Month: April 2012

Each foot

assigned a mission

and in moving forward

the steps falling behind

and lying in front

like a child ready for their first

taste of freedom

their first adult moment

savoring the steps

you hear them

the footsteps

some that get away

don’t fall in the echo line of the other steps

racing off in

directions that the other steps do not

sometimes will not

cannot follow

the one lost footstep taking

with-it

some small piece of what could have been

lesser now

a house divided

a house

that will not fall

but leaning

waiting for

the lost footsteps to return

will they?

The fog slowly covers

the path before

and the path after

and the footsteps separate further

time adding a stamp

to a long trail…

From the desk of Sandler Boggs

Riding the peaks and valley’s a bloggers lament

Posted on April 20, 2012April 20, 2012 by scottoandersen

So if you check your blog stats – you will see variances in the number of readers at any one time. In fact the problem is two fold – for example when I visit a blog ( and I visit a few every day – although most via my RSS reader which changes the “impact of the view.”) there is a noticeable behavioral change. For example when I hit a blog via the browser I tend to reach other posts by the author. If it is an RSS feed I tend to only read the post in front of me. That behavior makes the very numbers suspect. It is after all not about the number of people who visit your page rather how many people visit and stick.

As a blogger you seek stickiness.

This is actually an advertising and marketing concept as well (see “Made to stick” by Chip Heath and his brother). It is the concept that drives bloggers nuts. Unless you move past having to have readers and are simply blogging to get stuff out (which I do frequently).

Time on site is the stickiness factor you are looking for. Click through Sleeping half-moon is the thing you don’t want (hit your page and then click off your page right away – the game “Go Fish” not what I wanted problem).

There are a number of ways you can achieve this (catchy titles – great content – fantastic pictures – or my new thought a virtual $ for everyone who clicks on this blog Winking smile see its in your email now)

In the end it’s a numbers game – and you can’t despair if the numbers appear to favor another blog.

.doc

Another shameless review–Dish Network The Hopper

Posted on April 19, 2012 by scottoandersen

Full and honest opening disclaimer – I’ve been a dish network customer for more than 15 years.

The hopper is a new system that dish has brought out to compete with some of the many cable offerings in the DVR and whole home television space. Dish purchased Sling a few years back and this is an extension/improvement/next generation of the Sling Catcher technology. The Hopper acts as a “base station” or home rebroadcast system. This rebroadcast is sent to the “joey’s” that are connected via cable to the Hopper. By cable it’s the wired cable within the house allowing for a rebroadcast of the digital signal from one device to the other.

There are a couple of other interesting innovations that move the receiver high on my list – the first is the full integration of blockbuster on demand. That puts thousands of movies at your fingertips, the newer Pay-per-view movies and the BB on demand service. I suspect they preloaded mine with movies they knew I would like, so I downloaded and watched the horrible movies 1941. It’s a guilty pleasure to watch a movie that stupid that it is funny.

I haven’t tried dish remote access yet – will try that and post another review later.

Another new feature that is interesting is the “Prime time” feature. It lets you record all the shows on primetime (plus up to 3 more shows for a total of 6 shows at once). You can then watch the shows at your convenience. I like to record discovery (How the planet was made and Universe are two particular favorites) and the boys like to record myth busters. In the past we had more shows in some time slots than we had ability to record. Now we can record and watch what we want, when we want.

Overall my personal assessment is that the system is a nice improvement over some of the other existing systems out there. As we get more and more services from our entertainment systems it will be interesting to see how things progress. So far Dish has done a great job integrating two of their purchases – Sling and Blockbuster to produce a more robust and improved solution.

.doc

Walking and technology…

Posted on April 17, 2012April 17, 2012 by scottoandersen