Category — DH Blog

Just a short test to see if I can actually post using Contribute CS3.  I’m also curious to see if I can save while I work. 

Other things I’ll be testing:

Uploading a Photo,  and using smilies.

Well, everything appears to work properly in the editor.  Now can I acually post it?

Well, for my last weekday of vacation at home, I went onto MySpace (Wiki) and started to fiddle.  I really hadn’t gone before, and knew totally zilch about it.  Mind you I like to fiddle. 

I started a Blogger account in 2003, before I even knew about blogging.   Click this, try that and eventually got it to look like something.  Even though I recently upgraded it to Blogger 2 or what ever, I’ve still left the original templates and silly posts from four years ago.  Fours years moves quickly in cyber-space.  (a lot quicker than running a BBS on a modem at 14.4 us robotics in 1992).

But basic html, is still a handy tool.  From working with a program called Hotdog (1995) to Dreamweaver today, I’m happy I got into it.  I’d be a lot happier if I had the time to devote more time to it.  CSS and PHP are fun and handy too, I just haven’t put the time to be fluent in it.  I can fiddle with that too, but I always need a base to start with.

Ramble Ramble…

So off I went into that dangerous world of MySpace.  The place I had been careful of our son not to go near in primary school, because it was full of predators.   Still I like to fiddle, and I had a blast doing it.  Most of my day was spent figuring out what makes it click.  I haven’t gotten the full hang of it yet, but I’m slowly getting it.

What ever I make of it, may as well be this week end, ’cause after that it’s back to work.  I’ve been off since December 22nd, so it’s been a good run! 

I had a chance to look around a bit too.   A fine community it is.  As most of you know, my main interest are Adult Stuff.  In any shape or form.  I let loose in the Groups, I did a search for Adult and wa rewarded with 5,000 results.  I scanned the first 100!  Enough to get an idea.  50% of them private the others public.

MySpace appears to be about friends.     No shit!  The concept is to gather up as many profiles that you know or that you’re interested in and collect them.  Than if you do it right, whenever someone updates their space, you’ll know about it.

If you like to browse at videos and listen to music, MySpace is very well equipped in that department.  Users are encouraged to pick from a librairy and hang some media on their main page.  It makes visiting friends interesting! (said with a bit of a snarl)  You can also hang your picture gallery on your front page.

Yeah, so to make it interesting, you can hang stuff up like this little pole dancer I’ve hung up to your left.  Or if you’d rather choose a glittery pair of lips, to your right.

So what am I going to do with it, well I’ll probably prowl, and look for some good blogs, Ho I forgot to mention, there are blogs there too.  If I understood properly, you have to request to read someone’s blog, so I guess I won’t be prowling that much after all, unless I make a lot of friends!

For now, it’s a step inside, it’s a discovovery.  For those of you also fiddling, I have found a few resources to help with templates and stuff. 

• MyTheme.com
• pimpin-my-space.com
• MySpace Addons

Plenty more if you Google MySpace resources.  Just be careful, some of them have pop ups, (the above  three, don’t have pop ups).  Hope you are all using stuff like Zone Alarm!

MySpace is not for everyone, but its here to stay.  There’s much more there than what I’ve mentioned. So get acquainted at least.  Discover it for yourself.  Here are some statistics floating around from Big-Boards.com:

Number of posts: 912500
Number of members: 4150200

Here are more astounding numbers by Trendcatching.com 

Here’s one for all the researchers and journalists out there - some decent figures on myspace users and usage.  These are correct as of April 2006 and came from a speech given by Jamie Kantrowitz myspace.com VP Marketing at the Mashup meeting in London. 

In addition, to the 80m (and counting) profiles on the site there are:

• 2m groups
• 1.4m band profiles
• 15m blogs
• 7.3m classified listings
• 6.3m forum posts

In terms of demographics:

• 78% of site members are over 18 and under 40 (probably higher than this as a lot of users put their age as 99 years etc to hide their age or be funny)
• there’s a 51% male, 49% female split

In the UK, there are:

• 2.3m members (the largest user base outside the US)
• 13k new UK users are joining myspace each day
• average UK session length is 21 minutes
• average UK user logs on 7 times per month

So, at the current rate of growth MySpace should have 4 or 5 million UK members by the end of the year.  There’s every reason to think that MySpace can sustain or increase this growth rate, given their recent investment in a UK front end and UK marketing - myspace secret shows and the like.  Should be enough to give Bebo and Faceparty a run for their money. 

One of my new MySpace Friends, challenged me to put up a template which suits my wild personality.  You can imagine, I’ll be having some fun with that!

I walked away from the doctor’s about a month ago with blood test results that indicated slightly high (bad) cholesterol, and slightly low (good). So, knowing my lifestyle, the good doctor prescribed Lipitor. Little scary, it’s like crossing that line that says you’re not 20 anymore. It was a disaster.

After 2 weeks, I thought I would croak. Tired sleepy always feeling slightly elevated blood pressure. Just bad all around. I called the pharmacy, they said no problem: Stop taking it and contact your doctor. To which the good doctor, said no problem. “I’ll give you something else” .

Well after some discussion, we both agreed, that I maybe able to control this through exercise and diet (bad word). The smaller of the two problems: Good cholesterol too low, can be licked through an increase in Omega 3. So that can easily be added to the diet. The tougher of the two problems: Bad cholesterol too high, can be reduced through regular exercise and a control diet. On the diet side, I’ve cut out potato chips, cookies and all those good things. With Halloween and Thanksgiving it’s a tough act to follow!

DW and I were going on our week end walks, and then it got cold… and then we didn’t go. So I decided to join a fitness Gym. Energie Cardio. Loads of machines, trainers and Sauna. No Pool. 1 year membership. So it’s a commitment!

Today was my second visit. Lot’s to observe in a new environment like this. Mostly people keep to their own. There’s the odd Jock. I had never seen a female Jock before. I think what I like the most about it is the attitude. People go there, because they care about themselves. That gives the place an aura of its own. During training there’s almost null interaction. People are busy doing what they came there to do. The only interaction was amongst either buddies who came together or a few “couples” which I noticed tonight.

Is it so much about weight loss, Is it so much about quitting smoking?  I don’t know.  I’ve always been on the heavy side.  It’s more about fitness.  Building that level of energy.  Feeling good about myself.  It’s about watching my son grow up, about not having to worry about a pending heart attack if I do something about it now.