Creativeherb.com Rebranding 2009 is now in the works. The direction of this site has been debated over many months as I expanded into new areas of expertise. I came from a design background with many years of focus on offline media such as print, outdoor, direct mail, corp collateral etc. Lately, I’ve kept myself extremely busy playing catchup with online media.

I did freelance web design and flash banners before, but now I’ve gone beyond that with a deeper and more cohesive understanding of user interface design, social media strategy, SEO, trending etc. Like many people, I fell into the trap of over expanding my range of discussion topics, some of it inadvertently, some as a testing platform for bigger projects.

The range of topics here will be refocused to pull more from my experiences, on subjects such as marketing, branding, design, SEO, user interface etc. The unique selling point will be an experience that will be presented in an integrated approach based around the designable aspects. Leveraging my broad range of experience across different sectors.

Design is a broad word, but also can be taken as a problem that can be solved through a creative and intelligent plan of action. That will be the new premise of the Creativeherb.com. You will see changes over the next few weeks as I phase in new categories, completely new theme, new post topics.

Behind the scenes, SEO will have more of a design focus based on the categories mentioned. I will keep everyone updated and post about my methods as well. I’m very excited about the upcoming changes, and I think it will definitely be getting more interesting for everyone too.

EDIT: In case you were wondering, yes I will still keep a sub-section for misc. helpful tools/tips like the Melamine Food List or the Canadian Google Flu Trends I’ve been keeping updated.

I found this free long distance call service that actually works. Even tested it with some long distance pizza calls. No need to use VOIP, prepaid phone cards, or calling through an Internet service. You just pick up your phone, dial in their number, listen to about 5 seconds of ads and then you enter in your destination number.

It doesn’t cover every single city in Canada, but you can call from quite a few of them including: Toronto, Victoria, Calgary, Guelph, Halifax, Kingston, Niagara Falls, Oshawa, Ottawa, Peterborough, St Catharines and Windsor.

From those access points, you can then call out to hundreds of cities across Canada for free. Check out the full list at ZeroCents.

You may have read tons of books and guides on SEO, but when Google gives you a straight answer about PageRank, you should listen. It’s rare to get straight talk from them about search engine optimization, even though they changed their algorithms more than 450 times last year. In the Q&A from the third online Webmaster Chat, Google covered topics ranging from PageRank to Top Level Domains, to the impending doom of Article Directories. WebProNews wrote an article that intelligently decrypts some of those vague answers and makes it all clear for you.

Here are some of the more interesting excerpts from WebProNews:

Do backlinks from bad sites negatively affect my PageRank?

Those links might be positively affecting your PageRank (PageRank does not go down from “bad” links like those from adult sites). In general, you don’t have to worry about bad links like that which point to your site that aren’t under your control.

Is it true that the fewer the links FROM your website, the more influence they have on the sites receiving those links?

Google’s Answer: PageRank is split up over the links from a page, but I would recommend not concentrating on this (as you won’t be able to “measure” and act upon it anyway) and instead making your site as usable as possible for your visitors.

Translation: Yes, the more you link the more the link juice passed on is diluted, but don’t go trying to figure out the formula in order to game the system. We’ll figure you out. We’re Google.

Until recently (the last six months or so) a high ranking was achievable by submitting articles to article directories (providing they were 40%-60% unique), it no longer seems to be the case. Have links from article sites been de-valued at all?

Google’s Answer: In my experience, not every article directory site is high-quality. Sometimes you see a ton of articles copied all over the place, and it’s hard to even find original content on the site. The user experience for a lot of those article directory sites can be pretty bad too. So you’d see users landing on those sorts of pages have a bad experience. If you’re thinking of boosting your reputation and getting to be well-known, I might not start as the very first thing with an article directory. Sometimes it’s nice to get to be known a little better before jumping in and submitting a ton of articles as the first thing.

Check out the full article written by Jason at WebProNews.

There’s one major flaw with Google Flu Trends, it doesn’t come in a Canadian version. So I went ahead and put one together here, daily updated charts and all. They are auto generated, so you will always get the most recent data.

For those who were wondering, Google Flu Trends is a search data tool that generates location-based search-trends statistics based on “Flu” related words. It can help to predict outbreaks of Flu (Influenza), giving everyone an early warning system that even precedes health agencies. Hundreds of thousands of people die each year from the Flu, so stay informed and be one step ahead.

Of course you shouldn’t rely on data alone, keeping good personal health and hygiene habits are helpful in avoiding infection too. And of course a vaccine flu shot certainly helps. However, these preventive measures are far from 100% reliable. If you get Influenza, you will be the most infective between the 2nd and 3rd days after infection, and your infectivity will last for around ten days. So try to cover your mouth when coughing or sneezing, and carefully dispose of tissues etc.

NOTE:

The charts below are grouped by Canadian provinces. If an upper chart line is not visible, that means the search volume is lower than the minimum requirement for chart display. If you see a sudden spike in the chart for your area though, you should be extra careful around your classmates or coworkers.

Across Canada - Last 30 days *Auto Updated*


Across Canada - Past 12 Months *Auto Updated*


Ontario - Past 12 Months *Auto Updated*


Quebec - Past 12 Months *Auto Updated*


British Columbia - Past 12 Months *Auto Updated*


Alberta - Past 12 Months *Auto Updated*


Manitoba - Past 12 Months *Auto Updated*


Saskatchewan - Past 12 Months *Auto Updated*


Nova Scotia - Past 12 Months *Auto Updated*


New Brunswick - Past 12 Months *Auto Updated*


Newfoundland - Past 12 Months *Auto Updated*


Prince Edward Island - Past 12 Months *Auto Updated*


Northwest Territories - Past 12 Months *Auto Updated*


Yukon - Past 12 Months *Auto Updated*


Nunavut - Past 12 Months *Auto Updated*


There are many types of medicine, herbs, home-remedies and everything inbetween. But I believe the best way to avoid getting sick, is simply living life as happy as possible. *Bless you!*

Fresh Grad or just doing a job search? Picking the right company size is going to save you lots of headache. This is a guide on finding the best match for you.

One of the most overlooked criteria is the size of company. At times of lowered job employment, finding a job opening is going to be more difficult. You may be tempted to just grab any job opportunities that may pop up, but think of the long term impact of such a rushed decision. You certainly don’t want to look for a job again from scratch if you rushed the decision and it didn’t work out for you.

According to the University of California, it takes an average of 3 to 6 months to find a job. If you don’t do your research before jumping into that company, it can mean slowing down your career significantly if you don’t like the work environment.

I’ve worked at small (5-30) companies, medium firms (30-200), and large corporations (200-100,000+). Since I was a fresh graduate a long time ago, I decided to give each company size a try to see what I would like best. Nothing beats first hand experience really. However, to help you with your decision though, here is a list of attributes for each company size:

There are many pros and cons for each company size, but it really comes down to your career preferences.

Here is a list of questions you have to ask yourself:

1. Are you looking for a higher pay right away or would you like to learn more now to build up momentum for later on?
2. Are you planning to use many of the medical, optical and dental benefits associated with larger corporations?
3. Are you someone who have a problem with dressing up everyday or keeping a corporate image in front of your fellow coworkers?
4. Do you mind repetitive corporate work? Or would you prefer to have something different to do every day?
5. Are you someone who would be more willing to gamble on getting noticed in a small company? Or would you rather do your job and stay in the background?
6. Do you need a higher job security immediately? Or would you settle for less job security as well?
7. Do you see yourself as someone who will climb steadily up the corporate job ladder? Or are you a daredevil who prefers to sprint your way up in a small team?

Don’t settle for a crappy job environment if you can help it, you’ll regret it down the road. Find something suitable for you, because you will feel happier everyday and be more healthy in the long run. That’s one of the main reasons for making money in the first place right?

The new Apple Macbooks are great, but Hybrid Tablet PC Notebooks have way more features. Which should you choose as a designer? Here’s my take on it: I use a Mac tower at work but I use PCs at home (Running Windows XP instead of Vista of course). I followed all the latest news on the Macbook and Macbook Pro revamps on Mac Rumors up till the day they were released, then went to see them in person.

The design of the new Macbooks are obviously years ahead of PC notebooks. The Macbooks are smoothly built, great heat dispersion, and OSX is great for design work. Upon asking if they had a Macbook available, I was going to purchase one right there and then. No stranger to my impulsive purchase decisions, my girlfriend stopped me by pointing out that I should check on PC notebooks as well. I thought that it was only fair I do a proper pre-purchase research.

I went to Costco to roundout my research when I saw a cool little 12.1″ HP Pavilion TX2623CA notebook for $300 cheaper than the Apple Macbook. At this point I was still leaning towards the Macbook because I didn’t have a computer with OSX at home and I wanted to fill in that void. But check out this list of Pros and Cons:

Apple Macbook:
Faster CPU @ 2.0 Core 2 Duo, 2 GB Ram.

HP Pavilion TX2623CA:
AMD Athlon X2 QL-62 Dual-Core (equals to around 1.6 to 1.8 Core 2 Duo), 4 GB Ram.

Apple Macbook:
Great heat dispersion, more advanced track pad, looks very sleek, runs OSX.

HP Pavilion TX2623CA:
Heats up very quickly and needs a cooling pad or laptop fan, not as sleek looking by far, runs Windows.
At this point the Macbook is slightly ahead even with the $300 difference. Then I read on and saw the awesome features the HP has:

Features:
Fingerprint reader, memory card reader, Altec Lansing Speakers, touch screen, rotatable/convertible tablet screen(can flip the screen to collapse into a tablet configuration), built-in wacom tablet on screen, 2 headphone jacks, standard remote control.
Screw the Macbook. The HP costs less, has more ram, a cool finger print reader that I can show off to friends, a rotatable screen that I can use for adhoc presentations Tablet style, and a built-in screen wacom. The Wacom Cintiq 12WX (12″ Wacom tablet with a built in screen) costs $1,000 by itself. And now if I buy this HP I get it built-in already? Now that’s a great deal.

With a built-in Cintiq Wacom, I can use Photoshop or Painter to sketch out a few masterpieces or take notes during presentations. I was going to hook up a regular Wacom tablet to the Macbook anyways, but now this makes it infinitely more convenient.

Needless to say, I fell in love with the HP TX2623CA and been using it since. But what do you think of my decision to sacrifice OSX in exchange for additional features? Am I nuts?

UPDATE: November 18, 2008

U.S./Canada: Apparently some non-dairy coffee mixes from Korea contained milk and it is not listed as part of the ingredients. This is bad news for vegans or people with milk allergies, so be on the alert. And since the milk came from the Asia area, not sure if Melamine could be involved at this point, since it is not officially an ingredient of the product. What else sneaked by with milk as an unlisted ingredient? Here’s the full list:

Affected Products
Listed by brand, product, size, UPC

• Maxim Coffee Mix Original 1200 g (12 g x 100) 8 801037 019476
  Maxim Coffee Mix 1200 g (12 g x 100) 8 801037 019667
  Maxim Mocha Gold Mild 1200 g (12 g x 100) 8 801037 019667
  Maxim Coffee Mix 1800 g (12 g x 150) 8 801037 032581
  Maxim Mocha Gold Mild 1800 g (12 g x 150) 8 801037 032581
  Maxim Coffee Mix 240 g (12 g x 20) 8 801037 006391
  Maxim Mocha Gold Mild 240 g (12 g x 20) 8 801037 006391
  Maxim Coffee Mix 186 g (9.3 g x 20) 8 801037 034134
  Maxim Mocha Gold Mild 186 g (9.3 g x 20) 8 801037 034134
  Maxim Well-Being 1/2 Calories 186 g (9.3 g x 20) 8 801037 034134
  Maxim Coffee Mix Ice 183 g (18.3 g x 10) 8 801037 038972
  Maxim Cappuccino Mocha 360 g (18 g x 20) 8 801037 031300
  Maxim Cappuccino Hazelnut 360 g (18 g x 20) 8 801037 031317
  Maxim Cappuccino Vanilla 360 g (18 g x 20) 8 801037 031324

• Maxwell House Coffee Mix Original 240 g (12 g x 20) 8 801037 035650
  Maxwell House Coffee Mix Original 600 g (12 g x 50) 8 801037 035667

• Taster’s Choice Coffee Mix 240 g (12 g x 20) 8 801055 126316
  Taster’s Choice Coffee Mix 1.2 kg (12 g x 100) 8 801055 126606
  Taster’s Choice Coffee Mix Mocha 1.2 kg (12 g x 100) 8 801055 126538
  Taster’s Choice Well-Being Milk 189 g (12.6 g x 15) 8 801055 028672

UPDATE: November 11, 2008

India: Will this never end? Apparently massive amounts of Melamine contaminated milk products entered India recently, due to the demand for cheaper milk products from China. I guess you get what you pay for. And this is right after India banned milk product imports from China for 3 months back in September 2008, which was 2 months ago. Something doesn’t quite add up here…

Thailand: Apparently Thailand burned 33,000 melamine contaminated food items to show how serious they are with culling the problematic products. The problem is, since Melamine has 66% nitrogen in mass, and it releases Nitrogen when burned, it will also displace oxygen in the same place. I hope they weren’t just throwing all that stuff into the bonfire, because it’s going to kill more than a few brain cells.

Pet Food Scandal Reminder: Claim deadline: November 24th, 2008.

UPDATE: November 6, 2008

After a massive inspection of animal feed manufacturers, China’s Agricultural Ministry has confiscated and destroyed over 36 hundred tons of melamine-contaminated feed.

<sarcasm>Good thing everyone learned their lesson from the big pet food scandal before. </sarcasm>

Here’s another new recall headline or two. “Vietnam finds melamine in imported milk, cookies”. More items to add to the kill list.

It has already sickened more than 50,000 babies and even caused multiple deaths. Be aware of what you and your children are eating, especially with all those Halloween candies around. Officials are discovering more and more melamine contaminated foods on the international market. Whether you live near the majorly affected areas or not is irrelevant because of the global exports of many of the products.

Some products found in your local stores may not even be officially sanctioned to be imported, just to bypass local distribution restrictions and fees.Here’s a list of all the melamine recalled or alerted items I compiled from various sources on the internet.

What is Melamine?

Melamine is a chemical used in plastics and fertilizer production and is dangerous to humans. It can cause
kidney stones, death, and other ailments, this is the same industrial contaminant from China that poisoned and killed thousands of U.S. dogs and cats last year.

Dishonest suppliers in China used melamine to trick milk product protein testers after watering down the milk products. Because it mimics the effects of protein, melamine disguises the watering down of the product.

More than 53,000 babies became ill and even caused death for some.

Symptoms of Melamine Poisoning:
Irritability, blood in urine, little or no urine, signs of kidney infection, high blood pressure.

Detecting Melamine:
And in case you want to do a little scientific confirmation, here’s how to detect Melamine contamination in food and feed.

If you have more items to add, please leave a comment to let everyone know!

The Global Melamine Contaminated Food List:

Eggs from the following companies:

• Hanovo Foods Co Ltd.
• Green Living Beings

Recalled or Contaminated Brands and Products in and around Asia:
(some are exported to North America and Europe)

BOLDED Items are recent additions:

• Ann Summers sex shops: “I Love You” Chocolate Body Spreads
• Aomeiduo Infant Milk Formulas
• BAIRONG GRAPE CREAM CRACKERS
  Bairong Taro Biscuits
• Beijing Shuangwa Daily Co
• Bright Dairy & Food Co. (caution on all products)
• Cadbury chocolate blueberry flavor and coffee flavor
  Cadbury Dark Chocette, 45g and 80g
  Cadbury Eclairs, 180g
  Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate, 150g
  Cadbury Pumpkin and 300g Chinese New Year 2008
  Cadbury Dark Chocolate, 40g
  Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate Bulk Pack, 5kg
  Cadbury Dark Chocolate Bulk Pack, 5kg
  Cadbury Dairy Milk Hazelnut Chocolate Bulk Pack, 5kg
  Cadbury Dairy Milk Cookies Chocolate Bulk Pack, and 5kg
  Cadbury Hazelnut Praline Chocolate, 312g (2008 Chinese New Year).
• Dalian Hanovo Foods
  Dalilan Greensnow Eggproducts Development
• Danyang Day - Rice Crackers
• DOVE H/NUT ALM & RAISIN CHOC
  DOVE HAZELNUT CHOC
  DOVE MILK CHOCOLATE
• DREYERS CAKE MIX
  DREYERS CHOC CAKE ICE CREAM
  DREYERS COOKIE & CREAM ICE CREAM
  DREYERS MINT CHIP ICE CREAM
  DREYERS ROCKY ROAD ICE CREAM
  DREYERS STRAWBERRY ICE CREAM
  DREYERS TOAST ALMOND ICE CREAM
  DREYERS VANILLA ICE CREAM
• DUTCH LADY - caution on all products
• Edna Chocolate
• EDO Pack Almond Cacao Biscuit Sticks
• FIRST CHOICE CALCIUM S ONION CRACKERS
  FIRST CHOICE CALCIUM SALTINE CRACKERS
  FIRST CHOICE CALCIUM SEAWEED CRACKERS
  FIRST CHOICE CALCIUM SESAME CRACKERS
• Four Seas Cake
• GINBIS ANIMAL BISCUIT
  GINBIS PARTY ANIMAL BUTTER BISC
  GINBIS PARTY ANIMAL CNUT
  GINBIS PARTY ANIMAL SEAWEED BIS
• Glico Pocky Men’s Coffee Cream Coated Biscuit Stick
• Gold Nutritionals Master Gaine powdered milk
• Gold 1-10 milk powder
• Gosohan ssalgwaja” (tasty rice snack)
• GREEN FOOD YILI PURE MILK
• Gucheng Infant Milk Formulas
• Heinz Intelligence Man Many Vegetable Cereal
• Huimin Infant Milk Formulas
  
• JACOBINA - Fresh and Crispy Jacobina Biscuits
  
• Jinbishi Infant Milk Formulas
  
• Jinding Infant Milk Formulas
• Jolly Cow Slender Milk
• Kaiser Dressing Pretzel (Chocolate and Strawberry)
• Keqi Infant Milk Formulas
• KIRIN MILK TEA
• KOALA COCOA BISCUIT
• KRAFT OREO W/STICK WH CHOC
  KRAFT OREO WAFER STICKS
• Leilei Infant Milk Formulas
• Lemon Puff Munchee
• Lexus Cheese Cream
  Lexus Chocolate Cream
  Lexus Peanut Cream
• LIPTON GREEN MILK TEA (UNILEVER)
• LOTTE KOALA COOKIES (all)
  LOTTE CREAM CHEESE CAKE
• M&M CHOC CANDIES PEANUT
  M&M CHOC CANDIES PLAIN
  M&M FUNSIZE MILK
  M&M FUNSIZE PEANUT
• Magnum ice cream
• MALI Condensed Milk
• **Thanks to Robbie Sheik for this one:
  Masters Choice Milk Whitener *Possible Contamination*
  “Product of USA” but the barcode number is 69200 24500,which means made in China, 692),please beware.”
• MEIJI CHESTNUT & REDBEAN
  MEIJI FAMILY PACK-GREEN TEA
  MEIJI UJIKINTOKI
  MEIJI UMAKABO CHOCOLATE
• MENGNIU ORIGINAL DRINK MILK
  Mengniu Strawberry Flavour Sour Milk Beverage
  Mengniu - caution on all products
• MENTOS BOTTLE YOGHURT
  MENTOS BOTTLE YOGHURT PROMO PK
• Misarang Coconut
  Misarang Custard
• Milk Rusk from J&J International
• MONMILK - caution on all products
• Moosandwich ice cream
• Mr. Brown Mandheling Blend Instant Coffee (3-in-1)
  Mr. Brown Arabica Instant Coffee (3-in-1)
  Mr. Brown Blue Mountain Blend Instant Coffee (3-in-1)
  Mr. Brown Caramel Macchiato Instant Coffee (3-in-1)
  Mr. Brown French Vanilla Instant Coffee (3-in-1)
  Mr. Brown Mandhling Blend instant Coffee (2-in-1)
  Mr. Brown Milk Tea (3-in-1)
• Munchee Lemon Puff biscuits
• NABISCO IN A BISKIT CHICKEN
  Nabisco - Ritz cracker cheese
• Natural Choice Yogurt Flavoured Ice Bar with Real Fruit
• Nanshan Infant Milk Formulas
• NESTLE MILK & BERRY STARS CRL
  NESTLE NES D/STICK MINI VANILLA
  NESTLE NES DISTICK MINI CHOCO
  Nestle Dairy Farm UHT Pure Milk 1L
• Nissin Cha Cha Dessert
• NO FRILLS WAFER BLUEBERRY
  NO FRILLS WAFER CHOCOLATE
  NO FRILLS WAFER PEANUT
• OK OK Kaiser Strawberry Dressing Pretzels
  OK OK Kaiser Chocolate Dressing Pretzels
• Oreo Wafer Sticks
• ORION FRESH PIE
  ORION TIRAMISU
• Panda Dairy Whole Milk Powder
  Panda Kabao Infant Milk Formulas
• PEI TIAN CREAM BISCUIT
• Pokka Melon Milk
  Pokka Cappuccino Coffee
  Pokka Milk Coffee Europe
• RABBIT MILK SWEET
• Ritz Bits Cracker Sandwiches Cheese
• S & P Milk Cookies
• Silang House of Steamed Potato Wasabi Crackers
• Sherwood Pirate’s Gold milk chocolate coins
• Shien Infant Milk Formulas
• SILANG NATURAL OAT CRACKER
• SNICKERS CANDIES FUNSIZE
  SNICKERS PEANUT CHOCOLATE
  SNICKERS SNACKSIZE BARS PNUT
  SNICKERS FUNSIZE
• TAKE ONE BABY BITE CARROT
  TAKE ONE BABY BITE CK VG
  TAKE ONE BABY BITES
• Tong Wang Yang Coconut Cakes, Walnut Cakes
• VITASOY CHOCOLATE MILK
  VITASOY MELON SOYA MILK
  VITASOY Q SOYA MILK
• WANT WANT MILK CANDY
  WANT WANT FLAVOURED MILK
• WHITE RABBIT CREAMY CANDY
• Wuzhou BingQuan Soy Milk
• Yashili Infant Milk Formulas
• YILI HI CAL LO FAT MILK
  YILI HI CAL MILK
  YILI PURE MILK
  Yili Bean Club Matcha red bean ice bar
  Yili Bean Club- Red bean milk bar
  Yili Prestige Chocliz - Dark Chocolate Bar
  Yili Super Bean Red Bean Chestnut Ice Bar
  Yili - caution on all products
• Yingxiong Infant Milk Formulas
• YOUCAN MASTERBEAN MULTIPACK
  YOUCAN PASSION MULTIPACK
  YOUCAN SILK SLICED AND PASSION STRAWBERRY
  YOUCAN STRAWBERRY MULTIPACK
  YOUCAN TRADITIONAL SESAME MULTIPACK
  YOUCAN UNUSUAL MULTIPACK
• Yuchang F.C. Coffee Creamer
• Yubao Infant Milk Formulas

If you have more items to add, please leave a comment to let everyone know. And please feel free to share this article through Digg, Buzz or other link luving. Thanks!

11. Let your friends and family know you’re still alive

Seriously who has time to call up every single friend and relative nowadays. If it’s not instant it’s too much trouble. It has become too much effort to even Tab between different applications (scary human future scenario of Wall-E comes to mind).

However, if you have a blog, interested family members or friends can find out what you’ve been up to easily. Sure Facebook and Myspace profiles can do the same thing, but they’re mostly based on quickie updates only. A blog is where you can sort out your thoughts and present a more thoughtful side of yourself.

10. Keep your literacy level up

In fact, it keeps the literacy level up for the entire planet. It’s really scary when quite a few people at work can’t even write a proper sentence anymore. “Your” instead of “You’re” anyone? Sites like Twitter even promotes illiteracy by limiting thoughts to 140 characters. Shakespeare is likely rolling over in his grave.

When you blog, you can certainly write in net-speak or spam net acronyms. However, the longer you blog, the better you will naturally get at writing. Isn’t that the same for everything else one does? You will need to read large amounts of material to keep your ideas fresh and plentiful. And in many cases, writing properly is even a turn-on for the mind.

9. Learning by teaching

When you are writing about a particular topic, you will naturally learn more about it. Some of you may well be a fountain of knowledge, but there will always be new information that you have yet to uncover. There are even bloggers who are completely new to a category, yet sound completely confident and knowledgeable just by doing extensive research.

By teaching others through your writing, you will have an increased sense of purpose and become more eager to learn. Enriching yourself at a much quicker pace than you would otherwise. Want to learn all about the endangered species in Africa? Don’t just read about it, blog about it.

8. Slow down time itself

Time speeds up when you’re having fun, and time speeds up when you’re getting old. In fact, we never seem to have enough time no matter what. If we can attach a fixed monetary rate to time, it would make our crazy oil prices seem like nothing. Blogging can help to keep your thoughts organized and it helps to keep things in perspective.

Having something interesting that you do regularly every week will put a scale marker on time itself. Think of time as a slippery greasy rope, except now with blogging, you can put knots on it to keep better track of your time sense. Daily blog postings are especially good for this.

7. Stress relieve before you kill yourself

This may sound exaggerated but there are many people that does not know how to prevent dangerous stress build up. Yes, even millionaire entrepreneurs or brilliant academics. One of the major reasons for stress is the lack of an emotional outlet. Sure you may be able to always think of a solution to get through difficult situations one after another, but where does all the accumulated frustration and anxiety go?

You may not notice it, but stress does build up over time. You may not go crazy anytime soon, but why not let out some steam and live a few years longer? When you blog, you can complain and be angry all you want to an audience. You may get idiotic commenters of course, but nothing a few bans won’t fix. It’s like shouting out into a valley or an ocean at the top of your lungs. Well, almost as good.

6. Force yourself to sit still for a moment

When you are forced to do 12 hours of work in 8 hours everyday, sitting still for even a short moment is unlikely. I don’t mean sitting on that ultra expensive corporate chair, I mean really sitting down and thinking about your life for a moment. A calming session of introspection.

Questions like: Where am I going with my life? Am I doing what I really want to do? If not, how can I make the goal and the journey more pleasant? Am I really far off track?

You’ll be surprised at how good it feels to really stop for a few moments now and then. There’s also no such thing as “too late”. Since you have the power to write and the power to create individual action every day, you can create new opportunities for yourself. Won’t be the same opportunities, but definitely new ones.

5. Helping people and making the world a better place

One of the reason blogging works is because anyone can write anything, and it will be useful to someone out there. With billions of people currently living on the planet, there are a crazy amount of different personalities and scenarios. Back in school, when you say something mean to another kid, there is a good chance that it will really hurt the other person’s feelings. Or when you cheer on someone, it might empower that person to reach new heights.

With blogging, multiply that power by a million. Your audience is now the world and if your share your experiences and positive attitude, it will allow many others to do the same thing. And like anything with the internet, it is infectious. Blog a smile, save the world. Sorry, couldn’t resist. =)

4. Make side money, lots of it

Lets face it, who wouldn’t want an extra bit of spending money for that new shiny gadget or the latest trendy purse. Once you start up your blog, you can start earning decent money in weeks or even days. If you get good traffic, it can get up to a 6-figure income, it all depends on how much time and thought you put into it.

There are many approaches to this, some common methods are Google Adsense, affiliate marketing, and of course, the Donation button. If you don’t feel like cluttering up your blog with ads, then a small amount of affiliate text links and having a donation button will do just fine. And if you’re feeling particularly charitable, it could even be 100% donated to a charity. Mugs, T-shirts and branded Snowglobes. there are many other ways to make some blog money without annoying your readers too.

3. Feel the sharing love

When you own a blog, it is like having your own royal mint. For outbound links that is. Every link that you link to others is generating additional value to the link destination. The more popular your blog is, the more valuable your links are.

When was the last time you went up to someone and said, “here, share in my money.” With your blog mint, you now have the power to add value to other people’s lives without taking away from your own. Far from it, sharing link love will eventually gain you return links, increased relevancy reading for your readers, and maybe even a few new friends. It’s definitely a win-win situation. Not many places where your actions can benefit everyone at the same time. Feel the love.

2. No more traffic jams

Have you ever thought that your daily commute to work is getting pretty ridiculous? Not sure about you, but sitting in traffic for 2-4 hours every day just isn’t my idea time well spent. Say it’s an average of 3 hours in traffic every day, that’s 15 hours a week. 780 hours in a year. 3900 hours in 5 years, or 487 work days of 9-5. Wow, think about how much a person can actually get done in that time, if they aren’t stuck in traffic that is.

As you grow your blog, you will eventually be able to work from home. You will become much more knowledgeable in many different subjects, creating more opportunities for making money. Being rich and famous may not be your end goal, but not having to worry about money will free you to do what you really want in life.

1. Everyone else is doing it

One more point I must add: Everyone else is doing it. In 2005, 1 blog was created every second. In 2006, 2 blogs per second. And fast forward to 2008, there are new blog posts on 900,000+ blogs every day. Whether you like it or not, blogging is going stronger than ever. Sure, you don’t care if everyone else jumps off the cliff right? But when 77% of active Internet users read blogs, there has to be some sort of good reason in there somewhere.

So why not give it a try, it’s free at blog hosting services such as Wordpress or Blogger. If you don’t like it, you lose a few hours. On the other hand, if you do like it, you may just gain something very valuable.

Hope you enjoyed the article, feel free to sign up to my RSS to catch more posts or share some social love below.

Here’s a small excerpt from CNN.com:

Gonzales says many of the disaster survivors he studied weren’t the most skilled, the strongest or the most experienced in their group.

Those who seemed best suited for survival — the strongest or most skilled — were often the first to die off in life-or-death struggles, he says. Experience and physical strength can lead to carelessness. The Rambo types, a Navy SEAL tells Gonzales, are often the first to go.

Small children and inexperienced climbers, for example, often survive emergencies in the wilderness far better than their stronger or adult counterparts, he says.

They survive because they’re humble, Gonzales says. They know when to rest, when they shouldn’t try something beyond their capabilities, when it’s wise to be afraid.

“Humility can keep you out of trouble,” Gonzales says. “If you go busting into the wilderness with the attitude that you know what’s going on, you’re liable to miss important cues.”

When something seriously bad happens, you have to just stop and realize that you are merely just another human being on the planet. And the only way to overcome it might be your utter desire to do so. And that includes throwing out any negatively stubborn traits you may have, because they might just drag you down at the critical moment.

It’s also about realizing that the world may not be Peaches and Cream forever, and putting one foot in front of the other till you get through it. To keep pushing on, it’s important to realize that everything is merely relative in comparison. It is a bad idea to keep thinking and worrying about your current situation, the key is to keep on going in the direction that you want. If it means surviving a disaster or a slump in your life, then just keep on breathing and know that as long as you keep pushing on, it will get better.

The key is to actually have a direction to head towards, any direction.

Of course getting better doesn’t necessarily mean being filthy rich overnight, but it will mean that you have something to aspire to, that you are yearning for personal growth and that you’re acquiring experience and knowledge to make future tasks that much easier. Which I think defines the human spirit pretty darn well, and exactly how the human race have managed to survive against all odds, these tens of thousands of years.

Of course, I already have Version 2 fully drafted in my head and hopefully one day soon, I will be able to get to it.

Why NewsGrid?

First of all, what you see now on the main page of WarhammerBlogs.com is called the NewsGrid. Why is it called that? Well, it’s news, and it’s lots of information placed in a grid format. NewsGrid. I wanted to create a place where the most important community information is displayed in a convenient manner. I went through a few versions before it got to what you see now. Kevin also made me remove a bunch of features that would have extended the production time by another 500%, but hey I’m the Creative. It’s my job and my right to think up totally unrealistic yet sometimes brilliant ideas.

The Colour Debate

For the NewsGrid colour scheme I used neutral shades of brown/tan at first, but that caused the headings to be lost in the clutter. So then I fixed it by vastly increasing the contrast of the overall colour scheme to punctuate every heading, also making it much easier to locate each section. That is also one of the reasons why I created icons for some of the headings, for the users to locate and differentiate easier.

The overall styling of the NewsGrid and User Blogs are fairly consistent, with the main theme graphic image up top, merged with the small nav bar. The theme layout is not at a point where I’m completely happy with it, but it will have to do for now. In a future version, I will make it even easier to design for. Because right now the design restrictions that I have imposed on myself is quite difficult sometimes.

Signup 1-2-3

The standard signup page from Wordpress MU (WPMU) was horrid at best, so I PSD designed a custom form, simplifying the process for the users visually. I guess sort of similar to having a “list” in blog posts. 1,2,3, easy as pie.

100+ Layers PSDs

Designing the theme headers was quite a challenge. I had to do it in a relatively short amount of time AND it had to look good. I think my current favourite one would be the Empire Theme, which I did last. I suppose I just adapted to theme designing over time.

I used a crazy amount of images sources and techniques for creating the theme headers. All images were taken from rights-free sources of course, but manipulated so much so that it is probably completely unrecognizable from the original.

To give an idea of the complexity, for example, I might split the Empire Theme into 8 different areas, with each area composed of 5 images, and each image would have their own 2-3 modification layers attached to it. Multiply that together and you have alot of layers for that one header alone.

I keep all my Adobe Photoshop PSD files extremely organized and labeled of course, with colour/levels as modification layers so that there’s no permanent ‘damage’ to the original image file, allowing me to make tweaks to it even months down the road.

Perhaps in future posts, if is any interest in my design process, perhaps I’ll share some of the design techniques that I’ve learned or discovered along the way. Till next time!