Koenji Dadogei 2013 and Blogging

Posted: May 5, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: personal | Tags: , | Leave a comment

I’ve been falling into the trap of posting more pictures and videos on facebook. I’m assuming there’s an inherent desire to see all the likes and comments on one’s facebook page. The problem with posting too much on facebook is that you don’t get to own your content. As Scott Hanselman has said before, we are putting more of our content into walled gardens. In the hopes to share our experiences more we allow ourselves to trap our own content on somebody owns systems. Check out his post here.

On that happy note, I posted a video on facebook about Koenji’s Dadogei. Dadogei means street performance in japanese and you can find out more about it at http://www.koenji-daidogei.com/2013/

I noticed the video quality definitely suffers in facebook. The “shareability” factor also diminishes when you limit your video post on facebook and twitter alone as the content can only be viewed by your friends. I don’t think searching for Koenji on youtube or google will display your video in facebook which defeats the purpose of sharing. If somebody is doing research on the event, they they wouldn’t be able to access that content on walled gardens.

Conclusion. If the content itself is compelling enough, always share on more open platforms and the ones you control aka your blog.

Enjoy the videos from the final act of Koenji Dadogei 2013.

View it on youtube and you can crank up the video quality.

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Welcome 2012 with Actionable Goals

Posted: January 3, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: personal | Tags: | Leave a comment
As we enter 2012, everybody would have their own new year’s resolutions. Typical ones such as lose weight, save more money, be nicer, etc… Most of these resolutions never happen and it’s quite interesting to see how organizations cash in on these resolutions makers. Gyms, part time schools (think of language and cooking schools) and the like, love how people will join in the first month and slowly disappear as months pass.

Resolutions is a form cultural procrastination and we love making them as we see the new year as an arbitrary day that will magically change us and our environment. Unfortunately, we love setting ourselves up for failure by making vague resolutions such as lose weight, etc.

Let this post be my anti-resolution. I’ll blog more! haha but this time I’ll avoid the common failures of saying I’ll blog more. The more specific we are, the better the chances of actually fulfilling the “resolution”. So instead of calling it a resolution, I’ll call mine a habit. I’ll set time to blog every Friday afternoon 5pm – 6pm either on my personal blog or our work blog.

How about you? What’s your actionable goal?

Constant Work in Progress

Posted: June 13, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: personal | Tags: , | 2 Comments

Finally settled on a theme and just gave up on constantly editing the look and feel of my blog. Turns out that this will take forever and it’s becoming a tedious task that you just want to skip and forever bury in the deep recesses of your mind.

So for all of you aspiring bloggers like me who can’t blog his way out of a paper bag.

Setting Up Your Blog 101

  1. Choose your blogging engine
    – tons and tons of options are out there. Choose wisely as you don’t want to start all over again. I choose WordPress because of its great community support and large user base. (Aside from personal tech support I get from fellow WP users)
  2. Choose your theme wisely
    – Your theme is how you want to be portrayed. Of course aside from your posts, your theme is the first thing your potential readers would see. If it’s a cluttered mess then that’s what they’re going to think about you. Now you know why I choose a minamilist, almost empty and blank page. For me content is king and that’s what I want my readers to focus on, not ads, badges, blogrolls and other none sense you can see from the usual “personal blogs”
  3. Take advantage of plug-ins
    – They are there for a reason. Obviously, you need readers aside from your family and friends, this is where SEO comes in. I’ll dedicate a few posts on this topic but essentially this is your number one tool to get people on to your site.
  4. CONTENT!
    – What do you want your blog to be? Is it a personal blog that contains your innermost secrets? A tech blog that contains tips and guides on different technologies? A cash cow blog? Whatever your blog is about the number one thing you have to take into consideration is content. Without it you might as well not start a blog in the first place. People visit websites because of the information they can get out of it. As my blog evolves you’ll see a slew of topics that I will cover.

This is a short list on what you would need to put up a blog (definitely there are more ‘comprehensive’ guides out there). Watch out as I update and revise my blog and see what type of content I put out.