Category Archives: General

Not The Only ‘Not That You Asked’

Posted by admin on February 7, 2009 None comments

Interestingly enough (well, to me…) I’m not the only blogger out there smitten with the phrase “Not That You Asked” relative to some personal blogging.

I did manage to register notthatyouasked.org (.com and .net may still be available) to formalize things somewhat, though NTYA has been my blog tagline pretty much since I started blogging back in August of 2001. For a trip back in history, here is THAT RIVETING entry…

The Google search for ‘not that you asked’ turned up some interesting results (again, well, to me…)

The Mandell Family blog titled Not That You Asked have cornered the SEO market on ‘not that you asked’ phrasing. Looks like she blogs for Parents.com also, so definitely worth checking out! I’m a parent! Don’t you just love the Internet?

There are a few Not That You Asked books at Amazon, including Rants, Exploits, and Obsessions by Steve Almond:

In fact, Steve gets 2 of the 10 first page results of the Google search and adds a third sponsored link. Alas, for me, one is enough – Steve, my order is in – though I’m not yet a sexual failure, I’ll take in the book through vicarious eyes, and well, be prepared for anything I suppose. Us NTYA folks MUST stick together… at all costs!

Beth, an Aries from the Midwestern United States has just slightly less Google-placement-fu than I do, coming in at 8th (wow, I’m 7th?!!)

Wow, the Mandell’s, Beth and Steve all kill me on word count – I’d better step it up. Plenty to read. I’ve added you all my RSS feed and roll call here – I’ll keep on checking in.

Carry on my phraseologic brethren!

Turning Girl

Posted by admin on November 10, 2008 None comments

I ran across this “intelligence” test yesterday, posted at ReadnRock.com. I agree with the majority of the posters – it doesn’t seem so much to be an intelligence test – but it does appear to work, so I guess it is a good brain exercise. Not sure if working out your brain this way does anything for you or not.

I was skeptical enough, like many of the comments posted indicate other wer – that I ripped the animated gif apart with some software I had – thinking that the graphic might be built to just switch rotation. Nope, it has only enough frames to cover one rotation EITHER direction – depending on your perception.

I got good enough I could flip it back and forth, even to the point where she doesn’t appear to go around, but rather kicks left and the back right and so on. I found the suggestions to stare at some negatives space, rather than her body to be useful. I look below the swinging food and to the side of the spinning foot.

Have fun with this and let me know how it goes!

Patience and Wisdom

Posted by admin on October 16, 2008 None comments

I get a regular email newsletter feed from a friends investment firm in Mississippi. I’ve enjoyed their content and analysis especially these past several weeks during some of the most volatile shifts of the market and economy. Today’s message was short on content, but clever and fun:

Template Update

Posted by admin on August 28, 2008 None comments

Depending on whether you read this blog through an RSS feed aggregator or not, you may or may not have noticed the new site template. One of the things I really like about WordPress is that it is ridiculously easy to update the site template. I mentioned back in February that I migrated from Moveable Type to WordPress for what ammounted to various usability and administration issues like this.

Updating themes is easy. First you have to download a theme from somewhere. I had been browsing themes.wordpress.com, though now that I poke around, I can see that there are many other WordPress theme sites. In fact this site also has the theme I’ve just switched too, titled Amazing Grace. Once you download it, unzip it and transfer it into your WordPress wp-content folder under “themes”. Once it is there, the WordPress Administration area just recognizes it – you click it and it is applied – automagically! You can switch back and forth from one theme to another with a simple click of the mouse. When you are used to typical web design and the effort it takes to develop different look and feel – it is a fun thing to do this and see a site change instantly!

So, this Amazing Grace theme is a nice clean theme that I chose for a few reasons. One is, I like the color scheme – it is reminiscent of the colors I use on tombartel.com. I like the neutrals – grey, taupe, black, white. Good contrasts and basic. The other thing I liked was the easy modification of the Amazing Grace theme to change the pictures in the upper right of the page to be photos that I’ve taken. There are a dozen or so that are rotated randomly each time you load a page. Go ahead, refresh this page and see. See? That was a fun exercise, selecting some of my favorite photos that I’ve taken over the years. I wish there was a description or label for each, maybe a hover over description, but there isn’t. I thought about trying to hack that in. We’ll see.

So, that’s my new template with WordPress. I hope you enjoy it for now – and knowing how easy WordPress makes it to change these, look for future theme changes down the road!

Quick Funny II

Posted by admin on August 25, 2008 None comments

Okay, Close To Home, got me again this weekend, especially since I work for an email company:


Close To Home 7/8/2008