January 21, 2008

Pure Water 2Go

Do you grab a bottle of water every time you go out jogging or toss one in the diaper bag each time you take the baby out? How much money do you think you’ve spent for the convenience of bottled water? I work from my car and a lot of the homes I inspect are vacant and have the utilities turned off. I always keep at least two bottles of water in my car for just that reason. It’s been expensive to do that, but pure drinking water is a necessity so I’ve spent a bundle on always having some handy.

Pure Water 2Go is a portable water filtering system that will allow me to keep fresh water in my car and to refill with filtered water whenever I need to. Their water bottle filter will purify up to eighty gallons of water and last for about three months. My 16-ounce Sport Bottle is made of durable PET plastic and will last for years, so I can buy replacement filters and continue to get good use from it. I’m thinking it would be a good idea to buy a couple of extra Pure Water 2Go bottles and a few spare filers to tuck away inside my evacuation kit. The Level 2 filter removes chlorine, bad taste and odor and significantly reduces heavy metals like lead, mercury and copper. Water travels through the carbon filter as it leaves the bottle through the pop-up top and comes out clean and purified. The Pure Water 2Go 16-ounce Sport Bottle is sized just right to fit standard bike racks and the drink holders in most cars. The filtering system is light-weight, so it’s super-convenient to take with you wherever you go.

Pure Water 2Go offers an entire line of water-filtering products including shower heads, canteen filters, disinfecting tablets and even biological filters that will remove bacteria and protozoan parasites. You don’t have to go to a third-world nation to find yourself without potable water. All it takes is a power failure that shuts down your municipal water-treatment plant. Most of us have been there at one time or another and heard the warnings that we needed to boil our water before using it. If you’ve ever found yourself in that situation you know just how important clean water can be. Pure Water 2Go can help you be prepared and save you the expense of bottled water. Makes sense to me. Check them out!

Technorati Tags: bottled water, filtered water, Pure Water 2Go, water filtering systems

January 20, 2008

Self Portrait Sunday for January 20, 2008

My creative juices are at an all-time low, so nothing ambitious for my portrait today - just little old me. Ribs and beets are in the oven, garlic bread will go in shortly. Not sure yet what my friend brought to add to the feast - she always brings something. We’re going to be watching Northanger Abbey on Masterpiece Theatre about the time the ribs are done. I don’t have a Bose home theater, but my TV is larger than hers and I have all the cable channels, so it’s become our habit to watch stuff over here.

After the show I’ll be going over to Digi-Cass to see who else posted their self portrait today. You should check it out, too!

Technorati Tags: meme, photos, self portraits

Posted by skeet @ 7:28 pm • Photos, Meme • 4 comments  

January 16, 2008

Four Foods on Friday #13

I don’t have any exciting answers for Val’s questions this week, but I’d hate to miss two weeks in a row so I’m going to answer anyway. You can play along by posting the answers to the questions on your own blog, then going to Fun, Crafts and Recipes and linking your post in Val’s comments. Val will do a round-up post on Friday featuring everyone’s answers and will link back to your blog.

Heh! I wanted to squeeze the best of my luggage sets into the picture to signify that I frequently eat on the go but I just couldn’t make it work. Oh well! On with the questions:

#1. Cold cuts. Prepackaged or sliced fresh at the deli counter?

I prefer deli cuts. They cost more but are so much better. I eat sandwiches for lunch most days, so I buy a half-pound of two different meats and at least one cheese from the deli counter each week. I also buy “good” sandwich rolls from the bakery for my sandwiches. My current favorites are roast beef, Swiss cheese and cibatta bread.

#2. Which ingredient reduces acidity in red sauce? Corn syrup, molasses or brown sugar.

Hm! Mom taught me to always toss in a teaspoon of (white) sugar and that seems to work. If one of the ingredients listed does a better job I’d say it’s probably molasses. Is this a test? Did I pass?

#3. Whipped cream. Fresh, canned or frozen?

I like the real whipped cream in a can. I’m too lazy to whip it myself and I’m not crazy about the frozen substitute.

#4. How do you make pea soup? If you don’t, share a recipe that you use peas in.

I don’t think I’ve ever made fresh pea soup. I add peas to Mongolian Beef, stir fry, fried noodles and various other starch dishes. Do those count? I can’t think of any recipes I cook regularly that focus on peas.

There ya go. Nothing exciting, as I said. You can do better, so get on over to Val’s place and join the fun!

Technorati Tags: blogs, food, memes

Skeet porn

How did you find my blog? Most of my daily traffic comes from regular readers who carry my link on their blogrolls. Some of it come from their readers, who use those same blogrolls to find out who their favorite bloggers are linking to. New readers also find me through message boards where I post and through social networking sites where my readers have been kind enough to post my links. A percentage of my traffic also routinely comes from search engines. That’s the traffic I want to talk about today.

I check the stats for my blog at least once a day, sometimes more. Usually I’m most interested in seeing which posts are getting the most traffic and where that traffic comes from. I can use that information to produce more content that will please my readers. Lately I’ve been getting a lot of search engine traffic to my posts about hidden object games. I also get consistent hits for every post and photo I’ve ever published that is tagged “Hawaii.” I’ve posted a few recipes that appear to be pretty popular - my “grilled cheese and bacon” posts get traffic from search engines months after they were published. The searchers who find me using those terms get the results they’re looking for. So do the readers who land on a one-time reference to life insurance quotes or dog tags. There’s one other term that’s always brought me a lot of traffic, though most of it is unintentional. I blogged about the phenomenon over a year ago when, as a new blogger, I was just becoming aware of search engine traffic. That post remains popular and still brings me traffic on a regular basis. I’d like to think that’s because of my storytelling skill (it is a good story,) but that’s probably not the reason. Skeet most popularly refers to anything related to the sport of skeet shooting, but the hip-hop culture has revived an old meaning that is less well-known to anyone over the age of twenty or so. It is that meaning that brings me the most traffic for the word skeet. Unlike most of those searchers, though, I still contend that Skeet is not a dirty word.

According toThe Free Dictionary, skeet has a number of definitions that aren’t obnoxious.

The term skeet may refer to:
• A clay target.
• Skeet shooting or Clay pigeon shooting, a sport using such targets
• The Olympic Skeet event.
• Skeet surfing: A fictional sport featured in the 1984 movie Top Secret!, written and directed by the Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker.
• Possibly because of their physical resemblance to the clay target and that they fill the sky when deployed; the EFP warheads of the BLU-108 sub-munition, found in for example the CBU-97, are also called Skeets.
• Slang for coitus interruptus. The ejaculatory term for ‘pulling out’ the penis and ’shooting’ semen derives from the act of skeet shooting, pull and shoot.
• Term used in Newfoundland English to describe a low class, disruptive person.
• Term used in Manx English or Anglo Manx to describe news or gossip.
• Slang for cocaine, also may be known as skeeter.
• Skeet Ulrich, an American actor
• A sport involving inner tubes, rocks, beer and a stump; often played along the banks of The Yellow Breeches Creek in Pennsylvania.
• An awesome blogger

Okay, I made up that last one.

Skeet will always, first and foremost, be a name to me, because that’s how I first knew it and because it’s become a part of my own identity. I’d like to think that people who find my blog “by mistake” through search engines find it because they’re into the sport of skeet shooting or because they’re fans of Skeet Ulrich or Skeeter Davis or any of the other popular holders of the various versions of the name. Alas, I know that it’s just not so. That knowledge was reaffirmed today when I followed a search link from my Statcounter to Windows Live Search and got a bit of a shock.

I’ll admit that it’s quite gratifying to find that my blog is number 5 in relevancy for “skeet.” But take a look at the classification that follows the heading for the entry. Pornography? My blog is designated as porn? Disturbing, to say the least. I decided to do a little research on the subject. I entered the term “skeet porn” into the same search engine:

Woot! Now I hold the number one and number two positions. The relevancey of this search actually makes sense. There have been times when I’ve used the word “porn” in a post, usually as a statement to readers concerning links I will kill if they show up in my comments. For the record, skeet’s stuff is not a porn site. I don’t publish porn or allow pornograpy sites to take advantage of free links via my do-follow comment policy. However, now that I know that my blog can be found by people searching for porn sites I thought maybe my research should be extended. Please note that this is not a scientific survey and that your results may vary. Your results probably will vary, because serach engines are lively animals and the results they produce are impacted by each bit of information published on the web and by each search conducted.

I used three search terms: skeet, skeet porn and skeet pornography

I entered each of those search terms into three different search engines.

The results of my experiment appear below. After each term you will see the page my link appears on and the postions of links to this blog within the first five pages of search. I did not scroll past page five on any of the search engines, so results with higher numbers don’t appear.

Windows Live Search:
skeet - page 1 postition 5
skeet porn - page 1 postions 1 and 2
skeet pornography - No results

Yahoo!
skeet - page 3 postion 25
skeet porn - page 3 postions 22 and 25
skeet pornography - No results

Google
skeet - page 1 position 9
skeet porn - page 5 position 50
skeet pornography - page 5 position 42

What does all of this mean. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps something quite relevant to any blogger wanting to increase their traffic by understanding where it comes from. If you are looking for any use of the word “porn” on my blog, the search engines will help you. If you are looking for actual porn you’re up the creek because you won’t find it here. By show of hands, how many of you have ever gone to a search engine for the specific purpose of finding actual porn or even the word porn on my blog? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Entering skeet coupled with either porn or pornography in a search engine and finding my blog is a fluke. People who use those word combinations are not looking for skeet’s stuff. They are searching for … well, porn that features skeet, and we’re not talking about the beloved author of this blog.

How is that relevant to you as a blogger? It’s a bit of information that you can use to increase your search traffic. Everyone gets hits from searchers who were looking for something quite different from what they found. It’s the fluke factor. Search engines aren’t mind readers. They can only return results based on the data entered, not on the intent of the person doing the search. Take a look at your own stats for search engine traffic. What terms routinely send you traffic but have no real relevance to your content? How can you use that information to draw more traffic? Do you even want to attract that traffic? If we’re speaking only in terms of traffic it doesn’t really matter to me how people found me. What matters is that they did. So, yes - it matters to me that people find my blog when they are searching for porn. What I want more than casual, one-time visitors, though, is for people to come to my blog, find what they’re looking for, stay a while and come back again regularly. I’m pretty sure none of the porn creeps are doing that. The hidden object game searchers do. Quite a few of them have become my regular readers. So have some people looking for stories and photos about day-to-day life in Hawaii and even a few who first found me because they wanted to know how to make the perfect grilled cheese and bacon sandwich. Those are the readers I want. Those are the readers who find relevance in what I post. They are all part of a group that I need to optimize my keywords for. I’ll admit that numbers are not as important to me as some people think they should be, but that I’m not above using the fluke factor to increase them. This post will undoubtedly jiggle the fluke factor and result in an increase of readers who find me while searching for skeet porn. The better search engine optimization tactic, though, is to produce quality content on topics that appeal to the readers I already have so that I can increase my readership organically with more readers just like them. By using relevant keywords in relelvant content I can optimize opportunities for new readers to find me through legitimate searches. That’s much more satisfying than a bucketload of 1-second visitors who don’t want what I have to offer.

Technorati Tags: porn, pornography, SEO, search engine optimization, search engine traffic, skeet

January 15, 2008

Tuesday Teaser photo verification

We didn’t get much mileage out of the Tuesday Teaser this week. Lori, over at A Cowboy’s Wife is a pretty well-rounded gal. When she’s not out at the horse pen hanging out with hubby, she’s informing, entertaining and amusing us with her stable of blogs. One of her newest endeavors is My Wooden Spoon, a pretty good cooking blog, so I guess she knows her way around a kitchen. She was certainly quick to realize that the puzzle piece this week came from a photo of a can opener. Congrats to Lori on the win! You’ll get a review of the blog of your choice (My Wooden Spoon? Pretty please?) and your name will be entered in the end-of-the-month drawing for a $10.00 gift card. Mahalo to all of you who played. You’ve made Tuesday Teasers a pretty popular feature and I thank you for that, too! Hope to see you all back here soon!

Technorati Tags: contest, contest winner, photo contest, puzzle

Tammie Beagle

Having spent a good portion of my working life partnered with a working dog, and those dogs always being beagles, I learned to love the breed. My Lancelot is a beagle and very typical of the breed: handsome, intelligent, scampy and affectionate. I’m a sucker for a good beagle story. Naturally I was attracted to a blog that carries that illustrious name, but alas - not a canine beagle story to be found. There is affinity in more than name though, because Tammie Beagle happens to be handsome, intelligent, a touch scampy and bountifully blessed with an affectionate nature. Come take a stroll through her little corner of the blogosphere with me and I think you’ll agree.

Tammie made it easy for me to find the essence of her blog when she recently participated in the Archive Meme, which asked her to list five of her favorite posts. You’ll get a good snapshot of Tammie as a person and as a blogger when you see what she had to say about family, friends, herself, something she loves and … somthing else. I found out that Tammi and I have a lot in common with the first of those posts. She dedicated her family post to the memory of Heidi, her sweet dachshund. People who aren’t dog-lovers might not understand that pets are as much a part of our families as people are, but Tammi and I both get it. Having just lost my own beautiful Buddy I also understand the grief that comes with the loss of a cherished furry companion. It’s my sincere hope that time has softened the pain of Tammie’s loss, as I also hope it will eventually do for me. The other posts she selected for the meme each help define her, and the collection as a whole will give you a good picture of who she is and what makes her tick. I was recently tagged for the same meme, so look for it here someday soon.

It’s always a joy to visit a blog written by someone who takes pride in their words and makes the effort to carefully craft each entry. Tammie is just such a blogger. With a background in education and broadcasting, she certainly has the technical expertise to handle words well. The added ingredient that makes her blog irresistable is the hard edge of honesty that compels her to share herself openly with her readers. Her spiritual nature gets equal billing with her more worldly side, allowing her readers to come away from a visit with a well-balanced view of Tammie, the person. There are blogs I visit for professional and technical knowledge. I don’t tend to spend much time with them - only as long as it takes to find what I need before I move on. Then there are blogs that I read for the sheer joy of the writing, the person and the stories they weave. Those tend to become time-sucks because I find it hard to close them and get on with whatever bit of my own life I should be living. Tammie Beagle.com is one of the latter. She’s gotten away with four hours or so of my life today that I’ll never get back. That’s okay. She’s worth the time.

Technorati Tags: blogs, blog review, persoal stories

Tuesday Teaser for January 15, 2008

Can you identify the item depicted above? Just take your best guess and post it in the comments below. If your guess wins, you’ll get a nifty prize. Here’s how it works:

1. Write a comment giving your guess as to what the item is.
2. First person to identify the item wins.
3. The author of this blog will be the sole judge as to what constitutes a correct answer.

What will you win?

1. The author of this blog will write a LINKY LOVE POST (review) about the winner’s blog (commercial sites ineligible.) The LLP will contain the url for your blog plus at least two deep links and will be posted here on Skeet’s Stuff, a PR4 PR2 PR0 (bah google!) blog. Skeet writes good reviews.
2. The winner’s name will be entered into a drawing for a $10.00 gift card from Starbucks or Amazon.
3. Drawing for the gift card will be held on or about February 1, 2008, and will include all weekly winners for the month. There are five Tuesdays in January, thus the maximum number of people who will be eligble is five.

Other stuff -EDITED - PLEASE READ!

1. All comments to this blog are time and date stamped. The winner will be the first person (according to time and date stamp) to provide the correct answer. Guess as many times as you please, but please place each guess in a separate comment.
2. No hints will be given.
3. Answers must specifically identify the item. For instance, if the item depicted were to be a button on a remote control, the answer “something electronic” would not suffice.
4. Decisions of the judge are final. Don’t argue with me. I won’t answer.
5. I will attempt to post every few hours as to whether or not a winner has been declared, but I am not continuously at the keyboard so please be patient.
6. Entries must be posted before midnight on Thursday, January , Hawaii time (GMT -10, approximately forty-eight hours from now.)
7. This is intended to be an ongoing feature at Skeet’s Stuff. If you or I lose interest it will cease to exist, but all qualified winners will get their prizes.
8. Skeet’s Stuff is a do-follow blog, so you get some link value just for commenting.
9. You do not have to have a blog to enter. Your review can be donated to a charitable or non-profit site if you don’t have a blog or just want to share the love. Sites to be reviewed are subject to my approval. I’m not harsh, but I’m also not interested in donating space to a radical political non-profit site or a blog that is dedicated to porn. Commercial sites are ineligible and comments with commercial links will be deleted. If you would like to advertise on my site I’ll be happy to discuss your needs and my fees.

Additional Notes:

10. Let the fun begin!

Technorati Tags: contests, photos, photo contest, blog contest

January 14, 2008

Polly Pride Pet Detective - hidden object game

I originally found Polly Pride: Pet Detective on a site that annoys me because of consistent problems getting their downloads to function. It’s now available from Big Fish Games, so you won’t have those problems when you download it to try it out.

The storyline for Polly Pride Pet Detective is charming, as Polly flirts with the new town vet when not searching for lost pets. There’s a dark undercurrent, though, suggesting that evil forces may be behind the disappearance of pets Polly is asked to locate. With over ninety scenes, the game offers endless hours of play.

The artwork is bright, colorful and finely detailed. A delightful array of clutter in each scene provides the necessary distraction to keep gameplay sufficiently interesting.

The pets to be found are animated and pop into and out of scenes. Their appearances are brief, but don’t worry if you miss them the first time around. They’ll be back.

I enjoyed the game and found it engaging but not terribly challenging. Purchase price is $19.99, but you can get it for $6.99 with a Jumbo Pack monthly membership in the Big Fish Game Club. If you like owning full versions fof your favorite games this is the way to go.

Technorati Tags: Big Fish Games, games, hidden object games, Polly Pride Pet Detective

January 13, 2008

Self Portrait Sunday for January 13, 2008

Buddy gave me over ten years of devoted affection. His health had been shaky for several months and he took a turn for the worse this week. I took this photo Friday an hour or so before I took him to be put down. I’ve been doing things to stay busy, but the sadness is overwhelming. Lancie is still watching the door for his pal to come back. My dear friend J has her own concerns right now - her son just left for boot camp after the Army committed to providing him career training and paying off his student loans - but she’s been spending time with me and Lance to help shore us up. We’ll get through this together somehow and go back to remembering our Buddy for the joy he brought us.

Join us by posting your own self portrait and putting your link in the comments over at Digi-Cass. The others won’t carry an undertone of sadness, I promise. I’m off to visit them because they always cheer me up.

Technorati Tags: meme, photos, self portraits

Posted by skeet @ 12:09 pm • Photos, Meme • 30 comments  

Blood Ties - new hidden object game

I needed a distraction this weekend, so the release of Blood Ties came at a good time. It’s a new hidden object game based on the Lifetime TV Series of the same name. Vicki Nelson is a private detective who solves cases with assistance from her 450 year-old vampire friend, Henry Fitzroy. The case under consideration is the disappearance of all of the members of the Hellfire Club, each of whom had been entrusted with a piece of an ancient tablet. The magical tablet must be re-assembled each year in order to keep the demon Asteroth from unleashing his evil on the world.

Players must complete a series of hidden object searches in order to solve each case. The artists have created a collection of eerie scenes appropriate to the storyline. Though each scene befits the macabre theme, they are not so darkly done as to prohibit fair gameplay. Ethereal music and sound effects add to the atmosphere without creating too much of a distraction.

Objects to be found are clearly defined and each is recognizable as an item on the word list provided with each screen. The scenes provide that ecclectic and disorienting mix of objects we’ve come to know and love in these games. Ancient weapons, skulls and voodoo instruments somehow blend nicely into a room that also contains a computer, an electric guitar and a cell phone. Go figure.

Hints are available if you get stuck. You’ll accumulate extra hints by collecting “ancient symbols” hidden throughout the game. Most are devilishy disguised and difficult to find. Can you see the one in the right corner of the ceiling in the scene above? Don’t despair if you don’t find them all. I found the game challenging and engaging, but resorted to using hints only a couple of times.

As you solve each case you’ll be rewarded with a piece of the ancient tablet, which you will patch together as the game progresses. At the end of the game you’ll make one last trip to the patch panel to fully reassemble the tablet, thus keeping the world safe from the demonic forces of Asteroth.

Blood Ties is available for free, limited play (one hour of playing time) from Big Fish Games. I played the hour, liked it and bought it. I’m a Big Fish Game Club member, so it only cost me $6.99. The full, unlimited version is $19.99 for non-Game Club purchasers. If you’re as a big a fan of hidden object games as I am it makes sense to join.

Need more games? You can find all of my hidden object game reviews in the games category for skeet’s stuff. Each contains a link where you can find more information and free, limited downloads. Check back frequently. I have two more hidden object games to be reviewed in the next few days.

Technorati Tags: Big Fish Games, Blood Ties, games, hidden object games