Here’s a quick one…

Should I be using categories, tags, or both to “categorize” my posts? Wordpress has these wonderful new features regarding categories and tags, but I find myself at a crossroads trying to use both.

So far I haven’t used any tags, only categories, and I do enjoy having a category cloud widget at the right so you can see frequency and search based on those…but…I feel like I must be missing out on something by not using tags?

What’s the general recommendation on how to use both of them together, effectively? Oh and what about keywords? Should they be the same as the categories or the tags?

Is it appropriate for me to talk about having a bowel movement that happened so quickly that it created a vacuum in my intestinal tract?

What if I mention the yellow pus that squirted out from my second toe because of an ingrown toenail?

Is there a boundary of appropriate content for ones personal blog? Perhaps…perhaps not. These are conversations that I am able to have with my partner and close friends…one topic is normal biological function, one is only gross in that the pus is a nasty yellow colour - but again a normal bodily function to heal an infection.

And admit it - that first one either made you gasp or burst out laughing…and gasping increases oxygen flow and laughing is heart healthy, so that makes this blog medically sound.

But seriously…I CAN talk about whatever I want, but SHOULD I. Do you really want to hear about bodily functions/infections? The answer is likely, no.

About a year ago I wrote a post called You Can’t Do That On Blogs.  In that post I talked about slander, copyright, libel, and using unreferenced images or those not in the public domain.

But even with those “restrictions”, you can still pretty much blog about any topic that you want. You can talk about technology, fashion, business, pets, religion, hobbies, politics, movies, moral issues, whatever - because it’s your personal public blog - and a lot of what you talk about is covered under your Freedom of Speech.

So while I have the freedom to do it, again, it might not be in my best interest to do so. I might lose readers that I so cherish because they don’t want to hear about the latest secretion from my toe. On the flip side, I might gain readers who like to hear about medical oddities. Do I want both kinds of readers, sure, but which do I want more?

One has to be careful not to alienate people who actively help carry on the conversation, because that’s really what blogs are about - creating conversation, sharing ideas, adding value to readers. And I, like all writers, often have trouble coming up with a topic to write about. There are many times when I vacillate on whether I want to keep blogging, and then a new topic pops into my mind during a conversation and voila, you get another post.

As long as you all keep coming back and keep commenting, I’ll keep coming up with volumes of wit and sarcasm to keep you entertained.

And no more posts about BM’s or pus. I promise. For now.

A coworker just pointed me to Wordle, a very cool site that creates an artistic frequency cloud for any text you enter, or even a blog feed.

Here’s what it pulled from the Homo sarcasmus feed…pretty cool. Apparently I talked about Pothos quite a bit lately :-).

I am pleased to announce that Homo sarcasmus - Best of the Blog Volume 1.0 is now available at Barnes & Noble! So get on out there and buy some goodness :-).

It’s also available on amazon.com if you prefer to purchase there too.

(within the next month the rest of my books will also show up there, and I’ll be sure to let you know when… ;-))

Note: this product is also available on amazon.com and other online retailers.

Why create this book? Good question. Most people who have been following my writing for the last several years have probably seen one or more of these posts and have fallen over in laughter (or else they were drunk while reading them – which I can’t fault them for).

But there are many folks out there who for one reason or another (probably the lack of a good RSS Reader) may have never been exposed to the deliciousness that is Homo sarcasmus. Now keep in mind, I’m talking strictly about adults. This stuff isn’t for the faint of heart, or for those who would blush hearing about dieresis, or diarrhoea for that matter. Oh, and I also talk about Michael Jackson quite a bit, because let’s face it…he rocks.

It’s also not for children because in many cases I have used “language”, and I think we all know what that means when you put quotation marks around it. Actually, the worst you’re going to get is probably hell. Or maybe damn. Actually, I think I used darn instead of damn in the one case I recall. Hell damn yes.

Under no circumstances will you see something like ****. That isn’t my style and I don’t go that way, so in that regard, it’s pretty much safe.

Anyway – this is Volume 1.0 of the best of, and depending upon sales, there may or may not be a Volume 2.0. It’s really up to you. What’s it going to be?

I was having a chat with one of our social media managers at work, and started thinking about the overwhelming number of ways we communicate with one another.

In days of old, you had to get up out of your chair, leave your house, and walk down the street to talk with someone who wasn’t right next to you. But today, that’s all changed.

• Telephone
• Mobile Phone
• Email
• Text Messaging
• Instant Messaging
• Blogging
• Discussion Forums
• Chat programs
• Quick-Hit sites like Twitter*
• Status Updates on sites like Facebook* / myspace.com* / etc.
• Verbal (face to face)

And the list is probably double this if I had time to think about it. Oh, and verbal is last on the list for a purpose. These days you usually resort to verbal when none of the others works or is fast enough. Sad.

There are just too many ways to communicate, and it’s overwhelming at times. Don’t you just want to open a bottle of wine and tell everyone around you to BE QUIET?!

It’s just too much. The mind can’t handle that much information in a coherent way, and it’s likely why we have so many rampant cases of A.D.D., A.D.H.D., bi-polar disorder, and probably schizophrenia. Is it too far fetched to wonder if many of today’s mental disorders have been caused by the inundation of information we receive every second of every day? And I’m not talking about the news or the media, I’m talking about from our friends, family and coworkers too!

An article on Infoworld gives us an idea to combat the overload:

One strategy to consider is instituting information “filters.” To cope with volumes of data, e-mail filters can be used to screen out less-than-critical messages and prevent an overwhelming amount of data from being thrown at a person, Cascio says. Deleting your name from list servers is another way to limit the influx of e-mail.

Um…Hello?! That doesn’t solve the problem, it actually compounds it!

We’ve got answering machines and voice mail for our phones, we have filters and folders for email, and if you don’t want the information on a website, you don’t visit the website!

In each case we’ve implemented a method to prevent the communication from DISTURBING us. The problem is we aren’t ELIMINATING it, only delaying and compounding it.

To bring it home, it’s like TIVO. You can’t listen now, so you record it for later and then you suddenly realize Friday afternoon that you haven’t watched the last 20 episodes of the show and you have to spend your entire weekend catching up on the lives of the characters you care so deeply about!

Take my advice - open up the Now Playing list of your life, highlight the program folder, and push delete on your remote control. Then go outside with your partner/spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend/lover/friend/whatever and talk to them.

Oh, and leave your darn phone in the house.

* Cell phone and brain scan image from WikiMedia Commons

I’ve been using Feedburner to burn my feeds for a month or so now, and I really like some of the features. For instance, over on the right bar of this blog you can see the number of people who are burning me at this moment (or rather for this day or average of days).

That means that there are of you out there who subscribe to the site via an RSS reader. I think that’s a pretty good number. I know there are blogs out there who have bajillions upon sintillions of readers, but that’s not what I’m going for. What I really want is for all of you to interact with me via comments!

So that started me thinking, what would it take for you to comment on a blog? I know the basic answer is probably something like - the blog posed a question, or was about a topic I’m interested in…but that’s boring. What about posts that are curious, or are about something you know nothing about but want to know more about?

Just because you aren’t interested in American Idol doesn’t mean you can’t comment on one of the contestant’s hairstyles especially if I include a picture.

So…here’s a question and hopefully something you’re interested in (especially if you are also a blogger) - What is it that makes you want to stop for a moment and comment on a blog post?