Month: May 2009

Thunderstorm As Seen From TopThrillDragster

On Friday evening, a line of thunderstorms moving South East across Lake Erie managed to hit Cedar Point before they came my way. Knowing that Cedar Point has come cool webcams at the park, I decided to check out the view from the Top Thrillside Dragster and sure enough, I got a great view of a thunderstorm pouring down rain over the lake.

Click to see a bigger version

Click to see a bigger version

On the right side of the picture, you can see heavy rain falling from the sky. An ultimate web cam shot would be to see a waterspout over the lake from this view. I’m still waiting!

Almost Too Close

On May 13th 2009, a tornado was bearing down on Kirksville, MO. Bart Comstock who is a storm chaser for SevereStudios.com almost became a victim when he looks to his left and sees the Twister moving right towards him. Thankfully, he was on the outskirts of the circulation. Make sure you listen to the noise this thing makes when his driver side window is down. This thing is producing the classic ‘freight train‘ noise which is most commonly reported from witnesses.

Here is one with a little more emotion:

And here is footage of the same tornado by a chasing tour. This could have turned into a storm chasing disaster.

Personally, I would have been scared to death but I can almost guarantee that in the video, you would hear me say “this is $%#%^$# awesome”.

I Can’t Stands No More

Those of you who have been following my progress as a writer know that at about this time last year, I had a great opportunity come my way thanks to a referral from a friend where I was offered to write for Performancing.com. The pay was great compared to anything I’ve ever seen before. However, it didn’t take long to realize what I had stepped into. After working with Performancing for two to three months, I started to come up with ideas and ways to reinvigorate the brand/community/site. What I proposed was a radical change to the way things were done. I was filled with ideas and motivation to turn things around. My ideas were noted and passed around but progress was slow. While a redesign for Performancing has taken place on a platform that at some point the site will be migrated to, the site is where it was a year ago.

I wish I could just publish the email I sent this morning which clearly illustrates my frustration with the site but I don’t feel that would be in my best interest. However, I feel I can post a quote from it.

Ultimately, Performancing.com in its current iteration is a bottomless pit. Or an empty auditorium. I’ve been waiting for someone to bust my ass for lack of production or lack of enthusiasm but I’d pay to see anyone get enthused about this site now adays. Then I’d have to wonder what kind of shrooms they ate.

In my mind, Performancing would turn into an awesome site if there was a team of people writing for the domain. Each one of these people were so called experts are at least, in the know for a particular CMS/publishing platform of their choice. So, I’d fit the bill with WordPress, someone could do MovableType, someone could do Joomla, etc. Sure, it sounds like CMS Wire, but they do newsy posts. Our goal would be to help bloggers succeed using these publishing systems and doing this as a team. Think about the mini competitions we could have with one platform versus another. I think their would be endless content creation opportunities and the audience I think would love it. Top it with a forum, a podcast, maybe some screencasts, and wow, what a helluva resource for bloggers of all types. That’s what I would turn Performancing into if I had the cash and know how.

There are plenty of lessons to be learned from Performancing.com, especially regarding managing a site. Because the site has exchanged hands at points in the past, has cared more about content generation versus all other aspects of the domain, and no continuous maintenance, we now have a site with a huge six year archive, a bunch of spam user accounts, comments, and blog posts, not to mention stuff on the built in forums all of which make it difficult to do anything with the site. It’s one of those situations where I’d like to just reformat and start over but you can’t because the archive is the only saving grace of the domain.

I know they are currently in the migration phases to move from Drupal to WordPress and that will most likely solve half or more of the problems associated with the site, just as long as most of the crap is not migrated over as well.

It doesn’t matter how much you pay me to write on your site. If 90% of comments are junk, I have no idea if someone links to the post or not, I’m stuck with a platform that sucks, there is little to no way to build community or loyalty around the site, eventually the writer is going to burn out and wonder what the hell is he doing wasting his time going upstream rather than with the flow. I’ll no doubt miss the $1,000.00 a month in pay but being able to bust my ass and reap the rewards which is more than just cash coming in is worth more to me in the long run.

Now can someone point me to the soup line?

I Can't Stands No More

Those of you who have been following my progress as a writer know that at about this time last year, I had a great opportunity come my way thanks to a referral from a friend where I was offered to write for Performancing.com. The pay was great compared to anything I’ve ever seen before. However, it didn’t take long to realize what I had stepped into. After working with Performancing for two to three months, I started to come up with ideas and ways to reinvigorate the brand/community/site. What I proposed was a radical change to the way things were done. I was filled with ideas and motivation to turn things around. My ideas were noted and passed around but progress was slow. While a redesign for Performancing has taken place on a platform that at some point the site will be migrated to, the site is where it was a year ago.

I wish I could just publish the email I sent this morning which clearly illustrates my frustration with the site but I don’t feel that would be in my best interest. However, I feel I can post a quote from it.

Ultimately, Performancing.com in its current iteration is a bottomless pit. Or an empty auditorium. I’ve been waiting for someone to bust my ass for lack of production or lack of enthusiasm but I’d pay to see anyone get enthused about this site now adays. Then I’d have to wonder what kind of shrooms they ate.

In my mind, Performancing would turn into an awesome site if there was a team of people writing for the domain. Each one of these people were so called experts are at least, in the know for a particular CMS/publishing platform of their choice. So, I’d fit the bill with WordPress, someone could do MovableType, someone could do Joomla, etc. Sure, it sounds like CMS Wire, but they do newsy posts. Our goal would be to help bloggers succeed using these publishing systems and doing this as a team. Think about the mini competitions we could have with one platform versus another. I think their would be endless content creation opportunities and the audience I think would love it. Top it with a forum, a podcast, maybe some screencasts, and wow, what a helluva resource for bloggers of all types. That’s what I would turn Performancing into if I had the cash and know how.

There are plenty of lessons to be learned from Performancing.com, especially regarding managing a site. Because the site has exchanged hands at points in the past, has cared more about content generation versus all other aspects of the domain, and no continuous maintenance, we now have a site with a huge six year archive, a bunch of spam user accounts, comments, and blog posts, not to mention stuff on the built in forums all of which make it difficult to do anything with the site. It’s one of those situations where I’d like to just reformat and start over but you can’t because the archive is the only saving grace of the domain.

I know they are currently in the migration phases to move from Drupal to WordPress and that will most likely solve half or more of the problems associated with the site, just as long as most of the crap is not migrated over as well.

It doesn’t matter how much you pay me to write on your site. If 90% of comments are junk, I have no idea if someone links to the post or not, I’m stuck with a platform that sucks, there is little to no way to build community or loyalty around the site, eventually the writer is going to burn out and wonder what the hell is he doing wasting his time going upstream rather than with the flow. I’ll no doubt miss the $1,000.00 a month in pay but being able to bust my ass and reap the rewards which is more than just cash coming in is worth more to me in the long run.

Now can someone point me to the soup line?

21st Annual Ohio Bigfoot Conference

On Saturday May 2nd, 2009, I attended the 21st Annual Ohio Bigfoot Conference held at Salt Fork State Park. The event was headed by Don Keating of EOBIC. This is an event I’ve been attending the past few years. I’m always looking forward to getting out and spending time in the park while meeting with a bunch of bigfoot enthusiasts. Unfortunately this year, I didn’t have the funds to stay at the lodge so I had to drive their on the day of the conference.

I got a late start but I arrived 10 minutes before the event started at 4PM EDT. Worthy of noting is that on the way to the Lodge, I passed an area known as Hosacks Cave. As I did, I noticed quite a few emergency vehicles in the parking lot which made me wonder if someone else had fallen off the cave. At the beginning of the conference, a small prayer was conducted for the 20 year old student who had fallen off the top of the cave. You can read about what happened in this story published on the Daily-Jeff.com but she ended up dieing later on due to her injuries which makes her the second person to die from falling off the top of this cave. My sympathies go out to her family and I won’t go into another argument on whether the trail should be closed or not.

As for the conference, I had to stand up in the lobby as ALL of the seats were taken. We’re talking four to five hundred people in a conference room. That is a lot of squatchers! No worries though as after the first few speakers, I managed to grab a seat in the back but because of rude people in the lobby, I was unable to concentrate on the speakers and their presentations. I think next year, the lobby doors will have to be closed to prevent this from happening.

Overall, I just wasn’t into the conference this year as I was last year. The highlight for me though was John Cartwright retelling his sighting/experience. You could literally hear the fear in his voice as he recounted what happened to him. I met some old friends, talked a bit of bigfoot, ate a great buffet dinner which set me back $15.00 and then went home. Don Keating mentioned that he will probably do 4 more conferences and then, perhaps end on the 25th one. So, I have four more conferences to look forward to. Hopefully, I’m in a better financial position and can stay at the lodge.

Click here to visit my photo gallery of the event on Flickr.

Here are some YouTube videos of the event.

Hello? Can Anyone Hear Me?

Hey there. Long time no see! If you’re reading this post on the actual site, you’ll see I’ve gone through a bit of a redesign. Also check out the new domain name! Spiffy eh? I plan on getting back to my roots and publishing what I want to publish instead of obeying an audience. I’ve had alot of things on my chest but have had no where to publish them. Jeffro2pt0.com built an audience expecting WordPress stuff, icons, news, with a mix of personal stuff. Now, Jeffc.me will be all about me. No barriers, no constraints, just saying what I want, when I want.

So what I’m wondering is, can anyone hear me? Are you still around?