Thanks to Discovery Channel, this song is now stuck in my head.

The links manager of WP 2.5 is killing me.

Jason de Villa, a professor at my alma mater, recently wrote that “the best way to learn how to write is, well, to write.” My immediate thought: the second best way is to read.

I don’t mean to brag (ok, maybe a little), but my teachers (both in high school and in college) recognized that I did pretty well in most of my writing assignments. The thing is, I hardly wrote anything outside of those assignments.

If I didn’t particularly enjoy writing, what then could explain my knack for it?

Continue reading ‘My Secret to Better Writing’

I know it’s a few months old already, but this made me smile today.

Don’t let the image fool you, I’m not talking about UFC catsup (or ketchup, if you prefer that spelling). That UFC has been in the Philippines for quite some time. The UFC I’m talking about is the Ultimate Fighting Championship® (yes, complete with the registration mark).

Part of the way through a post on the UFC going global, I came across this:

UFC’s ambition won’t stop there. As company president White has said since he took over the company, he wants to lead the way in the growth of not just UFC but mixed martial arts all together.

“We are going global,” the 39-year-old White said. “The Philippines, Germany. We are going after Mexico.”

He actually mentioned the Philippines?!?

I don’t know how long it’ll take before the UFC actually has an event here, but I sure would be interested in tickets (or better yet, media passes - so I can bring my camera).

Tibor Radványi a.k.a. Photonovice wants to know where your visitors are from. He’s asking this as part of a three-part project on site statistics. The first chunk covered search terms that lead to your site while the second highlighted the most popular posts. By the way, both parts are done now so you can check out the results for both search terms and popular posts anytime you want.

This posts, however, isn’t really about search terms and popular posts. As the title above says, it’s a look at LightChasers’ visitors. Specifically, it’s a look at where our readers come from.

At this point, let me remind you that we’re not talking about this dark little corner’s visitors - we’re putting the spotlight on visitors of LightChasers Photography. Yes, this little blog resides in the same domain, but as the title implies, it’s just one corner of the place. Besides, this little corner probably only has 2 regular visitors. Of course, I can’t really be sure - I don’t really check statistics for this blog.

The question begs asking then - why am I posting this here instead of at the LightChasers blog? As my about page here says, “this is the place where I write about pretty much anything I want - anything, that is, except photography.” I’m trying to keep the LightChasers blog as focused on photography as I possibly can.

Yes, I know I already wrote about the second chunk of the statistics project (as well as the project results), but like I mentioned, I’m trying to keep the site focused. A post on site statistics doesn’t really fit well under the categories of images, gear, tips, or even news, so I might as well put that post someplace where it’ll actually get on the front page - and that’s why it’s here.

Anyway, moving on…

Continue reading ‘A Look at LightChasers’ Visitors’

If you (and I’m assuming you’re a blogger) were interviewed for a feature in a magazine, you would want to blog about it, right (Rico and Sasha both come to mind)? You’d probably want to post a photo of the publication, and you would definitely want to link to the online edition of the article, right?

What if that publication told you you weren’t allowed to do that?

That’s exactly what Business Week told SmugMug “Head Geek” Don MacAskill after they put him on a feature spread (this links to Google by the way). In the words of the Head Geek himself:

They’ve made it impossible to link to their articles directly (ie, drive money-making traffic to them)… BusinessWeek actually asked us specifically *not* to link to the article. Yes, that’s right, an ad-driven publication doesn’t want us to drive traffic to them. They were kind enough to point us to their User Agreement where, sure enough, they prohibit deep linking.

Gawker, The Blog Herald, and CNET have already picked up the story, and I’m sure several others will be following suit soon.

On a tangent note, the title of Don MacAskill’s post (Why traditional ‘print’ media is doomed) reminds me of Andrew dela Serna’s Three Reasons Why Manila Bulletin’s Website is Stuck in the Stone Age.

Janette Toral of Influential Blogger has a project: she wants to highlight The Top 10 Emerging Influential Blogs in 2008. She did this last year with considerable success, and that’s why it’s back this year, and hopefully, bigger and better.

Before I get to my picks for this year’s top 10 blogs, let me share this thought on last year’s winners: the winners were all local blogs.

The rules stated that “any blog in the world can be picked,” but it seemed like nobody cared to look beyond the blogs of people they knew. The world may be a small place, but it seems like the world according 2007’s list of emerging blogs was limited to our archipelago.

I’m all for Filipino pride, but hey, is our world really that limited?

Having said that, let me throw in my picks for this year’s list. I admit, this list might just prove how small my world is, but I’ll take that chance:
Continue reading ‘Emerging Influential Blogs 2008′

I had to check after reading this on ProBlogger, and it looks like Google really is updating page rankings.

What did I find?

Half a year old, and LightChasers Photography has grown considerably. I’m pretty proud of that.

Hmm… I wonder if my ratified ranking will jump anytime soon.

update 2008.05.03: It looks like my old site, despite getting no updates since November, has stepped up to a PR4. It looks like 6 months of silence isn’t quite the PR killer I expected it to be.

update 2008.05.06: My ratified ranking has been updated! I’ve jumped 57 spots and broken into the top 100!

Blogging has finally bought me something, and it’s something that will definitely let me buy more things. I’ve got a new Transcend 8GB CF card plus a pair of new batteries for my camera.

No, it’s nowhere near as extravagant as the house, car, laptop, camera, or even phone that blogging has bought other people, but still, I can’t say that blogging hasn’t been good to me. Still, with the heat (not to mention all the walking I’ve been doing), I’m also very tempted by these fruits of blogging.

Of course, I’m still counting on photography to bring better things to the table.

In case you’re wondering why I said I had a new Transcend 8GB CF card when there are 2 of them in the photo - a lucky bear is getting the other card for her kit.