Title:	Psych: Nip And Suck It
Author:	billie_doux
Date:	2013-05-24 @ 16:33
Security:	public

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BillieDoux/~3/B4jsZO9ntaE/psych-nip-and-suck-it.html

Title:	Lego X-wing fighter touches down in New York's Times Square
Author:	theregister
Date:	2013-05-25 @ 01:23
Security:	public

http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/25/lego_xwing_starfighter/

Biggest-ever brick model to plug Disney show

Danish toymeister Lego has unveiled the largest model yet using its eponymous plastic chunks: a 43ft (13.1 meters) X-wing fighter that's a claimed 1:1 scale replica of George Lucas' Death Star destroyer, and is 42 times the size of the same kit that Lego offers to children (old and young).…

Title:	Reports: New Xbox could DOOM second-hand games market
Author:	theregister
Date:	2013-05-24 @ 19:05
Security:	public

http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/24/xbox_second_hand_games_drm/

The cost of your cloudy new console

Updated Microsoft has been quite cagey about its plans for games licensing on the new Xbox One, but multiple reports now suggest there's going to be very little incentive for a second-hand games market anymore, and buyers could get stung with extra charges.…

Title:	Sofa and TV (Raleigh-NCSU)
Author:	craig_rdu_free
Date:	2013-05-24 @ 21:58
Security:	public

http://raleigh.craigslist.org/zip/3827449962.html

Title:	Free Above Ground Pool (Franklinton NC)
Author:	craig_rdu_free
Date:	2013-05-24 @ 21:50
Security:	public

http://raleigh.craigslist.org/zip/3827438961.html

Title:	Free lumber / wood (Fuquay Varina, NC)
Author:	craig_rdu_free
Date:	2013-05-24 @ 21:37
Security:	public

http://raleigh.craigslist.org/zip/3827420453.html

Title:	Double mattress and boxspring (Raleigh)
Author:	craig_rdu_free
Date:	2013-05-24 @ 21:33
Security:	public

http://raleigh.craigslist.org/zip/3827414994.html

Title:	Vintage Sewing Machines (N. Raleigh)
Author:	craig_rdu_free
Date:	2013-05-24 @ 21:17
Security:	public

http://raleigh.craigslist.org/zip/3827390259.html

Title:	Furnitures,TV, & more (Durham)
Author:	craig_rdu_free
Date:	2013-05-24 @ 21:04
Security:	public

http://raleigh.craigslist.org/zip/3827370987.html

Title:	Weed (NW Raleigh)
Author:	craig_rdu_free
Date:	2013-05-24 @ 20:45
Security:	public

http://raleigh.craigslist.org/zip/3827341520.html

Title:	Available Pasture Mate (Fuquay-Varina)
Author:	craig_rdu_free
Date:	2013-05-24 @ 20:39
Security:	public

http://raleigh.craigslist.org/zip/3827331470.html

Title:	Free carpet and pad - PPU (Holly Springs)
Author:	craig_rdu_free
Date:	2013-05-24 @ 20:33
Security:	public

http://raleigh.craigslist.org/zip/3827321624.html

Title:	in need of grill
Author:	craig_rdu_free
Date:	2013-05-24 @ 20:23
Security:	public

http://raleigh.craigslist.org/zip/3827305958.html

Title:	Because we needed another athlete's opinion on the issue
Topics:	lgbtq / rights, sports / athletes - football (nfl / cfl)
Author:	yondaime8893 posting in ohnotheydidnt
Date:	2013-05-24 @ 20:49
Security:	public

The Viking's Adrian Peterson is no fan of gay marriage

Title:	Arizona sheriff 'profiled' Hispanics
Author:	bbcnewsworld
Date:	2013-05-25 @ 00:12
Security:	public

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22664299#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22664299

Title:	My tweets
Topics:	twitter
Author:	dharawal
Date:	2013-05-25 @ 12:00
Security:	public

• Fri, 12:08: OMG! Just got accused of being part of the "Aboriginal Mafia" because we gang up on those poor racists. I nominate @LukeLPearson as Capo.
• Fri, 16:48: RT @schoolscatinfo: #slavconnects may I just say if you work in a library but are not qualified you are still a librarian IMHO
• Fri, 22:02: RT @mother_michelle: Who knows what these web things are in my tree? Spiders? Worms? There are about a dozen of them. #sciencequestion http…
• Fri, 22:05: RT @MitchBenn: What do they think happens to a homeless guy when you STEAL HIS SLEEPING BAG? He thinks "guess I better buy a house"?http://…
• Fri, 22:42: Watch "보이프렌드(BOYFRIEND) Love Style HD_Music Video" on YouTube - https://t.co/TMSwvOqYso @howlieT K-pop boy bands love floral trousers
• Sat, 00:13: My fucking fabulousness knows no bounds, first I was part of the Aboriginal Mafia and now I'm part of the Gay Mafia one more and trifecta.

Title:	The Anatomy of a Blog Post in 1200 words or Less
Topics:	blogging, social media, what i did on my weekend..., year of the author platform, yoap
Author:	petermball
Date:	2013-05-25 @ 11:45
Security:	public

This blog post is written to support a piece of my Year of the Author Platform workshop that’s running for Queensland Writers Centre today, breaking down the anatomy of an individual blog post for the participants. However, since I’m a waste-not, want-not kind of guy, I’m sharing it here in case anyone else gets some use out of it.

Since my readership consists of folks who are enormously smart about this sort of thing, I’m also going to use this as an opportunity to grab some feedback. Is there anything I should be telling these folks that I didn’t? Any resources you’d recommend? We’ve got a team of hungry aspiring writers who are eager to siphon your brainjuices, folks, so feel free to throw your two cents in once we hit the comments.

Alright, here we go. Strap yourselves in folks, ’cause we’re going to get meta.

Things to Pay Attention To Above This Text

1) CATEGORY

There’s a handful of things to pay attention to above the first paragraph of this post. The title is the obvious one, but it’s also worth paying attention to the category that appears just above the title, “Blatant Self Promotion.” Categories are a way of sorting web content on an individual site and tend to be very broad – I’ve used this one ’cause I’m also being a bit cheeky and using one Platform building activity (running a workshop) to direct people towards another platform building activity (checking out my website).

Category may not appear above the post in your individual site – its a function of the site design I picked for Petermball.com – but it’s definitely an option on most wordpress builds and it’s a surprisingly powerful tool (which, admittedly, I’ve mishandled on this site for the most part).

2) BY AUTHOR

Another thing that’s worth checking is the “By Author” section. This is a little thing, but its worth checking that you’ve created an account that syncs with your author name, rather than using the default names that blogging platforms tend to create. There’s nothing weirder than going to an author site and seeing everything being posted by “admin.”

Of course, if you’re reading this after the weekend of the 25-26th, the above paragraph will make less sense as I tend to keep “by Author turned off on my website. This is because I’m usually the only person whose writing and posting things to this blog.

3) WEB ADDRESS

This will only work if you’ve logged directly into the post, so if you’re reading this from my home page, click on the title of the post and come on over to the permalink.Once you’ve done that, note that the web address attached to the post uses the title as part of the direct link: http://www.petermball.com/2013/05/25/the-anatomy-of-a-blog-post

Wordpress doesn’t do this as a default, it’s an option you have to set. If you don’t, then your blog posts tend to be identified by a number, which is far less sexy. This is one of those little things its worth double-checking, just like the Author, because it makes your site look a little cleaner.

4) POST TIME

All going well, this has gone live at 11:45 on Saturday morning, the 25th of May. I haven’t gone near the computer in order to make this happen, since we’ve been discussing blogging styles for the last two hours, which I’m calling out here ’cause I really want to highlight the power of scheduling posts in advance.

Things to Pay Attention To in the Body of the Post

5) THE HEADERS

See how I’ve broken things down with sub-headings through the post? These are a function of using the Heading HTML Code, which tells a computer that certain things should be be displayed differently (for the human readers)  and read differently (if you’re a robot scanning the web for content). Header’s become your key words and phrases when it comes to telling places like Google what your post is about. This is a really nice breakdown of how it works.

You’ll need to figure out how to set up headers on your blogging software of choice, but it’s generally in the dropdown options under “Paragraph” when you’re drafting.

6) THE LINKS

I tend to throw a whole bunch of links into a post, pretty much any time there’s something relevant or worth following up on. There’s a bunch of reasons this is a good idea, based on the discussions we’ve had about in the workshop about blogging authority and being a useful internet citizen.

7) THE REQUEST

Scroll back to the second paragraph of this post and you’ll notice that I’ve put a request for comments in there. This is because I like comments, ’cause comments have the potential to be useful as an added resource in a blog post like this, and because it gives people an incentive to keep reading.

8) THE SUMMARY

So one of the second-last things that’ll occur at the end of this post is a summary of what people have just read, reminding them why this sort of thing is useful.

Things to Pay Attention To at the End of the Post

9) THE REQUEST, REDUX

So that request I made for comments at the top of this blog post? I’m going to reiterate it down in the bottom, just to make it clear that I’m really, really happy to hear people’s feedback on this topic.

10) SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS

There’s a whole range of options for linking this post, quick and easy. I’m favouring facebook, twitter, and email, but the other options are there in the Share This section of the link salad at the end.

These aren’t a standard for every blog yet, but dear god, they totally should be. Part of my day-job for the Australian Writer’s Marketplace involves curating a bunch of writing and publishing links for our twitter stream, which gets a fair amount of click through. It’s a job that needs to be done fast, which means that posts I’m on the fence about including get dropped off if they don’t have the easy social media links to work with.

11) USING THE ARCHIVE

It’s a pretty basic thing, but when you hit the bottom of this post it’ll give you a link to the post that occurred before it and the one that’ll come after it. Basically, it’s there to encourage the reader to keep exploring and to make it easy for them to do so.

12) TAGS

The young sibling of Categories. Basically a chance to really break down some of the key components/ideas in your post and make it easier to see. I tend to have a bit of fun with my tags, but if you click on What I Did With My Weekend you’ll see how it works.

The Thing You Can’t See

13) META-DATA/SEO

And finally, there’s the invisible part of this blog post: meta-data and SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization. Your site generates a fair amount of this automatically for you these days, but it’s worth being aware that they exist and have the potential to impact on the way search engines find data.

And that’s it….the anatomy of a blog post

One of the key things I’m stressing in today’s workshop is that blogging is both a publishing tool and an unfamiliar form for most writers, and when you’re setting out to learn how to write blog posts it’s rather like learning the form of a short story or a poem. You learn how to write these things by learning how to read them – looking at the way people have utilized narrative and form.

Blogging is just like that. Certain traits have built up over time because they work, but they also become invisible once you’ve learned them. This is an attempt to highlight some of the thing we don’t always think about, so the YoAPpers (as they’re known around the office) have a list of things to start paying attention to when they find blogs they like. It’s a checklist for figuring out why things that work may be working, or why the posts that don’t work are failing. 

It’s not the whole story, but it’s a baseline. If I’ve missed anything, let me know.

More importantly, if you’ve got some hard-won advice you’d like to pass on to new bloggers, add it into the commentary and I’ll pass it along.

Originally published at PeterMBall.com. Please leave any comments there.

Title:	Nationals
Topics:	via ljapp
Author:	gumbypuppy
Date:	2013-05-24 @ 20:42
Security:	public
Location:	US, Missouri, St. Clair, Franklin, N Svc Rd W, 1093

Today was our actual National Specialty. Results:
Both dogs qualified in Rally Novice, Pi was 96, Tess 93 points. 3rd and 4th place. We tried obedience, Pi was clueless, and excused. I won't try it with him tomorrow. Tess was a little stressy, and nowhere near qualifying, but not embarrassing. Though I hear she did cry on the stays.

BOTH dogs tried to mug the same person who was being a post for figure 8's. I told her she can't be in the ring with my dogs anymore.

Tess was Best Opposite in Veteran Sweeps. Yay! Big ribbons. Today's sweeps judge was my best hope, he likes fit dogs. We may not do any more.

Pi was 3 of 4 in bred by. There are some nice dogs here, it's not like we lost to crap. Tess was 2nd of 2 in Veterans.

Tomorrow, more of the same! Plus, agility! I hope Tess holds out, she was getting a little tired by her last ring time today. Still plenty of pep to chase Pirate around the dog run back at the hotel, though.

Title:	Placeholder of the continuing bad news variety
Author:	robinmckinleys
Date:	2013-05-25 @ 01:16
Security:	public

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RobinMckinleysBlog/~3/5z-XIrVc8ec/

http://robinmckinleysblog.com/?p=11831

The hellhounds have stopped eating again.

I had another four-hours-of-sleep night last night.

The vets had only had some of the lab results back today, not including campylobacter, which is the miscreant both the senior vets like the best.*

It is now the weekend.  It is, furthermore, another bank holiday weekend.  This means we won’t have the rest of the info till Tuesday earliest, and since stuff always backs up over a long weekend, Wednesday is likelier.  Or Thursday.

You’ll forgive me if I don’t feel like writing a proper blog entry tonight.

* * *

* Note that I don’t think it will be this easy.  We tested for all the usual suspects six years ago and came up negative.  And then I took them off cereals, which improved the situation sufficiently that it was possible to believe that what remained was a combination of the notorious sighthound bad attitude toward food and the damage done to their guts from having spent most of their first two years eating something they were fearfully allergic to.

Title:	Two volcanoes erupting in Alaska: Scientists are monitoring and providing alerts on Pavlof and Cleve
Author:	sciencedaily
Date:	2013-05-24 @ 18:02
Security:	public

http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/Ylh9qmVdgkc/130524180252.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130524180252.htm

Title:	Thursday 24 May 1660
Author:	pepysdiary
Date:	2013-05-24 @ 23:00
Security:	public

http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1660/05/24/

Up, and made myself as fine as I could, with the Linning stockings on and wide canons that I bought the other day at Hague. Extraordinary press of noble company, and great mirth all the day. There dined with me in my cabin (that is, the carpenter’s) Dr. Earle and Mr. Hollis, the King’s Chaplins, Dr. Scarborough, Dr. Quarterman, and Dr. Clerke, Physicians, Mr. Darcy, and Mr. Fox (both very fine gentlemen), the King’s servants, where we had brave discourse.

Walking upon the decks, where persons of honour all the afternoon, among others, Thomas Killigrew (a merry droll, but a gentleman of great esteem with the King), who told us many merry stories: one, how he wrote a letter three or four days ago to the Princess Royal, about a Queen Dowager of Judaea and Palestine, that was at the Hague incognita, that made love to the King, &c., which was Mr. Cary (a courtier’s) wife that had been a nun, who are all married to Jesus.

At supper the three Drs. of Physic again at my cabin; where I put Dr. Scarborough in mind of what I heard him say about the use of the eyes, which he owned, that children do, in every day’s experience, look several ways with both their eyes, till custom teaches them otherwise. And that we do now see but with one eye, our eyes looking in parallel lines.

After this discourse I was called to write a pass for my Lord Mandeville to take up horses to London, which I wrote in the King’s name,¹ and carried it to him to sign, which was the first and only one that ever he signed in the ship Charles. To bed, coming in sight of land a little before night.

Footnotes

1. This right of purveyance was abolished in Charles’s reign. ↩

Read the annotations