the free time to potentially tally the results looks a little lacking.

So Who’s the Winner?

I imagine that Bes Zain is having a good week. He already won one contest this week. Now he has won another. Congratulations Bes.

So How Was the Winner Selected?

To celebrate Bes and his stance on transparency, I have attached the excel spreadsheet I used to randomly select a winner.

I gathered all the trackbacks, Peeve Week entries, and comment IDs that were eligible for the contest and put them in one column. In two more columns, I added random numbers. I multiplied the random numbers together in another column. I then sorted by column with the multiplied result. Bes came out on top. If you look at the top five, you can see that the odds were definitely in his favor.

Thank You

I want to thank everyone that commented, linked, and/or participated in Peeve Week. I look forward to the next contest.

Comment Contest Update - 25 to Go!

I thought I’d share another update for those anxious to see how the contest is progressing. There are 25 comments to go. Using the current comment rate, that means the contest is about a week away from ending. It’s up to you to speed up the contest’s demise.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get rid of this fifty dollar Amazon.com gift certificate. It’s been sitting on my desk for a little over a month.

Do You Get Cubicle Anxiety?

This post is written as being somewhat sarcastic, but I do personally get a case of cubicle anxiety sometimes. If you really do have bad anxiety, consult your physician.

You don’t necessarily have to sit in a cubicle all day long to develop what I call “cube fever”, or cubicle anxiety. Just sit in one place for hours and hours just staring at a computer screen, and you are bound to have some idea of what cubicle anxiety is all about.

It’s a restlessness. You sit down and immediately don’t want to be anywhere near your computer. Call it technology burnout. Call it not wanting to work. Or call it cubicle anxiety. Continue Reading…

Congrats Bes!

I wrote about the who I thought the winners should be in the Weblog Tools Collection essay contest back in mid-January.

The winners have been announced, and I’m happy to say that Bes Zain won second place for his essay Importance of Transparency in Blogging. Bes was kind enough to participate in Peeve Week on this blog and wrote some great entries.

And for those wondering, I got an honorable mention for “attracting the most attention.” Woo hoo!

Thanks for reading.

Christianity and Fitness - Intimidation

Please read the previous article in the Christianity and Fitness series: Finding a Facility.

“I’ve never been so intimidated in my whole life. I walked in and everybody looked so much better than me. I felt out of place.”

Many can relate to that quote, whether it is stepping into a gym or a church. Throughout life, there are many things that can intimidate us. This latest Christianity and Fitness will go over the intimidation factors surrounding Christianity and fitness and give ways to overcome those factors. Continue Reading…

Public Prayer For Damon and Jill

It may be odd to see a public prayer on a blog. As odd as it may seem, I think the prayer is necessary so that I can get my thoughts out, and so that others can possibly join me. Keep in mind when praying that I am not talking to you; I am talking to God. I do have some links and quotes in my prayer so you can join in on the context. Please join me in prayer for my friends, Damon and Jill. Continue Reading…

Minimum Rage

The U.S. Senate decided to pass the minimum wage bill, which will increase the minimum wage to $7.25. Oh brother. I would have voted to ditch it, not raise it. Continue Reading…