Warren Shea - World of Warren

Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category

Blogging about blogging Part 4

Monday, June 28th, 2010 at 1:25 pm

Continuing the tradition (sorta – I missed last month) of blogging about blogging every month, here’s part 4: 5.5 months of blogging :O

On average, I have over 1 post/day with the exception of March 2010 where some crazy work got in the way. This month, I’ve been falling behind as well…like I said in previous posts, I’ve been a bit bummed lately and it’s been affecting my will to write.

Anyways, even though my posts are 1+/day, I wouldn’t consider some of my posts real posts. I’ve definitely noticed a decline in long, thought out posts. A correct assumption from a previous post regarding Z’s presence in my life. That and well, I wouldn’t say I’m running out of things to write about but most of my topics occur on the fly now. Also, my attention’s been pretty divided lately between updating this site (warrenshea.com) and actual blogging. I love doing both…but I love working on my site more. Still, working on my site…satisfies me a bit less because there’s a lot of development for subtle changes and quick glances. My Portfolio section, which took quite a while to do, doesn’t get many hits. Kind of disappointing…

My homepage though, receives 90% of my hits…and is also the main drop off point. People come, read my blog a little, and bail. I almost feel like I owe my readers more content, I want them coming back, I want them to looking at the various topics and while most of them may be pretty meaningless, I hope that one post here or there will grab a random reader enough that they think “…wow, that was interesting, I’m gonna bookmark this site and come back to see what else this guy has to say”.

People find my site mostly through Google searches. I get a lot of redirects to my site when people search things like:
“Why don’t I like myself” or “Why does a person hate who she is” and stuff like that. It redirects to this post: A person who does not like herself should not want be friends with a person like herself” which actually simply discusses a Gate Keepers 21 character.

I also get this quote in Google:
“With the coming of man came the illusion of free will and with that illusion came chaos. With every choice we make we literally create a world..”
which leads to this post Welcome to Earth Prime. I guess I wasn’t the only one that thought those few lines were a masterpiece.

/to be continued in Blogging about Blogging Part 5: Bots and content stealing websites >:(

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AN EPIC JOURNEY – 100 POSTS! O_O

Monday, April 26th, 2010 at 12:54 pm

I want to write about something EPIC to commemorate this special event !
But alas, much like the rest of the blog, I have nothing of interest to report.

Blogging is pretty fun. Writing is pretty fun.

I’ll continue this journey…I seem to be attracting more readers. People who DON’T know me in real life. I’m surprised O_O and confused O_o. Thanks to my readers…Google Analytics tells me the numbers are steady/going up…at least they aren’t going down.

*raising Tim Horton’s large steeped tea 1 cream 2 sugar* Here’s to another 100 posts….to 500 posts, to a bajillion! Cheers! :D

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Time Jumps: Big and Small

Saturday, April 17th, 2010 at 11:51 am

Big Time Jumps
An effective way to tell a story with new characters without angering the audience for ditching the old.

I’m watching a random episode of Gatekeepers 21. I’m watching characters almost completely unrelated to the original cast. They’re somehow related to the old cast, the cast I knew, the cast I grew up on and grew to love. The series drops scattered little pieces of information regarding the original cast…but all they do is raise more questions. The questions are never answered through the entire series…doing so would ruin most of the fun and mystery

Examples:
Beverly Hills 90210 (20-30 years?)
Gate Keepers and Gate Keepers 21 (31 years)

Small Time Jumps
The characters from the original series are still the focus but they skip development or uneventful times…the story post time jump sometimes goes back to the period of that short time jump to fill in some blanks (Naruto, Battlestar Galactica, Flash Forward) and sometimes don’t at all (Digimon, Death Note, Gundam Seed, Dragon Ball).

Examples:
Naruto and Naruto Shippuuden – 2 years
Digimon Season 1 and 2 – ?
One Tree Hill – 4 years
Sky’s Content – 2 years
Death Note – 6 years
Gundam Seed and Gundam Seed Destiny – 2 years
Battlestar Galactica – 1 year
Dragon Ball Z – 10 years
Flash Forward

If I were to write a story…
….I’d probably throw in a time jump in there. There’s so much mystery you can add, so much you can do without explaining every little detail. You can go back and only explain the important parts, the interesting parts. Seems like it would be a lot of fun…

Gate Keepers discussion…again
I’ve talked about Gate Keepers for 3/4 of the last posts -_-;
I’m personally peeved at how many unanswered questions were in GK21…now, I know there were 3 series, Gate Keepers taking place in 1969, GK21 in 2001 and GK1985 – a novel which was never published and I can’t seem to even get a synopsis anywhere…there are so many questions in that world that I’ll probably never know :(
So frustrating… >:(

I really like how the eyes are done, for any character that can open a gate, they’re perfectly circle….I love when the gate appears in their eyes and the sound that accompanies it…like some kinda deep vaccuum. Thinking about ocular movement, the gate in the eyes reminds me of the sharingan…but the gate keepers thing is better. there are 2 rings…and it lights up :)

Tags: Gate Keepers 21, Naruto
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Addictions: Old & New

Thursday, April 15th, 2010 at 12:23 am

Old Addictions
I have an addictive personality. Obviously. I can only recall a couple of things I’ve been addicted to recently though I’m sure there are tons if I think a little harder…which I don’t feel like doing.

1. FarmVille – I started playing FarmVille despite telling my co-workers that I shouldn’t. I resisted longer than everyone but eventually caved. And then I went crazy with it. I did the math on the crops with an excel sheet…found out the best exp. per dollar per time per space. I caught up and surpassed everyone I knew. Really fast. That was my goal. And then I quit. At least I went out with some AWESOMENESS:

2. World of Warcraft – I played this for years but recently quit. I won’t go into the reason why I quit. While I had a goal (10 80s, one for each class) that I reached a couple of months before quitting, I still had other goals that will remain unfinished forever. I’d like to say quitting was difficult because it was an addiction…but it was surprisingly easy. One day…it just didn’t matter to me at all anymore.

New Addictions
With these two old addictions out of my life…I’ve started a few new addictions. Slightly more productive than the last 2.

1. Twitter
2. Blogging/warrenshea.com
3. Google Analytics

RE: 1 & 2 – The first 2 are obvious…given the number of tweets I post, as well as the number of blog posts.

RE: 3 – With my new site, I’ve recently began to love looking at Google Analytics. It’s quite interesting to see what Browser/OS is being used to view my site, how many hits I’m getting, what resolution people are using, where the clicks are coming from (with map overlay). I can’t tell where specific clicks come from, Google blocks that level of detail…it only says what city they’re from…so my Toronto # is huge…and I have some readers in Waterloo, Montreal (?) and London (?). I have no idea who these people are -_-; Kinda creepy. Post a comment so I know!

Phasing out Addictions & Distractions
1. Gmail – I have Gmail open all day. I check it hundreds of times a day. I don’t think it’s healthy. I’m going to try to limit my Gmail use to a couple of times a day…
2. MSN – not sure what I want to do with this…I don’t really like getting messages when I’m working on my site, which I’ve been doing a lot lately. I like being in the zone, being left alone, just me + music/show + warrenshea.com + PS + DW. I might start going off MSN when I start working…just finding it slightly annoying these last few weeks. Even when people message me, my replies are pretty cold anyways…like I don’t have time for them. And I don’t. It might be better socially if I’m just not there so I don’t reply with rudeness.

Side Note of Creepy
Tried logging in to Facebook and it seems someone’s been trying to get into my account…someone from the US (Saint Paul, Minnesota). Never had this happen before…I’d assume it’s because I’m a much stronger online presence now? Maybe my email’s “out there”. Or maybe it’s just coincidence…Anyways, I’m on to you !

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New Self-imposed Blogging Rule

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010 at 6:51 pm

No posting blog posts til the day after I write it.

I think that last post was TMI. I shouldn’t talk about my OCD……Agree/Disagree?
I hope no one read it…but I doubt that.

And if I discard my last post about not blogging until Friday, does that self-imposed rule still exist?

…I guess not.

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