A blog by James Ledoux
Traveling is one of my favorite hobbies. Below is a partial list of the couturiers I’ve visited. There are a few more I need to add in Europe but I’d like to thin k I’ll add another 2-3 this year.
2008 was a wonderful year in most ways for me.
The Good:
The Bad:
I am currently working on my plan for the new year and will be posting them here.
A nice recap of how to blog by Marilyn Mann. Hits home as I’ve ben doing a lot of thinking about writing, blogging, and my various projects. Inspiring and a little daunting – find your voice, find your niche, and overserv it. This blog isn’t really focused on one particular thing as it really is a playground for me to explore and learn. None of my blogs are commercial ventures though I wouldn’t mind getting paid for them.
In any event Merlin has a a lot of good insight and is a great person to learn from if you are just getting started blogging.
I started using Mint not long after I heard of the web 2.0 service. Fro those who haven’t tried it is a very slick online money manager that lets you import data from your credit cards, banks, loans, and investments. Their import wizard is very polished and I must say that setting up accounts is far easier than it is in Quicken for the Mac. I was initially reluctant to put my personal data in the hands of one company for both privacy and security reasons.After some consideration I decided to add everything except my investments.The thought being that my credit cards and bank are both protected by fraud protection while my investment account is something I’m not going to share.In any event after importing your data Mint builds lots of reports and charts for your review. Over time it can offer month to month comparisons for all of your imported transactions.Mint also provides targeted offers after it compares the fees and features of your current bank accounts, credit cards, and loans.I haven’t yet taken advantage of these offfers but it was eye opening to see that I had spent several hundred dollars over the past few months needlessly on various fees and charges.Having all of your dat ain one place (or a good chunk of it) really does have a positive benefit. Also seeing your net worth updated in real-time is very satisfying (as long as the numbers are moving in the right direction.) Mint does not have any associated costs aside from sharing your private data which they use to broker deals with credit card companies and other financial service providers.I will be posting more about Mint as I use the service. Given the overall mood of the economy any service that helps you save money, become more financially aware, and reach your long term goals is something I can get behind.
I’ve recently started writing again in earnest. My goal is to put down at least 300 words per day. While the number is small and arbitrary I think it is a sound approach.
I recently read On Writing by Stephen King and Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott; both writers cited writing every day as a key component to becoming a good writer.
My mother Marie gave me King’s book several years ago but it wan’t until recently that I made it all the way through it. Lamott’s book came to me by way of an episode of MacBreak Weekly where Merlin Mann and Leo Laporte sung its praises.
In addition to those two books I’m rereading Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. This little book is full of practical insights into writing with style. If I’m lucky the combination of the three books will somehow work their mojo on me over the next year and my writing will improve. If nothing else sheer volume should do the trick.
It makes sense that to become good at anything you have to do that thing. So I’ve settled on 300 words as a very approachable daily goal. I’m sure that on some days I’ll get 1000 words. And I’m sure that on some days it will be a very difficult thing to accomplish.
I am not working on a specific fiction project right now but hoping to develop something along the way. So the writing will commence. It may be on one of my bogs, in a private journal, or on a fiction project. But regardless of the outlet the key is to crank the word count. 300 words a day isn’t a lot but that adds up to 109,500 in a year.
As a matter of course one of the projects I will undertake is to rebuild this blog. Folks that have stopped by frequently may have noticed that that the name has changed back to Medium Pimping. I realize this is a silly name but as this isn’t a commercial venture I am happy with it.
Other spots you may see my 300 words pop up are:
www.slidetounlock.com
www.talkingfitness.net
www.plinthandchintz.com
By my count I’m off to a solid 379 word count. Don’t want to overdo my first day.
This is my new term for when your Jetblue flight gets delayed 3 times and then finally cancels. I understand flights being affected by weather but if you are not going to go all the way let a brother know so he can make other plans.
This evening while surfing the Internet’s many wonders I made a point to listen to JoCo’s Baby Got Back. Been months since I listened to that cover. Would love to see JoCo cover some more hip hop songs.
Top 5 hip hop songs JoCo should cover:
Now I can in no way claim this is the definitive list but I would definitely buy them.
I’m currently playing with Square Space’s blogging platform. It is a visual editor that allows you to make very slick web 2.0 sites without having to code. While I love Wordpress I haven’t found themes that I love lately. This blog has been on hiatus all summer but will be back at it soon.
Today’s run/walk was better than last week but not easy by any means. Paul and I did 3 miles in about 35-40 minutes. This included several walking stints of 10-15 minutes.
Was running in new shoes and my feet & left knee balked a bit. Overall my pace is picking up, it isn’t as hard, and the trend is in the right direction. Going to stick with 20-40 minutes of running a few times per week and my speed/distance should pick up over the next month.
Number of minutes it took me to run 2 1/4 miles today. The heat and my lack of running conditioning led to the slow time. I’m sure it will only get better – no matter how poor it feels, you need to start somewhere.
I’m aiming for a 5-10k in the next few months.
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