*TANGENTS

I’m the kind of nerd that blogs on my birthday, but I really wanted to write this thing. This concept is cliche and a little tedious, but I did it anyway. Get over it. I just wanted to write what I’ve learned as though I’ve learned anything new or interesting in my 26 years. Sometime soon I’ll add photos, when I feel like caring about it.

1. Snow is the worst.

I live in Salt Lake City, which is alright, except for their “Best Snow On Earth” BS. It’s really the same snow you’d get anywhere else with a similar climate, but only when you’re tired of it being windy and cold. During the regular months of winter, Utah is cold, but rarely snowy. It isn’t until it’s supposed to be warm again that it starts snowing buckets. If you like snow, then you’re probably an evil person.

2. There’s really no reason to be vegan.

I’ve been a vegetarian for almost 12 years and I’m just two years shy of being a vegetarian for half my life. Within those 12 years, I’ve been a vegan for exactly 3 days consecutively. It was extremely hard and vastly unrewarding. You really have to care about animals to be a vegan for longer than 72 hours, and I can’t handle not having delicious cheese inside my body.

3. I hate TV.

I’m not sure how we can have great TV shows like Arrested Development without subsidies from advertisers, but I’m sure we can figure something out. But sitting through commercials, a schedule you can’t tinker with and how much it costs, has ensured that I’m done with cable/satellite forever. Viva la Netflix!

4. Quit your job often.

In the past two years I’ve had two jobs. Before that I had several others. Not being afraid to quit has been the best thing for me. I graduated college and thought I was going to be a journalist. I ended up a “online marketer” but learned a lot of valuable things. When I quit that job and started working for SEO.com, I learned even more. I’m starting to carve out what I want to do in life. The most hackneyed advice is to “do what you love”, but you have to find out what you love by living. So quit your job, change industries often and learn all you can about life.

5. Learn to like sports.

I’ve spent a lot of time in other countries, and I’ve found the absolute fastest way to make a friend is to start up a conversation about sports. Almost everybody has a favorite sport and you can go a long way with people by just getting them started talking about it. Don’t go to crazy in sports fandom, because that can be annoying or even isolating. But being able to talk enough sportsese is a great way to get people talking and make a friend.

6. Take a lot of photos.

I don’t need to explain this. It’s just worth doing.

7. Anyone and everyone can play the guitar.

I’ve made the mistake of being the huge douche bag at every party playing guitar by himself in the corner. Learn how to play the piano or something cool instead.

8. French Fries are like Religion.

Everyone has an opinion about whose is the best and which one is right, but the fact of the matter is they’re all just deep fried potatoes.

9. Nothing is better than snuggling.

I like it. It’s warm.

10. Fashion is a waste of time.

“Don’t you want to look your best?” I look the best when I’m happy and I’m happy when I’m not worried about how I look. This is why I’m wearing the same Weezer hoodie I’ve had for eight years and not forcing myself to vomit.

11. I enjoy being self-aware.

Take that, Sarte! I have no idea what I’m talking about.

12. 80 percent of your problems come from 20 percent of your possible sources.

Find what is causing you the most stress in your life and cut it out completely. Chances are, it’s something minor. Replace with more of whatever is making you happy.

13. Just listen to people.

I can yammer on for days and days. But people like to be listened to. I’ve made a lot more friends by listening.

14. Write like nobody’s reading.

I’ve sort of come to the realization that nobody reads this blog. And that’s just fine with me. I started this because I wanted a place to write, not because I wanted people to think that I was some sort of expert on life and existence. The fact of the matter is that this is the only way to find a voice is learning what works and what doesn’t. And you’re never going to find that out without doing a little bit of terrible blogging. (Also, I got this advice from a terrible bumper sticker about dancing. It’s lame. But I don’t care.)

15. Travel where you live.

I have lived in Utah for 2 years now and still never have gone to Moab. I’ve been all over Europe and the Middle East, but never took three hours to drive down to Moab. I mean, I’ve been plenty of places in the States, but I should take the opportunity before I head off to college in North Carolina.

16. There is not enough time in your life to watch another Michael Bay movie.

He is stealing your money. You wouldn’t sit there as someone robbed your home, would you? Don’t waste the time or money to make him any richer. He’s a huge waste of resources. And a communist.

17. There is nothing more fun than learning.

It’s the very best thing I can think of. Some people like skiing. I love learning new skills. Heck, learning to ski was way more fun that actually skiing. Whenever I learn how to do new things that improve my current talents and skill set, it makes me feel way better about life. Like a natural high or something.

18. Do the things you hate first.

Do them first, do them fast and then don’t worry about them any more.

19. Learn the subjects you were bad at in high school now

I’ve recently started to learn how to do Math, which is a subject I never got better than a C on in high school. But knowing how Math works is important in the world. Likewise, all the kids who did well in Math in high school are still writing definately on Facebook. Let’s use the expanded knowledge we’ve gained in the last decade to pick up those subjects that were lost on us. For some of us, that means reading The Scarlet Letter. For me it means Algebra. There’s no reason not to try now. We should be smarter, right?

20. Eat candy and cake.

People who hate certain foods have rape dungeons. Carbs aren’t bad, sodium isn’t bad, fat’s not bad and neither is sugar. What’s bad is eating too much and sitting around watching the Bachelor. That’s what too many people are doing now. Eat what you like but not more than you’re willing to burn off for the day.

21. Exercise.

Hot on the heels of the last life lesson is this: get up and run you fat face! (I yelled into the mirror) Our ancestors had to chase down their food for days, but we eat whatever we want whenever we want. Our body has a primordial need to run around and exercise- don’t deny it that.

22. Rarely, in an argument, is anyone right.

We only think we’re right. If I write anything else, people are going to start fighting me on it.

23. Do what you love in your spare time too.

People say “find what you love and do it for a living”. I propose finding what you like and doing that for money and then doing what you love in your spare time. That means at the very least you’ll like your job, but you’ll learn to make better use of your spare time too. Why wouldn’t you want to maximize your fun?

24. Pizza is the best food in the world.

It just is. My grandmother always said she’d just as soon eat the box than the pizza, but she grew up in an era when blacks couldn’t drink from the same fountain as her. So I’m going to say that she had a few things wrong.

25. Twitter is the best social networking site

Twitter is a conversation, it’s minimal and it’s fun. It helps you find people who have the same interests as you, who can help you solve problems and are experts at what they do. Rarely when I ask something on Twitter do I get crappy answers. Just try asking a serious question on facebook. See how many fart jokes you get.

26. Birthdays aren’t worth celebrating.

I’m 26 today. I went to work, danced around in a hail storm, called my mom, had a nice dinner with my wife and bought a new hard drive. That’s about all that needs to be done. The whole day doesn’t need to be about you, and the less you demand that, the more fun you’ll have.

I’m in love with a site and that site is Plinky.

I came across Plinky accidentally, like one comes about a good story or a true love. In fact, in the pursuit of ruining the Internet (which I do daily to place food on my table), I found the one thing that might convince me that the web is worth saving. It’s a strange amalgamation of democracy and communism: everyone answers their own opinions to a daily question. Then they build on each other’s works. It’s the most beautiful of all the Internet microcosms: one that could convince me that there is yet a reason to spare this bright blue ball we call earth.

Here are the top three things I love about Plinky:

1) It Is The Swift Hammer Of Thor To Writer’s Block.

The thing that I think I have the hardest time with as a blogger is coming up with the will to write. WordPress is a damn commitment when you really get down to it. I have to write the whole post, edit it, rewrite it, find photos, edit them, upload them and schedule it. That’s not including the time I spend cursing God or hating myself. It honestly takes a few days to fashion a good post (and you’ve seen what I consider a good post around here). In fact, I have a dozen “drafts” that are pretty much done minus photos, formating and the occasional affiliate link (a boy has to eat, right?)

Where Plinky succeeds is that they make everything easy. The idea is to be brief, but they don’t limit you to a certain word count. They give you a daily prompt and you answer it in as few or as many characters as you’d like. My post today was quite lengthy, but I’ve had others that were only one sentence. It’s just free form fast pace prose creation.

I started a Tumblr blog almost 2 years ago to help me do that very same thing. However, in the 20 some-odd months I’ve been part of Tumblr, I’ve only posted 8 times. In a month of being on Plinky, I’ve made seven answers and made friends. Prompts, I’ve found, help me to fire up my creativity. Plinky is like a light jog before a tremendous workout. It get’s the ideas moving and the blood flowing to the fingertips.

2) It’s A Great SEO Tool

Google’s recent Farmer algorithm change vastly affected the way a lot of people are doing their link building. I’m personally not a huge link building fan (though there is obvious value in it) I prefer to build links organically by having my readers link to it. What readers you ask? I’ve got some- I think.

However, adding links to a Plinky post is easy enough and every post I’ve put up has been indexed by google within a day of the post. My most recent answer was indexed in less than an hour. That means that not only do you get the anchor text you want, but it will also be indexed very quickly. Now it’s not a great link, but it is still a link. And if that’s what you need to feel better about your site at the end of the day, then it’s a perfect way to do it.

I’m not a huge believe in this, and I imagine that by saying it’s an “SEO tool,” people will take that to mean it’s a place that they can vandalize with useless text and get anchor text out of. I’m going to ask you to be gentle with Plinky, for the next reason I’m going to list.

3) It’s An Unadulterated Realm Of The Internet

Here’s what I mean by that. Facebook used to be this place where only college students could hang out, post photos and stalk cute girls. Now my 85 year old grandfather has a profile. Twitter used to be a free forum for conversation. Now you’ll get spammed any time you mention apple. LinkedIn always sucked.

There are very few places left on the internet that are free of the spam and wasted space of most modern social networks. Remember when everyone had a MySpace page? Then what happened- The only people who wanted add you were amateur porn stars and people with terrible bands. But that place exists again, and it’s called Plinky.

I haven’t been bugged by anyone offering me a free iPad 2. People are actually just reading my answers and leaving responses. It’s like being heard again. It’s nice. I know that I just listed it as an untapped SEO resource, but hear me out on this. It shouldn’t be ransacked and brutalized by SEOs desperate to get a link. They only ask for a short answer to a prompt, and there’s no reason you can provide a quality answer to the question and get a link in the process.

The Bottom Line

Plinky is a new favorite site, and this week’s winner of the Magnetic Oreo Award. I encourage anyone who fancies themselves a writer to use it often to do some metaphorical stretching before writing.

Creating your own themes is a really easy process, and I’m sure if you’ve figured out how to import the files, you’ve also learned to export them and how to tweak the colors to your particular fancy. That being said, I’m going to go ahead and explain it anyway.

Step 1: Find a color scheme

Finding a color scheme that both looks good together and can cover the various facets of web code can be tedious. Unless you’re a design nerd of have some level of OCD that requires that everything have the same six corresponding colors, using a web app to help you pick them is a lot easier.

I’ve found that one of the best places to start is with Adobe Kuler. I like to pick a cool looking Kuler group and base my colors around that. Kuler is also a great way to do this, because you can upload your own images and have Kuler extract the color theme automatically. If you’re not into Kuler, there are several other sites, including ColourLovers, Pictaculous and Daily Color Scheme that provide the same basic function. Get about 6 colors to work with.

Step 2: Assign The Colors To Code

In any particular language you’re going to have to have around 6 categories to assign colors to: Numbers, tags, attributes, comments, strings and functions (I realize this isn’t true across the board, but it’s true enough).

HTML is actually the language that you’ll have the most trouble giving colors to because it has to incorporate everything into one screen. But remembering that comments are comments, numbers are numbers and strings are strings regardless of the language helps in the ultimate coloration of the final product.

The easiest way to do it is to have Kuler up on one side of your screen and use the magnifying glass tool in the color selector screen just drag it over the color you want to assign. You could always drag the selector around the color wheel and shade it to taste, but I’ve never had that much time in my life.

Unfortunately, there’s no super quick way to do this, so you’re going to have to click on the color box next to the words and repeat the process until you’ve either finished or decided that you have something better to do. You can also use the radio boxes to the right of the color box to either bold or italicize the particular aspect of your code.

It’s important to realize that there are 5 different HTML color files: ASP-HTML, JSP-HTML, LassoScript-HTML, PHP-HTML and plain ol’ HTML. I usually only bother to change the PHP-HTML and HTML files, because I largely just edit wordpress themes. Honestly, you should only change the files you’re going to use the most.

Step 3: Export, Zip and Upload.

Finally, when you’ve gone through the process you just need to click the export button and save it to a file. It’s a good idea to export the original files (or you could just download them from here) just in case you want to restore everything to the factory settings.

You have to export each individual file and save them as the file type as the name in the designated folder. Either save just the files you will use most often or go through and make an entire theme.

Shortly, I’ll have a video ready that I’ll put here as a walkthrough. But it probably won’t be until Friday.

If you want to share them with others, leave me a comment and I’ll post them here on my site. I enjoy seeing people’s designs and want to create a library of coda seestyles that people can download from a single site.

I’m a little disappointed with CreativeBe, who apparently became Incredible Bee and stopped providing the world with Sponge, the winner of this week’s Magnetic Oreo Award. The good news is that the award can still go to CNET, for their website versiontracker.com which essentially has preserved an app that Mac didn’t see fit to put in their newfangled app store. But still this little application can save you a ton of space on you hard drive, as well as making it impossibly easy to delete files that are critical to your OS functioning properly. Win-win.

Here’s the skinny on Sponge:

Sponge is an app that scans your hard drive and tells you what is taking up the most space, helping you find space wasters and reclaim your hard drive. It does this in three ways: Listing applications by size, scanning volumes for data hogs and pulling up duplicate files.

Remove Applications

This is the feature I have used the least, but I’ve still used it. At the very least it shows you which applications are not actually getting used that much. It made me ask the eternal question: “What happens if I delete the Chess game that came pre-installed on my Mac?” And I found out. Civil war in Libya.

Sweep Data Hogs

When I said that this was the greatest app, what I meant was that this was a pretty good application with one great feature. And this is it: Sweep Data Hogs. By selecting one of the volumes on your computer, Sponge instantly starts calculating which ones take up the most space and ranks them in order of size. Obviously, if you’re like me and you have a lot of movies and music on your computer, these are going to be the data hogs. Sponge lets you track every folder in the entire hard drive, helping you find duplicates, undeleted podcasts and other non-essential space killers and put them to rest forever.

I found the movie Troy on my hard drive in an obscure section of my iTunes music folder as well as nearly 20GB of podcasts I thought I’d deleted. That freed up an incredible amount of space my drive.

BE CAREFUL THOUGH! Sponge lets you delete any file, big or small, essential or nonessential. Don’t go deleting random files in volumes like User or Library— you could FUBAR your OS. Only delete the files you know don’t belong, or else you’ll get to erase your entire hard drive.

Remove Duplicates

I used this once. It was worth it. It just looks for files with the same title, but I have never needed it. It’s worth trying on your iTunes folder and maybe docs. The only thing it found on my computer was a couple of ebooks I copied into my documents and never got rid of from the downloads folder. So it saved me a couple megabytes.

Overall, Sponge is this week’s winner of the Magnetic Oreo award. The application is free to download from version tracker and worth it. GET IT TODAY, PEASANT! I’m sorry, that was a little rude of me.