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It’s Snowing at Windward Mall

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Windward Mall has their faux show of snow again in the center of the mall. At the top of every hour, you can play with the soapy snow during a 15-minute snowfall. The kids love it.

Snowing at Windward Mall

After the snow, you can get a froyo at the recently opened yogen fruz.

yogen fruz at Windward Mall

I’m not so much a fan of the blend-your-own flavor of froyo at the fruz. I prefer the more exotic flavored ‘gurts at Yogurtland or Orange Tree.

6 Blogging Lessons Learned from New Moon

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The Twilight saga’s New Moon is having such a profound impact – on the perception of Young Adult books, on movie sales, on life lessons, on perturbing thoughts, on the rise of the Twimom phenomenon, and yes, even on blogging. For me, here are six blogging lessons learned from New Moon.

1. Have a dreamcatcher

New-Moon-dreamcatcher

What’s happening in the dreamworld of your blog?  Do you know?  Have a dreamcatcher ready to really see what’s going on with visits, referrers, keywords, popular content, and much more.  With popular blogging dreamcatchers like Google Analytics, Sitemeter, and Lijit, you can capture and analyze the unseen dreamworld of your blog.

2. The importance of image(s)


Even the eternal, almighty Volturi know the importance of protecting their image, and you shouldn’t discount the power of images for your blog.  Pictures, images, and videos are a great way to make your posts pop and are a valuable traffic source.  From the top 25 traffic sources for Pulpconnection, nine of them are referrals from image search engines.

3. “You know you’re sorta beautiful?”

In the blogging business, you’ve already heard the phrase “content is king.”  That’s still true, and the content of your blog is extremely important.  But almost as important is the appearance of your blog.  If readers are transfixed by the beauty of your blog, they’ll stay longer and take in more of your beautiful content.

new-moon-sorta-beautiful

If you’re not an artist or designer like me, get a theme that’s beautiful to begin with.  Head on over to DIY Themes and admire Thesis.  Thesis is a beautiful starting point.

4. Communicate with your pack

New-Moon-Wolf-Pack

How do you talk with your pack, your blogging community?  Sure, all blogs allow comments but for wolf-like telepathy, try another commenting system like Intense Debate, Disqus, or Echo.  Improving on notifications, spam protection, and integration, these systems constantly keep you connected to your pack.

5. Ready for the chase?

new-moon-laurent-hunt

Be it an onslaught of wolves or a rush of network traffic, are you ready for the chase?  Will you be unprepared and suffer the fate of Laurent, or will you be cunning like Victoria and have WP Super Cache installed?  With WP Super Cache, your blog will be able to keep up with the pace of fast attacks and survive to fight another day.

6. Rock hard abs are hot

Plain and simple.  Young or old(er), guys or gals, werewolf or vampire, rock hard abs are hot.  No blogging lesson from this other than rock’em while you got’em!

So, let’s visually review six blogging lessons learned from New Moon.

new-moon-abs-lessons

Got that?

My Dell Inspiron Mini 10v Notes

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Some notes from my experience with a Dell Inspiron Mini 10v, so I don’t forget.

  • Base checklist, also taking hints from here specifically the use of Netbook Maker and Netbook Installer.
  • BIOS change to A04 worked as described. Lots of LOUD beeping involved.
  • Don’t have a large capacity flash drive so using an older 20 GB external USB drive to store the Snow Leopard installation files.
  • Takes about 3 hours to build install drive.
  • Netbook Maker versus Netbook Installer. Use Netbook Maker to prep the Snow Leopard install drive. Use Netbook Installer after Snow Leopard is installed.
  • Use Netbook Maker 0.8.2. When I used version 0.8.3 RC4 to prep the Snow Leopard drive, the Snow Leopard install wouldn’t even start, reporting an unsupported CPU during a kernel panic. With version 0.8.2, installation goes as expected.
  • While booting up from the Netbook Maker-ed Snow Leopard installation drive, don’t view the (Chameleon??) options. Whenever I did this, it messed up my Snow Leopard installation drive. Not sure why, but end result is I had to build the drive again and wait 3 hours.
  • In the BIOS, leave USB BIOS Legacy support enabled. When I disabled it, the 10v bootup sequence changed and didn’t want to boot off the external Snow Leopard installation drive.
  • After installation of Snow Leopard, be sure to remove the drive while the machine is rebooting (or change the startup sequence).  Otherwise, the Snow Leopard install will startup again.

More notes later…

A Favorite from 2006

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Wow, three years already since the debut of Corinne Bailey Rae.  A great collection of mellow pop music is Amazon’s daily special, going for only $1.99.  Definitely can’t go wrong with this purchase.

And while you’re at it, get Amazon’s free Christmas song of the day, Christmas Tree by Lady Gaga. Free through December 6, 2009.

Then enter to win Lady Gaga’s shopping cart at Amazon.com. What’s in the cart? I don’t know, but it’s valued at $2000 and you can enter to win it.

New Moon in 4 Minutes

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Haven’t had time to watch the latest Twilight saga, New Moon, in the theaters yet? Here’s a four minute video synopsis including the surprising ending. Of course, spoilers are evident.

This video is so going to be taken down, so watch it while it’s available.

Sampled Wraps and Rolls Hawaii

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Refreshing and light were my first thoughts biting into a California Crab wrap from Wraps and Rolls Hawaii.

But first, full disclosure that this wrap is regularly priced at $2.90, but I received it free as a gift.

California Crab WrapFilled with imitation crab, rice noodles, crispy lettuce, avocado, and cucumber, the crab wrap was the right size with a nice balance of ingredients. The creamy wasabi dressing is a perfect match to spice up the wrap just enough. I would suggest that the dressing be in a wider container so I can dip the wrap instead of scooping it out with the included spoon.

The Wraps and Rolls Hawaii menu features more than just wraps, and they just opened a second location at Ward (in the former Ben and Jerry’s location).

You can follow them on Twitter at @wrapsandrollshi.

The Blessings of Being Taylor Lautner’s Boy Toy

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I can’t deny it.  I am Taylor Lautner’s boy toy, and I have been blessed.  Look at this past week’s search results for Pulpconnection, domination by the New Moon hunk.

  1. goteamjacob.com 390 times
  2. taylor lautner 361 times
  3. taylor lautner underwear 150 times
  4. apple happy friday 96 times
  5. taylor lautner steroids 50 times
  6. taylor lautner in underwear 49 times
  7. www.goteamjacob.com 32 times
  8. taylor lautner pictures 31 times
  9. bella’s lullaby sheet music 25 times
  10. goteamjacob 25 times
  11. pictures of taylor lautner 19 times
  12. hpdirect.com/deals/friendsandfamily/starbucks 18 times
  13. taylor lautner modeling 17 times
  14. team jacob underwear 15 times
  15. teamjacob.com 13 times
  16. taylor lautner calvin klein 12 times
  17. taylor lautner abs 12 times
  18. team jacob.com 12 times
  19. taylor lautner model 11 times
  20. taylor lautner photos 10 times

From recent analytics, I knew I <3 Twilight, Jacob and Taylor Lautner, and these latest stats enforce Team Jacob’s fandom.  But would I have guessed that pimping out Jacob Black would turn into a blessing?

In December 2008, I made the switch from Google’s Blogger to WordPress, and Pulpconnection visits tanked.  Links and URLs broke or changed, ruining Pulpconnection’s standings with search engines.  But look what happened in October and November 2009, activity finally caught up with and exceeded averages from one year ago.

pulp-stats-2009

That’s the blessing of  being Taylor Lautner’s boy toy!  So I’d like to say thanks to Taylor, he of the washboard abs.

Taylor Lautner Abs

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