thetransient » observations http://www.thetransient.com One designer's web design blog Wed, 12 May 2010 17:21:11 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 Plastic food containers are the socks of kitchen items http://www.thetransient.com/plastic-food-containers-are-the-socks-of-kitchen-items/216/ http://www.thetransient.com/plastic-food-containers-are-the-socks-of-kitchen-items/216/#comments Tue, 03 Feb 2009 04:54:17 +0000 Erik Phipps http://www.thetransient.com/?p=216 The title of this post says it all, but I’ll explain further. I was doing dishes while Naomi was struggle to find some plastic food containers to put our lunches in. She continued searching, all-the-while complaining that we had too many miss-matched pieces, and that was when it struck me. She makes the same exact complaint when sorting her socks!

]]> http://www.thetransient.com/plastic-food-containers-are-the-socks-of-kitchen-items/216/feed/ 0 The patterns of blog postings and my own stressful moment http://www.thetransient.com/the-patterns-of-blog-postings-and-my-own-stressful-moment/165/ http://www.thetransient.com/the-patterns-of-blog-postings-and-my-own-stressful-moment/165/#comments Sat, 13 Sep 2008 23:43:46 +0000 Erik Phipps http://www.thetransient.com/?p=165 I just had a fleeting moment of stress! It began when I decided to Google the title of my most recent blog posting, Test driving Internet Explorer beta 2 developer tools. When the results came back, there were many postings with similar titles (to be expected) but one that stood out sent a shock wave through my body. It was for a posting on Robert Nyman’s blog and, for a moment, I thought the title was the exact same as my own! I admire Robert’s blog and read most of his postings, especially the ones focusing on CSS and JavaScript. Luckily I soon realized his entry was about IE7 beta 2 and not IE8 beta 2 developer tools. The remainder of his title wasn’t the same either, but because I instantly recognized his domain in the Google search results and saw that they were associated with a title that at first glance triggered familiarity with my own, thoughts of public condemnation due to plagiarism rippled through my brain!

Once I realized my mistake, I took survey of all the blog postings that were similar to my own, and there were many. Some were from small-time bloggers such as myself, and others from larger web design communities. I think from now on I’ll Google potential title’s just to see what’s out there. Maybe I’ll use them and maybe I won’t, but it will be a good exercise in understanding search results. After all, the writer in me could not go on living if I was blacklisted due to plagiarism!

I’m sure every first-time blogger goes through a similar experience that goes a little something like this:

  1. Start your blog
  2. Google the title of one of your postings
  3. See many blogs with the similar titles and:
    A. Get stressed about the sheer volume of competition
    B. Get stressed about the prospect of being called out for plagiarism
    C. Give up blogging.
  4. Blog about it (or not if you fall under 3 – C)!
]]> http://www.thetransient.com/the-patterns-of-blog-postings-and-my-own-stressful-moment/165/feed/ 0