Cotton-Pickin’ Days

Keeping track….

LA Times Editor’s Picks, March 14, 2007:

Blog of the day: www.aheartylife.com: Interesting and helpful news/trivia focused on heart health.

California Healthcare Foundation’s iHealthBeat, March 14, 2007:

Dr. Hsien Hsien Lei, a genetics blogger, said, “The line is very fuzzy” when it comes to maintaining patient privacy. Lei started a site, www.geneticsandhealth.com, that lists blogs that successfully abide by privacy regulations and disclose their biases. “I just felt sites were not upfront about their affiliations,” he said.

Still, Lei said that while medical blogs touch on a grey area, they do provide benefits. Blogs can disseminate research and opinions quickly and provide patients with access to physicians.

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What a crazy morning! I went with Stephen’s class to the local church on a school field trip. As far as I could tell, the other children behaved beautifully while Stephen was acting up. I’m not sure if I should be volunteering much in his class anymore since it appears he has issues with me being there. The teachers don’t seem to think it’s a big deal, though, and always encourage me to be involved.

I want to be active in his class, but not if it causes a disruption. The worst thing is, I’m not sure he got anything out of the experience. I was giving him a quiz about the type of windows, benches, and statues in the church and he was being completely ornery pretending like he didn’t know what in the world I was talking about. Will have to give him a strict talking to before the next time.

Thank goodness I get some respect in other corners of the world. Margarita Bauza, Work Life Reporter of the Detroit Free Press, included me today in a story about medical blogs and patient-doctor confidentiality. I’m quite pleased with the juicy quotes attributed to me and think the whole series is worth a read for anyone interested in medical and healthcare blogging.

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Last week, Shai, Christina, William, Jayvee, and I chatted a bit about b5media. If you’re interested in what I sound like when I’m half asleep, have a listen by clicking the play button on the player below.

powered by ODEO

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Down on my knees, I beg you.

Please visit A Hearty Life this month.

I’m celebrating my first anniversary there and trying to raise a little money for the British Heart Foundation. None of it comes out of your pocket either. All you have to do is to read a few posts a day and I will donate $1 per 1,000 pages viewed. (I get an average of 50,000 page views per month and want to beat that!) You’ll not only be more heart healthy, you’ll be contributing to public health and awareness of heart disease as well.

Please please pretty please? Won’t you visit A Hearty Life today, tomorrow, and the next day?

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From bLaugh with slight modifications

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Ever since I started devoting most of my non-Stephen time to professional blogging, it’s been a challenge explaining to people what exactly it is I do. Saying I’m a blogger seems so frivolous yet I take it very seriously, but calling myself a writer seems a little pretentious although it’s accurate as well. I would still like to say I’m a scientist* but I haven’t been one for many years now.

When b5media received venture capital, it began calling itself not just a blog network but also a “new media company,” which means diddly squat to most people everyone I talk to. John Evans calls Syntagma a “publisher of network magazines” and his bloggers “digital authors.” Huh?!

In a nutshell, it’s Web 2.0. If we create any type of content on the Web whether it’s blogging, podcasts, videos, or even just comments on these, we are part of Web 2.0. b5media VP Ops, Mark Evans, explains:

To me, a basic definition of Web 2.0 is it’s active/dynamic Web; the place where people do things. This is different from Web 1.0, which was static and mostly involved accessing material that you would have otherwise had to have read in a newspaper, magazine or book (and all those flawed IPOs made by companies with little revenue and but lots of hype).

Here’s a video that helps describe the essence of Web 2.0 created by Professor Michael Wesch of Digital Ethnography @ KSU. Too bad I can’t show it to everyone who asks what I do but I may send them the link to this post.

*Stephen knows that Mama is a scientist, Baba is a general manager, Gong Gong (grandpa) is an engineer, and Po Po (grandma) is an office manager. He also knows which big internet companies my sister and her husband work for.

HT: ProBlogger

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Barbie lovers are taking offense to my characterization of their dolly in a review I wrote for Play Library about the Fashion Angels.

They quoted me as saying,

…they are well made and perky rather than trashy (Bratz) and not so provocative (Barbie). Their wardrobe is amazing - glitter, sequens, and leopard print trims all sturdily tailored for endless changes of ensemble.

And they continued in response,

What planet is that person living on? Laughing [emoticon] I’ll bet that woman doesn’t allow her child to watch television, and makes her eat granola and tofu! LOL! Laughing [emoticon]

Granola and tofu? YUM!!!

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Local Girl at An Island Life just emailed me with a cryptic message:

Hey, you’ve been nominated for a Share the Love Blog Award. Get all your friends to vote for you . . . you’ve got my vote! Good luck!

Christina Zola had already nominated Play Library in the Happiest Blog category, so that’s what I expected. Sadly, Play Library hadn’t been included (why?!) but Cotton-Pickin’ Days is nominated for Best Site Design!

Cotton-Pickin’ Days started out on the standard WordPress template, Kubrick, and it served me well for almost a year but didn’t have all that I was looking for. Trouble is, I have absolutely no design experience and can barely use Photoshop. (I’ve got grand plans to become Photoshop proficient and even made the banner for Laura at CFS Squared but these simple tasks take me hours.) I entertained the idea of hiring someone to design a template for me but I actually don’t have a lot of demands and paying someone $500+ to come up with a design I’d want to change on an yearly basis seemed a stretch.

So off I went to search through the hundreds of free designs available on WordPress Theme Viewer. It wasn’t easy to find one that fit the theme of cotton-pickin’ and was customizable enough that I could alter the parts I wanted. Luckily, I’ve learned a lot of about the backend of WordPress from working at b5media and I knew that if I had any trouble, I could always ask Christina, who knows all and is incredibly patient with my dumb questions.

I finally settled on Crayon World’s 3-column design, which mirrors b5media’s. I wanted to show off the contents of Genetics and Health, A Hearty Life, and Play Library in one column while having fun personal jibber jabber in another. As you can see from the original screenshot, I have changed it considerably to enhance the functions I find important. I’m glad that others appreciate it enough to nominate me for an award but I must thank Sadish Balasubramanian, creator of Crayon World, for giving me something wonderful to work with.

And now it all comes down to begging for votes. I’m listed in section 4 under Best Site Design - Cotton-Pickin’ Days. Click here to vote. It’s an honor to be nominated. (But even better to win! )

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Over on the far right sidebar underneath the feeds of my b5media blogs, I’ve added two more widgets (because it’s the Year of the Widget and I don’t want to be left out!).

The first is the last three posts I’ve added to my Google Reader link blog. They’re posts I come across which I think are interesting enough to recommend.

I’ve also added a LibraryThing widget that show three random books from the ones I’ve cataloged so far. I still have about 50 more books to go from those that I have with me in London. I have other books kept in Singapore and California that I may try to catalog as well although I may never be able to reunite my entire book collection anytime soon.

Hope you enjoy these time wasters as much as I do!

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I have the opportunity to go to next week’s London Toy Fair BUT I can’t decide if I should bring Stephen or not. Come take my Play Library poll and help me decide what to do!

Should I go to London Toy Fair?

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