As you might have noticed, there hasn’t been much activity here on my personal blog. I have been fairly busy with several projects I am working on, which I will surely talk about soon, but I have decided to make a comeback to personal blogging. I just moved OnlyJames.com to the Rackspace Cloud, and I am currently working on redesigning the entire site. I might even be moving from WordPress to Django. So, stick with me while I dust everything off.

I will not lie, the past few days have been a bit iffy with work and such.  Relationships that I thought were okay immediately got horrible, and things were said that should not have been said.  Needless to say, I worked through it, but the other party was having a very rough time with regards to finances and stress.

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So, I have just realized that I’ve been “in the zone” with my blogging lately.  It is a feeling where I just can’t stop writing about stuff.  The ideas are never ending, and the fingers are typing non-stop.  It is truly a great feeling to have. I only wish I could trigger this euphoric moment of blogging goodness more often, but alas, I have no idea how.

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Ah, you gotta love Google.  The company pulls out some amazing new things with April fools day.  This time around they have hit several Google services like Gmail, YouTube, and Google search.  Virgle anybody?Maybe there will be more developments, but it will be interesting to see how it turns out as the day goes on.  Unfortunately, it didn’t have me as fooled (although the Gmail one was very convincing at first).  It was still fun though!

I have my laptop, I have my mind, and I have no pain.

It is all good, and it is time to get back to work.

Daily blogging will resume from this point forward!  Hurray!

I had my first tooth pulled earlier today.  I had to get it pulled after Sunday night when my tooth started hurting beyond all belief.  It was the worst pain I ever experienced.  I had it pulled today—after about 45 minutes of pulling and tugging from the dentist.  I am in a great amount of pain, so things will be slow until everything heals up.  I will be back though!

Once I get my MacBook Pro—yes, I know I keep mentioning a MacBook Pro—I am going to attempt to post three or more videos every day for the next 30 days. Call it an experiment of some sort. With my new laptop, I should be able to easily upload videos via Quick Capture. I’m attempting to do this for a few reasons, but mostly it is just because I want to see if I can pull it off.

The reasoning behind all this? I have seen people who have uploaded at least five 5 – 10 minute videos per day, everyday, for a very long time now. I think they are insane. With all the freedom I have, I can’t even find the time to make one video within the past several months. I know that most of the people I watch actually have typical day jobs. I just can’t imagine doing something like that. I have to at least attempt it.

The quick capture feature will—hopefully—be a go for the MacBook’s iSight camera. If not, I may have to adjust the rules and goals slightly. I did see other users successfully using Quick Capture though, so I am confident that things will go smoothly with that regard. I have set up a few rules and goals for me to follow as well.

The Rules

1. I must aim to post at least three videos every day in a 30 day time period.
2. If I fail to reach three videos during any day, I must make up the required amount within three days.
3. If at any point I end up behind more than six videos, I fail the experiment.
4. Videos must be at least one minute in length to count. Preferably longer than that, but the point is to actually provide videos with some purpose.

The Goals

• Have 100 new videos uploaded within 30 days.
• Have at least 5 of these videos generate video responses.
• Have an average of 50 views per video.
• Have an average of at least 5 comments per video.
• Have at least three videos reach over 1,000 views.
• Have at least two videos reach over 5,000 views.
• Have at least one video reach over 10,000 views.

Questions To Be Answered

1. Can I pull it off?
2. Will I gain more subscribers than I did previously with posting videos on an irregular basis?
3. Will I lose any subscribers?
4. Will view counts be reasonable?
5. Will people comment?
6. What will be the general consensus by others of what I am doing?
7. Will this affect my work? (If so—how and why?)
8. Will this be considered as work or fun to me?

Knowing me, I will probably be yapping about something related to technology most of the time. It might be a few weeks before I start this experiment, but I will keep everyone updated!

If you want to read the story on what happened to my blog, you can check that out on Performancing.  What is done is done, and while my previous hosting company might have been the scum of the earth, I will prevail.

My task is to move around 120 – 140 articles over to a new site.  The interesting thing is I am probably going to end up doing it all by hand.  I would love to think it was just as simple as a copy and paste job, but it will not be that easy.  I will also have to carry over all the images as well.  I could, possibly, drop all the images, but I am not sure if I want to do that.

The bad thing is that I have hundreds of people that are trying to get to my content through Google, and all they end up seeing is an error page.  It just ticks me off that those people have to see that.  I don’t want to waste their time.  I have to fix that soon.  It will all be done by the end of this week.

Life goes on.

I have posted my first article for Performancing.  It took quite a lot of work, particularly because I wanted to make my first article as perfect as can be.  It appears I did in fact make a good impression as my article is the most popular for the day so far—even beat the Darren Rowse interview (he owns ProBlogger and co-founder of b5Media—probably one of the few 7 figure bloggers in existance).

Regardless, I am happy with the results.  I think it is the start of a great time contributing to Performancing, and I am thrilled about it all.

In other news, I am still prepping Tech In Demand for a move to the new server.  I’m still somewhat worried that once I move everything over that my time at the VPS servier is going to turn into a hellish nightmare.  I’m usually optimistic about things, but I haven’t the slightest idea about moving a server and content.  What makes it worse is there is absolutely no support for me on this either.

Trying to think of the worst case scenarios, I came up with the following possibilities:

1. The server completely fails and my site just comes up as a blank white page or something else
2. The server works, but the movement of all the data becomes a nightmare and WordPress fails to work.  It then displays a white page or something else.
3. The move goes well at first, but after awhile of enjoying myself, I realize that there is some error in a database or something else that completely compromises any new data I put on the site.

I think that all of those cover the basis for worst case scenario.  If anything worse happens, I will just be living a nightmare.  Other than that, hopefully everything goes well during the transition!

In other news, I have been bouncing back and forth through my mind trying to decide which MacBook I want to purchase.  More on that later though.

I was actually taking a short nap—which, honestly, turned into a long nap—when I received a message from Ryan Caldwell of Performancing.com asking me if I would like to join the team. Performancing is a site that focuses on helping bloggers to blog.  The site also focuses on search engine optimization, social media, and making money.

I applied for this position only a short while ago with the hopes of being able to join the team.  It appears that my patience might have been worth it after all.  Earlier, Ryan contacted me and asked if I would still like to blog for the site.  I, of course, want to help out.

I have emailed Ryan back and told him I would like to join.  I am hopeful that I will be writing for Performancing soon.  I will keep everyone updated.