Hey, hey — two months in the bag! Sweet!

I’m really digging everybody’s interpretation of themes and hopefully we can keep it up and have a lot more fun with this challenge. It sounds like those who are participating are having a fun time, so keep it going!

A few quick notes before I get to this month’s stuff –

• I have an e-mail reminder list set up. Basically, I’ll e-mail the group with about 10 days left in the month to remind you. When I remember, I’ll also shoot one out the day before the end of the month, as a reminder to post the following day. I can’t always guarantee that one though! If you are not on the list, let me know in the comments below that you would like to be on it.
• Second, I set up a Facebook group for those who are interested. Reminders and maybe some discussions or other things can be done there.
• If you haven’t already, attempt to check out everybody’s posts and consider commenting. These challenges are great for personal growth, but it’s also nice to be interactive with all the others in the challenge!

Anyway, April is in the books and now it’s on with May. We’re growing slowly and it’s my hope that will continue as there are some talented people out there and I love seeing all the photos.

For those of you who are a little late, the link for April’s challenge is still open for another day or two, so link up!

Before we hit up this month’s theme, for new people, allow me to refresh the rules a bit.

Here’s how it will work.

• On the first of each month, I’ll have a blog post here with the theme for the month.
• Over the course of the month, participants will take photos with their interpretation of the theme. On the last day of the month, participants should  publish their blog post, which will include five photos from the month. (please don’t recycle photos from the past … the idea is to hopefully challenge you to go out and take new photos to interpret the theme).
• I’ll have a link-up thing at the end of my post so people can come and post the links to their posts so, hopefully, everybody can go go check out and comment on other posts.

There is no rule on equipment or anything. Use a cell phone. Use film. Use a point-and-shoot. Use a DSLR. It doesn’t matter. Just make sure you publish your blog post on the last day of each month, come here and link up.

It’s simple!

Your blog posts can be as simple or as in-depth as you want. I’ll likely talk a little about each photo. But if all you want to do is post photos, feel free. The idea of this is to give a small challenge and give everybody a chance to express themselves with photography, participate in a challenge and have something to blog about.

That’s it. Easy, right? So join in! Help us continue to grow this challenge by telling fellow bloggers/photographers about the challenge and hopefully it can become a great monthly thing!

For those still with me, this month’s theme is: Night.

There are so many ways to look at and think about this theme. It doesn’t always mean a long-exposure shot. Test things out, think outside the box, but most of all, have fun with it!

Please make sure your blog post publishes Friday, May 31.

If you think you are going to take part in this, drop a comment below so we can see who all might be trying to tackle this challenge!

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog@gmail.com. Also, please “Like” HooHaa Blog on Facebook!

Forget about the past, you can’t change it.
Forget about the future, you can’t predict it.
Forget about the present, I didn’t get you one.

I really wanted to be clever for this post.

Alas, I don’t know if I have it in me. See, there’s this prolific blogger out there. NoNamedDufus is his name. (By the way, what did the doctor say when that was put on the birth certificate, huh?)

Maybe I should have ended that with eh?

See, Dufus is Canadian. Yeah, we could go so many different ways with that one, eh? I’m not sure though. See, he’s Canadian. But lives in French Canada.

I think.

Oh, Canada, indeed!

Nobody truly knows as the legend of the Dufus goes worldwide.

He’s a traveler. Been to hundreds of countries, they say. But apparently he’s been kicked out of all of them. Nobody says why, either. Something about Punnery or something along those lines.

See, Dufus is a master punner, among other things. He has this talent of really making people laugh, chuckle or roll their eyes. All with one pun. Just one.

Apparently, in some countries, puns are a bit frowned upon. A ban would follow. So Dufus would wander to the next country, pun the heck out of its people, and be banned. The biggest problem is Dufus doesn’t always know the language where he is traveling. But, you see, he’s a whiz at sign language, which comes in handy. Therefore, he gets by.

But today is not a pun-free day. See, Dufus is 61 (so he says, but that is debatable, with his world travels and all), which gives him a licence to pun you into the ground, if he so chooses. He’ll likely be playing golf though. Well, unless there’s still snow in Canada, which is probably true. There’s snow in Canada 11 months out of the year, no?

Maybe that’s why Dufus became so punny? Being shacked up for that long would make anyone go bonkers. Maybe it’s with all the books he reads. He is, after all, quite the reader.

I always wondered how Dufus landed his wife, especially with the name Dufus. Boy that must have taken some pushing, eh?

“Seriously, Mrs. Dufus doesn’t sound that bad…”

Maybe he met her at the library? I can see it now…

“I need to go get my library card because I’m checking you out!”

On that note, allow me to wish one of my favorite bloggers a wonderful birthday

And just remember, what does every birthday end with, Dufus? A Y, of course. Duh. Joyeux anniversaire (I think I spelled that all right)!

Every once in a while, I like to have one of these posts where I talk about blog comments.

See, as a personal blog, I don’t get many comments. That’s the nature of the game when you have varied topics or keep it personal or don’t have a massive following. And I’m OK with that because it’s how it goes.

But if I let everything fly, I’d have a ton of comments.

See, with WordPress (and other things, I believe), I have a plugin called Akismet. Basically, it protects the blog from comment and trackback spam. That way, I don’t even have to deal with it.

For example, as of now, I have more than 7,500 comments in my spam folder. I know there have been times real comments have gone in there and I actually caught them. But I have to be honest — I don’t sift through the spam folder too often because 99.9 percent of the time, it’s all crap.

Alas, sometimes these messages slip through and come up for me to moderate and approve. Usually they are ones that seem more like regular comments, so maybe that’s why Akismet misses them. In the end, they usually give me a laugh.

The thing about spam messages is they usually appear on posts that are older. That’s probably in the hopes they slip through and such.

Some are quite funny in that they are so poorly written or don’t have any connection to the post where the comment is. So, with that in mind, I’d like to share a few of these wonderful comments with you. Remember, these comments are unedited — no spell check or grammar or anything. All copied and pasted as I received them.

Then it’s time to empty the spam folder.

This one was from a Snapshot Saturday post in January:

Hi there, just became alert to your blog through Google, and found
that it is truly

informative. I am gonna watch out for brussels.
I’ll be grateful if you continue

this in future. A lot of people will be benefited
from your writing. Cheers!

I’m now watching out for brussels, too. What the hell are brussels?

This next one came from the writing challenge I was involved in this past February. The topic this person comments on? Compulsively.

Hello. I uncovered your current blog site the use of yahoo. It is an highly intelligently authored document. I am going to ensure that you book mark the item and are avalable returning to discover more of your information. Appreciation for a write-up. I will definitely give back.

I’m glad my post was highly intelligent. It’s what I aim for, you see.

How about this one? Somebody needs some help.

Hey there! This is kind of off topic but I need some guidance from an established blog.
Is it hard to set up your own blog? I’m not very techincal but I can figure things out pretty fast. I’m thinking about creating my own but I’m not sure where to begin. Do you have any tips or suggestions? Appreciate it

This one was on a post from the writing challenge I was involved in last summer. I may have fallen for it, if not for the link to something odd (I didn’t click), the fact that the post was so old, and because I’ve received it many times from different people. (I actually once tried to e-mail one of these people to see if I got a response and didn’t get one — another reason knowing these are spam.)

So stop sending me this crap. Appreciate it.

In 2010, I took a trip to Maine. This next comment comes from a post where I spoke about planning for said trip. It definitely seems to capture Maine, no?

The Zune concentrates on being a Portable Media Player. Not a web browser. Not a game machine. Maybe in the future it’ll do even better in those areas, but for now it’s a fantastic way to organize and listen to your music and videos, and is without peer in that regard. The iPod’s strengths are its web browsing and apps. If those sound more compelling, perhaps it is your best choice.

Yeah, makes total sense.

This next one is more current in that it is a comment from my recent post about the Lay’s potato chip flavors.

I am usually to blogging and i actually appreciate your content. The article has actually peaks my interest. I’m going to bookmark your website and hold checking for brand new information.

I’m glad it worked — go buy some.

I may have let this one go as it was in my peanut butter owns Nutella post from quite a bit back…

Can I just say what a aid to find someone who really is aware of what theyre talking about on the internet. You positively know learn how to bring a problem to gentle and make it important. Extra folks must read this and perceive this aspect of the story. I cant consider youre not more well-liked since you definitely have the gift.

I definitely knew what I was talking about in that post!

Finally, I will end with this one. It was a comment to a Soundless Sunday post, one which had a photo of a crisp winter scene.

A tooth (plural teeth) is a undersized, calcified, whitish order start in the jaws (or mouths) of many vertebrates and worn to sever down food. Some animals, particularly carnivores, also take teeth for hunting or instead of defensive purposes. The roots of teeth are covered sooner than gums. Teeth are not made of bone, but fairly of multiple tissues of varying density and hardness.

The community design of teeth is be like across the vertebrates, although there is respectable modulation in their show up and position. The teeth of mammals be struck by deep roots, and this decoration is also create in some fish, and in crocodilians. In most teleost fish, how, the teeth are partial to to the outer surface of the bone, while in lizards they are fond of to the inner interface of the jaw alongside the same side. In cartilaginous fish, such as sharks, the teeth are seconded by means of cold ligaments to the hoops of cartilage that form the jaw.

Fully makes sense, right?

On that note, it’s time to delete on a permanent basis and clean the spam folder out. But, I’m sure, they will be back in full force. I’ll be sure to share the good ones.

A missed day yesterday, but I haven’t had much to say recently.

Well, I always have something to say. I just didn’t have much when it comes to the blog. So, today, I’m hitting up a good fallback posting idea — Notes from my noodle!

The beauty of this is I only have a few ideas as I start and we’ll see where it leads.

So, let’s get it underway.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner

If you are a blogger, odds are you’ve entered giveaways before. It’s a big thing in the blogging world. I wish I could do more of them here, but I have to keep them a little spread out at this point in time. Plus, when dealing with personal blogs, you have to make sure you give things away that are aimed a bit at a larger audience, not just a certain niche etc.

When I read and follow blogs, I’ll often enter. I never expect to win, especially as many are for some big things and attract thousands upon thousands of entries.

Finding blogs recently through the North East Bloggers Network led me to a giveaway. And it only had a few days left. So, of course, I opted to enter. Basically, you earn entries by following, tweeting, liking, commenting etc. So I went through and did things, found a few new blogs to read and so forth. and that was it.

Until yesterday afternoon, when the site’s owner sent me an e-mail entitled “You’re a winner!”

This, of course, I already knew.

But Rachel apparently meant for the giveaway! Out of 3,692 entries, my name was drawn.

Score!

What did I win? A $50 Target card and a $10 Starbucks card, as well as one month’s worth of ad space on four blogs. I’ve never done blog ads and was curious about them, so hopefully this will help me understand it a bit more. Thanks to Krystal, Courtney, Jamie and Rachel for giving ad space as part of the giveaway!

Either way, I’m obviously quite excited about winning the contest. It’s pretty cool to get notifications like that out of the blue saying you’ve won something.

Brewing, brewing, brewing

If you remember a post I did a week or so ago talking about my next plans in homebrewing, I’ve completed two.

The White House Honey Porter and the Chocolate Maple Porter are now fermenting!

Two beers, fermenting away.

The Honey Porter is the one I brewed first. It was a Northern Brewer kit, so pretty straight forward. In the end, it took about an hour and a half and I had it in the jug and going to town.

The Chocolate Maple Porter, well, that was my first foray into doing things a little more in depth. See, this was a full all-grain setup. The mash, the sparge, the whole nine yards. All told, it was a bit more than three hours to pull this one off. But I liked the process. I liked doing it as the kit, one from Brooklyn Brew Shop, said to do.

This one also has a little local flavor.

At the end of the brew, I needed to add maple syrup to the wort. The syrup is some that was just made this year by Gid, a local and friend. I’m super stoked to see how this one tastes. I have to use more maple syrup when bottling, too, so I’m excited to see what the taste is like.

Speaking of brewing and such, I’ve decided to abandon the labels. I’m going to put smaller labels on the bottles to show what the brews are, but I’ll save the bigger, more elaborate ones for online use on Facebook or Untappd. It’s really just a pain to try and get it all set and everything and then have to worry about getting them all cleaned up and such. I think I also might have to start posting here when new ones are done and ready so I can keep track of them.

But these two fermenting now… I’m really excited for.

Bark, bark, bark

I have no true issues with dogs. But man, why do owners have to allow dogs to stay out when they constantly bark. As I write this, some neighborhood pooch (not sure where as there are many) is out — or at least close to a window/door and has been non-stop barking for a good hour. At least. It’s an ankle-biting dog, too, so it’s that yap, yap, yap bark.

Ugh.

I know I am not the only one who thinks this is annoying. I have a few neighbors with these dogs and most of the time, they are all good about it and make sure the dog is in or something if it barks too much. But this dog has not stopped.

Have some control. Train your dog. My lord. When it starts to annoy people all the time, it’s time to realize your dog needs some training. Enough.

OK, I’ve barked about that long enough…

iMessage

If you don’t have an iPhone or iPad or something, iMessage is probably something you wouldn’t care about.

Alas, for those who do…

For some reason, lately, I’ve been having  hard time with it. Sometimes, iMessage works. Other times it doesn’t. At the same time, it will work for one person and not for another.

Annoying.

52-week project

Fifteen weeks are done of this year’s 52-week photo project — the HooHaa 52.

One of my favorite shots so far from the HooHaa 52 — Week 3, Night.

It’s been a fun group so far this year. There have been some fun themes and some really good images. And, for the most part, those who started with us are still going strong. And that’s a good thing.

I’ve been pretty solid so far, but a few weeks gave me fits and I had a hard time figuring what I wanted to do.

We still have a long way to go, but it’s nice to know that people have seemingly made their way through some of the colder months and we are now moving to the warmer months, which hopefully means some more great themes and images.

I know when I see weather like this, I feel like there is more to take photos of and it’s more fun to go out with the camera.

I’m involved with a couple of other photo challenges and I look forward to seeing where they all lead this spring and summer.

Relay fundraiser reminder

I am a little more than a week from the Relay For Life and there’s still time for you to enter the fundraiser for the lap quilt. Don’t miss your chance — this thing is truly amazing!

For the information on how to enter, click here.

Work with me here, people.

I’ve seen some things with blogging over the past few months. And not all of it is good. So this is my blogging rant for the day — and hopefully — for the long term. I don’t need to do this again.

I need to start with this — I realize there are several different blog platforms out there. I’ve been through many of them. But they all run differently. For example, I use WordPress. But it’s a self-hosted WordPress site, not one you do on the actually WordPress site. That gives me much more control over the site and how it looks, feels and runs. I also use the normal system for comments.

I’ve debated going to Disqus, and actually did it for a few days a while back, but I thought the WordPress comment system was fine. Name, e-mail (not shown) and website, if you have one. It’s worked fine, but I’ve been told that one person can’t leave comments. I have no idea why, but he’s tried many ways to access my site and can’t do it. That’s the only issue I’ve ever heard, though.

Blogger is a different story.

With Blogger’s comment system, it appears the site owner has the choice to decide how people can comment. Some elect to make it a little tighter — in other words using sign on stuff for other things (such as your own Blogger/Google account). The problem with this is there’s no way to link back to your blog. AND with no place for e-mail, there’s no way for the blog owner to contact you or check your site out. That’s one reason I sometimes decide not to comment on those sites. Choose the name/URL option so anyone can comment. It also seems silly for Blogger to not have a spot or option for somebody commenting to not be able to leave their e-mail.

Disqus is somewhat like that now, too.

I don’t like that people can’t leave their blog address on my blog when they comment. It’s easy for me to click on their name to go check their site out. Why make things harder than needed?

Some of this was brought to my attention recently through a group I am part of. Apparently, when I comment with my Google account, or even with my URL/name on a Blogger blog, there’s no way for the person to e-mail me a response. I don’t know Blogger one big, so I have no clue what that means.

But I saw last night when I commented somewhere that I can have a checkmark in place when I use my Google account to have my e-mail address used for responses. That’s fine. But I don’t see that when I use the URL/name. Um… hello, Blogger? Why make things so hard?

I realize it’s about brand setup and all that, but reality has it that not everybody will use Blogger. I don’t personally like the control or interface. And I am already established elsewhere. It’s time to make it easier for your blog owners. Work on that, Blogger.

Now then, that leads me to something else in blogging.

Visiting people’s blogs.

I do my best to make my rounds to several blogs each week. I try and hit them 2-3 times and read what I can, comment etc. But that’s just in a regular rotation.

I’ve recently found a couple of blog groups and have gotten involved some. They can be fun and there’s some interaction. Many of these groups also have “blog hops,” which is basically where people from the group post links to certain posts, social media sites or whatever. The idea is to get people seeing your things, commenting, following and, well, interacting.

That’s how I see it anyway.

Every blog hop I’ve been apart of I try and visit every person on it. I comment on most. The times I don’t comment are when the “rules” are not followed (ie: only post your blog address and not the link to the direct post, as requested) or if one has to go through leaps and bounds to comment.

I’ve hardly ever seen success in blog hops, though. And I’ve done them for quite a while, not just recently.

Sometimes people will stop by or whatever. Maybe a comment? But not usually. I realize my blog isn’t a cup of tea for everybody. And it’s true when I visit blogs, too. But if there are blogs specifically for a hop, they there should be some sort of interest, no? Instead, nothing.

It’s disappointing, too.

Not because of the commenting (which, I won’t lie, we all like to have comments on our blogs), but rather because people are missing out on the interaction. Blogs are about more than yourself. It’s about finding new people, interests or whatever. I also realize that most blogging groups I am in are female dominated. And many blogs out there have that tone. You want proof? Go to Google and type in “Mommy blog” and see how many results come up.

When it comes to personal blogs (such as this one), females are definitely at the forefront. In one group I am in, I want to say there are fewer than five male bloggers in there.

But no matter who is behind the blog, it’s about content and interacting. When I check out others in blog hops, I can appreciate things that aren’t in my norm. If somebody went to town and created a kid’s room (I don’t have kids, so it’s not something I would usually care about), I can appreciate the work and time put into it. And I can appreciate what somebody has done to it — so I comment.

The same goes with arts and crafts and things like that. Or whatever else. I can usually relate — somehow — to what somebody has written. After all, it’s meaningful to them.

I guess, in the end, what I’m trying to say is bloggers should utilize the hops and comments to expand thoughts and interests. There’s a lot of great people out there blogging. There are people I never would have gotten to know if I hadn’t stumbled across their blog, either accidentally, through blog hops or other challenges. Many of these blogs have become favorites and ones I visit as often as possible. You can build some great friendships and get to know people quite well.

Especially with personal blogs as, let’s be honest, major blogs or niche ones, are sometimes more about you visiting and expressing opinions and such. Many of those are big enough where it’s impossible for somebody to respond to each comment or visit your blog.

But with personal blogs, it’s a two-way street.

I won’t lie — if I am commenting and trying to interact and nothing really comes back, I start to lose interest. To me, personal blogs go beyond content. They are about interaction and getting to know somebody. And when it becomes a fully one-way street, people lose interest, me included.

I’ll keep doing things the way I believe is the best way to get to know people and learn about their blogs. It’s just a shame when I know it’s time to cut ties with some.

Such is the life of blogging.