Personal – Jeffc.me

Time To Go Old School

April 8, 2008 By Jeffro 7 Comments

Over the past two weeks, I’ve been thinking about how great it was when this blog covered everything of interest to me. Sure, WordPress is fun to write about but when I considered the fact that I get paid to write about WordPress for WeblogToolscollection.com and I have guest blog accounts on HackWordPress.com, WPCandy.com, RAProject.com and on top of all that, I have tried to turn this blog into a WordPress only domain, I am starting to run out of steam.

I’m not running out of blogging steam, but I hate being in this blogging cycle where there is so much to write about yet, I’m not sure whether to publish the post on my own blog, one of the other blogs, or for WLTC. It’s become a constant battle within myself as to who to write for. I also hate the fact that as I monitor Twitter and the RSS feed, I constantly get this feeling of OMFG I have to write about that, I have to write about this, OMG I can’t miss any of this. At the end of the day, I end up not writing anything. The constant weight on my shoulders of trying to play catchup sucks! If you have no idea what I mean, please read this excellent post written by the NYTimes which goes into some detail as to what it’s like to be part of the blogging Elite. It’s become increasingly apparent that blogging is a game of FIRSTIES. As the NYTimes article points out:

Speed can be of the essence. If a blogger is beaten by a millisecond, someone else’s post on the subject will bring in the audience, the links and the bigger share of the ad revenue.

But before I go on any more of a rant considering the state of blogging for big bucks, I want to get back on topic. I have decided that I am no longer going to continue to make this blog a WordPress centric site. I will continue to write about WordPress on occasion. However, I plan on getting back to my roots where I published opinions, share things I discovered, shared my personal experiences, or write up reviews or articles of things that I find interesting. The writing, discovery and the entire aspect of blogging just seemed to be better for me when that was my method of getting through the day. So then, I’m going back to what made this blog successful.

If you enjoyed what I have written on this blog concerning WordPress, I highly suggest you subscribe to my WordPress tag feed so that if I post something about WordPress in the future, you’ll be notified in your favorite RSS reader.

Filed Under: Personal Tagged With: Blogging, jeffro2pt0, oldschool, Personal, successful, writing

My WordCamp Dallas Media

April 3, 2008 By Jeffro 4 Comments

Phew, finally finished uploading my photos to Flickr and then going through them one by one and providing a short description for the ones that needed it. All in all, there are about 40 images. Some of them detail WordCamp Dallas while others detail the hotel’s that I stayed in along with various other random images. I also have a couple of YouTube videos that you may or may not be interested in which are all available to watch on this post.

With all of that out of the way, I can begin to write up my own WordCamp Experience.

Video showcasing the setup inside the chambers of the Frisco City hall before the first presentation.

Short Clip of Jonathan Baileys presentation on content theft and copyrighting.

Short clip showcasing the WordPress Podcast being recorded live during Sunday Morning.

360 Degree view of an intersection in Frisco Texas. Reminds me of Texas Motor Speedway

Night Time view from the 12th floor of the Marriott hotel looking at the highway next to DFW airport.

Filed Under: Personal Tagged With: conference, flickr, hotels, media, wordcamp

WordCamp Dallas This Weekend

March 26, 2008 By Jeffro 1 Comment

The week has finally arrived where I can tell folks that I will be going to Dallas to attend WordCamp this weekend. WordCamp Dallas is an event that was orchestrated by Charles Stricklin, host of the WordPress Podcast.

Tickets cost $20.00 each and are still available. The event is located at the George A. Purefoy Municipal Center 6101 Frisco Square Blvd Frisco, Texas 75034. The first day of the event is on Saturday, March 29 and begins at 930AM and lasts until 5PM. Sunday, the event begins at 9:30AM and ends at 4PM. There will be an ATTENDEE only event that will take place on Friday evening. So be sure to purchase a ticket ASAP so you can get the 411.

For all of the information regarding the conference including links to register and purchase your ticket, visit the official Dallas WordCamp website.

Looking forward to meeting Ronald, Ptah, Lorelle, Matt, Cory of iThemes, Charles, and the rest of the gang.

Filed Under: Personal Tagged With: conference, events, wordcamp, Wordpress

Appearance On TwoBeams Podcast

February 9, 2008 By Jeffro Leave a Comment

Rob White runs a weekly podcast on Friday evenings at 8PM EST on Talkshoe called, Podcast Training And Chat. This past Friday, I was his special guest host as we covered the topic of WordPress. I discussed how I got involved with WordPress, previous experiences, then I discussed various plugins for different purposes. By the way, I also gave out which blogs I’m subscribed to in my feed reader which keep me up to date with the WordPress world.

Please give the show a listen and let me know what you think. It’s pretty weird being on the receiving end of an interview but it was fun.

Two Beams: Podcasting Training and Chat

Filed Under: Personal Tagged With: appearance, interview, podcasting, robwhite, talkshoe, twobeams

Going To WordCamp Dallas – Are You?

January 30, 2008 By Jeffro 4 Comments

The other day, I happen to purchase a ticket to WordCamp Dallas. The ticket cost me $20 and the event will mark the first conference I have ever been able to attend. The event is being organized by Charles Stricklin, host of the WordPress Podcast. If you want to know more about what WordCamp is, check out the post I wrote for WeblogToolsCollection.com called What Is WordCamp?

The event will be featured by some interesting speakers/speeches such as:

Matt Mullenweg on WordPress 2.5 and Beyond
45 Ways To Power Up Your Blog by John Pozadzides
How to prevent, detect and stop content theft by Jonathan Bailey
Cali Lewis and Neal Campbell
C’mon, Let’s Talk! Building influence and interaction with blogging by Liz Strauss
WordPress Power Tips by Lorelle Van Fossen
SEO For Bloggers by Chris Smith
Aaron Brazell
A panel of people to discuss the business of blogging: Mark Ghosh, Liz Strauss, and Aaron Brazell
Testing With WordPress by Jacob Santos

I’m pretty stoked about going to an event where people want to meet me and vice versa. I’ll be able to meet Ronald Huereca in person as well as, Charles Stricklin, Mark Ghosh, Lorelle Van Fossen, Matt Mullenweg and others. I plan on taking quite a few photos along with some video clips of the event. If I can manage to get a voice recorder, I also plan on getting a couple of interviews completed and then turning that into a WordPress Weekly episode.

If you are attending the event, let me know.

Filed Under: Personal Tagged With: conference, dallas, mattmullenweg, wordcamp, Wordpress

FireFox Saved Me!

January 29, 2008 By Jeffro 4 Comments

PhishingBlocker

Early in 2007, I finally managed to file for my first credit report since they passed the law allowing for one free credit report per year. Out of the number of institutions available for filing my credit report, I chose to go with Equifax. I was pretty impressed with how fast it took for them to process my information. Once they were finished, I was able to see my credit report online. And, in case you were wondering, my credit score is around seven or eight hundred which I hear is pretty good.

This year, I have yet to file for my credit report but I received a piece of email the other day from Equifax telling me that I was required to fill out a particular form they had sent me.

Well, I wasn’t in a hurry to open up any emails from them but when I finally did, here is what I saw.

Equifax Scamjob

Looks convincing doesn’t it? Well, after thinking about it for awhile, I decided to click the link to see what it was all about. The result? The first image you see in this post. This is the first time I’ve ever seen this notification which took me by surprise. After receiving the update, I did a Google search on the scam and yep, this was an Equifax phishing email.

So not only did I want to warn others, but I wanted to give a big thank you to the built in Phishing filter in FireFox. You saved me bro!

Filed Under: Personal Tagged With: emails, firefox, phishing, security, spam

How I Use The Web

January 18, 2008 By Jeffro 3 Comments

Steve Spalding of HowToSplitAnAtom has posted a blogging challenge for anyone interested. The challenge consists of answering a few questions that revolve around the use of the web. The questions are, How do you use the web? How do people around you use the web and what do you feel is the next big step in web development?

How do you use the web?

I decided to take this opportunity to explain how I use the web. I look at the web as a giant swiss army knife. Not one single tool, but a series of tools. I am online and actively using the internet more than 40 hours a week. As I continue to evolve as an adult, my usage of the internet differs. About 2-3 years ago, I used the internet primarily for online gaming. I actively participated in online forums related to Battlefield2 and put in quite a bit of effort into the team I was apart of. I also used the internet as a means of starting an online business that revolved around Teamspeak/Ventrilo and WebHosting. Don’t ask me how the business turned out because it only lasted from 2004-2006 and I’m still trying to acquire funds from the work I put into it, but that is an entirely different story.

Later on, my interests changed and I began to use the internet as a publishing platform in the form of blogging. Blogging was cool because I was able to publish my thoughts and develop relationships with people I otherwise would have never of met in the real world. I’m still blogging to this day and I’m beginning to use the internet as a way to promote my brand. That brand being myself.

How do people around you use the web?

When I ask those around me what it is they do while online, the answer I receive the most is entertainment. This entertainment comes in the form of YouTube, emails, jokes, and more. The younger crowd, (24 and under) tells me about the use of Twitter and social networking. Older folks tell me they use the web as a way to dive into history, or primarily as a means of knowledge. These people are the ones who hang around wikipedia and anytime they are asked a question, there response is “Google It“.

What do you feel is the next big step in web development?

Good question. I’m not a web developer so I have no idea. However, I believe the move towards making things as simple as possible via Web based GUI’s will continue to evolve so that, your average joe will be able to accomplish things that an average of above average developer could achieve.

If you would like to participate in the blogging challenge, head on over to HowToSplitAnAtom and jot down the questions, then follow Steve’s directions.

Filed Under: Personal Tagged With: challenges, how I use the web, howtosplitanatom, internet, stevespalding, usage

Photos Of The Blogging Master 3000

January 9, 2008 By Jeffro 3 Comments

Today as I was building the machine, I took the opportunity to take a number of photos of each individual piece of hardware. Most the photos involved me playing with the MACRO settings on my Kodak EasyShare and are not of the best quality but, they should suffice none the less.

All of the pictures I took today can be found within the Blogging Master 3000 Flickr Photoset.

Filed Under: Personal Tagged With: custom_built, hardware, pc, photography, photos, pictures

Meet The Blogging Master 3000

January 8, 2008 By Jeffro 9 Comments

Ok, the blogging master 3000 is not me per se, instead, its the name of my new computer system I’m building. Inside this picture is the following hardware (all purchased through NewEgg.com):

COOLER MASTER CM Stacker STC-T01-UWK Black/ Silver Aluminum / Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case – $149.99
EVGA 122-CK-NF67-T1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i LT SLI ATX Intel Motherboard – $159.99
BFG Tech GeForce 8800GTS (G92) 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card – $329.99
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Conroe 2.66GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor – $189.99
Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory – $74.99
Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JD 80GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive – $42.99

Total cost for this new machine came out to be $947.94. This is without shipping and handling added in. It’s been a long time since I’ve built a PC from scratch and I must admit, I’m pretty stoked about putting this thing together. Not that there was anything wrong with my current system. It’s just that, my current system has hit it’s upgradeability lifespan. For instance, my current computer only has support for 8x AGP for graphics cards. I am only using DDR memory clocked at 400 MHz. And last but not least, I’m using an old Pentium 4 2.4c at 800MHz FSB. Sure, I could overclock this thing to get more out of it, but I decided to plunk down some cash and join in on the PCI-Express revolution.Before I go, I wanted to let you in on a bonehead moment. Last Friday, I ended up getting all of the parts in that I ordered with the exception of the case and hard drive. Those didn’t arrive until Monday. When I began to build my new blogging monster, I realized that the motherboard didn’t ship with a small baggy of screws. These screws include the risers that are needed to seperate the motherboard from the case so that it doesn’t short out. Well, I spent some time online to see if these screws were left out of the packaging (this motherboard was cheap) which didn’t turn out to be the case.
So, I checked all of the screws I had left over from previous PC builds and only four of the riser screws has the proper threads on them to work in this case. That wasn’t enough. So I put the case away thinking I was screwed. (do you see all the intended puns here?) Today, after trying to find more riser screws, I told my dad about what had happened and he told me that usually the case comes packaged with all of the screws. He asked if I had checked the case to make sure that the screws weren’t tucked away in a drive bay or something. As it turns out, in the top portion of the case, there is a cardboard box which I thought was nothing more than a space filler, so I never bothered to check it until now.When I took out the box and opened it up, there were all of the screws I needed, including the casting wheels for the bottom of the case. This was one of those total bonehead moments. Now, I have to get ready for work and I have no time to build the machine.I thought I’d share that story because it was pretty funny. Tomorrow though, this baby is going to be put together, no questions asked!

Filed Under: Personal Tagged With: Blogging, blogging_master, computers, hardware, newpc

Happy Thanksgiving To You

November 21, 2007 By Jeffro 7 Comments

Just wanted to take this opportunity to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving. If you are traveling, I hope you have a safe trip. As for myself, I’ll be doing a little bit of traveling tomorrow but after that, I’m going to be hunkered down in front of my PC to play Call Of Duty 4. I’ll be eating the traditional turkey and associated side dishes. What will you be devouring at your dinner?

Filed Under: Personal Tagged With: dinner, holidays, thanksgiving, traveling, turkey