Blog hiatus

… until my paper is finished.

Anniversary and new series

Those who have been reading my blog for some time know that there are certain regular occurrences.

• On Sundays I usually post a quote under the title “Quote for the week.” The idea is to provide some “food for thought” for the week.
• On Wednesdays the post is called “Wednesday without words” with photos from Mali, or as Eddie called them “Mali without words.” You can see them all under the category WWW.

I just went back to see how long I have been doing those, and was very surprised to discover that both had started during the first week of January 2009. The first “Quote for the day” appeared on January 4, 2009 and the first “Wednesday without words” was posted on January 7, 2009. So these series have their first anniversary this week!

For some time I had the intention to add a few more series like the above. In a way, some of them have already started ‘incognito.’

• Life Model bites – For some time I posted topics related to the Life Model in Monday or Tuesday. You can find them in the category Life Model. I want to continue this more purposely as I announced in a recent post.
• Anthropology and culture topics – These posts have been rather irregular. So far I managed maybe one post per month. You can find them under the category Anthropology and Culture. I will post them on Thursday or Friday.
• Book reviews – This is the most recent addition. Apart from one lonely book report in April, the idea to do this in a regular form started in November. You can find them under the category Book Review. I plan to do them more often, namely on Saturday.
• Personal news – At one point I had planned to post personal news in irregular intervals under the heading Sammelsurium / Smorgasbord but this never happened. I guess this is due to the fact that too few of my personal (real life) friends, who might be interested in this kind of detail, are reading my blog.

The idea is more to follow a pattern, even if it is only semi-regular, have certain ‘weekday slots’ for certain topics. ‘Quote for the week’ and ‘Wednesday without words’ will certainly remain my most regular series, while the others will be posted whenever I have enough time.

Here is my weekly blogging grid:

• Sunday – Quotes for the week
• Monday / Tuesday – Life Model topics
• Wednesday without words – Malian photos
• Thursday / Friday – Anthropology and culture topics
• Saturday – Book reviews

I think that this grid also reflects very well the main topics I have covered on my blog.

Now it is your turn:

What were you favorite topics last year? Which is your favorite category of blogs? Or which topics would you like to see more often?

Twitter conference

TIME brought an interesting article that describes a real-life conference on the topic of education reform and how it intertwined with the virtual reality of Twitter :

At first, all these tweets came from inside the room and were created exclusively by conference participants tapping away on their laptops or BlackBerrys. But within half an hour or so, word began to seep out into the Twittersphere that an interesting conversation about the future of schools was happening at #hackedu. A few tweets appeared on the screen from strangers announcing that they were following the #hackedu thread. Then others joined the conversation, adding their observations or proposing topics for further exploration.

Read the full article here: How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live – TIME >> Fascinating!

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1st SoCa f2f 4 me 2day

Do you need a translation of the title?

It means: “First Southern Californian face-to-face meeting for me today.” Because today I met for the first time an online friend face-to-face.

Tara and I have been reading each others blogs for some time. Through her comment on my blog post ‘5000‘ I discovered that she might not be too far away from here.  Today she braved the traffic and met me for a cup of coffee (tea for her, cappuccino for me) and we had a great time getting to know each other a little bit more. I am sure it will make a difference for me to have met her in person when reading her blog in the future.

Sammelsurium

Sorry, for neglecting you!  That is the first time for some time that I did not post anything for a whole week. Life got kind of too busy.

For the longest time I have been thinking about doing an irregular blog post similar to Angie’s “Trail Mix” series. It is a fun way of giving you a glimpse into the bits and pieces that are part of everyday life. At the same time I have been looking for a good and catchy title for such a post category. What comes to my mind immediately is the German word “Sammelsurium.”

LEO offers the following translations for “Sammelsurium“:

• conglomeration,
• salmagundi,
• smorgasbord,
• mingle-mangle,
• omnium-gatherum.

The only one I have ever heard before is “Smorgarsbord” as a kind of Swedish buffet. I understand that it can mean an odd collection, similar to the German word Sammelsurium. I also thought of “Stone collection” even though the correct word might be “rock collection.” But a stone collection could include both meanings: a collection of precious stones (positive experiences), or stones that cause your shoes to pinch (painful experiences).

Now I need your help. Which of the words do you like best or find appropriate? Or do you have any other suggestions?

Dreaming

I found the following blog entry very inspiring and wanted to share at least parts with you. For the full blog entry go to Embracing Life: Make Your Dreams Come Alive!

It is not only important to dream but to keep dreams alive and to turn dreams into reality.
Dreams come alive when we take action! If you are waiting for inspiration…don’t! Inspiration comes after you take action. Inspiration comes through the execution of the creative process in fulfilling the dream.

…

1. Write out your dreams. Go ahead just list every single one of them. Don’t be afraid to list those deep hidden dreams, you know the one’s you think there is no way they will happen. They may be the very ones that God wants to reveal himself through. “What is impossible with men is possible with God.” Luke 1:37

2. Categorize your dreams and list by importance into personal, family, home, ministry and work.

3. Dedicate your dreams to God and determine which dreams to act on through prayer and those in alignment with your purpose and gifts. Every dream you have is significant but through prayer and your defined purpose you can determine which ones need your immediate attention. “Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Psa 37:4

4. List the WHY out beside each dream. Clarifying the why is what motivates you to persevere when your dreams seem impossible. Remember, dreams only turn into reality after you have followed through to completion. “You cannot stop until you have delivered everything God has implanted in you.” ~Shannon Ethridge/Completely His

5. Share your dreams with God and a few trusted people. Sharing and writing down your dreams gives them life and you accountability.

6. Pick your top three dreams and make a plan of action to see each dream fulfilled.

7. Celebrate when you successfully experience your dream come alive!

Dreams come alive when we take action but dreams also keep us alive through the hope of seeing them fulfilled. “Who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” Psa 103:5

What dream would you like to see come alive?

Peggy Reeves is a speaker, writer and life coach. To find out more about Peggy please visit her website and blog at www.peggyreeves.com and http://embracinglifewithpeggy.blogspot.com

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5000

I just happened to look at my blog statistic and discovered that I have had exactly 5000 visitors until now. Wow!

The Flag Counter in the right side bar counts each person only once (if they can be identified as being the same person). At the moment it also shows three round numbers:

300 visitors from Germany,
100 from Great Britain, and
60 from Canada.

Hooray to each of you!  Thank you all for honoring me with your visit. I have a foible for round numbers.

I would love to get to know my visitors more. So let me suggest a simple roll call for everybody, including RSS peeps and lurkers:

Write at least one or all of the following things in the comment field:

• your name (or internet nickname)
• your home town (where you live now, or where you were born) or nationality
• your favorite leisure activity
• your blog address (if you have one)
• a saying that describes your outlook on life

This means, feel free to write only one of them, but the more the better. Credit for the inspiration and format (even though I have seen it before) goes to Chrystal.

What’s a blog? ;-)

Poll on blog comments

I am learning new things every day. I just discovered how easy it is to create a little poll with PollDaddy.com and to integrate it in a WordPress.com blog. Have fun!

P.S. I hope the text is lisible? The pinkish line allows you to add a comment, but you can also use the normal comment feature.   See here how to do it.

How to: follow-up on comments

This time my post does not offer any instructions (unlike last time) but it is a question to you, my dear reader, because I still have not figured out how to do it.

I do read the blogs of several people, more or less regularly. It was very helpful when I discovered that there is such a thing as a blog reader. I used MyYahoo for quite some time (until I discovered that it has problems updating some blog feeds), then I switched to the Google reader, and recently I discovered Netvibes and I just love it. Netvibes has a similar layout like My Yahoo which I really liked. It also includes Facebook and Twitter updates. And I just love the colors.

I do not just read blogs, I also comment on them as this an important part of being an online community. My problem is that I never remember where I have left a comment, even after a short time, and then forget to check back whether the blog owner or somebody else has replied to my comment. Or it takes me a lot of time, retracing my steps and trying to remember where I have written something the day before. Some blogs let you subscribe to the comment feed. I found that really helpful (but don’t know how to set it up on my own blog). Other blogs use different kinds of “connect” software or services (e.g IntenseDebate). Too bad, that that there are so many different ones. I am not sure that I want to subscribe to all of them.

So, my question to you is: How do you remember where you commented so as to come back and see any replies to your comments? How do you do this? Do you just have a phenomenal memory or lots of time? What are your tricks? Please share!