Linkin' bLogs

After an exchange with Johann and Abby on the Bone Zone, it occurs to me that this is a good time to get my blog roll in order. And I'm too poorly organized to figure out whether I have reciprocal links to all you folks out there in blogland.

Please leave a comment if you are missing from my link list, and let me know the correct address. I'll turn on anonymous comments to enable all you Wordpress and Typepad folk to leave a message, and will fend off comment spammers by hand until I get fed up with them again.

Wait for the tone...beep!

Pappy's Blog Interview

Like many of the pet bloggers out there, I received an invitation to submit an interview at the Bloginterviewer.com site. If you have a vote left in you, go out and rank all your favorite dog blogging sites.

It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair...

We hit 14,000 all-time visitors on Pappy's Blog this week. However this suffers by comparison to Pappy's movies on Youtube, which simultaneously hit 100,000 views. For this inexplicable feat I must owe a debt of gratitude to the bazillions of cutesy-bashing preteens watching the "Teletubbies Meet Pappy" video over and over, accounting for three-quarters of that total.

I deserve no sympathy, but I can't help but feel a little maudlin. The movies are fun and all, but the blog is where I put my heart and soul. Maybe I need to copy the Technorati top searches into my blog labels each day. That's right all of you Noelia and iPhone fans, this is da real shizzizzle!

Growing Your Dog Blog

I came across this blog article concerning how to best promote your niche blog. It really struck me how this maps to my blog and dog blogs in general. It may elicit some "that's obvious" or "I'm already doing that" moments, but the article does an astute job of summarizing the sociology of blogging and a strategy for success. They come at it from the angle of popularizing a blog to make money, but I think it is equally relevant if you aren't profit driven.

A big point they make is the importance of continually participating in your niche community, and keeping up with your peers' blogs. I definitely see big changes on my site's activity based on whether I am "putting myself out there" with other blogs, but that's tough for me to sustain. Being a hermit, it's hard for me not to veer off into my own little world.

Petfinder Widget

I added a little search widget to the blog as a plug for Petfinder.com, the pet adoption search engine, after seeing it on The Blog Pound. That's where I heard about Nablopomo, so I'm always ripping her off for something. I don't think she'd mind.

Anyway, the source URL for the specific widget is at www.petfinder.com/tools/featuredpet, but for some reason my version was missing the little search box and wasn't working quite right. I looked at the source on The Blog Pound and got the code below if you want to use it on your site. If you look closely, you can tweak which states are included for the featured pet.

<center><script src="http://fpm.petfinder.org/fp/modpet.cgi?font=Verdana&amp;fontsize=1&amp;fontcolor=940f04&amp;search=1&amp;state=DC&amp;state=MD&amp;state=VA&amp;shelter=&amp;animal=Dog&amp;age=&amp;" type="text/javascript"></script></center>

Cashing in on Pappy's Blog

My blog is worth $22,581.60.
How much is your blog worth?

So I went out to this site, entered our URL, and found out that Pappy's blog is worth $22,581.60 on the open market. This valuation is scientific, based upon a model used in the sale of Weblogs Inc to AOL. So, that's our basic market value. Now, if I factor in the proceeds from the T-shirt sales to get an idea of the revenue stream. Let's see, seven shirts at $0 profit per shirt. Wait, since I ordered three of the shirts that's more like a loss-- oh well, all internet startups operate in the red.

Okay, so let's figure out my investment-- the number of hours spent writing posts (let's say 220 hours), filming and editing movies (ummm, probably 500 hours), graphics and general fiddling around (200 hours), and hours spent gazing at Pappy for inspiration (oooh, that's gotta be about 2000 hours)-- for a total of 2,920 hours. So the site has increased in value by about $7.73 for each hour invested.

So let's say I cash out now. Invested at 5% per year, the proceeds from the sale of my blog would net me a daily income of about $3.09. How much does a Starbucks coffee cost anyway? Maybe I could get a venti soy latte, or at least learn what it means.

Shameless Pandering for Votes

So, we are entering the last couple of days of voting on November's Cool Dog Site of the Month at Dogmark.net-- and I must remind you that Pappy's in the running for his November 22nd site of the day appearance. If you haven't voted yet, get on over there and vote your conscience. But, before you do so, I'd just like to say that you are such a pretty dog. Such a smart dog. Good dog.

Holiday Surprise

For several weeks it has been looking like the "Do They Know It's Christmas?" video might surpass the "Teletubbies Meet Pappy" video as the most viewed Pappy movie of all time, clocking slightly less than 6,000 viewings on Youtube in a month. Then, overnight, suddenly Youtube was showing that the music video has 9,250 viewings. At first I was thrilled and wondered how this might have happened. Then I started noticing all these messages in Youtube about various "temporarily disabled" features and "site maintenance"-- and the number seems to be oddly stuck at 9,250.

Color me suspicious.

My New Favorite Search Engine

I remember way back in the nineties when I moved from Metacrawler to Google as my favorite search engine-- I was a pretty early adopter. But, in a recent bout of navel gazing, I typed just "Pappy" into Yahoo, and Pappy's Dog Blog came up as the number one hit ahead of Pappyland, Pappy Boyington, and many other worthy Pappies. Google is so ten-minutes-ago that we don't even appear on the first page.

To be frank, I find it unfathomable that Pappy even appears on Yahoo's list. It leaves me wondering if they are somehow tracking my activities, then playing on my vanity by bubbling up favorite sites for my every search. Woo-ooo-oo, the internet sure is a creepy place full of scary people who know everything about you.

Opening Up Shop

I've been thinking recently about putting together some t-shirt designs and opening a little online store. My motive wouldn't be to make money (because I'm pretty sure my only customers would be my wife and myself), but it would be wild to come across a total stranger wearing Pappy merchandise.

There are a number of different web services that allow you to set up an online store without any upfront costs-- they take a certain amount on each sale and you charge your profit over and above that. I see a number of bloggers who make use of Cafe Press for this service, but I've seen a few mixed reviews on the turnaround time, cost, and quality of some of the merchandise. I have absolutely no experience, so I'm ignorant on all counts.

Are any of these companies good? In the spirit of all things on the web, a little research exposes a wealth of contradictary guidance. What sense I can make of it seems to indicate that a lot depends on matching the printing process to the appropriate materials. The direct printing technique used for these print-on-demand companies isn't the same as screen printing used for large t-shirt productions, and sometimes appears washed out on thick cotton sweatshirts, for example. There are a couple of helpful posts with detailed discussions ongoing here and here at the now-deceased The Brooke blog.

Puzzling Traffic

I was looking at a report of referrals to my site, and I've gotten like 30 different hits today from search engines where people are looking for "immovable object", "irresistable force", and some variant of "wrestling"-- I did a post a while back containing these phrases. Other search phrases that have brought people to my site in the past include "duck footed dog" and "dog ate a maxi-pad". I see stuff like this, and it makes me wonder what the heck is going on out there that I don't know about.

Tag, I'm It

In the comments for a recent post, I was tagged by Disgruntled Owl and again by 3DogCache to list six weird things about Pappy and/or me. Is this a trick question? This blog is essentially a celebration of everything weird about Pappy. We've got an embarrassment of riches to draw upon. Of course I am of no relevance-- just a poor scribe.

Maybe I should be trying to make this a challenge, and list six normal things about Pappy. Well, I'll stick with the instructions. Here are six weird things I haven't seen other dogs doing:

1. When chasing a ball, if it ricochets off a tree or other object he has to go back and investigate. He'll go look the tree up and down, even if it means backtracking across the yard. It could well be that he is the Isaac Newton of the dog set, working out the physics of ball trajectories.
2. When Pappy has his ball and you aren't playing with him, he'll immediately take it to the nearest low-hanging obstacle-- a bureau, a chain-link fence with a gap under it, a bookshelf, a sofa, the TV stand-- and start a high-stakes game of pawing and poking the ball. Within seconds he'll have knocked the ball under the obstacle, whereupon he begins scrabbling around underneath with his paws. Often he can get the ball out himself, but he'll continue poking it under until he can't. Finally he'll begin a little dance of looking at the ball, then looking back at us and whining...driving...me...nuts...until I totally cave in and get the ball for him.
3. When you're petting him, Pappy always tries to gnaw on your rings. My wife worries he'll eat the diamond from her engagement ring, and I don't look forward to the "outcome" of that eventuality.
4. For some reason he always gets playful when I am putting on my shoes-- grabbing at socks, getting under my legs, etc. It's not that he isn't playful at other times, but he's always riled up with the shoes. I think he gets high on foot odor.
5. When anticipating a walk I've seen dogs go nuts, or I've seen them enthusiastically sitting waiting for the leash. For some reason Pappy nervously paces in slow circles around me making it difficult to get the leash on. I have no explanation for this one, because he clearly likes walks and never goes off-leash.
6. Pappy's bed is at the bottom of our bed. I have a little eighteen inch gap between bed and bureau to squeeze through to get to my side of our bed. For some reason Pappy always flops off his bed and sprawls his head and front legs across my gap when he goes to sleep. I'll stomp back and forth over his head while getting ready for bed, and he never flinches. After I turn out the lights I shuffle, night-blind and worried about crushing his skull, to bed. Later, he curls up on his bed out of the way. Ha ha ha, funny game.

Now for the hard part-- who do I want to victimize next? I remember my first chain letters as a kid, and they gave me a bit of a complex. They either promised a horrible and painful death if I didn't continue the chain, or asked me to send a dollar I didn't have to the people who victimized me in the first place. When I got older I made a methodical practice of breaking any chain letters, but always with some hesitation.

Let's see who looks like they haven't been tagged recently (man, there was a huge outbreak of tagging back in August). OK, I'll tag the following:

The Dogs of Jackman Avenue

Finnegan

Marvin, the Hollow Hound

[The rules...Each player of this game starts with the "6 Weird Things about You"-- or your dogs. People who get tagged need to write a blog of their own 6 weird things as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose people to be tagged and list their names. Don't forget to leave a comment that says 'you are tagged' in their blog.]

Vote for Pappy, He'll Make You Happy!

Well the voting is officially open for November's Cool Dog Site of the Month at Dogmark.net, and Pappy's Dog Blog is in the running. If you vote for Pappy, he will promise a soup bone in every dog bowl, and canine suffrage for the 2008 presidential elections. (Slogan: "Dog vote now! How much worse could they do?")

You can vote here once per day. Scroll down and you'll find the form has a lot of questions, but you only have to enter a name, email address, and vote selection-- and I haven't noticed the site abusing my info. We're campaigning against worthy contenders like Bella, Sid, and Pinky, so every vote counts.

Bark the vote!

My Race Is Run

Woohoo! We're there! 40 posts in 30 consecutive days. For those of you who weren't aware, I've been participating in National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) during November. I stopped mentioning this a while back lest I jinx myself. Too easy to imagine saying how well it was all going, then total blogger's block sets in.

Looking back over the posts, it was an eventful month, so now it's time for a long, boring, retrospective post. These are my thoughts:

• When I look back, I am amazed at how much happened this month. It seems like a long time since those first posts. Posting frequently is like walking rather than driving; I see a lot more, and time moves slowly.
• In browsing the sites, I saw a lot of participants bothered by the forced act of posting each day diluting the value of their insights. I often wondered whether I was getting tedious and repetitive. My wife reassured me that there were a few unmemorable posts, but the quality was good overall.
• As mentioned before, I came across some participants' sites that had been closed off from public access. One of these left a message that she had found herself doing too much self-editing because of the influx of new and unfamiliar visitors. I did get a lot more traffic, and I definitely take a lot fewer risks when I am less sure about my audience.
• I kind of hated posting immediately after Crusher's tribute. That deserved a few days of attention.
• Ironically, I found I was writing much longer postings when working on a tighter schedule. I'm a fan of brevity, and it takes time to whittle things down and still get your point across.
• I never felt that I was at a total loss for subject matter-- in fact I still have a couple of topics in the can. Of course, this just shows the depths of my lunatic obsession with my dog.
• Once I had started, I was confident I'd finish. I'm pretty compulsive (for example... the movies).

Thanks to everybody for your visits and support. I notice some NaBloPoMo participants are talking about taking a vacation from blogging after this slog. I don't plan on a break, but going forward I'd have to say that I am going to take it a bit slower.

Holy Moley!

I was pretty pleased earlier this month when Gladiators of the Dog Park attracted 100 hits in a day. Then came the Do They Know It's Christmas? video... Jumpin' Jehosophat! Thanks everybody.

Christmas Comes Early

In recognition of the good fortune that celebrity has brought him, Pappy wanted to give something back. So we lined up this holiday music video including other superstars of the dog-blogging world. Commence rocking out.

Cool Dog Site of the Day

Just in time for Thanksgiving, Pappy's Dog Blog has been selected as Dogmark.net's Today's Cool Dog Site. Since 1996, Dogmark.net has awarded a site with this distinguished honor every day. Now, ten years later, they've reached down deep and found us.



Think about it-- 3,500 dog sites have been awarded in that tenure. I have to go back through their archives. If enough of them have closed up shop, we may be only the 1,356th coolest dog site on the web... 26 behind Tinkle Trousers.

NaBloPoMo Analysis

Since I've been participating in National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo), I have been noticing a couple of things, which I find interesting.

• As a "duh" kind of stat, my hits are way up-- easily doubling the previous month. Not all of this comes from NaBloPoMo, but probably a third of it does. Thanks to everyone, and come on back.
• Entropy seems to be affecting NaBloPoMo participants. Most people seem to be keeping up with their posts, but the enthusiasm in surfing the different sites seems to be dying down (my own enthusiasm included), and I see a lot fewer comments from random visitors. Again, this isn't so unexpected.
• This last one does surprise me: I'm noticing some NaBloPoMo sites in the randomizer that are blocked, allowing only access by invitation. I came across two in a row Sunday morning, and I am pretty sure I remember one was public access when the event started.

I'm thinking that some participants were a little freaked out at the responses they were getting from the non-regular visitors on their sites. I can imagine getting a comment that would creep me out, but dogs blogs aren't much of a lightening rod for loonies-- well, not that kind of loony. I like the loonies I get.

P.S. Ailing Pappy is much improved. He's toddling up and down the stairs with ease, wagging his tail, and is even playing a little slow-motion ball. Now he just whines because he's bored, bored, bored.

Blog Subjects

As subjects for a blog, dogs are sweet and all. But I'm not sure they are nearly as funny as... heaven help me... cats. I just see blogs like this, and videos like this that crack me up. But they also make me wonder why you'd ever invite a cat in your house.

But you'll never see anyone writing this about a cat:

Dog Experiences Best Day Of His Life For 400th Consecutive Day

Fame, Fortune, and Terriers

I was just alerted in a comment by HotDog of Wikifido.com that Pappy's Blog has been selected as Blog of the Week. Pappy gets to follow in the footsteps of many august blogdogs who have visited this page and left their marks. I couldn't help but notice a disproportionate number of terriers in the past winners' circle, not that I have any problem with that. Now, I collect my prize... a subject for one more post during National Blog Posting Month.

It wasn't so long ago that I was despairing that our blog seemed to fall off the Googlable internet. Now we've rebounded, baby, like Robert Downey, Jr. I'd like to thank Pappy, the Academy, and of course my wife...