Archive for the ‘Blogging’ Category

100 Posts, nearly one Year

Blogging | Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

Probably one of the least important posts. But for me it is great! I relaunched this blog at the 23rd of December 2008. Now about one month before the year is complete, I have reached 100 Posts (with this one) after the relaunch.

Over all I am pretty happy that I have been able to do this, that I stuck with it and wrote this great amount of posts. I know that many people round the globe do more and some do less with better quality but I am doing this for me, I am doing this for my english writing and also to get my voice out there! To get great content out there and therefore I need to train writing. Also I have to focus on school and have other passions to spend time with so I am happy that I find the time to write here that regularly.

Also a great THANK YOU to the people who read this I would love to hear from you more often — comments or emails are very welcome!

Post number 61 after Relaunch

Blogging | Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

This is the 61st post after my relaunch of this blog. I’m happy that everything went so great till now and I have fun writing this blog — which probably is the most important aspect for me at the moment. Writing this blog brought me some thoughts, but that’s an other story.

But what is this? Why the 61st post? Well simply cause I missed the 50, I choose the 61st. I think it’s important to review past times. I think it’s important, especially for the writer. Now, exactly 7 month since I relaunched this blog — I relaunched at the 23rd of December, now it is the 23rd of June — which counts down to 8 posts per month — I’m impressed by my self!

For now I want to thank you, the reader — if someone reads this? I try to keep doing this blog and getting better in writing, for me and for you and I try to find my self — which is a little hard at the moment. Now lets party, celebrate this 61st post! And for the upcoming 61 — and more — other posts!

WordPress Feature Request: Trash

Blogging | Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

WordPress 2.8 just hit the public and I already upgraded but there is one feature I would love to see which is not there (maybe it’s not even ‘wanted).

Something what happened several times over the past few month was that I wrote my post locally and than went over to my browser — currently Safari 4.0 formally Safari 4 beta and earlier Firefox 3 — and copy/pasted my post into the admin-interface of WordPress. That is pretty easy but I’m often doing that at a early stage of the post to write it within the WYSIWYG editor of WordPress. OK I could use some nifty blogging application like MarsEdit but I’m not — at least currently — cause none of them provide the features I would love to see. So I’m online doing my edits and than scheduling my posts.

Doing so far is no problem. It’s easy and even a browser crash is easily backuped via the WordPress Post Revisions. But I often store drafts online to be published someday — sometimes I even save post ideas as drafts and not as local files. And there is the problem, if I sort through the posts I’ve stored as drafts and delete some I don’t want to write. But what if I come back later and want to get one of my ideas back—that is impossible, they are gone for ever!

What about a WordPress Trash? OK, you get asked one more time, after you clicked the ‘delete’ Button, if you really want to delete that post, but what if you wanted to delete the post previously and come back about 2 hours later cause you rethought and changed your opinion about the post?

I think it would be nice to have a WordPress Trash to store deleted items — posts as well as pages and media files — with the ability to delete them if I want to (just like my Mac OS X Trash) and maybe some settings to tell WordPress to automatically clean up the Trash after, lets say 14 days.

Maybe a 2.9/3.0 feature or plugin? I would love the feature!

The current Situation and a Look into the Future

Blogging, Personal | Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

This post is part eight and the last one of the series, completing my about page with more than just short paragraphs.

This post is pretty much a wrap up of my plans I have for the near and far future.

At the moment I’m learning for my schools finals this year in July and thats probably the most time consuming part of my live, at the moment. Learning, getting some homework done and writing tests. And that’s the reason I’m restructuring a little bit. I want to keep up the posting twice a week, but maybe I’m not able to write one long post and one short Linked List per week. In that case, I’m going to publish at least two Linked List posts.

For my computer works, that means that I’m slowing down. Doing just as much as needed and spending more time sitting down, learning. I still will do something but that’s for a future project I’m working on right now. But there are no details going to get shared till the official public release.

The photography part of my live also has to slow down a little bit. I’m going to sort and edit some shoots in the next weeks and will be publishing some pictures at flickr. But that’s also going to be slow and not to much.

All in all, I’m slowing down. Getting stuff done. Will hopefully not be starting some new projects and maybe chill a little bit in the sun. I hope you all are able to enjoy the weather — at my place, it’s great, at the moment — and hope that the next weeks are going to be structured not to stressful and that I’m going out of all this with great marks, a smile and no headaches, heading into summer vacation, followed by the next year of school.

I wish you all have some great weeks and everyone who’s writing exams this year, good luck.

Next is, oh there is no next in this series. This series is over, my about page is nearly finished and I’m not going to stop posting on Tuesdays but I think I’m going to post about various topics. If you want let me know your feedback or maybe tell your story.

My Way to Blogging

Blogging | Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

This post is part seven of the series, completing my about page with more than just short paragraphs.

The blogosphere is now out there for a quiet long time. Some people make a living from blogging, some blog for fun and some blog and earn little money on the side. I got first interested in blogging in early 2006. I started my first own blog which at the time was just a collection of random thoughts not well written and mostly for the garbage. For the next year or so, the interest slowly decreased cause I had other projects and in germany there was not much of a blogosphere to see. In early 2007 I got interested again and did some projects with blogging involved in the net but nothing worth telling about.

In late 2007, I found some interesting people in other countries who were blogging and doing it well. That was the time I started to watch more for things happening in countries like the USA, Australia and New Zealand. The first blogger I found was Glenn Wolsey. I found him via his flickr stream and got interested in what he was writing. Through him I found other people like Michael Mistretta who is a Canadian Student, writing really well content and does great stuff at FusionAds.net an other person I found in early 2008 was Darren Rowse who is a full time blogger at ProBlogger.net. He maintains various other blogs and wrote a book called ProBlogger — Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income with Chris Garrett which I bought immediately after it hit the German Amazon Store.

The rest of 2008 I mostly spend reading about blogging, design and web-development. Using, for me, new services like Twitter where you can find me @cspiegl, Plurk (I’m no more using Plurk actively!), Facebook and some other which I mostly over the course stopped using.

In the end of 2008 I relaunched my own blog. CSPIEGL.com was redesigned and I returned actively to the actual content producing at the 23 of December 2008 with a post about my return, what has changed and what was around the corner.

In the following weeks I wrote many new posts. Most of which were targeted at the changes, new stuff I did, like my Business-Card and some thoughts about decision I had taken for example with my licensing.

Over the course, till now, I got a schedule in place for my blog, how many post I want to write per week and since then I’m writing two post per week and stick to that schedule. Maybe I’m going to post more or less in the future but for now I don’t have the time to write more due to school, work and some other projects I’m currently working on.

I’m looking forward to what’s coming and hope that I can learn many things in this area of interest. Also I’m really interested in contacts! So if you feel the need, just email me or look at my contact page.

Next is ‘The current situation and a look into the future’. Stay tuned for part eight — which will be the last post in this series— of the series. If you want let me know your feedback or maybe tell your story.

Filling my About Page with a Series of Post

Blogging, Design, Personal, Photography | Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

Since some time, I’m writing on this series of posts, which is supposed to be a little background story of my life. Explaining which are my passions, what I do all day long and why I’m here blogging. The second purpose of this post is to fill my about page with some more information. The up and coming posts will be covering the following topics:

  1. My very first years with a PC (Posted: 2009-03-10)
  2. My Way to Web-Development (Posted: 2009-03-17)
  3. My Photography Story (Posted: 2009-03-24)
  4. My Thoughts on Design (Posted: 2009-03-31)
  5. Thoughts on Project Management (Posted: 2009-04-07)
  6. Why I switched or My Macintosh Workstation (Posted: 2009-04-14)
  7. My Way to Blogging (Posted: 2009-04-21)
  8. The current situation and a look into the future (Posted: 2009-04-28)

One thought popped into my mind while I was writing this series: Why should someone be interested in all this, the story about a young man hitting the internet telling his way to all that?

I thought quiet long about this, coming down to three different aspects. First, I like to read similar stories cause I’m interested in the life of others, they inspire me and I can learn from them about how to life my life, what are their passions, the professions and the backgrounds, why they do what they do like they do it. Second, I wanted to fill my about page with value, doing this with some quick paragraphs was not my thought, I want that someone who wants to know more, can read an article about that special parts. Third — the last — is that I want to write an overview about my story that I can remember and read it some day, cause now I can remember the most parts best even though I don’t want to just write it down for my self.

I hope, the posts are well written, interesting and informative. At the moment my post schedule is one post on Tuesday at 00:00 AM (CET, Germany — Berlin) and one at Friday also at 00:00 AM (CET, Germany — Berlin). I want to stick to that schedule this is why I publish this series Tuesdays for the next couple of weeks and still be posting a different post at Fridays.

Update: This series is over. All posts are published.

My Desk

Apple, Blogging, Design, Technology | Tuesday, February 10th, 2009

A useless about page is one of the worst things you can have at a blog, right? I’m now — finally — about to change that. The last post was about why I write English — and also the first partly completing the about page —, this one is about my Mac Desk or Workspace — you choose how you call it.

For me its like for many creative or freelancing people — OK, I’m still at school but hey, I do my projects on side. Working at a desk is just impossible if it’s cultured with papers and other crappy stuff. Which means, that I normally have nothing lying around, especially if I want to enter the creative zone. The only things which are allowed to be there, are my MacBook, secondary screen, phone, a folder containing papers belonging to current projects I’m working on and — of course — my Keyboard, Mighty Mouse and Graphic Tablet.

The Whole Desk

The Whole Desk

My Two Chairs

My Two Chairs

Little about my desk. It’s 2.4m (94.49 inch) wide and 90 cm (35.43 inch) deep. It’s white which is one of the colors I like most. There are usually two chairs in front of my desk, one with a back which is chilly and one without which I like best for long sessions cause it doesn’t let me lay back and forces me stick to the work to get done.

Like I already sad, having a clean workspace is key for me to get creative or even just to get some work done. I can’t concentrate if there are many papers — which don’t belong to the project I’m currently working on —, dust or other stuff lying around. If you look at the pictures you’ll probably notice that there are two colors which dominate the room. White and Red. I love the white because it lightens the room and I also love the red because it’s a strong contrast to the white which is supposed to let me think out of the box and makes me fell good.

In the end it comes down to a clean, ordered and uncluttered work-area which makes me happy and helps me to get work done. The best part is I’m happy when I can sit down at my desk to get work done rather than sitting at school at desks which are not that great designed and chairs which are not comfortable.

The MacBook plus Screen, Keyboard and Mouse

The MacBook plus Screen, Keyboard and Mouse

What is your thought about the workspace? Is it worth spending some time and money to design a great work-area and to keep it clean? Or don’t you care about the place you are working in? What do you think? Feel free to leave a comment.

Why I write English

Blogging, Personal | Friday, February 6th, 2009

Writing this blog in English — which is not my first language — I got some feedback about my writing, which was not so positive. Some people mentioned the quality of my writing and that there are problems with grammar and the spelling of words. That being sad, I started to think about the reason why I blog English, rather than German and why I write in general?

Why I Write

I always had problems writing something at school and for personal usage. My hand writing is not the best, my grammar and spelling was and still is kinda bad. But the quality of writing does not change if you don’t write. But just writing for my own just bored me. Don’t get me wrong, for me it has value to write down the day at the end in some quick lines but just writing a few lines a day wasn’t enough at someday and I started to write more. Doing that, plus some other reasons, I started this blog (there are more reasons for this blog but not for this post). I wanted to write, I wanted to put my thoughts out there and I wanted to get better writing skills. Even if that means getting critics some days. That’s the why I write.

Why English

I started to learn English in 3rd grade of school. Till now I never stopped learning English – which adds up to now over 10 years learning English at school. But since some years, I have started to train my English even more, especially listening and reading. Why and how I did this is a post for its own, for now the reasons why I train my English, which are pretty obvious. English is the worlds most important language — followed by Chinese? — which means if you can understand and speak English, you are able to communicate with most parts on this planet. You can go to other countries for vacation much easier and you maybe able to someday life in another country — if you want that. All that is — in my eyes — much harder if you can’t speak or at least understand an other language — for which I choose English. In the first place I trained my English listening skills but about 1.5 years ago I started to train my writing skills as well and over the years I have seen an improvement — which makes me happy. At the beginning I haven’t been able to write everything down what I wanted, cause I had just a little vocabulary which lead to problems with finding the right words. For now an enormous part of my life is English. I like to communicate with people from other countries and do that with people from Canada, New Zealand, the USA and Australia, but not just communication is English, I write my to do lists, project ideas, mind maps, code comments and this blog in English, which is nearly half of my days language usage. All that I think makes me better in writing, speaking and using the English voice.

Conclusion

I hope that I made clear why I blog and why in English.
If you have some thoughts, own ideas or an own reason to learn other languages or to blog please feel free to leave a comment.
This post is one of many to complete my about page.

Writing about milestones?

Blogging, Opinion | Thursday, January 29th, 2009

The last post I published was a look at the ‘1 month after relaunch‘ milestone which I just hit. Before I decided to publish such an post I had to decide if I wanted to get a milestone post online or not. I have spotted some pros and cons of writing such milestone posts on a personal blog:

Pros

The milestone post shows readers that there is something happening – not just some post hitting the rss reader – and it shows what is happening. A short review of what happened and a short look into the unknown future. I, as a reader, appreciate such posts cause than I can better see what is happening with the person behind the blog and the blog it self. I think especially at a personal blog that’s very important.

A second pro is your own ego. I like to see the good going on – who don’t? – and that includes hitting milestones like the ‘1 month after relaunch’. I take the publishing of future plans as a incitation to get the goal hit by the deadline I wrote in the post, which is a great reason to publish such a post – at least in my eyes.

Cons

If you publish a milestone post at your blog you may turn some readers off cause they just like to get information and don’t want to get a note in their rss reader that you changed the design. The second reason is that maybe the feature plans don’t fit the expectations of the reader. This is for a personal blog both not that important I think, cause people who read your blog are interested in you and your opinion which means they are interested in what you think and what you write.

Conclusion

In the end I decided to write such an post. I decided that way because I want the readers to know what they have to expect and what happened since the relaunch. That shows that something is happening and I’m looking forward to get out more great content and improve my writing skills.

This thoughts are for my personal blog. If I would run a business blog which could make me money, I think I would write the milestone post in a completely other way.

What do you think about publishing milestone posts? Please leave a comment or just send me a email.

One Month Later (after I relaunched my Blog)

Blogging, Design, Personal, Web | Tuesday, January 27th, 2009

4 Days ago. The blog turned one month – after the relaunch. For me the experience till now has been positive. Writing is fun, reading other blogs is fun and I get it done on a regular bases. In the beginning I didn’t thought I could really make it, two or at least one post per week is in my eyes hard work. Especially if you have some other passions and jobs to get done – like school, photography, coding and design. Till now I have made it through and I’m looking to the feature which looks exiting!

That’s it, the way till now. Now I want to give you a quick preview on what I have planed to come in the coming weeks:

Design Update

The last month I have been improving the design locally and in a few days I want to get it online which will change some little things – like the sidebar, menu bar and Flickr hovering and improve the validity for some browsers. This will get it’s own attention cause I’m going to post something about updating your theme.

The About Page

In my eyes the about page is the worst part here at this website. There is no content and just some ‘coming soon’ text. That’s bad! Everywhere you can read that you miss getting subscribers and or readers if you don’t have a well done about page in the first place. I wanted to publish some posts about my passions and my workflow in the first place and update the about page with this posts. That was planed to happen in the first weeks of January. Well I didn’t made it. I plan to get that done in the near feature – it’s one of my top priorities for the coming weeks.

KwasK.com

This domain name is now no more under my control. After just one year, I shut the domain down – I already owned KwasK.de since July 2006 and last year thought I would need KwasK.com which now seems like a wrong decision. But I think no decision is wrong if you learn out of it. I learned and now I know that I don’t need that domains anymore. I think I’ll get some other domains in the feature and this two are hooked to an history which I lived, but not to the feature I want to live now!

To come?

There is much on it’s way to come and I just started out. I hope everyone reading this blog stays interested and my content stays interesting. I would love to get your oppinion about my writings so that I can improve through your thoughts!

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