Bloggiesta ~ I Didn’t Play, but I Wish I hadda!

I hate housekeeping. 

When I was a kid, and my mom was trying to force me to do my chores, I’d mouth off that I was going to get a maid when I grew up, so I didn’t need to learn how to do dishes or laundry or clean the toilet. 

I’m still waiting for my maid.

This past Friday and Saturday (June 19-20), Natasha at Maw Books hosted the first ever Bloggiesta… Olé!  The idea was to clean out the broken links, write the reviews you’re behind on, clean out the clutter, and in general bootify yer blog.

Housekeeping.  For my blog.  Blech!  Needless to say, I didn’t sign up. 

However, as I read through everyone else’s Bloggiesta updates and challenges, I found myself doing all the activities and wanting to fix up my blog, too.  I don’t wanna be the family in the trailer with four foot grass and the car on blocks while everyone else has mansions…  Wait, I wanna bootify my place, too!

So here’s some of the things I ended up doing.

1.  Updating Mt. TBR’s inventory page, adding a page for my ARC-alanche pile.  Unfortunately, I got about halfway through the TBR page when LibraryThing pooped out on me, so I’ve still got some more work on that.  It’s no where near what’s allon my TBR shelves.

2.  Stealing a page from Stella Matutina, literally, I’ve written up a review policy for Mt. TBRand linked it in my “contact me” widget on the sidebar.  I didn’t really have a policy before… not one set in stone, anyway, just a  kinda-sorta flimsy plan.  This fact is made painfully obvious by the amount of books on my ARC-alanche pile.

Other things to improve my blog, more on the cosmetic side of life:

One of the things that irk me is that I can’t find a theme that I like… I mean, really like.  The colors on this one seem a bit pale, and the sidebar and main area run together for some unknown reason sometimes, but my problem is:  I wanna knew layout, but hate all the wordpress ones, halp?  Is there a site somewhere that makes them to paste in the CSS thingy like MySpace does?

Another thing I’ve been wondering lately:  Is my site too busy?  Too many pics?  TMI?  Is it navigable and readable, or does it overwhelm and turn off?

A third, and major… in my opinion it’s big, is that there will be a book review change.  I’ve learned that blog posts look a lot different on Google Reader, and I’m beginning to see that the whole itemized list of title, author, publisher and date and page numbers… blah blah blah… is unnecessary.  Who cares what year it was published and how many pages!  It’s making the post needlessly longer.  From now on, the reviews will have the title, author and ISBN only and smaller covers.  Personally, I like the ISBN handy to grab and paste to my wishlist instead of having to sift through similar titles and other books by that author.  Smaller covers, again something I’ve learned from Google Reader, because, while the big ones with detail are pretty, they take up soOOoo much space.

Website Grader, FINALLY!  After months and months of trying to make the web grader inspect my blog, and every time the ‘tarded thing telling me my URL was invalid, I clicked the link “free seo tool” in the gray box to the right and MAGICALLY! it took the URL in the next page.  It was so frustrating to hear everyone tell all about the wonderful things they discovered through this thing, and I couldn’t even get past the front dang door!  BTW… I gots a 95 🙂

Meta whota whata?

Some of the things in the report from Website Grader made sense, but some things left me very confuzzled.  like Meta.  Meta tags.  Meta description.  I’m missin’ out on the Meta deal, but have no clue on how to get hip and get with it!  How do I add the Meta parcels?

 

File that under miscellaneous…

I took time to add the newer awards I’ve received, added the Viral Video Wednesday button, and put my 4Rchallenge button and linked them all up, so now they’re all good to go 🙂

RSS feed ~ Fail?

 

  IDK… I’ve tried to use the RSS feed (thank gawd for Google Reader!), but this is what I see:

Is this what I’m suppose to see?  With all the code and stuff?

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So that’s where I’m at on all the “Keep the Bloggie Beautiful” stuff, though… I figure it’s probably a lot like my desk.  No sooner than I clean it all up, someone will dump a load on it and I’ll have to start over.

Now here’s where I need your help, everyone…

What kinds of things would you suggest to improve Mt. TBR?  Any help is appreciated!

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Viral Video Wednesday ~ What’s Ur Sub?

Happy Wednesday Everybody 😀 Today’s VVW is all about the subs.

I’m not talking about “What’s long, hard and full of seaman?” I mean subscriptions. To what YouTube channels do you subscribe? What videos made you subscribe to them? What’s their current video?

Here are mine:

asathecomic has a strange, but hilarious sense of humor. He’s easy on the eyes, I might add. Often his videos are social commentary, but he can also sing.

The first Asa video I watched and the one that got me to sub his channel is “7 Youtube ‘Don’ts!’ – STOP IT!!!!!!!!” It’s probably the video that introduced me to the idea of viral videos in the first place. If you like VVW, thank Asa… if ya don’t… 😀

His current featured video is “We Make YouTube – [Eminem – We Made You SPOOF]” which oddly kind of calls back to the previously video. He does a lot of other stuff too, I promise.. lol. While writing this, Asa made a new vid Dragonball Evolution Sucks?!? (FAN REVIEW), but I didnt’ feel like rewriting this.

Cory “Mr. Safety” Williams, owner of smpfilms channel, looks like Sylar from Heroes, I swear! I have featured his videos on past VVWs, including the first video I saw, Mean Kitty, and the Numa Numa parody. I’m not sure if I subbed for the Mean Kitty music video, or if it was one of the “how to deal with Sparta” vids, so I’ll share the one with the Witch Doctor, because it cracks ME UP!

The channel’s feature vid is called “What Goes Up…” and Cory gives the following description for it:

If you’re not of a fan of my “artsy” videos, don’t worry… I’ve got a dumb one coming right up! Tony and I had fun with this video and we hope you do too : )

Of course, there is FRED. Fred, the eternally four-year-old boy with an alcoholic mother, enprisoned father, and a C-Span watching grandma, who has a crush on Judy (she hates him) and a problem with a bullly named Kevin. Fred has an anger problem and a YouTube stalker, he takes medication, ran for class president, ran from Kevin, sleeps with the cat with rabies and thinks the neighbor’s pekingese dogs are squirrels. I love FRED! He was also recently on i-Carly, where we got to see the real guy behind Fred, or rather… got to hear his real voice.

Fred goes to the Dentist was probably the video that made me subscribe. His voice, his screams, the idea of his mother… lol… I hit the yellow sub button before I even knew it!

Fred’s newest video is a Thank You vid for reaching a million subscribers. BTW, for those who might not know…. Fred is the #1 sub channel of all time 🙂

My first time seeing Tony “The Wine Kone” Huyen was actually with him in a YourTubeNEWS video segmant called the WTF Factor. I laughed so hard, and had to go and look up TWK himself and subscribe.

His featured video is a Q & A with him. Here’s the description:

Do you have a burning question you need answered? Ask away on Twitter or here or wherever. It could be YOU who I call an idiot next!

http://twitter.com/thewinekone

 

Probably, by far the most disturbing channel I subscribed to is Mr. Pregnant’s. I actually have to admit that the following video was one of the very first videos I ever saw on the Internet (I had a long period of time with no ISP in which YouTube and a lot of other things happened). AND I first saw it on Grouper, before I had even heard of YouTube. Apparently, though, due to copyrights on the song, the original video has been pulled from YouTube. It was originally made with the song “Big Girls Don’t Cry”.

Kinda sux now… not even half as funny as the original, but such is life.

I had messed up on the copy/paste and put the same vid as above here, so I went back to grab the right one. But now there doesn’t seem to be a MrPregnant feat vid, so here’s the one that pops up on my YouTube home page for him:

Before I knew he was on YouTube, I was subscribed to Mark Day‘s video blog at MySpace. Mark Day is originally from Scotland and lives in San Francisco. He’s a social commentator with an interestingly twisted view of things. Plus, he’s Scottish… and if it isn’t Scottish, it’s CRAP!

My first experience watching Mark was at some random video site, which made me check him out on MySpace, which then sent me to his YouTube channel to which I subscribed. This is that video WARNING: Video contains adult content:

I messed up putting Mr.Pregnant’s correct current video in this post, putting it over Mark Day’s current feature video. So when I went to grab Mark’s current vid’s code, I found he had a new one up. So here it is. I’ll warn you, though, it does have some offensive material in it.

Red State Update is another of those MySpace-YouTube crossovers. Hailing from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, Travis and Johnathon, aka Jackie and Dunlap, are a comedy team providing politcal satire for the masses. Conservative and Republican, they’ve also appeared on CNN during the ’08 campaign offering their YouTube question. Dunlap is a total goof, who opens his mouth and inserts both feet with politically incorrect statements, while Jackie is a grumpy (but loveable) old man who tries to maintain some amount of respect, grunting in between swigs of beer and puffs on his cigarette.

I honestly couldn’t tell you what the first video I saw was. I watch them regularly, though less often of late. So I’ll give you my all-time favorite RSU video. Last year, Dunlap was promoting Jackie Broyles for President, to which Jackie vehemently denied his candidacy. His refusals did NOT stop Dunlap, however, and the following is one of those campaign vids. I actually have this video memorized…

Their current featured video is a bit strange for them…. Dunno if I like it very much, but it’s okay… The description says:

Non-actors Billy Bob Thornton and Joaquin Phoenix share laughs, swap stories, and discuss tricks of the trade in this enlightening one-on-one.

I guess I’m sub’d to more channels than that, but I think my kids have done some of the subbing…. lol… I’m thekoolaidmom at YouTube, too, if you wanted to see what all I’m doing there. One of these days I’ll get a cam and make some of my own videos.

So, You’re turn…. What channels do you subscribe to? What video made you click the sub button? What’s your fav of theirs? What’s their current featured video? Leave a comment sharing your vids or, better yet, blog it and leave the link so I can check your VVW out 😀