Heading out to help prepare midnight breakfast at church for watch-night services. Happy New Year to everyone in the MartyBLOGs readership community. Twenty-o-seven was a great blogging year and Twenty-o-eight will be a ground breaking and earth shattering year in the making!
Please be safe and Happy New Year!!!
I just heard at church this morning that an old school mate of mine, Rev. Mark Lee and his fiance Rynetta Washington, were involved in a horrible car accident in Memphis, TN a few days ago during holiday travels to see their families. Mark is the pastor at Bell Baptist Church in Auburn, AL. I’m not sure if I’ve met Rynetta although it is possible as she was formerly a member of the church that I attend.
For those of you who are Christians this is a personal appeal to you to send up prayers for a brother and sister in Christ. I’m praying for healing for them and well being for their families and I hope you will too.
Mark seems to be recovering better than expected but he still has a long way to go. The outlook isn’t as positive for Rynetta at this point and she’s holding on as best as she can. I’m asking all of the prayer warriors to hit your knees and send up some strong requests to the Lord.
My pastor’s sermon this morning was entitled “God’s Greatness: A Source of Comfort”. It was very appropriate for the news that was delivered from the pulpit. No one is more deserving of it than Mark.
I remember him being one of the young guys who was really serious about the Lord when we were at Tuskegee. As I recall he was involved in one of the campus ministries and he consistently made it a point to witness to others with the Word and with his behavior as a young college student.
That last part alone was a witness to me. I was dumb enough to try focus on being cool – I wasn’t that good at it – instead of letting my light shine as much as possible during much of the collegiate phase. I thank God to this day for putting people like Mark in my path during that time to help keep me from falling completely off the deep end spiritually.
So again, if you’re inclined to do so, say some special prayers for Mark Lee and Rynetta Washington before you go to bed tonight and at your watch night services on New Years Eve.
Some of my favorite contemporary music jams thru the years have been the great story songs. The rock and roll genre has definitely had it’s share.
Have you ever fantasized about being a star when you were a kid and pictured yourself on stage behind the mic or with your fave instrument? Then you will most definitely love this classic from Foreigner. Juke Box Hero talks about a kid who can’t afford a ticket to the concert and has to stand outside the stadium listening to his favorite band.
It doesn’t end there though. His imagination leads to positive action (and you wonder why I like the song?) when he buys a used axe and actually becomes good enough to take center stage himself.
Here are the lyrics. Print them out and see if you can take yourself back and jam with the band on the YouTube link. Oh yeah…rock on dude!
Standing in the rain, with his head hung low
Couldn’t get a ticket, it was a sold out show
Heard the roar of the crowd, he could picture the scene
Put his ear to the wall, then like a distant scream
He heard one guitar, just blew him away
He saw stars in his eyes, and the very next day
Bought a beat up six string, in a secondhand store
Didn’t know how to play it, but he knew for sure
That one guitar, felt good in his hands
Didn’t take long, to understand
Just one guitar, slung way down low
Was one way ticket, only one way to go
So he started rockin
Ain’t never gonna stop
Gotta keep on rockin
Someday hes gonna make it to the top
And be a juke box hero, got stars in his eyes
He’s a juke box hero
He took one guitar, juke box hero, stars in his eyes
Juke box hero, he’ll come alive tonight
In a town without a name, in a heavy downpour
Thought he passed his own shadow, by the backstage door
Like a trip through the past, to that day in the rain
And that one guitar made his whole life change
Now he needs to keep rockin
He just cant stop
Gotta keep on rockin
That boy has got to stay on top
And be a juke box hero, got stars in his eyes
He’s a juke box hero, got stars in his eyes
Yeah, juke box hero, got stars in his eyes
With that one guitar he’ll come alive
Come alive tonight
Yeah, he’s gotta keep rockin
He just can’t stop
Gotta keep on rockin
That boy has got to stay on top
And be a juke box hero, got stars in his eyes
He’s a juke box hero, got stars in his eyes
Just one guitar, put stars in his eyes
Hes just a juke box hero, aah aah aah
Juke box hero, juke box hero, he’s got stars in his eyes
Stars in his eyes
I FTP’d the all-in-one-seo-pack into my WP directory with all my other WordPress files and activated it this morning. While doing that I stumbled upon this file default upload feature that was part of the existing theme and I think I know how to add picture files to a post now.
Yep it works. Now to add it to the main file somehow, somewhere on the page. The all-in-one is overlaying itself rather sloppily in my Manage screen though. It’s covering the Post Password and Post Slug boxes from the default instead of everything shifting and sharing space. I’ll have to play around with it and see if its what I thought it was.
Just downloaded a Technorati tag cloud plugin too. Hasn’t changed a thing though. Maybe the seo pack cancelled it out or something. Oh well, at least I can download and install in the right directory. Now I just have to optimize my optimizing tools (LOL).
I think I’ll have to make life easier on myself and buy one of those WordPress for Dummies books too.
Guess what I got for Christmas? My wife bought me a miniature copy of John Ortberg’s “If You Want to Walk On Water, You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat”. It’s based on the premise of Peter’s walking on the water to Jesus during the storm.
Here are some cool thoughts I want to share with you that you can carry into the new year.
On the Law of Cognition:
“Whether we are filled with confidence or fear depends on the kind of thoughts that habitually occupy our minds…
The way you think creates your attitudes…Everything about you flows out of the way you think…
Jesus once said that a good tree cannot produce bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot produce good fruit. He was making this observation in terms of the connection between our inward condition and outward behavior. Over the long haul, good thinking – accurate perceptions, healthy emotions, wholesome desires, honorable intentions – cannot produce bad results; bad thinking cannot produce good results.”
On the Law of Exposure:
“Your mind will think most about what it is exposed to…The law of exposure is as inviolable as the law of gravity…
The events you attend, the material you read (or don’t), the music you hear, the images you watch, the conversations you hold, the daydreams you entertain – all are shaping your mind and, ultimately, your character and destiny.”
—————-
So while you’re enjoying the holidays and any time off you may have from school or work consider meditating on thoughts like these. Consider how to make a significant change of mind for 2008 by getting out of the boat.
Merry Christmas and Happy Saviour’s Day!
Now that the needle is moving in the right direction again I’m targeting particular mileposts once again to grow my readership back to the point were we were this time last year. Currently on Technorati I have an Authority of 15 and a rank of 550,426.
Here are the particular goals I’m shooting for in the first quarter of 2008; no more than 500,000 by the end of January 2008; 350,000 by the end of February; 100K by the end of March. Other than continuing my writing and commenting streak into next semester I need you you guys to friend/fave me on Technorati too.
Copy and paste my base URL into the favorites register on your side while I figure out how to install the fave button please. Gonna have to push the programming part of this bad boy off on someone else so I can focus on scribing.
Until I get there though I could use your help. What’s a good site describing how to add Amazon, Kontera and Technorati widgets to a WordPress.org platform? If I have to ftp files what folders should I put them in? If I only need to cut and paste a hunk of code what file should I paste it into? I’m putting my ducks in a row to have a break out blogging year in ’08. MartyBLOGs is going yard!
Chapter 13 of The World is Flat has a section about the guy who won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. The path to the prize started thirty years before the award. Thomas Friedman describes him as a social-entrepreneur-activist.
The person he refers to is Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh. He founded the Grameen Bank in 1976 which gives small loans without collateral to poor people. It’s Bangledeshi bootstrapping.
Over time they expanded the program to giving amounts equivalent to as little as $10.00 to street beggars. The beggars were taught to add sellable products to their begging repertoire and see which worked out best, begging or selling. You guessed it. Many of these folks are replacing more of the former with the latter.
I like that phrase, social-entrepreneur-activist. It’s just as Friedman writes in the book. Here’s a great way for the traditional activists to redirect their energies from protesting governments and global organizations to focusing it directly to the grass roots and solving the problem themselves.
The Grameen Foundation chronicles some of the organization’s other efforts to proactively reduce poverty around the globe.
I think my pal fredric mitchell and his crew at ypbguide.com could appreciate this guy. Check out their link for another example of the microfinance concept. They have a Kiva sponsored link.
Ready to spread your wings and put your politics where your economics are? Look into these organizations or others like them and see if you’re inspired to give a global hand up.
This is a fun research post for my own purposes folks. You may actually want to try this at home and see what comes of it for you. What am I refering to?
I’ve been curious to delve more deeply into how effective Technorati’s own search metrics are in drawing traffic for us blogger types if we use the most popular keywords and search tags that they catalog.
For instance I put Ron Paul, Briteny Spears and Amazon’s new program DevPay in my title. Just for kicks I’m going to see if putting some of these “Top Search” terms in my post header generates any attention for MartyBLOGs.
I wonder if just a mention of nuffnang which refers to itself as Asia’s first blog advertising company will create any curiosity flow or will I have to write something substantive for the search engines to register my reference to them?
I think it goes without saying that iphone doesn’t need a lot of help because people are talking about it all the time. Can I yank some electrons without a weblink to the product? Let’s give it a try.
Ron Paul is getting a lot of attention for good reasons with negligible results. People who aren’t his official staffers are raising record amounts of funds online but he’s still non existent in the polls. It’s almost like the Ross Perot effect, but on someone else’s wallet.
John Edwards on the other hand is being accused of not being able to keep his penis in his pants. A staffer, Rielle Hunter, apparently is six months pregnant and claims that he’s the man. Can just a mention of two candidates names and a “chick on the side” in the text body create attention for MartyBLOGs? We’ll just have to wait and see won’t we?
Myspace and Google round out the first page of the list. I’ll link them since I’ve dabbled in each. Maybe I’ll get some backlink juice flow.
Here’s a copy of the first page of top tags (“frank rich” “ron paul” authority bacn barcampcologne2 britney facebook fashion galilea montijo google hot huckabee hurricane dean iphone life melayu bogel music myspace nick lachey pantyhose paris hilton photos skype sylar turzi utube vanessa minnillo video johana cardona video noelia web 2.0 yahoomail you tube). Considering that I’m still WordPress tag cloud illiterate I’m really curious to see what happens with this copy-paste right off of Technorati’s site.
I’m going to look into some of the assorted channels on Technorati one day to see what’s hot in different categories and see what I can toy around with search wise. So tell me readers how have you been using key words and phrases strategically to give your blog a boost?
My boy Yobachi went back in the stacks on this one. I can do no justice but to share the link showing Chaka on the drums and singing “Tell Me Something Good” on two different YouTube clips.
If you remember the Mike Douglas Show and Soul Train then you’ll really like these. Here’s your funk and soul music post for the week. Enjoy.
The announcement from the Sheridan Broadcasting Network is official. Read the exciting press release below. Go Alma Mater! Hey Tuskegee!, whoo!, whoo!, whoo!
(Pittsburgh, PA – December 17, 2007) – The Tuskegee University Golden Tigers have captured 2007 SBN Black College National Championship honors. Under the leadership of head coach Willie Slater, the Golden Tigers finished the regular season undefeated and won their second straight Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC) Championship. During the season, Tuskegee also became the first and only historically Black College or university to win 600 career football games and is one of only two in the NCAA Division II.
“We are blessed to have a great team of student athletes who display discipline, resilience and intelligence as well as superb training and athletic prowess,” said Tuskegee President Dr. Benjamin F. Payton. “I am sure our student body, alumni across the world, and the entire state of Alabama join our university and supporters in congratulating these extraordinary young men and their excellent coaches. This marks our second national championship since 2000 and also underscores our 601st career victory.”
In the final SBN Black College Poll this season, Tuskegee finished with 28 first place votes and 292 points to win the Jake Gaither National Championship Trophy. The award is named in honor of the legendary Florida A&M Rattlers head coach who led his teams to 203 wins and six national titles during a 25-year span. Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) champion, Delaware State, finished in second place. The Hornets final poll tally was 206 points and two first place votes.
Tuskegee University will officially receive their second championship trophy this decade Saturday, February 16, 2008, during the 34th Annual SBN Black College All-American Banquet at the Atlanta Marriott Marquis in Atlanta, Georgia. Other honorees will include the 2007 SBN All-American Offensive and Defensive teams, the 2007 SBN Offensive and Defensive Players of the Year and the 2007 SBN Coach of the Year.
The SBN Sports Network is a division of American Urban Radio Networks, and has honored the outstanding football coaches and players from the nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities for more than three decades. The SBN Sports Network provides exciting and informative programming covering all sports and its award winning Black College football coverage is second to none.
About American Urban Radio Networks
American Urban Radio Networks (AURN) is the only African-American owned radio network company in the United States. It is the largest network reaching Urban America with more than 20 million listeners each week. Through three programming networks and its marketing division, American Urban Radio Networks reaches more African-Americans than any other medium in America and produces more programming than all other broadcasting companies combined. American Urban Radio Networks broadcasts 200 weekly news, entertainment, sports and information programs to more than 300 radio stations nationwide. It is the only Black broadcaster with a bureau in the White House. AURN has offices and bureaus in New York, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
Final Poll
SCHOOL MASCOTS POINTS (#1 VOTES) RECORD
*Tuskegee Golden Tigers 292(28) 12-0
Delaware State Hornets 206(2) 10-2
Southern Jaguars 183 8-3
Norfolk State Spartans 165 8-3
So. Car. State Bulldogs 123 7-4
Prairie View Panthers 89 7-3
Jackson State Tigers 62 8-4
Grambling State Tigers 49 8-4
Virginia Union Panthers 42 9-3
Albany State Golden Rams 37 8-3
Others Receiving Votes
SCHOOL MASCOTS POINTS
Alabama A&M Bulldogs 34
Shaw Bears 26
Winston Salem State Rams 23
Fort Valley State Wildcats 19
North Carolina Central Eagles 14
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