#60, Thoughts From The Mall

Walking On Ewa Beach, Ewa, Hawaii, October ‘07, artistic view.


3 For $5, Waikiki, Hawaii, October ‘07, artistic view.

It's again another hot day, and a sticky one on top of that. Not the one I like most. 75F is fine with me but 90+F is a bit too much. Need to get something to drink, fast.

Spent this morning preparing a package to be shipped to an eBay customer. It has been a while since I sold anything through eBay. The site has changed, it is actually more difficult to sell, and item prices are higher than they were before. In a nutshell, not as cool as it used to be. More corporate, the entrepreneurial phase is long gone. My deal went smoothly, I already got paid through PayPal, and a digital camera got shipped. Only I could not slide my credit card in and out of the shipping Post Office’s machine in a smooth movement and almost gave up and assumed that I would have to go somewhere else. Luckily, the Postal employee explained to me how to use it, and after several tense moments, everything completed satisfactorily. Till next eBay deal!

Now switching to a different subject. How do you decide if you should make your own web site or if you pay somebody experienced to handle it for you? I am in a situation like that right now. Certainly I can handle simpler designs on my own, but more advanced and better-looking websites require a bit more experience than I got. There is no need to learn everything on your own since this approach takes time and only delays the time when you will be able to see your website up and running. But if a simpler is good enough, then it may also be quite acceptable, and no doubt cheaper. Did not decide yet which way to go.

In my last blog, I used Google Docs for the very first time. Actually to display certain types of data, Google Docs could be fine. The good feature is that it is updated every 5 minutes, so it could be used to capture near real time data. I have to think about that. Some Google API’s will no doubt be needed. There are many new possibilities because of that.

I looked around the web for information about ads in blogs. The most honest bloggers will tell you that you need to have traffic to your site of over a million visitors before anything can be made to work. Below that threshold, essentially nothing is going to happen. This advice appears to make lots of sense. Before you have a pretty good traffic, do not bother with any ads. It is unlikely that the ads alone would attract new people to your site. Basically I got some time before a full-blown ad campaign starts on this blog! Lucky you.

I try to stay, on this blog, away from politics. Not that I have nothing to say or know nothing about it. Quite opposite! But it would be better to have that vast subject omitted here. You may have heard that at work you never discuss politics and religion. I think it works better for people who just do that, from my own experience. Since blogs can be read by anybody, also your employer, it is better here as well to omit those subjects. It is amazing, however, that in the country with so many freedoms, you are better of if you just keep quiet! Enough on that subject, already said too much.

Now watching JillBolteTaylor_2008_480.mp4, who is showing a real human brain. Will not spoil any more. Very interesting, you should watch too, recommended on Twitter by BrookeAlley.

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