Awards! What for Me?

For some odd reason I have recently been awarded not 1 but 1 amazing awards by fellow bloggers!

It really feels great that other appreciate my blog and my participation in their blogs.

So who did what and what are they?

Brown Baron gave me the wondrous the Mariuca Superstar Award. This award was deservedly passed to him from Marzie. It was given as a token of appreciation for the friendship and support of other bloggers and he passed it onto me for the same reason. It is really really really really really really really really really really really appreciated. Does that get the point across? Thanks Mr B. Baron.

He also awarded it to Bush Mackel, Mark, Opal, AntiBarbie and Zath so I suggest you check these great blogs out.

The Be The Blog award is a very special new award created by Mark at Me and My Drum and is spreading around like wildfire. I feel amazingly priviledged to be awarded by the creator himself. I must say his blog has been a great place for me to visit and his commitment to helping other bloggers is only one very small reason as to why you should become a regular reader of his.

Thanks to everyone who reads my humble words. I also want to mention that Bush Mackel recently posted asking his readers how he was doing. I really think it important that we all ask this question and should all post about it at some point (I'll be doing just that soon), and if others ask us we answer honestly.

My Random Desktop Meme

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Me and My Drum, has tagged me with the “What’s on your desktop?” meme.

So I guess it's Meme time again for me :)

My desktop shows a view from my girlfriends house one evening in Vermont, USA. Isn't it beautiful!

As you can see i'm a little cluttered and could do with organising myself a bit better.... maybe we will find with this meme that desktops show a little of ones personality!

[TAG STARTS HERE]

My Desktop Free View Instruction:

A. Upon receiving this tag, immediately perform a screen capture of your desktop. It is best that no icons be deleted before the screen capture so as to add to the element of fun.

You can do a screen capture by: [1] Going to your desktop and pressing the Print Scrn key (located on the right side of the F12 key). [2] Open a graphics program (like Picture Manager, Paint, or Photoshop) and do a Paste (CTRL + V). [3] If you wish, you can “edit” the image, before saving it.

For MAC users: Press [ Apple] [ Ctrl ] [ Shift ] and [ 3 ]

B. Post the picture in your blog. You can also give a short explanation on the look of your desktop just below it if you want. You can explain why you preferred such look or why is it full of icons. Things like that.

C. Tag five of your friends and ask them to give you a Free View of their desktop as well.

D. Add your name to this list of Free Viewers with a link pointing directly to your Desktop Free View post to promote it to succeeding participants.

List of those who have participated: Francine of La Place de Cherie Chez Francine Bloggishi Unchained Melody LadyJava’s Lounge Mariuca Revellian Dot Com|Desktop iRonnie Rebecca Jon Rolando Speedcat Brown Baron Tish Mike Money Online NoDirectOn Max Elena’s Photos Comedy Plus MeAndMyDrum The Random Forest

add yours here after doing this tag.

[TAG ENDS HERE]

The following people are hereby tagged: Ugly Mailbox, Twisted Sister, Life in the Country, Samir, John Cow, and Bush Mackel. (Oops, I did 6!!)

Has The Random Forest lost it's fire?

Well I hope it hasn't lost it's fire yet, I guess I see it really as just warming up.

So why do I ask this question?

Yesterday I had 8 Feedburner readers. Almost reaching 10 made me greatly excited. The sky felt like an easy height to achieve, I was thinking that next week it will be 20, then 50, then 100 and then one day 1,00,000.

However today I saw that sadly my readers had dropped back down to 5. Oh dear! I felt mildly devastated and confused "what did I do wrong? Was it because I did not post yesterday? Was it because my tongue in cheek dig at the letter Z offended what is probably mostly a US audience? Did Feedburner have a glitch?"

Well I have no answer, I am having extreme trouble working out what I need to provide to get people reading but see this as an exciting journey and want to formulate a list of things to as I constantly read that people like lists. So here goes...

To Do by the end of the week.
1. Submit 2 articles to Blog Carnivals
2. Visit and if liked comment on at least 10 new blogs, subscribing if liked
3. Comment on all my liked blogs at least once
4. Read up and find out about good affiliate programs and which ones I should add to my blog
5. Find out how to change my template without affecting any added coding
6. Find a new template
7. Add one article to Helium and Associated Content (Same article is ok if allowed)
8. Learn to understand the Statcounter stats
9. Post at least 3 more times
10. Make sure I have enough items for my next list of 10

I guess that small set back has caused some concern to me and made me create a list of To Do's but the last week or so has been extremely positive. My traffic has slowly increased as you can see from the image below it's slowly getting better and today my on blog counter just reached 300 unique visits!



Hardly 100,000 a week yet but I'm excited.

Reading other people blogs had become a real inspiration. My attempt at starting a Meme hasn't really worked yet as there as so many around being started and pushed by the big guys (you know who you are) but I am making contacts and I have really started to find some voices I like.

I can't thank everyone enough for commenting on my blog. It really is a great feeling to know that somebody is actually reading and not just visiting for a brief second in fact I best be off very shortly to go on a reading lastest post rampage!

Before I head off I want to thank a few inspirational blogs and blogs I like. I now feel that an online work and some social life is achievable and I really want to work hard to achieve this for myself.

Bush Mackel - Bush started a great series for new bloggers and I have found his blog to be extremely helpful and informative as well as occassionally random and to boot he seems like a very friendly nice guy.

Bob Meets World - Bob again is very helpful and between this blog and his other one John Cow I have learnt the beginnings of the skills I need, also he is a great friendly helpful guy... do you see a pattern here?

Ugly Mail Boxes - This site basically gives me a pretty much daily laugh

Julie Anne Bonner - I'm not sure if she reads this blog but she was one of the first blogs that I came across when I first started my research and she sent me a very helpful email when I first started blogging with my original blog back in April. I always read her new posts and am always entertained.

Snoskred's Life In the Country Has been great and I may use the same template when I get round to changing. Snoskred came by my site and was very helpful when she added me to something came Stumble Upon and it caused that Tuesday hump in my traffic.

Twisted Sisters - This site can be very negative in tone but it's mostly just ranting and good humoured and I like it. Insanity Suits Me has been visiting and commenting on my site which is very encouraging!

I also want to mention Samir because I like his blog design and if you check out his latest post about conversing with urban Indians it is very funny. Christyz has always been a good place to stop by and same goes for Joanne's I'm Happy Fish and Aaron Cook. Sorry if I missed anyone who has been regularly stopping by.

Adios, gonna go find some fuel to help this blog burn brighter......