Photo LinkLove

Beth and I went downtown this past weekend to hang out at the Irish Festival near St. Patrick’s Church on Church Hill. It was a warm day and there were crowds aplenty enjoying themselves as they tried to get from one side of the street to the other by burrowing through some of their neighbors.

I can do this for about an hour before I start to get really, really tired and cranky. Having a camera in my hand does tend to prolong my participation in these kinds of events however. Beth was happy to find a present or two and some Brunswick stew. I don’t wait in lines to buy food (at least until the next depression). But I did get some photos!

(There’s a photo here of St John’s  Church where Patrick Henry gave his  famous speech. )

On a separate and unrelated subject I have deep-sixed the Keyword Luv plugin. I did this for a variety of reasons and none of them will make sense to some of you.

But what else is new?

Basically I feel like KWL is messing up my  entire blogging experience and my blog as well.  It draws comments based on its existence here and what it does.   It’s like free advertising.  Most of the comments drive me crazy because they are so transparently fake.

And here I am trying to create a blog that is moves to a deeper level of human feeling.  It hopes to visit our common humanity once in awhile.   So why would I encourage these comments?   My mistake.

And what must Google think?  It is trying to create search results  based on genuine interest and not commercial gimmicks.  My stats don’t look that impressive since I installed this thing and there is a gradual decrease in monthly visits.  Could there be a connection?  I don’t know but I guess we will find out.

The bottom line is that I’m losing interest in posting and wondering why?   The combination of falling stats and inane comments may be two of the biggest reasons as I try to introspect about this issue.

Beth and I will be going to Virginia Beach and Washington DC in a week or so and there will be some better opportunities to post.   I’m hoping that the vacation plus  the goodbye party for KWL will reinvigorate my desire to blog.

And, as always, I will share my thoughts and feelings here.  Because that’s what this blog is supposed to be about.  It’s a personal blog and a diary of sorts with lots of photos.

I need to do a better job and stick to the mission.

Click on the thumbnail photo to enlarge and for a slide show

St patrick day

Lord of the Rings Online/ Mines of Moria is a wonderful fantasy-filled game full of mirth and adventure.  And now they have added a blogging area for their fans to express themselves.

It is a Wordpress blogging area.  Isn’t that convenient?

It is for this blogger who has four Wordpress blogs and doesn’t need to spend time learning another way of doing things.

This is so cool.  You can have fun in Middle Earth and then blog about it.  I spent about thirty minutes this morning coming up with this. ..

http://my.lotro.com/davidlind/

and   had a bump in traffic because of it.  I really enjoy this game and recommend it to those of you who love Tolkien and the little hobbit fellows.

It really is hysterical watching hobbits try to run in this  game.  Their tiny legs go back and forth is frenzied  fashion as they dash across the tundra.  But I shouldn’t make fun of them.  Some of my best friends are hobbits.

Please make a friend request if you visit my lotro blog and play this game.  I will put you front and center.

I cannot predict where my blogging adventure will take me.  It’s just a matter of following the fun and trying to share it with anyone who is interested.

*The Boo Zoo is seeing a little action and I appreciate the support.  Stumble it and you merit a mention when I find something  really cool that you have made.  (You know. . if everybody did this and then we all checked out the new links and added them to new posts we could all have an amazing number of relevant links and higher PR’s in a short period of time.)

Successful blogging requires THIS.  Anne describes in a concise way how to get from here to there.

http://webpreppro.com/

Bernie is back from his vacation and his photos are sizzling.  Don’t mind the title.  He’s being funny.

http://sindianavisions.wordpress.com/2008/10/03/oh-crap-not-flowers-again/

And Ron is giving out gift ideas.  This book making process is fascinating and the company he is using appears to have the process down to a very inexpensive science.   Save 30 percent on print orders.

http://blog.rtd13.com/book/

Evita weighs in with healthy snacks for the little Halloweeners (and the big ones too).

http://evolvingwellness.com/posts/432/how-to-have-a-healthy-halloween/

*

, originally uploaded by Davidlind.

Your blogging friend has been asked to do the photos for a Visitor’s Guide published by the Chamber of Commerce in this area.

How about that?  And it’s a perfect time of year to take some photos of the outdoors with the leaves just starting to seriously turn different colors.

This publication will go out to thousands of people in the area and it will include a bio of the photographer. So I will be taking a lot of photos in the next few weeks. And there should be some photos of Heaven being published soon because that’s where I will be.

This has also got me thinking about publishing a book of poems and photos using Amazon.com. I’m a little late for this Christmas but we will see.

First things first and the Visitors Guide.

I will let you know how it goes.

Also a new edition of Wordpress has come out today.  It offers a couple of security fixes so it’s probably a good idea to “get er done”.   And prior to that . . . Today would be a good day to BACK UP the blog.  In fact I am going to do it right now and suggest you might want to do it too.

It makes things a lot easier if you write about something that fascinates a lot of people.   I was looking at some of the top blogs earlier and they focus on movie stars and electronics stuff.   If you do that in a cool way you will easily have a successful blog.  I used to put photos of movie stars in a blog that was sort of floundering around and they brought in a lot of readers.  But then I found this very unsatisfying.  Because I wasn’t going to advertise off of them and make money.  I was just serving them in some strange way that they most likely didn’t even want or need.  There was no joy in it and certainly no creativity.

So I stopped doing that and took all of it down except for the absolutely amazing photos of a couple of dynamite babes including a fascinating photo of Charlize Theron.  But that really is another subject and it goes beyond blogging into the realm of remembering how beautiful a human being can be for awhile on the outside.

So I am still floundering on that blog NewsLink Briefs but at least it gives me something to think about and experiment with in my more relaxed moments.  Blogging is in general a way of dealing with idle time in my book and avoiding the boob tube and other mostly useless activities.

So more power to these guys but if it’s not about money, electronics or the latest Hollywood gossip you have a more challenging way to go.   A lot of us out here are trying to make something interesting out of our unglamorous lives.  We are doing it without superior media skills or writing ability.  And we are supporting each other as we try to do this.   We are not in competition with each other.

I am basically enjoying life and taking photos that will memorialize the good times in a way that requires me to do it on a regular basis.  So later when I get Alzheimer’s I can look at this blog and try to remember how things were in the good old days on a day to day basis.

Probably you won’t read about that rationale for blogging anywhere else on the web today.  Or possibly ever.

But I’m still going to blog until the end of my days.

“Ate soup today”

“Got lost in the woods”

“Charlize Theron visited  today and wanted to ravish me”.

“Who is Charlize Theron?”

So I guess that makes me a dedicated blogger.   I have a niche.   And I hope you will pardon me but I need to go scratch it.