Very happy to launch this week my new personal blog.
I’ve had the blog MichaelQuinn.com.au for many years and never really been sure what to do with it. Do I use it for posts about my family, or use it as a general blog for anything I want to go on about?
Obviously there is different audiences for both – direct family members just want to hear about Eliza, and not necessarily about the latest widget. Other friends might want to see what I am interested in – but could care less about what Eliza did last night that was sooooo funny. I know – bloody “Breeders”.
So during my work-break over Xmas 2009, I decided to split things up – the bleeding obvious after years of indecision. My old blog – MichaelQuinn.com.au will be particularly directed at friends and family who just want to keep up with what myself, Fiona, Eliza and Jhett are up to. This new blog – MichaelQ.com.au will be my “personal” daily blog for whatever stuff happens to come along. I’ve also set up Down Under Geek as my tech blog – it’s been around for a while too but hopefully I’ll be using it a bit more in 2010. We’ll see.
I’ve learnt a lot about WordPress over the last 7-10 days. Looked at probably 100+ designs, narrowed that down to 30-40 to try out before eventually ending up with 2-3 designs I really liked for this site. This design was the first one I tried – and the first one I discard initially. But having experimented with a couple of others over the week I came back to this one for its style and simplicity. I’ll have to do one of those “Top 20 Plugins for your WordPress Blog” posts soon – got some nice ones helping me out here.
This blog will be a combination of “point to” other posts I find interesting, plus some of my own thoughts and ideas. Hope you can sign up for the ride.
Jay? Not so much. Apart from the whole underhanded way he got the Tonight Show – he’s just not that funny to me. Too scripted – man has never ad-libbed in his life. Talking to dumb people on the street – not funny.
I even found the politics and behind the scenes stuff of The Late Shift to be fascinating. Of course it’s all happening again – Leno said he’d hand over the Tonight Show to Conan so he could retire, Leno announces 10pm Prime Time show at the last minute to undermine Conan’s debut, 10pm Show sucks, NBC want to move Leno back to 11:35 and the “Tonight Show” into “Tomorrow” starting at 12:05am.
Apparently Leno retiring isn’t an option anymore – he still wants to be #1 TV Boy.
The funniest bastard in all of this has been Craig Ferguson – the one Late Night Show we don’t get in Australia – and probably the one show after Letterman I would watch. But he has made some great opening monologues regarding it all.
Last night, he nailed it. In the midst of the disaster in Haiti – Who Really Gives a Fuck.
I’ve seen this footage used a couple of times now – last time was when Apple released the new iPod Touch but without a camera. Probably doesn’t sound that funny but made me cry.
I saw Matt posting about giving up Twitter for a week last week, and thought it was a good idea. I’ve actually been off it (and Facebook) myself since last Sunday.
While I haven’t probably gotten as much done as Matt, I have taken this week to get 5 WordPress blogs (including this one) either updated / refreshed or started from scratch (including this one).
I’ve missed the Twitter banter a bit – but not as much as you might think. I really missed my “Twitter Brains Trust” when I needed help with things. But a few people have been more than helpful via email – mind you I only had contact with many of these people because of my Twitter history.
I like some of Matt’s suggestions for more 30 day challenges – might approach 2010 with some more myself.
“Australian Idol will not return in 2010. Network 10 has decided to “rest” the tired talent quest after years of falling ratings.”
No huge surprise. Been saying for years they would be better running Idol every second year. Gives them a better pool of talent to choose from, plus lessens the burnout from viewers.
2009′s format was a dud. Should have had the elimination at the end of the show. Too often we just tuned in for the first 15 mins to see who was booted and then watched something else.
Judges need to have a say too. IMO the best format is Rock Star. Judges picked the 3 worse performances on the night and then the viewers voted on that.
Bring back Kyle. And Big Brother!
Main problem I see is what will Undercover.com.au do now for Australian Content now that Paul can’t bitch about Idol? ;)
Craig Ferguson (the boss in the Drew Carey Show) has his take on the rumours that Leno is being moved back to a later time slot to possibly replace Conan.
Really, what idiot thought a late-night format would work in Prime Time 5 nights a week?
Would it have killed Google to at least ask to use the name Nexus One?
Don’t try to pretend your using the name because of it’s original meaning – meeting place. Why add the One to the end of it then?
Personally I think the name Nexus One is an awesome name – but ONLY because of the attachment to Blade Runner / I Dream Of Electric Sheep. If that movie / book didn’t exist – then Nexus One would be a pretty fricken lame name for a phone to be honest.
Makes me wonder why companies like Dell etc have waited till now to release a Tablet device?
The hype around the Apple Tablet has been huge over the last year or 2 – why wait till supposedly 2 weeks before its announcement to release their own?
Been pretty happy with the progress so far. Very happy to find a theme that easily lets me add site URLs in a Nav Bar across the top of the site. For what I want this site to be – a hub or many other sites, it’s ideal.
Been going through a lot of my old plugins that I had saved from other sites. Most of them didn’t make it to this one. Instead I have been going through several articles written by people smarter than me about Top 10 Plugins for WordPress, First 10 things to do with a WP blog etc. I’ve gone thru half a dozen or so of these and picked the best bits from each one. I’ve now got a nice core of around 20 plugins – a few related to SEO which I haven’t turned on yet but I will.
I think I will probably end up writing my own Top 20 WP ideas – once I go thru a few more installs.
Main problem I have been having is getting Feedburner to work. Well feedburner works fine, but getting WP to deal with it properly seems to be a bigger pain than expected. Google seems to have fucked up quite a few links that would have been handy – it’s redirected them to a generic Google Groups page which imo is probably the most useless thing Google offers.
I have decided to make my old site michaelquinn.com.au more or less for “family type” news. The idea is I can rabbit on about any kind of shit here, and family and friends can visit the other site if they just want to find out whats happening with Eliza.
This one is a bit of a work in progress – still trying to work out where everything fits and if this is the right WP theme to go with. The usual procrastination crap.
The plan is to have 4 blogs up by the end of the week at the latest, and then actually use them. At least one 2009 New Years Resolution might have a chance of getting a tick!
