I’d Like To Thank…

I am so honored to announce that “Midnight Musings” has won its first blog award! Lisa over at qualcosa di bello (who I believe was the first person to ever blogroll Midnight Musings) has honored me with the Arte Y Pico award for blog creativity, design, interesting material, and contributions to the blogging community, no matter what the language. I am thrilled to accept this award. Thanks, Lisa!

[And to think I once asked my husband if it was worth blogging if no one ever read what I wrote. I'm glad I stuck with it - and moved to WordPress where I can glance at the blog visitor stats every so often. (Ok...so I look at them obsessively many times a day if I'm home...but I don't have a problem...really! Did you know that 30 to 40 people read this blog every day? Wow!)]

There are five rules associated with this award:

1. Winners may pick 5 blogs that they believe deserve this award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and contributions to the blogging community, no matter what the language.

2. Each award given has to list the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog.

3. Each award winner has to show the award graphic along with the bestowing author’s name and blog link.

4. The award winner and the one who has given the prize must show the link of the Arte Y Pico blog so everyone will know the origin of this award. (The author is a blogger in Uruguay).

5. Each award winner should post these rules.

(Ok…so I did a little research and this award was apparently just started on Friday, May 2, 2008. But when you google it, there are already 128,000 hits. Ah, the power of the internet! The popularity of this award is growing almost as fast as the gas prices!)

In the interest of sharing the love, here are my nominees for this award. Please visit and bookmark their sites. You’ll be glad you did!

* John Schinker at Taste of Tech, who got me started and hooked on this whole blogging phenomenon, patiently answered all my questions (or referred me to the right websites for answers), and keeps me learning about and growing with new technology. He’s also the best husband in the whole universe!

* Alvin Trusty at Alvin’s Educational Technology Blog for his TSPY (Time Saved Per Year) tips and tricks! Aside from Taste of Tech, this was the first blog I ever followed (which motivated me to learn about Protopage and RSS feeds!) I hope I get to meet Alvin in person someday, even is he still hasn’t tried out the Memory Manager software I sent him. (-:

* The fine women at the Shutter Sisters collaborative photo blog, who inspired me to start my own photo blog with their meaningful prose paired with delightful visual images.

* Julie Stiles Mills at the Pragmatic Compendium whose tagline is, “I Breathe, Therefore I Organize!” I found her recently, but her posts make me laugh out loud and her style is incomparable.

* Rebecca Borelli for the Art in Your Heart blog. She is the art teacher at Woodland Elementary and I LOVE that she’s embracing technology by creating this blog. It’s the first blog my kids have bookmarked and read on their own – and even commented on!

Schinker’s Shutterbug Site

So I started a new blog today: Schinker’s Shutterbug Site. I recently discovered the Shutter Sisters website and LOVED its daily photo topic feature. Basically, one of the Shutter Sisters blogs on a topic daily and asks visitors to post links to their own pictures on that same topic.

Yes, I could have used this blog for those posts. But it didn’t seem like the right vehicle, and I’ve discovered that many people have multiple blogs on different topics, which appeals to my obsessively organized brain. I also love WordPress’s new photoblogging theme, Monochrome, that changes the color of the post automatically based on the picture in the post. It’s a great theme, but not appropriate for this blog where I have spent many an evening getting my sidebars just right. So creating a special photo blog seemed like the logical way to go. (And of course, doing something technological FIRST in this family is hard to accomplish, so I expect the DH – dear husband – to now go out and create HIS own second blog. Yes, dear, that IS a challenge (-:).

So please have a look at my new blog and do tell me what you think! You could have the distinction of making the very first comment there if you hurry!

Looking Backward and Forward

I recently browsed through my own blog, reading past posts and comments. I thought it was interesting how I have a different perspective on some of what I wrote just 15 month ago.

For example, here’s an excerpt from one of my earlier posts from January of 2007: “There are even rumors that Hilary Rodham Clinton might start a serious bid for the U.S. presidency. Although I don’t particularly like her stand on many issues, I would feel it necessary to strongly consider voting for her in order to create history and further deteriorate the historic stranglehold on power men have and do hold in this country.”

Now we are less than 7 months from the general election and not only has Hillary started a serious bid for the presidency, but she and Obama are running neck and neck with both having already garnered more votes individually than any other past presidential candidates in a Democratic primary election.

And, yes, I considered voting for her early on, but after researching the candidates’ stands on various issues, listening to stump speeches, and seeing how they react in a variety of situations, I came to the conclusion that I just couldn’t vote for her, even though she is a woman and I sincerely do want to see a female U.S. president before I die. But I plan to live to be 101 years old, so there’s still plenty of time. (-:

So this year I am an Obama supporter and so have put away my, “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of a Good Woman for President” button (obtained years before Hillary’s run), since I don’t want anyone to get the wrong impression that I think Mrs. Clinton is that “good woman.”

An April 2007 post discussed my hopes for a congress that would stand up to President Bush. I wrote, “…my fear [is] that the Democrats, having gained power in Congress, would be unable or unwilling to exercise their people-given power to stop him.” Hmm…looks like that fear has come true.

I also discussed Sunshine Week, a movement to keep discussion alive about the important of open government and freedom of information. Unfortunately, I heard nothing about Sunshine Week this year.

In contrast to my changed perspective politically, my perspective on the importance of organizing your digital photos hasn’t change one iota! Memory Manager is still the best program out there – and unlike the price of just about everything else these days, the cost of this software hasn’t changed! Everyone I know who has this program is sold on the features and ease of use. Read more about tis fantastic program here.

It will be interesting what perspective changes next year brings.

Dodge Charger

Sometimes, I don’t understand this whole blogging thing. Although I have never (before now) mentioned the words “dodge charger” in my blog, yet I apparently used a picture of one in my post “Baby, You CAN Drive My Car!” back in October of 2007. (In case you didn’t know, the General Lee was a Dodge Charger!) This picture is single-pixelly responsible for the majority of traffic to this blog from search engines. Yet when *I* use a search engine and enter the term “Dodge Charger,” I don’t find my own blog.

And it’s not just me. The top search engine term for “Taste of Tech” is “cheetah.” You’d think it’d be from a past post referencing how fast a cheetah can run, but instead, it’s from a post that used the picture of a cheetah.

So what’s going on? How is this happening? Why do random web images used to illustrate a point in a blog post create such search engine traffic to a blog? (And is there a way to use this pheonomenon to steer more traffic to a blog or other website?)

If you have answers – or even decent theories – PLEASE leave a comment. And if you found this blog by searching the words “Dodge Charger,” please tell me exactly how and where you were searching!