December 2010
0 posts
Day 30: The End: Stats & Wrap-Up
Hard to believe it’s the end of my thirty day experiment, but it is.
Here’s the wrap-up:
Writing something substantive nearly every day for thirty days was no easy chore. I’ve had a blog at briangunzenhauser.com for some time, and there have been several times that I’ve gone over a year without posting. That’s pathetic. Setting a rigorous schedule held my feet to the fire. It was tough but...
November 2010
30 posts
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Day 29: Working Hard(ly Working)
When I’m online, I’m distracted. And writing this essay is a prime example. I started it, bounced over to IM, bounced back, wrote a little bit, decided to look something up, bounced back, wrote a little bit, bounced over to my work email, bounced back - all within a span of about three minutes. I love the Internet, but it’s a distraction. I have the world at my fingertips, but the...
Day 28: Bungee!!! (Part 2)
Every summer since the first jump I wanted to go back. Finally in 2008 - 10 years later - a friend and I decided to drive up to Canada for the jump. A few weeks later we crossed the border. Instead of stopping at the currency exchange by the border we drove right into Ottawa. That worked out well, as I’ll let you in on a little trick we discovered: you’ll get a much better exchange...
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Day 27: Bungee!!! (Part 1)
This was supposed to be easy. Less than two months prior I was on top of the world - literally - speeding towards the ground as a tandem skydiver. This piddly 200 foot jump was going to be nothing. Except it wasn’t. I stood with bare feet at the edge of a bridge in Quebec, Canada, my toes just barely over the edge of the mesh-like metal surface while my hands tightly gripped metal handles next...
Day 26: Sans Time
Ah, the holiday’s. A time for friends & family, food and fun. Unfortunately, I’m also running short on time.
I’ll be back tomorrow.
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Day 25: Thank You
I’m going to keep the word count light today given that it’s Thanksgiving.
To all my readers out there: thank you. I appreciate the time you take to visit and read what I write. I hope you enjoy reading these posts as much as I enjoy writing them.
Now, back to the downtime. Gobble, gobble.
Day 24: Recipe: Cranberry Sauce
One of my favorite things about Thanksgiving is savoring my Grandmother’s homemade cranberry sauce. Unfortunately, as she ages it gets harder for her to make. So, this year I’m taking over the reigns.
It’s really simple to make, but to get the right viscosity for this recipe you will need a sieve. I use a chinois sieve with a wooden cone (similar to a pestle) to separate the...
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Day 23: Smile
Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart. -Anne Frank
I like to smile at passerby’s as they walk down the street. It doesn’t matter the color, heritage or size of the person, or whether it looks like they want to rob me. In most all cases, I smile at them.
Everyone deserves a smile at some point in their day. Maybe the only smile they see is the one I...
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Day 22: Quitting is for Winners
Quitters never win, or so the saying goes. Yesterday I went back-and-forth on a post several times before finally calling it quits. My thoughts were malformed, and I knew I was writing in circles. The topic I was writing about? Quitting. I needed the break, and am back to give it another shot. You see, quitters can win. There are two types of quitting I’ll refer to first:
Quitting with...
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Day 21: Hitting the Wall(s)
I had the idea for the post in my head for about a week. Over the course of a few days I jotted notes down, organized my thoughts and set myself up to hunker down and write the entire post.
But it didn’t go as I expected. I changed direction, then changed back, extrapolated, then changed direction, then changed back. At one point it seemed like I was making progress.
But then I hit a...
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Day 20: Customer Service Fail
We had been waiting over 10 minutes for our server. The restaurant was nearly empty with only about six tables occupied, including ours. After figuring out our lunch order, I felt we waited long enough, so I went up to the bar and asked the manager when we might expect our server. “Where are you sitting?” he asked. I walked him around the corner, and pointed to our booth. “Right there.” ...
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Day 19: Ah, Lighten Up, Would Ya?
That’s what I tell myself. The more I write, the more I realize the challenge of releasing personality through the written word. I’m sure part of it’s due to the self-imposed requirement to write every day, which definitely makes it harder for me to let myself roam when writing. Maybe that’s just part of the challenge. And as I see it - a two-sided challenge. Personality can either come through...
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Day 18: Surf's...Up?
Generally the first thing people ask when I tell them I took a semester in Hawaii is “did you surf?” Did I? Yes. But can I? Ehh. I’d surfed before, but it wasn’t pretty. I rented a board in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, but it was a short board and the waves were, I don’t know, maybe 4-5 feet? Big enough to surf but also big enough for me to eat it if I messed up. Yeah, I ate it. The...
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Day 17: Speed Up Workflow & Increase Productivity
As a teacher, the majority of my time is spent in class, while a considerable amount of time is spent grading and preparing lessons. What I don’t want to do is spend a lot of time with the logistics of writing assignments, rubrics, notes and organizing them between my home and office. When I started out, I would create Word docs for assignments, rubrics and lesson plans. I would store them on my...
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Day 16: A Better Framework for Website...
Last week I presented the case of why Flash is best when adding audio and video to a website. However today I will cite an example of where Flash is not best: adding website interactivity. Most of the interactive power being stripped from Flash started with the jQuery JavaScript framework. Since the release of jQuery, JavaScript frameworks have increasingly become a popular and easy way to add...
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Day 15: Own Your Online ID
As both a blessing and a curse, I’ve always been somewhat of a control freak. So when it comes to googling myself, I want to make sure that what is found paints a picture of what I want people to find. There are two ways to do this: either don’t put anything online and hope that no one will find you, or put a lot online and own your online identity. You can assume that most people will google...
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Day 14: How Do You Spend Your Day?
If only there were just one more hour in the day, then I would do everything I wanted to. I find that each day, from the time we wake up to the time we go to sleep, is analogical to life. We wake up every morning and have a choice of what to do. How should we spend it? Why should we spend it this way? Who should we spend it with? Life is very much the same. Nearly every one of us has the ability...
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Day 13: Taking Another Break
Last Saturday I decided to take a days rest from writing and it served me well. I think I’ll take one today as well. Talk to you tomorrow.
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Day 12: I Want My Flash TV
“Flash is dying. It’s irrelevant now that Apple doesn’t support it. HTML5 is the way to go.” “No, HTML5 isn’t ready yet. Flash will be relevant years from now. ” Technically you’re both right, but it’s not that simple. The debate seems to hinge on HTML5 versus Flash, but that’s all wrong. They serve completely different purposes. HTML5 - or any incarnation of HTML - is not used to create...
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Day 11: What's a Flexitarian?
Me, evidently. This past summer I decided to try giving up meat for a week. Why? Well, I read that a vegetarian diet lends well to running. And since I run quite a bit, I gave it a shot. I’ll admit I was intimidated at first. My main fear was not feeling full and not getting the proper nutrients I needed. Surprisingly I made it through the week just fine. However, I have since reverted to eating...
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Day 10: Tips for Better SEO
I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard it. “Do you guys also do SEO?” Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is sometimes marketed as a separate function away from Web Design. It’s not. In fact, for it to work well it should be tied directly to the strategies that a Web Designer uses while a site is being built and/or maintained. Here’s how: Stick with the Standards By now this should be old...
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Day 9: Near Death at 10,000 ft.
The scene was familiar. Again I found myself staring out the window, ready for my turn to jump. This time I ascended above the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii, a far more spectacular view than my first jump in northern New Jersey. Our plane turned left and my view changed from the lush and rugged volcanic mountains to the azure hues of the Pacific Ocean. Bliss. The plane sputtered at 10,000 feet over...
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Day 8: A Week In: Progress and a New Metric
I’m a week into this project and so far things are going well. In light of the progress made over the past week I’d like to describe a new metric I’m using, as well as reflect on some ideas I’ll be considering as I continue this experiment. A New Metric: Clocking Myself On the first day I outlined three metrics which I would use to measure the success of this experiment: topics, popularity and...
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Day 7: Goodbye Coffee: Why I Switched to Green Tea
There’s no way I can live without my coffee. Or so I thought. About 10 years ago I tried giving it up because I didn’t like relying on something to get me through the day. That lasted all of about six months. All it took was a whiff of a coffee one morning and I was back at it. This past February I quit again, but this time for a different reason: to switch to green tea. So far it seems to have...
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Day 6: Taking a Break
Sometimes I just have to concede that I need a break. Today is one of those days. I plan to return to writing tomorrow.
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Day 5: Unmasking Your Inspiration
“And while I try to write, all I can do is sit here.” … “At the same time, I know the only way I can answer the question I have in my head is to go for it. To write. To put words down and decide if it’s right for me.”
Those were the first words I wrote for this blog. I had no ideas for my first post; writers block. It was based on a fear that I would have nothing to say. How...
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Day 4: Falling from 10,000 ft.
As we climbed to 10,000 feet, I stared out the window. I love flying. While connecting my harness to his, my tandem instructor tapped me on the shoulder. “I sure hope this thing is connected right!” I knew he was joking. I turned towards him, chuckled, and went back to looking out the window. He tapped me on the shoulder again, “Hey, see that?” He pointed out the window. I saw nothing but sky....
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Day 3: Three Tips for Better Web Writing
Update: Cross-posted to the personal blog of Brian Gunzenhauser.
Writing for the web requires a unique skill set as opposed to other types of writing. Unless you’re writing a blog post or a tutorial, long blocks of text can act as a barrier to information. Web users are generally busy people looking for specific information, and they scan pages quickly until they find what they’re looking...
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Day 2: Ignore Your Text Messages (If Just...
Adam sits in the restaurant, catching up with his friend Nate who he hasn’t seen in months. Regularly while they “catch-up,” Nate pulls his phone up below his face, smiles, types a few words and dives back into the conversation. Adam says nothing, though the blank stare on his face during Nate’s interruptions speaks volumes about his thoughts. The story isn’t true and the characters are...
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Day 1: Announcing the 30 Day Essay
I have always enjoyed writing. As a teenager who was confused about his life path after high school, I wrote journal entries. As a young man who appreciated life and love, I wrote lyrics and poems. On a trip to Hawaii in 2007, I wrote a travel blog. And for the past four years I’ve dreamt of writing more and publishing my work. But something has been standing in the way, and I don’t know what it...