The Webcam's Back: A Window on Small Town America Reopened

My webcam is back online, posting two new pictures a second, at "Small Town America: Central Minnesota."

It had been doing quite well, from December 27, 2007, to April 26, 2009. That was when my computer got a rather serious malware infestation, and had to be de-wormed. After that, I could monitor the webcam from my computer, but the software I was using to post to the Internet was not working. At all.

After quite a few hours of frustration, spread over several days, I decided that, much as I liked traffic generated by the webcam, I was spending too much time trying to make it work.

Fast forward to this week, when my son-in-law-to-be was visiting for a few days. He told me about USTREAM, a service which provides pretty-good video feeds. He talked me through the setup - which was quite easy - and I had a 23 frames per second live streaming video for a few hours. Then I had to reboot my computer, and couldn't get the webcam and my computer to get along. As far as the computer was concerned, the webcam wasn't there.

No clue why.

Today, around noon, I did what I'd done before - physically disconnected the webcam and rebooted the computer. This time, it worked: and I've got a video feed again.

It's slower, now: by intention. Two frames per second lets people see the cars, cyclists, pedestrians and hummingbirds: and doesn't put quite so much strain on my system's resources.

It's not an ideal situation, but it'll do for now.

Easy Griller Blog Gets a New Lease on Life

I started my Easy Griller blog on July 28, 2007.

It's description is wordy, but pretty thorough. "Notes of a backyard griller, without many gadgets and gear. A propane grill, fork, tongs, and spatula is all I need to grill hamburgers, hot dogs, and the occasional chicken."

In March, 2008, I stopped writing new posts. I'd found it was hard to write something interesting - even from my point of view - about grilling every Saturday and Sunday. Winters included. Each time I started another post, it seemed like I was writing something like: "Grilled burgers again. Same as yesterday. Same as I'll do next weekend. They taste good."

Watching linoleum curl might be less exciting, but it would be a close contest.

I'm trying something a little different now, based on how I handle my Apathetic Lemming of the North blog: writing micro-reviews about grilling articles and websites I find; with the occasional ramble, when I've got something vaguely interesting to say.

One thing that's got me excited about this re-start of Easy Griller is that I've gotten very good return on the time I spend on Apathetic Lemming of the North, both in terms of page hits and revenue. I'm hoping that I'll find that the same is true of Easy Griller.

Today's post, "Chicken Grilling Recipes That Really Work: But First - - - " is the first of what I hope will be many more.

Waiting for Inspiration? Start Working!

Thought for the day:

"We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action."
Frank Tibolt, The Quotations Page

I'm Not a Forty-Year-Old Kid Any More: Time, Organization, Energy, and Priorities

My wife told me that she'd like to see more of me. Apart from giving me reason to question her aesthetic sensibilities, it brought me back to an issue that I'd noticed.

Properly Prioritizing Projects

Several promising projects have slid off the back burner, and are somewhere behind the stove now. These include:

• Artwork for an existing website
• A new website's
  • Graphic Design
  • Site architecture
    (fancy talk for organization and navigation)
  • Copy
  • Artwork
• Content for a somewhat-lapsed blog

I'd known that I'd been letting a bit of the non-urgent slip by, but hadn't realized how big that pile behind the stove was.

Worse, I realized that I hadn't been spending as much time with my wife and kids as I could - and probably should - have.

Sound familiar? Nothing new here.

This week I took a deep breath, and about a half hour, to think about where my time and energy was going.

I'm Not a Forty-Year-Old Kid Any More

The first thing I decided was that it was time to admit my limitations.

• I need sleep
  • At regular intervals
  • Around 8 hours a day
• When I don't sleep I get tired
  • When I get tired I get stupid
  • When I get stupid my productivity goes down
• I need exercise
  • There's a cartoon, doctor saying to patient, "What will fit better into your daily schedule: exercising for one hour, or being dead for 24?"

Family is Important

Sure, an exciting, rewarding career and a thriving business is fine (I'll let you know when I've got both!), but there's not much point to either if you don't have, and keep up with, your family. At least, that's the way I see it.

Urgent and Important Aren't the Same Thing

I've been paying attention lately to blog posts and website issues that needed to be dealt with now, or sooner. That sort of thing can be distracting.

Details are Important - So is the Big Picture

I've let two things happen: Concentrated on the details of keeping an ambitious set of blogs and websites fairly up to date; added little tasks one at a time, until the principle of the camel's back applies. Since I'm the entire staff, as well as the manager and head of the company, I can't let the detail work become overwhelming.

Or, rather, I shouldn't have.

Reality Check and the Next Step

I don't do my best work after about 10 or 11 at night. What made me aware of that was a late-nighter I did recently, when I couldn't think of the word "pretentious." For me, that was spooky: like a driver not being able to remember where the switch for the headlights is.

So, I'm cutting back my workload: to get better work out of me; make more time for my wife and family; and have the brains, energy, and creativity I'll need to spark up "Easy Griller" and "Minnesota for Web-Wise Travelers," and create "Loonfoot Falls," the website.

It's probably going to mean lower traffic in the short run, since the biggest time-eater right now is "Apathetic Lemming of the North." I've been doing six posts a day - mostly what I call 'micro-reviews.' It's fun to do, people like to visit, but I think I need to grow other places online.

We'll see how this works.

Good Advice About Time Management

"How to Shave Ten Hours Off Your Work Week" assumes that the reader works in an office: and gives good advice about meetings.

The seven-point list is worthwhile reading for people who are their own bosses, too. It's the same touch-papers-once, sort of advice I've read for decades, with the possible exception of Michael Hyatt's advice about unfocused Web surfing.

What makes this list helpful is that

• It's manageably short (seven items)
• Recognizes human needs and limitations ("make appointments with yourself")
• includes a review/revise step

I'm not convinced that it'll open up ten hours a week, but I've been wrong before.

("How to Shave Ten Hours Off Your Work Week" is Friday's post in "From Where I Sit / Musings on My Life, Thomas Nelson and the World of Publishing" - Michael Hyatt, President and CEO, Thomas Nelson Publishers.)

ROI: Reality / Optimistic Interpretation

I know that's not what ROI really means!

But when looking at the immediate ROI of my blogging, I realized that I had to decide whether to keep being hopeful, or look at the flattening rate of traffic growth.

Not a hard choice, really. The six blogs I started have enough material now to give a rough idea of which attract attention and which don't.

I've also noticed that the dramatic growth in the first two weeks has leveled off. Dramatically.

Finally, although I haven't had this much fun in a long time, It's time to spend a whole lot less time on blogging, and more on developing the sites I have, and publicizing them.

Not that I'm finished blogging!

Tomorrow I Gotta Get Organized

And I probably will.

I got an inexpensive 18-month planner, scribbled the top projects for tomorrow into appropriate time slots, and set it aside for reference tomorrow morning.

And I just remembered a detail that I missed. That's what these notes are for: jotting down things that would be forgotten or ignored.

There. Got that written down: the non-trivial, time-dependent item that I left out of tomorrow's to-do list.

This system should work: it's simple, and avoids the sort of self-micro-management nuttiness I've tried before.

Time will tell. And so will this blog.