Commenting on Other Blogs

Here, I continue to chronicle my work for Blogging 101.

Per Assignment 8, I needed to leave comments on at least 4 blogs where I had never commented before. This is an important assignment. First, while I’m looking at some other bloggers’ content, I should take some time to look at other things on their site and get to know more about them. Also, by responding to others, they can thus respond to me and perhaps gain an interest in what I have to say on other things.

That sounds easy but it’s always hard for me to leave comments…unless I am fairly comfortable in any type of environment, real or virtual. I would like to steer more attention to my content but I have a hard time responding to others’ content. That’s not to say I don’t look for other blogs and read those posts; I am following other blogs and looking for more with content that speaks to me. It’s just that I want to leave substantive feedback. Basically, it’s just hard for me to find something to say about what I’ve read.

One of the first posts I commented on was of course one by the person I followed to WordPress and that took some doing. Another post I commented on was The Loss of Innocence by policecommander, and it took me some time to find the post, let alone comment on it. I have since struggled to find posts where I could leave substantive feedback.

Getting back to the assignment: I was able to find some blogs during the day to comment on. Some of the blogs are run by writers who have responded to my work before. What better way to respond to them than to give some feedback on their content? There’s at least one blog I found that had profound content that I needed to digest and then respond to.

Posts I commented on:

• Who am I and why am I here? by Ameena’s Musings
• THE TRANSCENDENT TRAVELER by usfman
• Today Assignment: “Love Your Theme” by Jason Bucky Roberts
• Dinner on the Run by shandraeats

I want to respond to far more bloggers, of course.

(Btw, it has been far easier to post and respond to others in the Blogging 101 commons. It’s only natural since there are so many users there. But yeah, I need to grow from here.)

50th Post!

More Personalizing

For the seventh assignment in the Blogging 101 course, I had to do at least 1 of 3 things:

• Add a header image.
• Add a background.
• Try a widget if I was happy with my header/background.

It should be known that I have changed the theme for my blog since assignment 5. While customizing some more, I quickly came to love the Lovecraft theme. It is set up a certain way and there’s a right-aligned sidebar, but the design is somehow sleeker than the Baskerville theme. I love the default header, too, but plan to change it.

Now, for this assignment I decided to play with the header image and colors. The header image I have is really a sample image that came with my system. I ultimately want to go with a landscape anyway. The background color is a dark gray for the time being. Here’s a screenshot in case I change it:

I might just go back to the default until I’m ready to do even more with the theme. The idea I have for the header is to incorporate a rough sketch. This will give me a chance to use my art and it will pertain to one of my interests. The background color will of course be adjusted, too.

 

Things I Don’t Like About Television, Episode 12: Infomercials

Infomercials are often the domain of scheisters and the gullible.

Many of us have seen these things. Most of the time, some crap is being pedaled late at night on some of our favorite channels. Either they pop up late at night or during the day for some networks that have gotten rid of particular programming altogether. They’re repetitive, yet highly effective and I know their purpose.

That said I really hate it when I’m channel surfing just to see an infomercial. When is this commercial ending? Oh, it’s a stupid infomercial. I just wasted two minutes when I could have been looking for real programming.

To be fair, I have come across infomercials selling legit products every now and then. For example, Shamwow is still remembered to this day and so is Vince (the man known for pedaling this product).

The towel was promised to soak up anything, but it sounded too good to be true then. However, it gets a passing grade since it does do most of the things it was promised to do.

Now, here is a general complaint about the worst offenders.