CakeOrPie

Got An Extra $7k Lying Around For That Wish List Item?

I noticed on Digg.com tonight that there was a scientific tome going for more than $6k for the Kindle edition, and more than $7k in hardcover.  As an Amazon affiliate, I couldn't resist.

So, if you needed a copy of Nuclear Energy, why wait for the holiday rush?  Get it now!

Quick Review: Mayflower, by Nathaniel Philbrick

Mayflower, by Nathaniel Philbrick

Just finished listening to Mayflower.  It's interesting history and Pilgrim myth-busting, but the book is really two: the first is about the Pilgrims and the Mayflower, and the second is about Plymouth Colony and New England as a whole during the Indian wars of the following 100 years.  If you're from the Northeast and have an interest in history (I have two relatives on the Mayflower, including one who fell overboard...), it's worth your time.

Sarah Palin: Already Under Investigation?

"Excellent. Smithers, she'll be perfect for my administration. Contact William Randolph and have him hold the afternoon editions!"

http://www.adn.com/monegan/story/478090.html

The Show So Far

I'm off to a deliberately slow start, as I'd really rather do things well/right rather than do them over again later.  I've played around with different themes here on TypePad, fired up an Amazon Associates account, Google AdSense and Analytics, and I've explored some of the widgets that are out there.

Mostly, I've found that having this blog as an option has awakened (I wanted to say "re-awakened," but that sounded asinine as I thought about it) my senses to the stuff kicking around in the real world that might make for blogmatter.  (Is that a word?  Well, it is now...)  I've actually sent myself a couple of messages reminding myself to write about such-and-such at some point.

Beginning this weekend, I'm going to begin poking around the web and finding sites that guide (or purport to guide) you through this process to see what all they advise.  Of course, I'll share with you all what I find, if only as a memoir for those who pick through the rubble that remains when this implodes, to see where things went horribly awry.

The Circle Expands

I've begun to build a list of links to sites I recommend.  Some are the personal sites, blogs and projects of friends, from both the off- and online worlds.  Others are the works of strangers, but are sites whose excellent work I will seek only to complement, not replicate.

As of right now, they include...

• 43 Folders - Merlin Mann’s personal productivity/life hacks site.
• David Allen Co. - The online home of David Allen, author of Getting Things Done and Ready For Anything.
• Heroes of Lesser Earth - A gaming-related comic by my gaming-related friend, Kevin Pettway.
• L.A. Food Crazy - A great blog for Los Angeles foodies, written by Jess Winfield.  You name it, Jess has succeeded at writing it, from plays (The Reduced Shakespeare Co. presents The Compleat Works of Wllm Shkspr (abridged)), to non-fiction (What Would Shakespeare Do?), to animated hits (Stitch! The Movie, Leroy & Stitch) to -- most recently -- a novel (My Name Is Will)
• Paper Coach - Lou Agresta's blog, which "tracks an aspiring writer's efforts to design then take a course made from easy-to-find books on writing."
• The LoHud Yankees Blog - Beat writer Peter Abraham's excellent blog on the New York Yankees.
• Tim VanOrden's Running Raw Project - Tim VanOrden's quest to see if one can be an athlete while eating a 100% raw vegan diet.
• Yankees Chick - 'Nuff said.

Check them out, and keep an eye on the list to the right for more great web sites I recommend.

Invitation

I was considering how I might ask for active participation from you all, and I remembered a work I loved as a child and love as an adult.  I attempted to edit it, changing the nouns in some silly Internet parody, to suit my needs, but felt I was committing an act of sacrilege and returned it to its original state.

It's too perfect.

Without permission of the late, great Shel Silverstein...

Invitation
If you are a dreamer, come in.
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer...
If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire,
For we have some flax golden tales to spin.
Come in!
Come in!

(From Where The Sidewalk Ends)

Where You Come In

Part of what I'd like to do with this site is to pull the curtain back from an attempt at the "blogging for dollars" scheme.  The way I figure, people are always allowed to make documentary films when they try something futile and nutty, why not a documentary blog about a blog?

So, over the next few days, I'll be sharing a little with you all about how I got here, but, more importantly, I'll be looking to you to come with me -- heck, even lead -- as I go forward. 

By the way, I'm writing this from my iPhone. It was one of the reasons I went with TypePad for the platform for this -- the immediate availability of a web app and a promise of a native app soon after the July 11 opening of the iTunes app store.  I also liked that I could get a lot of functionality for what some folks were charging for hosting alone. 

On Tuesday, my library of reference materials arrives (from Amazon.com, naturally).

"Writing a blog for money is like learning ventriloquism to pick up chicks," my friend Eric said to me in an e-mail tonight.

In my reply, I failed to mention that I'd ordered Blogging For Dummies.

A little too ironic.  Yeah, I really do think.

A Site By Any Other CNAME...

Step one in the process was getting the blog established somewhere. Step two, I knew, would be an awkward effort: point the domains I've had parked for years -- cakeorpie.com and pieorcake.com -- to the blog. While TypePad has excellent instructions, it seems my registrar, Network Solutions, makes it a little challenging to get both www.domainname.com and domainname.com traffic directed to a new address. I'd already encountered this once before, when pointing another domain to my Dotmac homepage, built using iWeb, part of Apple iLife '08. If you skip the www, you just can't get there from here.

More to come...

Asking The First Questions

And so, it begins.

I have decided to make use of the domain names a few years back (as well as the alias I've used on a number of social networking sites for some time now) and start a blog site.  The site will allow me to opine on things that are of interest to me, sure, but hey... I could do that at MySpace.com, right?  Why CakeOrPie.com?  (Or PieOrCake.com, depending on your perspective?)

It was always the ultimate Internet argument.  So simple.  So pure.  So profound.

OK, fine...  I'll cut the B.S.  It's just a really catchy name.

But this site will be about questions and answers, both mine and yours, on a wide variety of topics.  Of course, the root question -- cake or pie? -- will always be out there, but I hope to also help tackle some of life's other great mysteries.  Is that new gadget actually worth the $299 you're dying to spend on it?  Is buying that polypropylene bag they want to sell you at the grocery store actually better than either paper or plastic?  What is the greatest franchise in all of professional sports?

That last one's a trick question.  There is only one answer.  She knows.

Then there's this...

I was inspired to launch the site now after listening to The Millionaire Next Door as an audio book on my iPod (iPhone, actually, but we'll get to that later...) and finding myself frustrated that, frankly, I could never be that guy.  Live below your means until just before your death, then give all your savings away to beat the death tax?  Where's the fun in that?  Like they say at Starbucks when someone orders a decaf nonfat latte, "Why bother?"

But I tried.  I went home and revised the family budget, poring over months of stats from Quicken and my online banking, trying to see where it all went, hoping I could be a little more like the neighbor with the bags of cash under the bed.

It just wasn't going to happen.

So I said, "OK, I've been reading all these self-improvement books, listening to these podcasts, scanning my RSS feeds for the latest on personal productivity.  Surely I could offer some tidbits of my own to the world.  I may be a disorganized pauper listening to yesterday's hit single on the wrong media player, but that doesn't mean I can't help others, right?  And by helping others, help myself?"

So I picked a date: July 4th.  Independence Day.  It marked the birth of a nation, it would do just fine for the birth of a blog.

Or so I thought...