You Can't Coach That

Sunday, July 29, 2007

My most devoted reader, Comedy Plus, included me on a seriously long link love list. While I never know whether to participate its seems that it is a popular thing to do at the moment with Google page ranks being updated soon. I am therefore doing my bit to help out and will see what it does for me in page rank terms. Thanks Comedy+ for including me. Here are the “rules” for anyone wanting to also join in:

1. Write a short paragraph at the beginning of your post and link back to the blog that put you on the list in the paragraph. This isn’t a suggestion. You need to break up the duplicate content. Someone took the time to add you so the least you can do is give them an extra link back.

2. Copy the list of originals below COMPLETELY and add it to your blog. If you would like a different keyword for your blog then change it when you do your post and it should pass to most blogs with that keyword.

3. Take the adds from the blog that added you and place them in the “Originals” list.

4. Add at least 1 new blog that you KNOW is using the DO FOLLOW plugin to the list in the “My Adds” section. (Add no more than 5!) Let the people you’ve added know, so that they can keep the list going! I would like to add (but place no expectations on):

Goldcoaster
Cruftbucket

Originals:

A Great Pleasure
Little world of thoughts
Renisphere
mott’s island
Kev’s Walkabout
iBubbs woof
Down Memory Lanes
Woof & Arf
Lovely Mummy
Bubba Stuff
Mommibee
Moments in My Life
Rambling Moo
All about Zara & Zaria
Hip n cool momma
Random Thoughts of a Blur Mommy
Mylittleanelqianyi
Bits & Pieces
De’moments
chinneeq
Giddy Tiger
Huei Rabbit
Rinnah
Simple America
Niceheart
Ethel
Sanna
The Queer Chef
Shoshana
Leah
gina>
Haze
Ghee
Neng aka Sirena
Angelo
Juaka The Border aka Juana of Femjo
Tina
Keep the Faith
jsonvlog
Suncoast Scribe
Blogging Kenneth
My 2 Centavos Worth
Manila Mom
3 Dogs, 3 Pigs and A Family
Cafe Romanza
Earn Global
Credit Ability
Macuha
Flee the Cube
MomReviews.net
Fellow Eskimo
Pajama Mommy
Amanita.net
WebStyle
Meredith’s Weight Loss Blog
Pink Blog
Tricia’s Musings
Ugh!!’s Greymatter Honeypot
Midlife Musings
Utterly Geek
Whatever I Feel Like
My Dandelion Patch
Surviving NJ
GeekySpeaky
Simple Kind Of Life
3DayMom
BuyMeBlog
The Hockey Dad
Mariuca
This is a Miracle
Revellian
d bImBo
Secret of Mind
Rightly Epitomised
Random Magus
Disjointed Intelligence
WalksFarWoman
FeedGet
The Process of a Miracle
The Tall Poppy
Man About the House
One Man’s Travel Blog
Wits End
Walks For Woman
A Modern Goddess Online
Bev’s Bits
A Nice Place in the Sun
Twisted Sister
Writers Reviews
NoDirect(not:NoDirection)
Comedy Plus
Just a Girl In Short Shorts Talking About Whatever
Expecting Executive...And Miles To Go Before We Sleep...
You Can’t Coach That
Untwisted Vortex

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

If on the off chance you have tried sending an email using the contact link at the top of the page I sincerely apologize for apparently ignoring you. I thought I had configured my blog control panel to use the correct email for this link but apparently not - hence the title of this post.

I am hoping to post more frequently for a while having seen off the black dog that has been hanging around too often lately.

“You can’t coach that”

ps Thanks to the following folks who have stuck around and left comments during July even though I have been missing in action a bit lately

• Comedy plus - my most loyal reader and the funniest blog out there
• Micki from ”My Reaview Mirror - an excellent outlook on life
• Goldcoaster - always something thoughtful to say and lives in Paradise
• RT Cunningham - A prolific writer at Untwisted Vortex, generous blogger, his intelligence is obvious in what he writes
• Joh Blogs - the best blog name out there, a fellow teacher and good guy
• Jacer - the internet safety advisor - safety on the net for children, nothing more important
• Patrick Hawke - another Aussie blogger
• Xerendipity over at writinerary
• The Brown Baron - does a regular open comments post that I have been meaning to join in on
• Jim - a fellow forty something
• Lorna the webgrrl
• Jer at nyquil.org

Saturday, June 23, 2007

So much reading to do, so many things to learn.

• From My Rearview Mirror - I learned that as a married man with children my creative years are behind me. You are sitting there thinking to yourself “I could have told you that”
• The World is in good hands if Meg’s son is anything to go by. She wrote about his message on Myspace about people being more concerned about seals that people
• From Matthew at eJabs - as we get older the amount of water in our bodies decreases. A timely reminder to drink lots of water. But there’s water in beer right?
• Goldercoaster doesn’t like commercial television news and who could blame him
• From Comedy Plus - you see some amazing things on freeways in the USA
• Joh Blogs reminded me what it is like to have your tyres pumped up
• Webgrrrl got me thinking about splitting posts with a read more tag. I think I will keep things as they are for now.
• The Internet Safety Advisor introduced me to Imaginif. There can never be too much discussion about keeping young people safe.
• Arnie at Critical Assumption showed me his new business card and introduced me to the world of gaping void cartoons. (I had been meaning to check this out for a while after seeing the cartoons on Arnies site some time ago)
• From Rinsem’s Rink - Walnut trees have chemicals in their leaves to stop other trees growing near them.
• Zep over at The In-Sect educated me about Godzilla

“You can’t coach that”

Thursday, June 07, 2007

I finally forced my lazy a$$ to confront the amount of comment and trackback spam that I have been receiving. Sincerest apologies if you have made a comment and received notification emails when these spam comments have been hitting. The blacklist module I was using was obviously not working but I have since found an akismet extension for ExpressionEngine which will hopefully do the job.

Thanks to kyte for giving me the push that I needed to deal with this.

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Recently, Matthew at eJabs tagged me for his meme on My Favourite Unpopular Posts. Given the reasonably small readership of my blog (growing slowly and I appreciate you all) it could be argued that all of my posts are somewhat “unpopular”. Therefore, below is a list of the posts that I enjoyed writing the most (apologies to Matthew for taking some license with his meme topic)

1. An Open Letter to the Acme Corporation
2. The Prime Minister and the Port King
3. Conspiracy Theorists Association Application
4. Protecting the Innocent
5. Easter, God, Children and Six Year Olds
6. Chinese Piano Smugglers

Interesting to note that these are generally less than serious pieces of writing (except for “protecting the innocent”. Perhaps there is a lesson for me there.

Thanks for the idea Matthew.

I am going to link here to all in my Friends list - no expectation on my behalf to take part but the link love is good.

• A Bowl of Stupid
• Coaching Mantra
• Comedy Plus
• Cruftbucket
• Crazy Aussie Bastard
• critical ASSUMPTION
• DailyBlogSpot
• Dazed and Confuzed
• Goldcoaster
• Hamarana
• I’m Forty-what?
• Rinsem’s Rink
• SmartWealthyRich
• towcentblog
• Untwisted Vortex
• Writinerary

Thursday, May 17, 2007

The Alexa rank is something I have completely ignored up to this point. I thought therefore that I would participate and see what happens.

~Start Copying Here~

Rules:

* Put anything you like above this list – Chit Chat, talkies, introduce what this is.
* Start copying on the “~Start Copying Here~” and copy all the things listed without removing the links (Of course, the train would be no use without those links)
* Move all the sites labeled “Newcomers” to the list labeled “Oldies”.
* Add 5 sites that you want to include in the train and make their “Visit My Site” link like this: http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?www.criticalassumption.blogspot.com/ then invite them to join the train.
* Visit all the listed sites using the Visit My Site link. (That’s not much work! Remember, if you plant good seeds they will also grow good) and look at your high Alexa ranking next week!

Newcomers:

Cruftbucket - Visit My Site
Goldercoaster - Visit My Site
ComedyPlus - Visit My Site
eJabs - Visit My Site
UntwistedVortex - Visit My Site

Oldies:

The Chronicles of My Life - Visit My Site
I am Who I am - Visit My Site
WebStyle - Visit My Site
Endangered Spaces - Visit My Site
CoolAdzine for Marketers - Visit My Site
Rinsem’s Rink - Visit My Site
Sean’s Ramblings - Visit My Site
MacBros Place - Visit My Site
Can’t Coach That - Visit My Site
Critical Assumption - Visit My Site
Foreign Perspectives - Visit My Site
Carl Pei - Visit My Site
Swapw - Visit My Site
Life of a School Bus Driver - Visit My Site
Tamiki - Visit My Site
Bobs’ Reformat This - Visit My Site
Shawn Knight - Visit My Site
Kelly Cho - Visit My Site
John Chow dot com - Visit My Site
DoshDosh.com - Visit My Site
Jane May Blogs - Visit My Site
Ms. Danielle - Visit My Site
Stock Trading 101 - Visit My Site
Ed Lau - Visit My Site
Derrich.com - Visit My Site
Nate Whitehill - Visit My Site
Gary Lee - Visit My Site
Make Money Online with a 13-year Old - Visit My Site

~End Copying Here~

Monday, May 14, 2007

Jim over at I’m Forty-what? (gotta love that name) kindly included me in his list of five “Thinking Bloggers”. I very much appreciate that he thinks of me in that way and I value the fact that he and a few others stop by from time to time to see what I have to say.

Sometimes I over think things. Not much I can do about that, just the way I am. Am I a thinking blogger? I try to be although I am sometimes just happy that I manage to get something coherent down on the digital page.  A line from the song “Brainwash” by The Cruel Sea sums this up quite well:

My mind is a room full of people all trying to get out the door at the same time.

Here is my list of “Thinking Bloggers”

1. Matthew at eJabs who is sick of his best posts not being popular

2. Rinsem’s Rink - two links here in a few days. Along with the Grinders that I mentioned in my post on Saturday there is plenty of interesting stuff to read here.

3. Arnie at critical assumption has been quiet for the last week or so but I always visit to see what he is thinking about.

4. Dazed and Confuzed - there is a great mix of humour and thought provoking comments here.

5. The Wrong Advices - an Aussie blog where the advice is anything but wrong.

6. Comedy+ - you can never have too many laughs.

I was only supposed to name 5 but I couldn’t resist putting Comedy+ in there. Also on my list would have been RT at Untwisted Vortex but he is already on Jim’s list. All the blogs in my friends list are also worthy of being here as are many other blogs that I read regularly.

If you would like to write a list of your own here are the “rules” as I have read them:

1. List five people that you wish to award with, “The Thinking Blogger”
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.
3. You may display, The Thinking Blogger award image or the silver version if the gold one does not match your color scheme. This is not mandatory however. The Thinking Blogger Police will not raid your website should you choose not to.

“You can’t coach that”

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Included in my friends list is Rinsem’s Rink. One aspect of this blog that I really enjoy is the weekly story of The Grinders. A new chapter is published every Friday and it is an enjoyable read. In the latest chapter, “Hello Newman” the character of “Jeremy Parkman from New Jersey” is introduced to the readers. This character is also known as Newman, as in Newman from Seinfeld, hence the title of the chapter.

The geography of the United States is not an area in which I profess a detailed knowledge. In particular, the areas around New York have always been baffling for me. The little knowledge I have in this area has been pieced together from various TV shows including Seinfeld and the Sopranos and things I have casually read over the years. If you had asked me before today about New Jersey I would probably have been able to tell you that it is a state of the USA. If you had asked me about “Jersey” however, I would probably have said that it is a suburb of New York City. If you had asked me about Jersey City I would have been completely ignorant.

I have since learned some interesting things about Jersey City (to me anyway) from the Destination Jersey City website. Due to a lack of funds I am restricted to this form of sight seeing these days - I suppose I am a web traveler.  For example, I now know that Hackensack is a district of the city and that the Statue of Liberty calls Jersey City home. I’m sure that I have heard of Hackensack from an old TV cop show and think that it is a superb name, it just rolls off the tongue. As for the Statue of Liberty, I think she’s that tall sheila that shows off how good her underarm deodorant is.

Anyway, if you want to read more about Jeremy Parkman from New Jersey, head over to Rinsem’s Rink.

If you want to read more about Jersey City, head over to Destination Jersey City.

“You can’t coach that”

[This has been a sponsored post]

Saturday, May 05, 2007

While I don’t consider myself a very lucky person I do like the old saying “you have to be in it to win it”

In that vain this post is an entry in the The Piggy Banker’s blog link contest.

So what is The Piggy Banker dot com all about? It’s an online resource for the best cd rates.

If you want to enter the contest too you can at the blog link contest page. I wouldn’t encourage it though as online promotions like this are pure evil (and it will diminish my chances of winning)  

Friday, May 04, 2007

A sponsored post:

Dating, I am so glad I don’t have to do it. I am in the incredibly fortunate position of being happily married to a saint. She has to be a saint to put up with yours truly and all my s#@t. We met in high school so I have had precious little experience in the dating arts. I often wonder whether I would have been very good at it as I got older. It was a pretty easy thing to do as a teenager but I can imagine it gets a heck of a lot harder as the years tick over. At 15 you are supposed to have bad skin and be socially awkward. It’s not a good situation at thirty however.

I wonder how I would have approached the dating challenge as an adult. Would I have been the clubber type? Would I be the dinner and movie dater or perhaps the bar-b-q with friends type? Could I have turned to an online dating service? Probably a beer and pie at the footy - romantic I know.

To end on a humourous note, here are some translations of common lines in personal ads [via: no marriage]

# Strong woman - Bitch with a severe case of self entitlement.

# Classy - Bitchy 45 year old real estate agent type.

# Seeking gentleman - Looking for rich guy who isn’t interested in sex.

# World traveler - would love to go to Europe as long as you’re buying.

# Intelligent - She isn’t but thinks she is, and you’d better entertain her.

# Rubenesque - Fat

# Sarcastic - Bought into the whole Gen X irony thing and is really a miserable bore to hang out with.

# Make me laugh - You’re expected to be highly entertaining right away.

# Sick of bar scene - She doesn’t get hit on at bars due to one or more physical flaws.

# Friends first - Reformed nympho

# Shapely - Fat

# BBW - Grossly, morbidly obese (Bring Burgers With)

# Snuggling and Warm Fires - No Sex

# Enjoys Traveling - You’re paying, right?

# Meaningful Relationship - Slavery

# Nurturing - Smothering

# Sassy - Insufferable by the third date.

# Bubbly - Happy all the damn time to the point of annoying.

# No games! - I won’t put up with your games, but I will gladly infuriate you with mine.

# Eccentric or quirky - Psycho…

# Grown up man - Sucker willing to marry and support my lazy fat ass. 

Sunday, April 29, 2007

Like many people I use a feed reader to keep up to date with my favourite blogs and other pages of interest. I have in fact been doing so for at least five a couple of years but have only recently started using a web based reader. This is where my dilemma begins. I have been using Google reader for a while and have also dabbled a bit with Newsgator and I am still trying to decide which one I like best and therefore which I will continue to use. I thought up until about five minutes ago that Google Reader had won the contest. I have however just realised the one thing that has been bugging me about it. Whenever I visit a site outside of the reader to leave a comment or read a story in more depth and then return to the reader, I am returned to the home page of my Google Reader setup. I would much rather be returned to the feed that I left from. I have not been able to find a way of remedying this situation so if you know of one please let me know. Newsgator returns me straight back to the feed that I was reading before I left.

I know that I could set up firefox to open links in new tabs and I was using this option for a while. I find that this leaves me with just too many tabs open so I only selectively open links in new tabs (with a middle mouse button click).

I would love to hear opinions on the best way to use Google Reader if you use it or if you use another option.

“You can’t coach that”

Since I stopped using the ad block plus extension for firefox I have of course been seeing a lot of google ads in my blog travels. One particular ad seems to be following me around. It says “Are you EMO? Hang with us.” I am starting to get a little nervous here. Has google invented some sort of new technology that somehow gets inside your head and looks for certain thought patterns or brain activity? If they have then I think it needs a tweak or two. No EMOs here.

If you are wondering why I am no longer using ad block plus, the answer lies in perhaps a naive sense of fair play. I am in the process of working out the best way to monetise this and another blog and I feel that if I hope to make a little money this way (hopefully to cover costs) then I should do my bit for others. I would love an extension that allows you to block ads selectively. I suppose I could turn it back on and then disable it for specific blogs I visit often but I haven’t got around to it yet.

Here is a definition of EMO.

I get the feeling that the wind might be going out of the sails of the many technorati favourite exchange programs but what would I know? What I do know however is that they are very time consuming to stay up to date with. Engtech has written a neat little program that will automatically connect to technorati and favourite anyone who has favourited you. It first checks to see whether they are already in your favourites.

So far I have a total of 261 favoutites. I would estimate that about 40 of these would have been on my list without the exchange programs. I have been favourited by 100.

While I don’t know how relevent it is my tachnorati rank is now 75,388 which seems ok to me given that I haven’t done a lot of active promotion other than the fav’s exchange so far.

And yes I do know how to spell “favourite” - we spell proper in Australia.

“You can’t coach that”

Friday, April 27, 2007

Not that it probably means too much but noticed today that cantcoachthat has made it into the top 100,000 blogs at technorati. I guess the technorati favourites exchange achieved something. 

Thursday, April 19, 2007

I have been surprised by the number of blogs that I have chanced upon and then later found they are written by Aussies. I’ve added two of these to my friends list:

Cruftbucket and

Goldcoaster

Like all in the list they are well worth a read.

“You can’t coach that”