Tools ‹ Ethniccooking’s Weblog — WordPress.

I believe that people should spend around 30 minutes a day reading and doing research.

Remaining up to date in your chosen areas is important if you are going to present yourself as an expert. Besides conventional resources other bloggers are a HUGE source of information. The question is, how do you find people who are blogging about the same topics you are?

The answer is Tag Surfer, a menu option under ‘Dashboard’ .

Tag surfer on your dashboard

WordPress suggests and allows you to add and delete tags (topics) that you are interested in.

Subscribe to your chosen tags (topics)

You add tags using the field and button provided at the top and you delete them by clicking on the grey cross next to the listed tag e.g. ‘leadership’.

WordPress then draws selected recent posts from other people’s blogs with the tags you are interested in and presents them to you; see example below which uses ‘leadership’ as a tag.

Post suggested by tag surfer

The first five lines above are mainly links.

The top one is the permalink to the actual post on the blog written by the user ‘petermsalmon’. You can click on the user to find out more about him. The Spam link is always provided allowing you to report the post as spam. The list of tags that follow are links to other posts on the tag topic. Note how the user links to the original post i.e. Peter Bregman. He then quotes a portion from it and finally adds his own views on the topic.

Im Header beziehe ich mich auf das cineastische Meisterwerk “Ghost in the Shell” von Regisseur Mamoru Oshii, nach dem gleichnamigen Manga vonKazunori Itô und Masamune Shirow. (Nebenbei bemerkt ist der zweite Teil “Innocence” nicht weniger sehenswert.) Natürlich ist der Film auch oberflächlich unterhaltend, beschäftigt sich aber grundsätzlich mit der Frage nach einer Seele in künstlicher Intelligenz.

Als ich heute auf den Tag-Surfer klickte fand ich dieses Video von [metroccolis], welches Anlass für diesen Artikel war:

Sean asked me yesterday:

how do i create a blog???
a ha ha ha ha ha……^^’
i hav totally no idea about it…..
mind giving out some tips for it…. a he he he.

Well, it is actually pretty easy, if you know WHY you create that blog. You create it for personal use(not planning to earn money) or you want to make money out of it(business blog).If you are pursuing a serious looking blog platform, I would suggest WordPress. But, if you are planning to make your own theme/layout/template, then Blogger will do the trick.

Also, are you in need of some pages, to put your profile,contact perhaps? Then, WordPress is the answer. WP(short for WordPress) allows you to have as many pages as you want. However, Blogger doesn’t allot you to have pages of your own. Unless you know how to use the HTML code or CSS code to create your own theme/layout/template, you can’t use this ‘page’ feature.

You want to know how many people visited your blog per day? Unfortunately, Blogger doesn’t have this feature. You have to dig out the widgets yourself. WordPress, on the other hand offers this solution, they have the ‘blog stats’ page in the dashboard that allows you to see your stats per day, week and month. They let you know the top post, the top clicks, what your readers searched for, etc.

However, right till now, I was talking about WP’s good points. Now, it is time to point out some cons. You can’t put in those Javascript, flash and CSS codes in your sidebar and posts. Like, if you want to put a flash poll, a countdown or any other widgets, WP doesn’t allows it. In this case, you can only use simple HTML code, like image, text links, and text in color.

WordPress has a lot of other interesting features for advanced blogger. Normally,beginners use Blogger as it is easier to understand while those who are more experienced(did I mention my name? LOL.) use WordPress as they have a lot of advanced features. You will see Media, Tag Surfer, Blog Surfer,Subscriptions, Polls, Settings and Appearance.

The Defaulted Theme/Layout/Template Gallery in Blogger sucks. You can never find something you like there. Which is why, I think they allow you to make your own theme. Anyway, WordPress has an extensive gallery which will be updated every month. The themes are great, but needs more improvement on the three column themes.

So, at the end of the day, it is up to you to decide. Whether you want to have a professional looking blog(WP) or a personal blog(for friends and family)[Blogger].

GoodTimePolitics is a blogger. He or she is on the conservative side of the political spectrum. I am on the left side. I noticed on WordPress’s tag surfer that we had posted on several of the same subjects, so I posted a comment on his blog. This is the link:

http://goodtimepolitics.com/2009/03/01/an-interview-with-john-goodman-on-the-future-of-health-care-europe-socialist-governments-provide-free-universal-health-care-for-everyone/#comment-6535

It was a bit disappointing to find that the blog was simply a borrowed interview from another source, but since conservatives often borrow their arguments from a set of talking point sources, I gave him the shadow of a doubt and posted anyway. Perhaps he would be willing to use some of his own thoughts in any discussion that followed.

This particular borrowed opinion piece insisted, though it provided no sources, that the reason universal healthcare appeared to cost half what Ameircans pay was that the true costs are hidden. Although it admitted that life expectancy was, if anything, longer in countries with universal healthcare than in the US, it chose to discount that measure of healthcare quality and cherry pick certain types of cancer for which the US has better 5-year survival rates than Europe does.

This seemed unfair to me, since it was cherry picking, and those types of cancer are not truly a large proportion of health problems for the US or Europe. A better choice might have been cardiovascular problems. But I knew of a more general measure that few could really question.

So I asked, if he thought deaths that could have been prevented by access to timely and effective healthcare was a good measure of healthcare quality. This measure is especially pertinent because opposers of universal healthcare in the US keep insisting that universal healthcare would prevent timely access to effective healthcare. Unfortunately, for that argument, the US comes out at the bottom by that measure, allowing many more preventable deaths. I provided a reference.

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN07651650

and I quoted from it:

“In establishing their rankings, the researchers considered deaths before age 75 from numerous causes, including heart disease, stroke, certain cancers, diabetes, certain bacterial infections and complications of common surgical procedures.

Such deaths accounted for 23 percent of overall deaths in men and 32 percent of deaths in women, the researchers said.”

I asked that he explain why he did not consider it a good measure, if he didn’t.

Did I get a reasoned argument in return? Not at all. He blew right by the fact that apparently universal healthcare managed to provide effective care in a timely enough manner to out-perform the US system, and gave a source on waiting times in the UK, ignoring my question as well, and zeroing in again on cancer.

I countered with my own experience of British healthcare, chronicled elsewhere on this blog, along with a recent encounter with a neighbor who had gotten a hip replacement. I included what my family, living here in the UK, have learned about how UK waiting lines operate, moving the most urgent cases to the front on the line very quickly.

He said I didn’t know what I was talking about. (How he knows more, never having lived here, he did not explain.) In fact, he insisted there was no waiting time at all in the US, a laughable proposition, so it’s no wonder he got so upset when I presented him with proof otherwise.

Then he brought up TV licenses, as an attempt to side-track the discussion, I presume.

It didn’t work. He tried again, maligning the BBC as a government mouthpiece, something it clearly is not, and showing his general ignorance of things outside the US. He, of course, didn’t bother to answer my question of whether he had any personal experience of any other system, and when the BBC side-track did not work, decided to move on to Canada’s healthcare system, probably a good move, since it is debatable whether it is better than the UK’s system or not. (The UK system is considered one of the worst universal healthcare systems.)

More quoting of other sources, almost all anecdotal. Again I explained how the waiting system deals with urgency. More anecdotes of his own experiences with military medicine, which wasn’t good. How it was supposed to aid his case, I don’t know.

Having been doing a little research in the meanwhile, I posted the following two references:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deborah-burger/ugly-health-care-waiting-_b_55749.html

which actually quotes the chief medical officer of Aetna insurance, speaking at an investor’s conference as saying:

• The U.S. “healthcare system is not timely.”
• Recent statistics from the Institution of Healthcare Improvement document “that people are waiting an average of about 70 days to see a provider.”
• “In many circumstances people initially diagnosed with cancer are waiting over a month, which is intolerable.”
• In his former stint as an administrator and head of a physicians’ organization he spent much of his time trying “to find appointments for people with doctors.”

and

http://www.canada.com/story_print.html?id=7af65822-8a73-46cc-afb6-808e49be3eff&sponsor=

“Canada tops U.S. in health care comparison study. Canada’s health-care system is as good or better than that of the United States and is delivered at half the cost, new research shows.

Strangely, my post did not appear. I tried again. It did not appear. Another poster was asking for evidence for my arguments, but I wasn’t being allowed to post it.

Finally, GoodTimePolitics posted saying that if my post had contained more than one link, it would have been filtered out by his restrictions.

So I posted each link in a separate post. Still it did not appear.

Faced with the facts that totally refuted his insistences, he refused to let them be posted. My opinion is that this makes him a coward.

Über den Tag-Surfer fand ich diesen netten Artikel über meine Bibliothek.

Wir haben zwar schon am 20.9.2007 unsere Tore eröffnet (übrigens seitdem über 6200 Neuanmeldungen) und Fahrradständer gibt’s auch massig – allerdings hinterm Haus, dafür aber überdacht- aber ansonsten kann man das auf jeden Fall so stehen lassen

Also, über den Tag-Surfer kommt zwar auch vieles, was man nicht unbedingt braucht (ggf. ist es dann ratsam, einige Tags wieder abzubestellen), aber ab und an findet man durchaus nette Artikel und/oder Blogs.

I truly enjoy the “Tag Surfer” and the “Readomattic” functions found in the Dashboard.  It leads to some interesting posts, some of which I just read, others I will leave a comment.  Here is a comment I left just recently:

Eternal Life …

Although I have heard the phrase often I am not sure I understand the concept. If one is granted eternal life, are they “frozen” in time? Do they exist as an infant, a teen, a young adult, a mature person, and elder?  Or, are they born, grow as we understand aging in our simple terms, only to progress to sentient dust?

With eternal life there is no “old age” or “death” as those terms would be an emphatic oxymoron to the idea. Without a definition of “eternal life” how can one choose it?

Of course, this was from a discussion regarding some of the religious teachings of a well known group, and I am neither for nor against their tenets as I try to keep an open mind and believe people should be able to make choices of their own free will. 

What my reading did spur was the comment, and I guess my naivete in religious ideologies.  I can only hope to see a continued discussion of the ideas being brought forth as I do find them interesting and thought provoking.

Busyet .. aktif banget wordpress bebenah .. kali ini ada lagi tambahan yang sekarang kalo diakses ngga menghasilkan apa-apa di halaman kosong melompong saja. Dan dari staff wordpress juga cuma ada pemberitahuan bahwa itu akan diumumkan resmi.

namun demikian dalam masa percobaannya sesekali ada yang sempat menangkap kesempatan melihat screen seperti ini :

wekss ..ada kait mengait dengan Twitter, subscribe ke tags dll .. belum jelas nih maksudnya apa ..

Menurut teck-line ini merupakan tag surfer dan blog surfer yang dikombinasikan dan dapat dilihat updatenya dari Twitter.

Kita lihat aja mungkin sebentar lagi kita akan bisa ber-Twitter-WordPress ria .. yang mungkin akan bisa muncul juga lama-lama plurk-wordpress, sehingga ngga perlu takut blog atau plurk yang mati.

post ini dibuat dengan windows live writer ® yg dapat anda temukan di blog puskesmas | opm | bljrblog | balita | hkn | idi

การเปลี่ยนพฤติกรรมการบริโภคอาหารกับการลดน้ำหนัก

• พยายามรับประทานอาหารเฉพาะในมื้ออาหารโดย เฉพาะที่โต๊ะอาหาร และลุกขึ้นจากโต๊ะทันทีที่อิ่ม
• รับประทานวันละสามมื้อ
• รับประทานอาหารเช้าทุกวัน
• อย่าอดอาหารมื้อไดมื้อหนึ่ง
• เลือกอาหารว่างที่มีไขมันต่ำ
• รับประทานผัก ผลไม้ ธัญพืชที่ไม่ขัดสี
• ใช้จานใบเล็กๆ เพื่อป้องกันรับประทานอาหารมากเกินไป หลีกเลี่ยงการเติมอาหารครั้งที่ 2
• รับประทานอาหารอย่างช้าๆ เคี้ยวอาหารแต่ละคำช้าๆ
• ดื่มน้ำมากๆ ทั้งในมื้ออาหารและระหว่างมื้ออาหาร ดื่มน้ำ 1 แก้วก่อนอาหาร
• พยายามเลี่ยงอาหารที่ใช้มือหยิบ เพราะคุณจะเพลินกับการรับประทานอาหาร
• อย่าเสียดายของเหลือ ไม่จำเป็นต้องทานอาหารจนหมดจาน
• จำกัดเนื้อสัตว์ติดมันไม่เกิน 2 ช้อนโต๊ะ
• รับประทานเนื้อปลาเป็นหลัก เนื้อไก่และเป็ดให้ลอกหนังออก
• เลือกอาหารที่มีไขมันต่ำ แทนอาหารที่มีไขมันสูง
• อย่าเตรียมอาหารมากเกินความจำเป็น
• หลีกเลี่ยงอาหารจำพวก ทอด ผัด แกงกะทิ ให้ใช้ อบ นึ่ง เผา
• อย่าวางอาหารจานโปรดหรือของว่างไว้รอบๆตัว
• อย่าทำกิจกรรมอื่นๆระหว่างรับประทานอาหาร เช่น อ่านหนังสือ ดูโทรทัศน์ เพราะจะรับประทานอาหารมากเกินไปโดยไม่รู้ตัว
• พยายามหางานอดิเรกทำเมื่อเวลาหิว
• อาหารเหลือให้เก็บทันที
• ไม่หยิบหรือชิมอาหาร
• หลีกเลี่ยงการปรุงอาหารด้วยครีม เครื่องจิ้มที่มีไขมันสูง

สรุปสิ่งที่ต้องการลดน้ำหนักต้องเรียนรู้เกี่ยวกับอาหาร

• พลังงานที่ได้จากอาหารแต่ละชนิด
• สารอาหาร เช่น แป้ง ไขมัน โปรตีน
• อ่านสลากอาหารว่ามีปริมาณพลังงานเท่าใด
• การเลือกซื้ออาหารที่มีพลังงานน้อย
• การเตรียมอาหารที่มีไขมันน้อย หลีกเลี่ยงการผัด ทอด ใช้ต้ม เผา อบ นึ่ง แทน
• หลีกเลี่ยงการรับประทานอาหารที่มากเกินไป
• ดื่มน้ำให้มาก
• ใช้จานเล็ก

อาหารและพลังงาน

        ผู้ที่อ้วนคุณควรสั่งจานเดียวทุกครั้งเนื่องจากอาหารจานเดียวคุณพอจะคาดได้ว่ามีพลังงานเท่าใด คุณควรจะทราบปริมาณพลังงานในอาหารจานนั้นเพื่อที่คุณจะได้ทราบปริมาณอาหารที่ควรที่ควรรับประทาน ตัวอย่างเช่น เมื่อคำนวณแล้ว พบว่าคุณควรได้รับพลังงานจากสารอาหารวันละ 1500 กิโลแคลอรี เมื่อท่านจะสั่งอาหารหรือรับประทานอาหารแต่ละมื้อไม่ควรเกิน 500 กิโลแคลอรี ปริมาณพลังงานในอาหารดูได้จากรายการต่อไปนี้

อาหารประเภทข้าว        น้ำหนักต่อจาน              พลังงาน

                                 (กรัม)                (กิโลแคลอรี)  

ข้าวยำปักษ์ใต้                 189                         248

ข้าวขาหมู                     289                         438

ข้าวหมกไก่                    316                         534

ข้าวหมูแดง                    320                        540

ข้าวผัดใบกระเผราไก่         239                        554

ข้าวผัดหมูใส่ไข่               315                         557

ข้าวราดหน้าหน่อไม้          720                        462

ข้าวต้มปลา                   350                        315

ข้าวแกงมัสมั่นเนื้อ            374                        477

ข้าวหมูทอด                   404                       587

ข้าวไข่พะโล้                  316                        577

ข้าวมันไก่                     300                       596

ข้าวคลุกกะปิ                  296                       614

โจ๊กหมู                        415                        253

โจ๊กไก่                         415                        231

อาหารก๋วยเตี๋ยว               น้ำหนักต่อจาน            พลังงาน

                                 (จาน)               (กิโลแคลอรี)

      เส้นใหญ่ราดหน้ากุ้ง           354                   292

      เส้นใหญ่เย็นตาโฟ             494                   352

      เส้นใหญ่ราดหน้าไก่           354                   385

      เส้นใหญ่ราดหน้าหมู          354                   397

      ก๋วยเตี๋ยวเนื้อสับ              381                     417

      เส้นเล็กแห้งหมู                235                    530

      ผัดไทยใส่ไข่                  244                    577

      เส้นใหญ่ผัดซีอิ้ว              350                    679

O.k., nachdem die ersten Aufgaben nicht wirklich eine Herausforderung waren, hat mich der Tag-Surfer neugierig gemacht und ich hab’s mal ausprobiert.

Also, über den Tag-Surfer kann man Beiträge angucken, die mit Tags versehen sind, die man ausgewählt hat.

Zunächst sind das die Tags, die man in den eigenen Beiträgen vergeben hat,  man kann daraus aber Tags löschen und/oder neue einfügen.

Ich hab schon etwas gelöscht und neues ergänzt: Ich bin nicht wirklich an Sarah Palin interessiert und Hobby ist auch weit gefasst, aber vielleicht findet sich der ein oder andere interessante Blog?!?

vertagg dich nicht.

Acabo de descobrir o fascinante mundo das tags. Eu sabia que elas existiam e que isso tinha algo a ver com buscas, temas para buscas etc. Mas não sabia exatamente o que era feito com isso. Eis que agora fuçando o dashboard do meu novíssimo blog, me deparo com uma seção chamada “tag surfer”, onde o wordpress me indica outros blogs que tenham posts com os mesmos tags que os meus.  Ahhh, é pra isso. Deve servir pra mais coisa também, mas isso só já é diversão infinita.

Acontece que eu só uso as tais etiquetas pra mais ou menos catalogar meus posts, antevendo o dia que eu precisarei delas pra localizar algum texto no meio dos milhares que terei escrito. Não me preocupei com a conseqüência disso.

Sendo assim, ao dedicar um post ao meu delicioso marido, coloquei-o sob a categoria “Tofu”, que é como ele me chama (mas ele jura que a intenção não é dizer que eu sou sem sal, sem gosto, sem graça e com uma textura meio estranha). E aí que, segundo o wordpress, vegetarianos do mundo inteiro estão escrevendo sobre o mesmo assunto que eu!! Eu quero dizer que não, que não tenho assunto em comum com essa gente, mas as tags me traem. Vejam só o que isso me causou… Eis algumas fotos das coisas nojentas que esse robô teve a audácia de me apresentar:

Mas nem tudo foi ânsia de vômito. Outros tofus desavisados também usaram a palavra sem atinar para suas implicações nefastas. E foi assim que eu descobri uma alma gêmea, que em uma frase simplória sintetizou o que eu estava querendo dizer ontem na biriba, adicionando ainda um argumento muito mais poderoso. Lili, veja se me entende agora:
“Not that I dislike what I’m doing at my desk, I just think there’s pretty much nothing that could beat a picnic+beers+nudity. “

Quem pode discordar? Go Vegan!

Add Headings

If you’re wondering where, say, those Headings are, click the overlooked last button on the Add New Post editor, Show/Hide Kitchen Sink, to get an extra row of buttons to put you more in control. Now you have indent, Paste from Word, underlining, colors, and custom characters ♣.

Add Video

For YouTube or Google Videos, all you need to do is click Add Video and paste the URL link. That was easy.

Girl in a Coma, Clumsy Sky, 2007, Blackheart Records

To find out how to add other video types (Vimeo, Flickr, etc.), do a search for video on the Help > WordPress.com Support page. To upload your own videos, you’ll need a Space Upgrade ($) to get the WordPress Video Player.

Add an Image

From Add an Image, I uploaded an image 1024 pixels wide, but the resized image preset at Full size (500 pixels wide) cut part of the image off, and Medium was smaller than I’d like at 300 pixels. But you’re not limited to presets. Click on the inserted image in Add New Post to use the corner resizing handles to size it to your liking. You can also click the Edit Image button for more options. If you click on a posted image, it opens as original size in a new window.

Detroit Publishing Co., Street scene, Rome, Italy, circa 1890-1900, Library of Congress

If you have really large images, you’ll slow down page loading and quickly use up your Media Library’s 3GB free space. Consider resizing those digital camera pics in a Photoshop-type program. Photoshop Express is a free online program ready to use wherever you are posting from. For your computer, IrfanView is another free popular choice for editing images into a post-friendly format.

Add Audio (mp3s)

This is a little trickier. If you use the Add Audio button, you must link to an Audio File URL. Since few mp.3s open in a separate window, you are limited. To upload mp3s to your Media Library, you need a Space Upgrade ($). Here’s an mp3 link:

Meiko, Under My Bed, 2008, mp3.com

To get a player on your blog, you need to use the WordPress “shortcode” for [audio ], paste your URL inside it, then paste it in your post. Adding Audio Files to Your Blog has the details. Here’s a player:

CSS, Alala, Sub Pop Records

Add Shortcodes

Now that you can add an [audio ] shortcode, check out What are the WordPress shortcodes? for more nifty ones you can use, like Google Maps:

View Larger Map

And finally,

With adding content out of the way, be sure to tag your finished post with keywords from the Post Tags module of Add New Post. All your tags end up in Posts > Post Tags. In My Account > Tag Surfer you can see “a collection of posts around WordPress.com from people talking about the same stuff that you do.”

As your site grows, you can add categories (and sub-categories) in Posts > Categories. Assign them to your posts to provide structure and aid navigation. If you want to go beyond the default sidebar Blogroll, Links > Link Categories is waiting for you.

While we’re at it, in addition to Add New Post, you can use Add New Page if you find the Blog (main page) limiting. Pages are static (think About Us) and appear in the Pages sidebar widget or in tabs along the top of some themes (like this one). Like categories, pages can have nested sub-pages.

Now your focus is less on figuring out the Dashboard/more on actually posting!

Es war ein kleiner Schock. Ich komme aus dem Urlaub (14 Tage! Wow!) und denke: “Okay. 2 Lektionen lernen 2.0 verpasst. Macht nichts.” Neugierde! Vorfreude! Voller Elan schaue ich auf die Seite von lernen 2.0: Was ist das?? Da steht doch tatsächlich: This is the end …

Durch viele Wochen hat mich der Kurs begleitet. Donnerstag für Donnerstag eine neue Lektion. Ausprobieren, freuen, lachen, üben, ärgern, nachdenken, begeistert sein, entgeistert sein … Und nun nur noch eine “Finale Aufgabe”. Die ich gerade erfüllt habe, wie man sehen kann.

Ich habe mir die Übersicht über die Lektionen noch einmal ausgedruckt. Was für eine Vielfalt! Hatte ich eine Lieblingslektion? Nein, eigentlich nicht. Ich habe überlegt, wie ich meine Erfahrungen mit diesem Kurs zusammenfassen kann. Da kam mir dieser Artikel aus dem Tag-Surfer gerade recht (und Gelerntes war/ist damit auch abrufbar: Tag-Surfer, Bookmarklets):

aus dem Blog: KiFaSchule:

“Emotionale Prozesse sind für das Lernen wichtiger als bisher angenommen. Der deutsche Hirnforscher Manfred Spitzer plädiert deshalb für eine emotional positiv aufgeladene Schule …

So beginnt ein Interview mit dem Hirnforscher Manfred Spitzer, das am 06.09.2008 in den Oberösterreichischen Nachrichten erschien.

In dem Interview heißt es u.a.:

Spitzer: Emotionen kommen immer dann ins Spiel, wenn etwas rasch gelernt werden soll. Auf die heiße Herdplatte greifen, macht man genau einmal, da braucht es kein stundenlanges Synapsen-Training.”

und das hier:

“Es geht nicht darum, dass man bei jedem Vokabel einen Witz erzählt, sondern darum, dass die Dinge selber interessant sind, überraschend, und dass man die Neugierde am Stoff herauslässt. Dann wirken die Dinge selber belohnend.”

Kawa13’s Weblog › Tag-Surfer — WordPress.

Ja, selber belohnend, interessant, auch manchmal überraschend – das galt auch für lernen 2.0. Und vielleicht war das auch der Grund, warum die Zeit scheinbar im Fluge vergangen ist.

Gelobt habe ich die Macher von lernen 2.0 bereits an anderer Stelle. Mir stellt sich jetzt die Frage: was mache ich ohne lernen 2.0? Schaffe ich es, all das Angestoßene weiter präsent zu halten, zu vertiefen? Soll mein Blog am Leben bleiben? Wird vielleicht gerade dieser sehr “widerwillig” angelegte Blog dazu führen, dass ich “am Ball” bleibe? Oder mein inzwischen gut gefüllter Feedreader?

Gründe zum Weitermachen gibt es genug – aber wird die Motivation ausreichen? Mal sehen …

First of all, I really do enjoy the Tag Surfer feature of WordPress.  It has given me a lot to read when my usual online haunts have gone quiet.  Well, slowed down with posts.  If you are not familiar with the Tag Surfer, you should check it out because it gives you a snapshot of WP blogs that also have the same tags as yours so you get to read blogs much like your own and are pretty much up to the minute.

I love that you get varying points of view on topics that you feel strong enough to write about.  Family is one of those things that I feel strongly about.  I come from a family that has strong values of togetherness and working together so that no matter we have to face in our lives, we will not do so alone.  There is a saying in our Culture that we have that “you get what you put in” meaning that it is your job to be there for your extended family when they need you because they will be there for you when your time comes.

So when do they need you?  I am sure you want to ask that so I will answer.  It’s nice how that worked out isn’t it?  In our lives we have many things to face but there are universal things that we all face no matter who or where we come from.

Death being the most obvious thing that we all face.  We all die and with every culture and tradition in existence today, there are ways to cope with the loss and ways to lay our loved ones to rest.  Family and culture help us define who we are as a person as well as how we honor the lives of our lived ones.

It is no secret that dealing with the loss of a loved one is a personal thing.  Having a community to help you through this is such a welcome thing that I sometimes take it for granted.  It allows us to not only cope with our loss but to give ourselves up to our Culture.  Well, for me that is how it is because there is literally an entire community that helps us through our losses.  Then there are three other communities as well as my hometown.

The Extended Family goes beyond our uncles and aunties on both sides, it extends further than that.  We have a matrilineal society in that our identities and Clans are passed on to us through our Mothers.  As we wait for the birth of our third child, many things are already known about this baby and the life they will lead.

This baby will be born into the Wolf Clan and will have two older brothers who are also Wolves because their Mom is a Wolf.  This baby will have a father in the Frog Clan.  This will have bearing later on as things get done in the Feast Hall but I have gotten way ahead of myself here.  Needless to say, when this baby is born, the journey of life will have been drawn out as far as a path’s direction goes.

Where that path leads to and what obstacles will be encountered remain to be seen for those are the trials and tribulations of our existence.  Family will be there for this child as it has been for this child’s brothers, mother and father.

My brother had a son who was with us for 13 months before dying of SIDS.  It was the father’s side of the family (us) who stepped in and were the Undertakers for the funeral.  This is how it gets done.  Family is there always.

Now I started this post a few days ago and was on quite a roll with it but it got interrupted with a question about something else and I lost my train of thought so I left it as a Draft and have come back to it today.  I had lost what it was I was writing about but remembered it today.

My wife and I were just at an internet cafe and we left messages for our sons on their pages.  We are missing them, seeing other family members in town and wish we could get them out but it can’t be done.  Our oldest will be leaving home for high school and we are not able to be there for him to see him off as he gets on the bus for high school and his own life.

It is just the two of us, well 2.95 of us.  The .95 is our child that we are waiting for.  We are without our family at the moment but that doesn’t mean we can’t leave messages on sites or phone home.  We just miss them.

So I went on quite a tangent, stood on the nexus of who I am and now want to come full circle.  What I had noticed about the Tag Surfer and the Family Tag is that a lot of posts around family also have God as a central figure in their posts.

I am not without God and the Anglican Church.  I was an altar boy at the same time that my Late Father was a Lay Reader in the church.  I was baptized, Confirmed, and married in that Church, say prayers to open gatherings and at times when uncertainty sits in front of me.

I will be carried out of that Church one day, feet first but right now I have some living to do.  A baby to raise, a wife to care for and two sons who are getting ready to test their wings and venture out on their own.  I may be getting a little ahead of myself since they are 10 and 13 but have grown so much in the last 8 months that is surprises and scares me a little.

You may see the tags that I have chosen here so it will be interesting how this goes over and I have to wonder if I don’t get into a religious debate after this.  It has been a little while since I have delved into a Philosophical debate over God so we’ll see how things go.

I do not need to be saved so save that for the street corner okay?  Okay.  =)

Tags are cool. And WordPress’ Tag Surfer is very useful. A little less “automatic” than a recommendation system, but a promising high quality relevant content filter for sure. There are a couple of things about it that bug me, though. So for this blog post I will provide some of my complaints that may have also been expressed by others. So here they are (not necessarily in the order of importance, though)…

Suggestion #1: Include an extra tag filter to your tag surfer results page
lmighton (August 2006) suggested that users should be able to click on their tag list and only receive the posts related to that tag and I totally agree. This seems like a very valuable and logical feature to implement.

Suggestion #2: Make pagination of all the posts that are displayed with this tag service
There is a limit to the amount of posts that Tag Surfer displays based on your tags and that number is not high. If I go to my personalized tag surfer now, I count 19 posts. That is not a lot while there are plenty more. Although to be fair, #19 is a week old, so perhaps they were like “if it is a week or older, people probably do not care”. I do not really agree, good blog posts are good blog posts, and if they are related to the stuff I want, I would not mind being given the choice to read more. Pagination navigate to older posts is a welcome change. Marcy (August 2006) also wants pagination but with the ability to manually set the limit of posts shown on a page for the “dialup folks”.

Suggestion #3: Enable a language filter
Björn (August 2006) and alsotop (January 2007) suggested a language filter (for both the tags and the posts). Most of the posts that are displayed for me are in English, so for me it is not really a big deal. However, I do occasionally see posts that are in a language that I do not understand. So having a filter that gets rid of that sounds indeed useful.

Suggestion #4: Show a summarized version of each post
donaldhtaylor (February 2007) suggested that the posts should be ‘collapsable, so that I can see the headers only and then decide which entries to read entirely’. I agree that this is useful. Some blog posts are long, some are short. Although I am not sure if only the header is really that informative. To make the display page more consistent and easy to follow, display a summarized version of each post instead? If we want to read more, we can always click on it. This would also help more specifically with filtering posts and add to the view counts of blogs that deserve to be viewed (according to what you want to read at that time).

Suggestion #5: Hiding returned blog post results
Mary (August 2006) suggested a way to ‘“x out” of the posts you don’t want, in the same way you can “x out” of the tags you don’t want? That way, I wouldn’t have to scroll down the page and find a post all over again every time I wanted to see it.’ Makes sense to me.

Suggestion #6: Block posts from specific blogs
Anne (December 2006) suggested that ‘it should be possible to block posts from certain blogs from the tag surfer.’ Which is a great idea. The post right after hers is from Matt (a WordPress developer) who claims that they are ‘definitely going to add a blocking feature, keep your eyes on the WP.com blog for an announcement’. 2 years later and I still do not see that feature anywhere. Too bad. This one is actually very important. OK, there is a ‘report spam’ feature, but that is not the same thing. Something does not have to be spam for you not to like it on a given topic.

Suggestion #X: WordPress should do the same for categories
Not really a suggestion for Tag Surfer necessarily. The reason why I shifted from Blogger to WordPress is because WordPress has (personal) categories in addition to tags. As much as I love tags, having one that also responds to categories would be great. We still get to see the posts from bloggers who do not bother with tags.