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My favorites of 2008

December 31, 2008

2008 will be history in less than 24 hours. Before we close the door on it, I wanted to look back and take a snapshot of the things I liked (and disliked) about 2008. These are in no specific order at all. Please feel free to comment and leave your list of faves.

Favorite Gadget: 3G iPhone
This one was easy. The iphone has become more than a phone, I use it as a business and organizational tool. I won’t say “can’t live without it”, but it really is handy.

Favorite iPhone App: Evernote
Having the ability to quickly bookmark something while away from my desk or retrieve information I’ve previously saved has been an extremely useful tool.

Favorite Movie: Choke
You may think this was an automatic decision for me, but it really wasn’t. I had a hard time narrowing down my list. But, at the end of the day, for a movie I had been waiting so long to see, it did not disappoint. It’s one of my favorite books and Sam Rockwell absolutely nailed his performance. Iron Man, The Dark Knight, Wanted and Zack and Miri Make a Porno were all in the running for this one.

Favorite Educational Blog: Strobist
Off-Camera lighting to me is the most interesting and challenging part of Photography. The information and knowledge shared in this blog is priceless. As a bonus, there are over 40,000 members in the strobist.com group on flickr with over 180,000 photos. People take the information they learn from the blog, apply it and then show their results. It’s incredible way to learn.

Favorite Photography Blog: TheBlogIsFound.com
When I grow up, I want my photography to be like Nate and Jaclyn. I find that when I look back through their blog and find sets like this one, I want to email and ask how Carla and Adam are doing. It’s more about capturing the moment and presenting an engaging set of photographs. One of my things to do in 2009 is get out to SoCal and take part in one of their shoot shops. So much to learn from these two.

Favorite Memory: Our trip to Alaska
Face it, everybody is too busy these days. We go go go go 1000 miles an hour all the time. My kids are growing so fast and it won’t be too long before the idea of taking a vacation with mom and dad will seem like torture to them. Getting away with just the 4 of us was absolutely incredible. Even if we were to hop back on the ship and head back to Alaska tomorrow, it wouldn’t come close to how special that trip was to me.

Happy New Year to you all. I hope you go out and make a million memories in 2009.

Filed Under: Blogging, Family, Photography Tagged With: , ,

Incorrect info leads to major stress

December 30, 2008

One of the requirements for running WordCamp is a temporary event license. I needed to get this from the businesses license department of Las Vegas. I went to their website and downloaded the form and was quickly overwhelmed. For some strange reason, instead of tackling the issue, I set it aside and let time roll on by.

I made a call to the business license a few days later and explained what I was doing and asked what all I needed. They pointed me back to the website to the form I already had in front of me and said to follow the instructions. Oh boy, this was not going to be easy. The instructions list several different permits I had to get that included getting inspections for waste removal. HUH? What have I got myself in to? Overwhelmed once again, I set the papers aside and let more time roll on by.

Yesterday I got a call from a very nice lady at the business license office here in Las Vegas. She was following up because she knew my event date was coming up and needed to get my paperwork in. I could put it off no longer, I was forced to get this done. NOW! On my lunch break I made several calls to find out what I needed to do and who I needed to pay. Some of these permits were fairly pricey. This was going to hurt. Thanks to my brilliant timing of waiting until the last minute, which just so happens to be in the middle of the holiday season, I have even less time than I normally would. So, in a panic I fill out some forms, leave work early and head home to pick up the checkbook.

On my way home I decided to call my contact at Palace Station to see if she can provide some guidance. I know it’s my fault that I’ve waited so long, but hopefully I’m not overly screwed. As I’m explaining the hoops I’m getting ready to jump through, she stops me and says, “You don’t need to do all that.” Palace Station has all the permits for 95% of what’s on the list. The only thing I need is the temporary event license, sans all the permits. Excellent, this is a good start. I high-tail it over to the business license office and submit my paperwork. As it turns out, there is one permit I do need to attain. It’s a tax permit that is required because I’m charging attendees for the conference. Still, they let me submit the forms with the promise that I’ll get the tax permit and fax it the following morning. We pay our bill and hit the door.

I check our navigation system and it says that the tax building is .7 miles from the business license building. 10 minutes later (thanks to some fun one-way street issues) we are in their parking lot. We find the right room, put our name on the list and find that we are in for a 1 hour wait. During that hour it became clear that every person working in the tax office was overly nice. They were cheery and helpful and got people in and out of there quickly. The experience was not what I was expecting, I’ll tell you that right now! When it was my turn, I sat down at the desk and found that the lady helping me was training 2 people at the same time. She had a big smile, great attitude and had me in and out of there in under 10 minutes paperwork in hand. It could not have gone any smoother.

If I could make one suggestion it would be that the city of Las Vegas create different forms for the different type of event permits or at least provide a set of instructions that can help you figure out what parts are or aren’t required. Running events is not my normal job so I would have no idea that I could skip portions of that form. It would have made for a way less stressful day. Thankfully, I ran in to 3 ladies today that helped me out, set me straight and got me back on track.

Filed Under: Ranting, WordCamp Tagged With: ,

WordCamp:Las Vegas is only $20 for 2 days!

December 29, 2008

I know I’ve talked about it before and my long time readers have probably heard about it a bunch, but, I have a few hundred new followers on Twitter who may be hearing this for the first time, so please pardon me if you’ve read this before.

If you are interested in learning more about WordPress, blogging, monetization, personal branding, or building up interest for your personal or business blog/website, I invite you to join us for WordCamp:Las Vegas.

You can find all the details about who’s speaking at the event, the agenda, who’s sponsoring and everything else there is to know about it at LasVegasWordCamp.com, but here are the basics:

When: January 10-11, 2009 (8am-5pm, both days)
Where: Palace Station Hotel & Casino, Las Vegas, NV
Cost: $20.00
Where to Register: EventBrite.com

For your $20 you’ll get a t-shirt plus 2 full days of learning and networking. You’ll have a hard time finding a better deal!

See you there.

Filed Under: Blogging, WordCamp, WordPress Tagged With: ,

Top 5 posts of 2008

December 28, 2008

Sticking with the them of looking back on the past year, I thought I’d take a look back at my top 5 posts as calculated by the number of page views. This is made a heck of a lot easier thanks to the excellent WordPress plugin, WordPress.com Stats. This plugin is so useful, I’m almost surprised it hasn’t become part of the core installation of WordPress. But, I digress.

And the top 5 posts of 2008 are:

#5. JHU Caption Contest
I’ve never been one to take myself to seriously. Posting a photo of myself with a thought bubble and leaving the rest up to my readers had potential danger written all over it. There were a bunch of great entries, and as I had hoped, it drove traffic to my blog. Win-Win.

#4. Become a Twitter Rockstar
This year Twitter really took off. And, like most things that become popular on the internet, people started trying to find ways to use it to make money. After using Twitter myself for a few months, I put together and ebook that describes how you can build a business using a blog, Twitter and some free time. The ebook is free. Sign up for the newsletter to get your copy.

#3. Fixing the WordPress login issue
Back in September a bug was found in WordPress version 2.6.1 that would let somebody go and create a user account on your blog and then force a reset of the admin password. This gave people fits as they were unable to log in to their blog. Thankfully the bug wasn’t really malicious, just annoying. My step-by-step instructions for fixing the issue was a popular post and still receives steady traffic.

#2. Review: Fisheye Lomography Camera
A few months back EpicEdits.com ran a contest where you had to buy a film camera (non-digital) for less than $50, shoot an entire roll of film, get it developed and then publish a review including all the shots you took with it. I had just learned about the Lomo fisheye camera and thought it was a perfect opportunity to pick one up and test it out. The camera is amazingly fun to shoot with and the results are silly/interesting/ridiculous. I may not have won the contest, but I gained a ton of exposure (ha, get it) for my blog and a fun camera in the process (again, with the puns… I kill me.)

Drum roll please… And the winner is…

#1. Rock Band Foot Pedal Reconstruction
Thanks to a heavily keyworded post related to the hottest game of the year, this post trumped all others in a landslide victory. The first wave of traffic came to this post thanks to StumbleUpon. But it wasn’t long before Google picked it up and this post ranked very well for several keyword combos bringing people to my site in search of how to fix their drum kit. On a side note, I’m sad to say that I have since broken the replacement part and have fixed it again. I’m back to rocking out once again.

So there you have it. Congratulations to all the winners.

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: ,

A quick year in the life of a blog

December 27, 2008
Tag Cloud

After blogging on geeeek.com for several years, for some unknown reason I decided to move my blogging to a more personally branded domain. Enter: JohnHawkinsUnrated.com. Last year on December 14th I started JHU and since then geeeek.com has fallen in to ruins. Actually, so have a few of my attempts at blogging. I have “plans” for many of these projects, it’s just finding the time to execute the plans that I need to work on. Really, what I need to do is find direction and figure out which projects are important to me and which are not. JHU I plan to keep as my personal blog. A place for me to rant. Welcome.

This is post #172 since the beginning of JHU. I was going to go back and pick out some of my favorite posts from the year, but I’m working on something similar for a post on New Year’s Day. so instead I thought I’d do something a little different. Here’s a snapshot of the “popular tags” found on JHU so far. I figure this would be a good way to figure out what my blog is all about.

Tag Cloud

By the looks of it, my year was dominated by the following:

Yeah, that pretty much sums up my year. It will be interesting to see how this tag cloud changes over the next year. What will dominate my time and interest in 2009? I can’t wait to find out.

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: ,

Building a Las Vegas posse

December 26, 2008

There are so many great tools for social networking these days. Who isn’t on Twitter and Facebook by now, right? While both of these are great for virtual meetings, I’m looking to expand that to actual face-to-face meetings. In order to do that, I need to find people in my basic area who are also interested in building their own social web.

For the past few weeks I have been focusing on building up the number of people I’m interacting with on Twitter from the Las Vegas area. To do this, I have been using twitterlocal.net to find tweeters in and around Las Vegas. I have a fairly basic rule set that I use as a guideline when it comes to who I do or don’t follow. For example, I usually don’t follow somebody if I’m going to be one of their first 5 followers. I also don’t follow people that look like they might be less than 21. This is mainly because if we schedule a meetup at a bar, I’d hate to exclude somebody I’ve gone out of my way to try and network with.

So what’s the benefit in all of this? Unless you are independently wealthy, we all have some sort of business or service that we offer. There is no better way to advertiser yourself than by going out and meeting a bunch of people who share common interests. Your first meetup may not turn up any new clients. Your second, third and fourth might not either. But, by keeping your name and face fresh in peoples minds, when it comes time that they or somebody they know need a service that you provide, your name should be on the top of their list.

I currently organize 3 groups on meetup.com. Each group has been having meetings on a monthly basis. We have some cross pollination going on with the groups, and that’s a good thing. People are getting introduced to different views on social media, blogging, self branding and promotion. My goal now is to introduce the 200 plus people I’ve found on Twitter from Las Vegas to our meetup groups.

If you are interested, here are the 3 meetup groups to join:
- Las Vegas WordPress Meetup Group
- Vegas Tweetup
- Las Vegas Social Media Club

On Saturday, January 10th at 5:30 PM, just after the end of Day 1 of WordCamp:Las Vegas, we’ll be having a meetup with all 3 groups invited. Join any of the groups above to get all the details. We’d love to see you out there!

Filed Under: Social Media, WordCamp Tagged With: ,

Christmas and Family

December 25, 2008
santa

santaChristmas is a time to spend with family. This year, thanks to a freak snow storm in Vegas, this is the first year since we moved to Las Vegas 7 years ago that we did not travel back to Southern California to visit my mom, sister and grandma for the holidays. We normally go out for a couple days before Christmas, but then high-tail it back to Vegas in time to have Santa come for a visit. Christmas morning has always been with our immediate family opening gifts at home and I intend on keeping it that way.

While I’m bummed that we weren’t able to spend any time with my side of the family this Christmas, we still managed to have a house full of family with us today. After we opened gifts first thing this morning, around lunch time we were joined my mother-in-law, both brother-in-laws and their families. This brought our total to 11 for the day’s festivities. The ladies spent some time in the kitchen making stuffed shells while the boys played Rock Band. We ate dinner around 3pm and then all 11 of us gathered around the table to play a game of Apples to Apples. If you need a game that can be played with a large group of any age range, you MUST buy this game. Good, clean, family fun. That’s not easy to come by these days.

After playing and then having some pie, we said good bye to our family and now we are back to just the 4 of us, which is nice, too. The kids are both playing with new games and toys while the wife and I are in our PJs laying in bed. She’s reading and I’m blogging. The dogs are curled up between us glad for the peace and quiet as well. A fantastic end to a fantastic holiday, all of it spent with family.

Merry Christmas to you and yours. I hope Santa brought you everything on your wish list.

Filed Under: Family Tagged With: ,

Reversal of fortune

December 24, 2008

Yesterday I blogged about how rude people were while out shopping. If you read yesterday’s comments, several people pointed out that they weren’t experiencing the same. In fact, they were enjoying quite the opposite. So today when I had to go back to the mall, I was really curious as to what moods I would run in to on what has to be the most stressful shopping day of the year. Face it, you have one last shot to get that special someone that special gift. Tensions are likely going to be high.

When we got to the mall I had a pretty good idea of where we were going to look. I had the kids with me and we were shopping for mom’s gift from the kids. Don’t worry, I already had mom’s big gift taken care of, so this was just for some stocking stuffers and something small from them. The first store turned out to be a bust. Then, as we walked past the line-up for people wanting to get a picture with Santa, it made me really glad my kids are older. The line was ETERNAL! I did not envy those parents.

We went in several stores and purchased items in a few of them. We didn’t run in to any long lines, which had to be a Christmas Miracle. Also, we didn’t run in to a single person with any sort of attitude. People in the mall were downright cheery. What an incredible turnaround from my previous day’s experience.

After returning from the mall we had some friends over for dinner and some games. They just left and we are wrapping the last few gifts for morning. We had a great day and I’m looking forward to watching my kids open their gifts in the morning.

I hope your Christmas is filled with family, friends and good cheer.

Filed Under: General Tagged With: ,

Do the holidays bring out the worst in people?

December 23, 2008

Maybe it’s just the holidays, or maybe it’s just me noticing it more, but people are a assholes. Today while we were out doing some last minute shopping, I was acutely aware of how rude people can be. For example, if you are walking around a shopping center, you normally stay to the right, much like the flow of vehicle traffic. Several times there were people walking up-stream and they are the ones that won’t move an inch to avoid running in to you. Annoying!

Even still, I typically go out of my way to be courteous to others. As we are entering a store I almost always hold the door for people coming in right behind us. When walking past somebody in an aisle while, we always say “pardon me” as we slip by them as they browse. These aren’t Mother Theresa level acts, but I’m amazed at how it seems we are the only ones in the mall who think to do them.

Tonight while at Ross, we were walking down an aisle that was fairly narrow. A lady with a cart edges her way in front of me and then I have to pull Chris to the side to let the lady pass as I’m certain she’s about to be run down by this lady with the cart. I was so pissed! I don’t know if you know this about me, but I’m RARELY the one to start a confrontation. In a situation like this I’ll typically say nothing and just steam about it. But this lady really ticked me off. I made a comment, louder enough for her to hear, I hope, about how Chris was lucky not to have been run over. Chris says the lady said she was sorry as she zipped past, but I certainly didn’t hear it.

After that bit of fun we stopped at the grocery store to pick up the fixings for Christmas dinner. We have a bit of a group coming over, so our basket was fairly full. I headed to the checkout line as Chris went to pick up a final item. As I arrived up front, I stood behind somebody in line just before another lady with a half-full cart pulled up. I then looked up and noticed I was in the 15 items or less line. So I moved over to look for the other lane. Turns out, there were no other lanes open. The lady who walked up behind me zips her cart in front of me in the line. She saw exactly what happened. I was less than 5 feet away. She jumped in front of me on purpose. This time I held my tongue because I knew that if I said anything, it was going to get nasty quick. I couldn’t believe how rude this lady was. Honestly though, I’m not sure why I was surprised.

Listen, if you are going to go out in public, bring along some manners with you, OK? I’m not asking for much. Remember when you were a kid and your mom told you to treat others the way you’d want to be treated? Let’s try that next time you go to the mall, shall we?

Filed Under: Ranting