SOME RANDOM DUDE

Well, as expected, the posts are not frequent while I work on the redesign of this blog. Surprisingly, last month still had 30 comments - totaling $15.00 of Comment Love. All $15.00 was donated to KQED.

I will be dropping the amount of working hours per week in the next week or two which will help speed up the redesign process. The design is already at the point where I could implement a beta if I was not as concerned about getting all the details right. I hope to write a little about the process in the coming weeks. Thanks to all who have commented even with my lack of updates.comment love, comments, donations, july 2008, kqed public radio

Well, May and June were supposed to be a big couple months in order to generate enough comments for a special Comment Love project. I dropped the ball - big time. The beginning of May started off really well and then tapered off extremely quickly and I have yet to recover. A couple large projects, a vacation and a continuing battle with burnout have done my blogging in for about a month and a half. I know I will get back on the horse eventually, it just has not happened yet.

All that said, the charities that we were supporting for May and June, the International Rescue Committee’s Iraqi Refugee Program and the Disabled American Veterans Charitable Service Trust were extremely important and I feel extremely guilty that my otherwise unimportant problems got in the way of hitting our goal. Therefore, I decided to donate the maximum amount ($100 to each charity) even though we barely hit half that mark in comments. I really dropped the ball in terms of posting - frankly, I’m surprised we got as much as we did.

The posting frequency will be back up to normal levels soon - hell, just posting this article was a major accomplishment for me in my current state. Ironically, I have been doing a tremendous amount of interesting work that I am really looking forward to sharing. Be on the lookout for posts sooner than later.blogging, burnout, charitable service, charities, charity, comment love, disabled american veterans, international rescue committee, iraqi refugee, love, month and a half, refugee program service trust

Even with less posting after mid-April due to the ramp up for next month’s special Comment Love, we still managed to generate $16.50 thanks to 33 comments. All $16.50 was donated to KQED.

I was really surprised by the amount of comments that came in - more surprising were the articles they came from. I am hoping to spend more time actually analyzing patterns on participation on this blog so I can create content that interests more people yet sticks to the format and niche that I wish to focus in.

Stay tuned for this upcoming month, there should be a lot to see here.
april 2008, comment love, donate, kqed love

Based off a recent comment on this blog, I am taking up the commenter’s suggestion and am dedicating May’s Comment Love towards the troops in Iraq. I have been a staunch critic of this war from very early on in its inception. I also have the sense that most of the regular readers of this blog are not too fond of it as well. However, regardless of what anyone thinks of this war, there are many people who are suffering greatly, on both sides, because of it. So, in the month of May, the Comment Love will go towards helping U.S. troops and Iraqi families affected by the war.

At this point, I am leaning towards The International Rescue Committee for Iraqi Families and The Disabled American Veterans Charitable Service Trust for U.S. troops. These are still tentative as my knowledge in this area is still limited. I chose these two as they address what I consider to be key issues in aiding victims of this war as well as their low percentage of overhead - meaning more dollars go to the cause. May’s dollar limit will be increased to $100 and the total will be given equally to both charities. So if we hit the $100 max, both charities will get $100.

The past few months have seen some lower-than-average comment counts - due mostly to my lack of posting worthwhile articles. I am planning to go above and beyond the norm in terms of posting in May so as to encourage as much discussion (and subsequent donations). I am truly hoping this equates to more comments.

I am still very open to suggestions for better charities to give to for either causes. Please feel feel to contact me with your thoughts.

casualties of war, comment love, donate, iraq war, iraqi families, love, may 2008 us troops

To go along with the Comment Love program, I have tried to add a bit more incentive for commenting. Last week, I implemented the CommentLuv plugin. I must say, the whole thing took no time at all - it was quite a breeze. There are so many ideas and pieces of functionality that I would like to implement on this site, but when I do not even have enough time to write real articles, I have a hard time trying to bite off anything of that scale. Still, slowly but surely, I am trying to add pieces to increase participation.

There is going to be a special month of Comment Love coming up, so I hope this extra addition will help stir up conversation. blogging, commentluv, comments, love wordpress plugin