Showing posts with label Blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blog. Show all posts

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Where To Find The Word of Jeff Work Online

Thank you to all of you who have "Liked" The Word of Jeff Facebook Page.  I just thought I'd take this opportunity to welcome those who have connected recently and provide a list of where else you can find my work online.


The Word of Jeff blog - My writing blog (those posts, like this one, are automatically posted to the Facebook Page)

The Verbal Vagabond - My travel blog

Postcards From Maggie Valley - My Maggie Valley, NC photography blog

The Masked Blogger - My comic book industry blog

My articles on Suite101 - I'm formerly a feature writer and currently a contributing writer to Suite101


If you haven't already, I invite you to visit these other sites and again, thank you for liking The Word of Jeff Facebook Page.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

50 Useful Blogs for Writers

Over on The Word Blog, Randy Ray has compiled a list of 50 Useful Blogs for Writers. He's broken them down into 21 blogs of Writing Tips, 10 Word of the Day blogs, and 19 Grammar blogs.

Plus, if you read down into the comments, there are links to some other blogs for writers that might be of interest.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Happy Belated Anniversary To Me

Last Saturday, August 22nd, marked the second anniversary of this blog. I completely let it slip by, so I thought I should correct that oversight. With the exception of one or two days during that time period, I have posted something at least once every day and I believe those non-post days were all the result of having no Internet connectivity.

If you'd like to take a stroll down memory lane, you can click here to read that first post.

Thanks for reading

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Blast From The Past

One of the benefits of keeping a daily blog is when my memory starts fading (as it has already begun to do) I can always go to my posting files and remember what happened. For instance, below is a post I made in a previous blog 4 years ago today on July 25, 2005.

Blog Girl and I had a good weekend, although it was definitely busy! We got off work early on Friday to meet a friend who was in town for a few short hours. Then we raced out to Disney to meet some friends for dinner. Saturday morning we were up early and running errands for a good part of the day, then we got to go over to George and Caroline's to celebrate Caroline's "mmmph" birthday on Saturday night. Caroline is expecting little Rowan in November and is just so absolutely serene looking and glowing. To look at her, you'd never guess she is "mmmph" years old! Sunday morning we were up early to get some family members into EPCOT, then we raced from there to Downtown Disney so we could have lunch with Kirk and Laura at Earl of Sandwich. BG sees Laura at work every day, but I don't get to see her or Kirk all that often or as much as I'd like, so it was nice to spend some time with them. We walked around a little bit, then stopped in at Ghirardelli's Chocolates where BG and I split a hot fudge sundae. The rest of the day and evening was spent here in The Blog Cave getting caught up on some things, but not all things.


Ahhh, memories.

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Google Vs. Bing

I have decided I still prefer Google search over Microsoft's new Bing search and it is all based on one quantifiable and totally scientific reason:

Placing the term "the word of jeff" in the search box brings up this blog in FIRST, THIRD and FOURTH place in results on Google, but only FOURTH on Bing.

Bah! Bing bad, Google good!!

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

This & That

Here's a lot of little things that aren't lengthy enough to warrant their own blog post.

There is a guy up here who does a syndicated traffic report for several of the radio stations and his voice sounds just like Zephyr, a friend of Cindy's and mine in Orlando. Zephyr has a pretty distinctive voice and I wouldn't characterize it as a "radio voice", but this guy sounds just like him in tone, timbre and enunciation. It certainly "woke me up" the first morning I was driving to the office and heard him do the traffic.

I was driving down to Somerset, Kentucky last week for a meeting and I noticed that the closer I got to Nashville (which is only 170 miles from Somerset) the more the radio dial filled up with country music stations. I was so glad I had brought my mp3 player with me. Fair warning.

The Watchmen movie opens this Friday night. I've already got my ticket from Fandango for the 7pm showing, which I SHOULD be able to JUST make after getting off work. It lasts almost 3 hours, so I didn't want to try to go to the later show and be getting back to the hotel at 2am when I have to be back at work at 8am Saturday morning.

Monday I ate lunch at a place I had never tried before called Qdoba Mexican Grill. I ordered the chicken grilled Quesadilla which was 3 times the cost of a Taco Bell chicken Quesadilla but at least 10 times better. Thicker, with more chicken, cheese and fresh pico de gallo. It was delicious and filling! Do they have these in Florida? I can't remember seeing one.

And here's a couple of things that I found I had written in my old mini-composition book when I cleaned it out Monday evening to begin using my new moleskine notebook:

Competing Hotel Commercials

I was sitting in the lobby of the Comfort Inn Suites in Cedar Falls, IA on a Sunday afternoon while housekeeping was cleaning my room. I was reading and occasionally looking up at the TV as "Kill Bill 2" was being aired. Twice there were commercials for other hotel chains; once for Best Western and once for Hampton Inns. I wondered if hotels ever think of trying to find a way to block other chain's commercials to guests while they're staying in their hotel? On the other hand, unless someone is already unhappy with their current lodging, does anyone really see a commercial for a competing hotel and say, "Damn, I'm packing up and moving over there"?

A Child's Smile

I walked into the men's room the other day in a restaurant. There was a dad with his toddler son and the son was just finishing up a man's "business" and obviously pleased with himself. As I walked in and he saw me he smiled the biggest smile of happiness. I smiled back, smiled at his dad and then thought about how there is something so pure and unpretentious in a child's smile. No agenda, no ulterior motive, no making a mask of the smile to hide anything behind it...just an honest expression of happiness. It's a shame we lose that as we get older.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

New Media & Social Media Acceptance Growing?

If you're reading this in the morning, please don't read too loud as hopefully I'm still sleeping in on my first day off after 2 weeks and 144 hours of work.

Thanks.

Zzzzzzzz.

On a daily basis, when I am out on assignment around the country, I review news clips that mention our mission. In the past, only those from "official" media outlets have been collected and disseminated. But for the first time this past Tuesday a blog entry was included and on Thursday, lo and behold, a Twitter post appeared. It feels so cool that new media and social media mentions are beginning to be included now and not dismissed as being beneath recognition.

Do you think Obama, with his high visibility of using YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and even placing a blog on the official White House website, might be responsible for that?

New media and social media writers or spokespeople are consistently accused of being unreliable or inaccurate by the "official" media, but we're all very much aware that those so-called "official" media outlets aren't always reliable when it comes to relaying accurate reports either.

In fact, tomorrow's post will highlight some more of those fun spelling errors I see all the time and some of those are from the "Big Boys."

Saturday, January 31, 2009

My Grandson's Blog

Getting ready to go to Kentucky has left me with little time for blogging. Ran several errands today getting things I need before the trip and filling the refrigerator and pantry with food for Cindy. I also bid a tearful "adieu" to my office late this afternoon when I finished cleaning it out and converting it into a storage room.

I wanted to mention that my 7-year old grandson Mikey has started a blog. He has his first post up and it's how to do a file check in Windows. He's like a little Bill Gates, lol. His Uncle Jeremy and Aunt Amber each gave him different programming language books for Christmas and his mom tells me he has been putting them to good use. Last I heard he had written a program in PHP to create a calculator. He simply amazes me.

Anyway, because of his young age I don't want to make his blog address public, but if you want to stop by and see it and I know you, feel free to send me an e-mail and I'll reply with his URL.

Obviously, he makes his granddad proud, and not just because he is smart and has an insatiable need for knowledge, but because he is a good kid with a good heart who pwns his granddad's heart.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Neil Gaiman Wins Newbery Medal

Acclaimed author Neil Gaiman was announced on Monday as the 2009 winner of the prestigious John Newbery Medal for his novel "The Graveyard Book", and it is a more than well-deserved award for the best-selling science fiction and fantasy writer. "The Graveyard Book" is the story of an orphaned boy who is raised by the spirits in a graveyard, a story that Gaiman says was inspired by Kipling's "The Jungle Book", and an occurrence with his own 2 year old son some 20 years ago when he allowed the toddler to ride his tricycle in a cemetery across the road from their home and was inspired to ask, "What if a young boy was raised by dead people?"

I have been a fan of Neil Gaiman's work since his run as writer on DC/Vertigo's "Sandman" comic book series and have been entranced by a host of his novels like "American Gods", "Anansi Boys", "Stardust", "Neverwhere" and many others. He is also a prolific blogger, which is a favorite in my RSS feed, and he has apparently fallen in love with Twitter and delights those who follow him (that would be me as well) on that social-media tool with multiple tweets on a daily basis.

Newbery winners have included such favorites as Louis Sachar's "Holes" and Kate DiCamillo's "The Tale of Despereaux" as well as a favorite of mine from my own childhood, Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle In Time" which won in 1963.

On Gaiman's blog, he writes that "The Graveyard Book" is not just a children's book. It's "a book for pretty much for all ages, although I'm not sure how far down that actually starts. I think I would have loved it when I was eight, but I don't think that all eight-year olds were like me."

No, but some of us were, lol.

Congratulations to Mr. Gaiman on this illustrious award!

Monday, January 26, 2009

$100 Amazon Gift Card Giveaway!

You like Amazon, right? Want to win a $100 Amazon gift card? Then head over to Miss Musing's blog and see how many different ways YOU can get in on the contest. This post means I've taken advantage of every option available to make as many entries as possible. I HAVE to...have you seen my Amazon Wish List? LOL

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Shout Out On Dot Com Pho Video

Today "Dot Com Mogul" John Chow offered to do a shout out on his Dot Com Pho video to those who twittered him their blog site URL. As you can see in the screen capture below, The Word Of Jeff (last listing on the screen) was included.



UPDATE: My friend zengrrl made it into the shout out too!

Friday, January 23, 2009

Proofreading Tips

My friend Michelle Twittered me this little spelling jewel from a feed she gets;

"not that I'm byast, but you should stay at MGM Grand"

That arrived almost at the same time that an RSS feed showed up in my reader from Copyblogger. Shane Arthur's "14 Foolproof Proofreading Tips for Bloggers" gives some excellent advice for how to proofread your blog posts, but they could apply to any writing. Some of these I already practice and I'm sure I'll try implementing the others as applicable.

Of course, proofreading involves more than just spell checking. Proper grammar, correct citations, working links and just making sure that the piece reads comfortably and correctly are all important components and aspects of successfully proofreading a post or article. Check out Shane's post and see where his tips may help you.

Not that I'm byast or anything...

Monday, January 12, 2009

New Blog Additions

Astute observers will notice some new additions to The Word Of Jeff blog, but for those who have better things to do than look over this blog's design contents or who read it via RSS, here's a short rundown.

Quotes Widget
- over on the right hand column content is a new Quotes Widget that displays a different quote each time the page is refreshed. I like famous quotes and find them fun to build upon in some of my posts and writing, so this was more for me than you, lol, but I hope you might enjoy it as well.

Search This Blog - also on the right hand column content is a Search This Blog button courtesy of Google. It works just like the Google search page; simply enter your word or term and it will list all occurrences of your query within this blog.

Social Bookmark Widget - added to the bottom of every post (even past ones) is a new feature that allows readers to email or bookmark the post, submit it to Digg or Del.icio.us or post it to Facebook or MySpace and more. I was able to find the code that would work in Blogger at AddThis, thanks to a recent great post by Susan Johnston of The Urban Muse, 5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Blog.

By the way, you may recall that back on October 2, 2008 I posted the Top 10 Blogs For Writers. Of the three that I listed as being blogs I would try out, The Urban Muse is the only one that I kept on my RSS feed. That's because of the quality, helpfulness and easy readability of each of Ms. Johnston's posts which always make her posts so enjoyable and educational. If you haven't already, you should definitely add her to your reading list.

Anyway, I hope you'll try out some or all of the new additions and let me know what you think.

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Top 10 Word Of Jeff Posts For 2008

I thought it might be fun to review my blog statistics and see what the top posts were for 2008, in terms of page hits. In case you may have missed them or are a new reader, here are the Top 10 Word Of Jeff Posts For 2008:

10. By Grabthar's Hammer

9. Top 10 Science Fiction Authors

8. Top 10 Movie Theme Songs

7. Sunny 105.9

6. Saying Goodbye To Missouri

5. The Facebook/YouTube Virus

4. The 100 Worst Christmas Songs

3. Angel At The Fence - A Hoax

2. What Does "Des Moines" Mean?

And the Number One Word Of Jeff Post For 2008...

1. Cindy Hard At Work

Friday, November 14, 2008

Two New Widgets

I've added a couple of new widgets over on the right hand column and placed them right at the top so everyone can get a look at them.

The first is a badge that collects images from previous posts and displays them as graphical and clickable links to the post in which the image is found. The hope is that new visitors might be intrigued by an image and click through to the post.

The second is a badge that displays where visitors to the blog are coming from as city, state or country. It's been interesting to see readers from South Africa, Iowa, Atlanta, London and other places around the world. Thank you to all of you who stop in to read.

These widgets, and others, are available free from Wowzio.

Monday, October 13, 2008

Turkey On Wry

Note: From October 12th - 20th posts here will be new but pre-written due to my camping in the mountains of North Carolina where Internet connections are not always available or fast. Thanks for reading!

I first met Mary Ann de Stefano a couple of years ago at a Florida Writers Association mini-conference in Maitland. There is no doubt that she would not remember me from that conference, but she made quite an impression on me during a seminar she was conducting that day.

So when I had the opportunity to join Mad About Words I jumped at including my blog in the community of central Florida writers she has created with the Mad About Words Lounge. I haven't been able to participate as much as I would like to, though I have had a couple of nice exchanges with some members, especially after finding out that one had also been to Montmartre, France where Cindy and I spent a week in May of 2007.

Anyway, I got a real laugh this past week when I received the Mad About Words newsletter via e-mail and saw that my blog was listed under the "Must Reads" banner with the description;

See THE WORD OF JEFF (Wetherington)
for his wry take on life and fun photos



Thanks, Mary Ann, for the kind description and placement. I laughed because I thought that must make me a "Turkey on "wry." LOL. And I WILL make it to your wonderful seminars one of these days, if I'm ever in town long enough.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Blast From The Past

I was kicking around my friend "LilDabster’s Blog" the other day and came across a page she had created to memorialize the surprise my staff had prepared to welcome me back to work upon my return from Scotland in May of 2006.

Yeah, I know it says "Bruce's Return" but it IS about yours truly, who had gained the nickname "Bruce" thanks to a total mix-up of my name by a "customer" of ours the year before.

I remember I got a real kick and a good laugh out of their surprise when I walked back into the office for the first time in two weeks that morning. It took me a few days to eventually get the foil off of everything they had wrapped, and then they took the foil and compressed it into a solid ball of aluminum about twice the size of a standard softball and all of them signed it. I still have it in my office at home. Thanks to Natasha, Rebecca, Heather and Denise for the fun and the thought. It will always be a good memory for me.

And thanks to LilDabster for the Blast From The Past. Catch her writings about being in Houston helping to recover from Ike.

Friday, October 3, 2008

My Dream Blogging Chair

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Top 10 Blogs For Writers

My RSS reader is full of feeds from different writer-centric blogs. I used to have even more, but weeded out some that did not ultimately meet my needs. I NEED more time in the day...

This year saw the 3rd Annual Top 10 Blogs For Writers competition over at Michael Stelzner's Writing White Papers blog and below are, appropriately enough, the Top 10 Blogs For Writers. I'm going to copy/paste Michael's list and descriptions (though in reverse: lowest to highest order) along with a note from me about whether I already subscribed to that particular blog, plan to or will pass at this time.

10. Urban Muse: Susan Johnston covers a wide range of excellent topics that all writers will enjoy. Not one that I had previously read or subscribed to, but after a scan through this eclectic mix of pertinent subject matter I quickly added both the blog feed to my reader and the monthly e-mail newsletter to my mailbox. Great stuff here!

9. Freelance Parent: Two moms, Lorna Doone Brewer and Tamara Berry, provide excellent perspective on writing while balancing time with little ones. Another one that was not on my radar earlier. This indeed looks like an excellent blog for its target audience; freelancing parents with children at home, but I'm an old fart whose children are grown and have flown the nest. Passing on this one, but recommended for those to whom it applies.

8. Writing Journey: Looking for a great stop on your writing journey? Bob Younce’s blog will refresh and energize you. Here's where being an old fart (see above) is a detriment. This blog looks familiar, which means I probably tried it before and gave it up, but since I'm not sure and what I looked at today was more in line with what I like to read, I'm adding it to my feed.

7. Remarkable Communication: One part writing, one part marketing and one part selling, this excellent blog by Sonia Simone will help any writer succeed. Not previously in my feed and won't be added. The "one part writing" seems to be overshadowed by the other two parts. Just not my cup of hot chocolate.

6. The Renegade Writer: Linda Formichelli and Diana Burell, authors of a book by the same name, help freelance journalists find inspiration. Not previously in my feed, but I've read and enjoyed Linda Formichelli's guest posts in other feeds and the blog looks interesting enough to be added to my feed.

5. Confident Writing: Looking for encouragement? Joanna Young will help you take your writing to the next level. Not previously subscribed to, but if there is ANYONE who needs confidence in their writing it is yours truly so I'm adding this to my feed with high hopes.

4. Write to Done: This blog delivers a steady stream of excellent articles for all writers and is the product of top blogger Leo Babauta. Not previously in my feed and won't be added. I scanned through this one 3 different times (I think I must have subconsciously WANTED to find something to make me add it to my feed) but just could not come up with enough incentive to add to an already long list of such feeds.


3. Freelance Writing Jobs: Founded by Deb Ng, this site is the first stop for freelance writers seeking new work and great articles (and it remains a top winner since this contest began). This one has been in my feed for a loooonnnnngggg time. Good source of writing gigs and helpful posts and articles.

2. Men With Pens: James Chartrand and Harry McLeod are the dynamic duo who continue to deliver rich content and community discussion. Also in my feed for quite a while. My only negative comment is that every time I see it in my feed there is a nanosecond that I see "Men With Penis", which really bothers me.

1. Copyblogger: As the undefeated champ, this blog has held the number-one spot for three straight years! The baby of Brian Clark, this blog keeps winning because of its excellent and educational articles. Not in my feed and not planning to add. Copywriting is not my focus at this time. Neither is marketing.

I found the list of Top 10 Blogs For Writers to be very helpful in adding some hopefully new and informative writing feeds to my already overloaded reader.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Dying Bloggers

A week and a half ago the New York Times ran an article about bloggers dying at their workstations. It seems that, at least with the ones who blog for money, these bloggers cannot bring themselves to get up to eat healthy, exercise or relieve the stress they are experiencing trying to pump out enough SEO articles to keep the bucks rolling in. I'm not entirely sure it's completely right, but it's not completely wrong either.

Of course, the tiniest ripple in "the force" is felt throughout the blogosphere and now someone has designed some blog labels and graphics to complement the premise of the article.
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