Month: November 2008

Kiki James Leather Journal

KikiJames, a company based in London specialized in creating various hand made journals as well as diaries, guest books, address books, wallets and purses, etc. The journal that I picked up was a chocolate brown classic wrap journal. The journal is made out of Italian bridle leather yet it is smooth to the touch. Size wise, it’s about as big as a small book (4½”x3″). This particular journal is filled with 64 empty pages with no lines which enables you to doodle, writing down notes, pictures, etc. In my own opinion, the paper has an old fashion yellowish tint to it.

The only thing keeping me from using this Journal on a regular basis is the smell. My leather coat smells nice and I’ve smelled other forms of leather that don’t smell that bad but this particular piece of leather has a potent smell that I don’t agree with. It is very hard to explain exactly what it smells like. It is a combination of general leather and something else. That something else is what I don’t like.

This means I have a journal that I won’t be using and thus, would like to give away to anyone who is interested. All you have to do to qualify for the give away is to comment on this blog post. Then, after a few days I’ll announce the winner and send it off to you.

Adjusting Has Been A Pain

This is the first week in where I begin working weekends only at the grocery store while doing freelancing Mon-Fri. One of the reasons I was looking forward to this type of work schedule was the simple fact that I would finally be able to develop a sleeping schedule that normal people use. Well, in my first week, sleeping schedules have been anything but normal. I’ve been trying to get to bed at an early time but after a year and a half of working 9PM – 5AM, it’s just not that easy. Coupled with the fact that here in northern Ohio, we have been flirting with 70 degrees all week long but thanks to my insane sleep schedule along with the time change, I haven’t been able to take advantage of it.

My writing this week has also suffered. I haven’t published as much content at Performancing this week nor have I written anything for this blog in a little while. I’ve been thinking about using some sleeping aid pills to help me out but my girlfriend is strongly against me using those. The only real choice I have now is to pull an all nighter where I stay up for most of the day and then try to go to sleep at a decent time. Pretty poor for my health but I am sick of waking up in the middle of the afternoon.

Inspired But Reality Kicked In

So last night, I like many Americans stayed up to watch/listen to all of the coverage related to the election. I ended up voting for Obama and as luck would have it, he has become the next president of the United States. However, I must admit that when I listened to John McCain’s concession speech, it touched me and was a bit inspiring. After his speech was over with, I seriously thought if I had made a mistake voting for Obama.

That question was answered once I listened to Obama’s acceptance speech. I was seriously impressed with what Obama had to say. He left no stone unturned and after he left the stage, I had this feeling of wanting to go out and kick some ass as an American to help get things back in order. Obama had one hell of a speech and it really messed with my emotions.

Then, in the back of my head, I reminded myself that there is a good chance that what Obama promised in his speech could be empty handed. After all, that is what most politicians have done, promise this and that and then come up empty handed with no one to hold them accountable for their actions or lack there of. I sincerely hope that Obama delivers on each one of his promises in the next four years.

What A Busy Week

I am pretty excited to know that I am almost finished with my 32 hour work weeks at the grocery store. At least, for the time being and everything continues to go well with freelancing. The grocery store will serve as a crutch in case things in the freelancing world cave in. This past week, I published an interview on BloggerTalks.com with Steve Hodson, published a great post that was welcomely received by the Performancing community called 7 Tips On Building Relationships Through Blogging, produced a fun open mic edition of Perfcast and to top it all off, produced an hour and a half WordPress Weekly with Jane Wells were we covered a ton of ground related to WordPress 2.7.

WordPress 2.7 Beta 1 is out and ready for the publics consumption. November 10th looks like the date for a release candidate while the end of November is aimed for the actual release of 2.7. I am going to bite the bullet and work on getting my content from my Jeffc.me domain and the content on Jeffro2pt0 back into one file and then import that into a new installation of WordPress, that being 2.7 beta 1. Then, I’m going to work on slimming down the theme and installing one plugin at a time and get back to the basics.

One of the subtle changes I am going to make is to remove the FeedBurner graphic. I was having a discussion with Andrew Rickmann on the WordPress Weekly after show and I was talking to him about going back to the basics and how I am getting to the point of doing things my way instead of the popular (what the rest of the blogosphere is doing) way.  So, I’ll remove the graphic because I don’t care to see it everyday. I’ll check in from time to time but it is not a priority for me anymore. My priority is to clean this place up, highlight my freelancing work and then publish content on a regular basis by treating this blog as if it was my Tumblr account. That means, publishing links to articles that interest me, sometimes I’ll write a long form article, opinionated pieces, bits of my personal life, random thoughts, etc.

I just feel that it is time for me to reclaim this blog as my own and no one else’s. While I enjoy writing content for people, I always enjoy writing content for myself and getting my thoughts from my head, out into the open. I want to get back to the point in time of where I can freely express myself without thinking about the boundaries I have placed on this blog by writing for others.

Will I still talk about WordPress and Web 2.0 and all that other stuff? Of course I will, as I see fit, but don’t expect this site to be an authoritative figure in any subject. I want to converse with people and discuss things, concepts, ideas, whatever. So, that will be the focus of the site after I have reformatted it. Along with the reformat, I plan on doing a redesign but it will not be anything drastic. I’m tired of spending 17 hours each time I redesign the site. I’ve always been a fan of forests and so, that is the theme I am going to head towards with the redesign.

For those that will continue to ride the train of life and blogging with me, its time to move on to the next stop. For everyone else, you can get off here. But don’t forget to send me a postcard :)