We'll be right back

I am experiencing an unusually hectic day with my day job, so the posts I had planned to work on this morning have been postponed.  Nonsensible Shoes will return shortly.

 

Nonsensible interruptus

It's been a busy couple of months for me and my regular posting has suffered as a result.  That should return to normal within the next month, which is a good thing as there is soooooo much going on that deserves commenting.

I will continue posting as I can over the next few weeks and hopefully return to top gear soon.

2015 for Nonsensible Shoes (uh, in case you were wondering).

There's some interesting things going on here at Nonsensible Shoes.  Firstly, after 6 years of blogging, I'm closing in on 1 million page views.  Having not checked that in some time, I was surprised by that.  It's higher than I expected and yet less than I had hoped for initially.  I had also hoped for 100 followers by the end of 2014.  While the tracking isn't exact, it would appear I'm close but a bit shy of that number as well.  Additionally, I had hoped to be able to make at least 500 posts each year.  In 2014 I fell a bit shy of that, even though I probably could have made it with a late December push.  As one additional consideration, I do a have a time consuming day job that has kept me busy this year.  I also have the domain name locked up for more than another year (although no one is breaking down my door with offers to buy the ridiculous moniker).

So much for context.  Where do we go from here?  Get ready for short.  Obviously 1 million page views is an immediate goal.  But that's not a far off event horizon given the historical rate of page views. But I'm still enjoying the blogging and I do plan to continue with it into the foreseeable future - well beyond one more year.  However, there's probably a change coming in terms of the approach I've been taking.  In fact in recent months you may have already noticed that some of my posts have been far shorter than in the past.

I enjoy crafting essays, but blogging does not lend itself to that sort of readership.  Given the social media influence on attention spans (Vine videos max out at 6 seconds for Pete's sake), shorter makes more sense to capture attention.  I still am holding myself to a minimum of 500 posts this year, and shorter posts certainly lend themselves to being able to reach that goal.  So expect more posts of a much shorter, more to-the-point nature.  It's a win-win: easier for me (even though I normally like to fuse multiple points into a longer narrative) and it's less taxing for readers. I will still try to work in the occasional longer, more analytical essay type posts, but they will be less common than in the past years.

Getting more followers is no longer a goal for me, but rather a potential outcome of good posting and more importantly more outreach (it's something I've been preaching the GOP should be doing, so it wouldn't hurt to do a lot more of that myself).  Shorter posts may be an attention grabber, but getting more directly and frequently involved in social media is probably a healthy approach to achieving that.

A little more in the way of background/direction that is probably salient here.  I've spent a lot more time invested in an NFL pool this year.  Consequently I am in striking range of first place going into the playoffs (4th place of 29 competitors, only 2 games back of first).  That's been at odds with the previous few years where I've ended up in the middle of the pack mostly.  So that's something that has reduced my ability to focus on blogging in the fall and winter, and will continue to be the case in later 2015.  Lastly, and far more relevant, I've begun writing outside of the blog and in addition to the daytime job I have, and that has been consuming a considerable chunk of my free time.  That is likely to persist throughout 2015 and 2016.  Both of those factors lend themselves to shorter, more direct and distilled thoughts on my posts to Nonsensible Shoes as well as Left Coast Rebel, where I am also a contributor.

Two Word Opinions - 2013 first edition

No, two REAL words.

I've been busy in my personal life to an extent that it has unfortunately disrupted regular blogging for the time being.  It doesn't mean I'm not following the news and politics or that Nonsensible Shoes is going to fade away.  But lacking time, for now I'm going to revert to some more two word opinions as a means of catching up a bit.

Ron Paul made some pretty damn insensitive remarks about the death of a Navy Seal sniper - Really dumb.

Iran might just be aligning with the newly 'democratic', Islamic Brotherhood controlled Egypt - Conservatives knew.

Post Office is shutting down Saturdays - More please.

Immigration reform on the table again with the secret ingredient being amnesty sauce - Not robust.

The GOP is getting the idea that outreach to minority voting blocks is important - not...really.

CBO claims the US will add $7 trillion in national debt over the next decade - THAT'S conservative.

That's about it for now.  Back soon.

безразумной обувь

безразумной обувь 


That's "Nonsensible Shoes" in Russian.  I haven't been hacked. April Fools.


Yeah, my heart wasn't in it this year.  At least not yet.

The shape of things to come

Things are sort of in hold-mode now for me with the Iowa caucuses tomorrow being the starting gun of the race while everything up to now has been stretching exercises for the marathon to come.  I'll feel a little more confident about the shape of the race once it starts.  In the coming weeks I'll take a look at the shape of the race, the implications of the primary race on the overall race. Right now all the speculation adds little value to the chronology, even if it is fun to watch.

Nonsensible Shoes will also be back to a more regular posting schedule starting tomorrow - unless of course I win a lottery in the meantime...

Happy New Year from Nonsensible Shoes

Wishing everyone a happy 2012 and Barack Obama a happy retirement.

Nonsensible Shoes turns three

Yesterday, November 6th, was the third anniversary of Nonsensible Shoes.  It slipped by without me actually noticing.  I actually set up the blog months earlier with no particular plan for it - it was just something I could do.  The reason I consider November 6th, 2008 the birthday for my blog is because it was the date of my first serious post.  In fact it was my first post. Ever.

In honor of Chris Christie...

In honor of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, I've widened my blog page layout to 1180.  Adjust your screen resolution accordingly.  Feedback on how viewable the new layout actual is, is most welcome.

Note for the sarcasm-challenged - it had nothing to do with Chris Christie.  As I've mentioned before, his weight has nothing to do with his ability to govern.  Maybe if he added 400 lbs it would, but as of now - zero impact.

A thought on shoes

Nonsensible Shoes.  Soon to be Nonsensibleshoes.com, minus the blogspot.  It's just a question of when to flip the switch because it looks like an outage of about half a day for DNS correction is in the cards.  Plus some follow up on the feed may be needed.

And then there's the re-direct and how that might work.  If you are following this site and want to continue and think you might find problems afterwards, send me an email. I'll try to make sure you don't lose me in the shuffle. Meanwhile once I pick a time, I'll let you know.

Here meanwhile are some truly nonsensible shoes (they aren't mine):

Nonsensible Announcement

With a headline like that anyone other than regular visitors can be forgiven for assuming I was talking about an Obama announcement on aid to Egypt. I'm not really.  It's not about him.  It's about me.

A quick blog self analysis

I've been looking back over my blog statistics and made a few confirmations/discoveries of things that I already intuitively knew.  There have been 3 period that I had a lot of visitors to my blog.  The first period was when I was new.  I was writing a lot more essay style posts than at other times.  I have to say, that's what I'd prefer to write - more insightful, researched posts.  I had my greatest readership success at that time.  I'm not sure whether it was because I was new or because of what I was writing, but I was getting noticed.

Well, I was wrong

Way back on December 26, 2008, I wrote that Moveon fails Economics 101. I was wrong.

Feedback? Hello?

For those of you who read my blog, I've changed my comments form to allow comments where before it was apparently not working very well for some browsers. For those who subscribe in a feed, consider visiting the site from time to time and posting your thoughts.  Since my blog doesn't even amount to small potatoes (yet), the only feedback I get from it is in the form of feedback in the comments section or comments on Twitter. I don't really know how I'm doing, because I'm not a writer, a journalist or even blogger really.  I'm just writing stuff down.

My new, other blog

I've created a new sister blog for Nonsensible Shoes. It's not replacing this one, it's a companion blog. It' probably won't get updated too frequently and I'm not sure the new blog will stand the test of time.  After all, the antagonist it focuses on won't stand the test of time either.  Then again I expect a lot more comments on it.

Check it out.

One Year of Nonsensible Shoes - A blog story

Today is the one year anniversary of this blog.  Happy anniversary to me.  I started Nonsensible Shoes back in November of 2008, after writing numerous emails for my friends, explaining, and to a lesser extent interpreting, the daily happenings of the 2008 U.S. Presidential primaries and general election.  It started out as more explaining but as it went along it became more of a warning of "don't believe the (Obama) hype".  It turned out I enjoyed the interpreting as much as, or more than explaining electoral college and super-delegate details.

Nonsensible Shoes has always been about politics, from a conservative viewpoint.  It will continue to be. However, I really started blogging without any goals beyond getting my points out there for people to consider.  What I hadn't considered myself, was that getting people to notice my ramblings, was a challenging proposition.  Once I got a few visits, I wanted more.  It turns out success, however small, is kind of addictive.

Half way through my first year of blogging I started getting some pretty good (for me) traffic.  In the late spring it fell off and I decided to try to set a goal for myself of getting 20,000 visits in my first year of blogging. I don't know if that was a good goal or not because before this year, I knew nothing of blogging.  After my first year, I can report that I fell just short of my goal, having had 19,695 visits.  However, in late December of last year I added a feed to my account and have had 3,992 views from that.  So I don't feel like I really failed to reach my goal, some of it just came in another form.

However, I still have a lot to learn about blogging; blog design optimization, blog marketing and monetizing a blog.  After one year my audience is no longer growing. In fact I've been so busy with my real job and family life the last few weeks, it's contracted some as a result of neglect of the regular blogging frequency.  In one year I have posted about 800 entries - few have been from the last two weeks.  That will return to normal over the next month or so (I hope). 

The other thing that excited me as an unrepentant capitalist, was that by throwing some Google Ads on my site, I was able to make money doing something I really enjoyed.  That was what opened my eyes to the possibility of eventually making a living doing something I love - talking politics and policy.  Granted I've made less than $40 in my first year.  But it hasn't phased me.  Like I said, I'm still fairly new at this.  I've had people tell me it takes three years to really see some kind of traction on a blog.

I'm inspired in particular by Ed Morrissey who blogged at Captain's Quarters and now Hot Air.  Mr. Morrissey apparently also had a regular full time job but managed to blog on the side and grew his audience over the course of a few years, to, at one point according to Wikipedia, 400,000 per day at the height of the Canadian Adscam scandal. Ed's tireless efforts, and quality writing have been inspirational.  John Hawkins at Right Wing News has also proven for me that effort and quality mean success.  His site has been for years one of my most frequented web visits.

Others have written or told me some of the obvious blogging tips that I'm sure everyone has heard.  Most importantly that quality content is the single biggest factor in succeeding in blogging.  It's in that light that I've set more goals for my next year of blogging.  They don't involve numbers for the most part, other than writing at least as many posts as I have in the past year.

My goals are more internalized - writing ever better quality posts (which means perhaps taking a course or studying methodologies of journalism), and learning more about smart marketing tactics, and web/blog design.  Hopefully by this time next year I will have achieved all of my specific goals and seen some seeds of success as a result.  Perhaps in the following year I can then start thinking about actual numbers again.  A successful blogging year would make a wonderful 2010, especially if it's combined with a conservative Congressional landslide next November.  Of course, just like my personal goal, a landslide will take a lot of hard work and dedication.  Hopefully some conservatives in the RNC and GOP are, one year out, thinking the very same way.

Saturday Learning Series - What The Doctor Ordered

History. Those who do not learn from it are condemned to repeat it. Those who do learn from it stand on the shoulders of giants, and stand to gain from it.

James Burke, a professor and scientific historian paints a brilliant historical picture in a way that is wholly absorbing. Even those not interested in history will find something engrossing in this, his television series.

For more of these and other important learnings, search Nonsensible Shoes for the term "Saturday Learning Series".


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Saturday Learning Series - Credit Where It's Due

The following set of videos from the fascinating professor James Burke of England, is part of a series entitled The Day The Universe Changed. This episode is entitled Credit Where It's Due. The series looks at how society has ended up where it is now as a result of some seemingly completely unrelated and startling event of the past.

You might think history is dry and dull. If James Burke were your professor, you wouldn't think so. His series are truly excellent.

NOTE: The Saturday Learning Series on Nonsensible Shoes has changed it's time slot to noon, in order to try to reach a wider audience. For more learning series search Nonsensible Shoes for the term "Saturday Learning Series". If you haven't followed the series, at a minimum, at least look at the rest of The Day The Universe Changed, as there's a connectivity between the episodes.

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Nonsensible Shoes Anniversary Coming Up.

October 31st, 2009: Halloween will mark the end of my first year of blogging. My first real post went up on November 6th, and I set the blog up months earlier, but November 1st was when I seriously started looking at blogging as a creative outlet for my political views. I wrote a few drafts of things and by the time they were published, it was a November 6th.  In my mind though, the anniversary of my blog therefore has always been November 1st.

A couple of months ago, in the midst of a readership doldrum, I took a look at what I had accomplished and realized that I hadn't set any specific goals when I started out, so I set myself a goal - 20,000 visitors in my first year.  It was a bit of a stretch at that point: having had some great success early this year, the readership had pulled back considerably over the summer.  Since then readership has picked up and so has my day job in terms of amount of time.  Blogging has become that much more difficult to find time for.

But in true rugged individualism style, I rolled up my sleeves and continued to plug away.  The counter on my site has me almost within 640 visitors with 14 days left to go.  I just might make my goal.  If you know anyone who might be interested in conservative political commentary, combined (hopefully) with some intelligent thought, let them know.  I'd love to make my goal, and I would appreciate your help.

That said, coming up short of my goal, will not put a stop to my blogging career.  I plucked the number out of the air and it may be a smart goal or a stupid one, I still don't know enough about blogging to know if that's a good first year result.  I do know that it's not a financially rewarding result, but that's okay.  That wasn't part of my reason for writing (although clearly I need to get better at monetizing this thing some day, because I'd much rather be writing full time).  I'm writing to spread conservative thought in America.  The country needs it.

What's next for Nonsensible Shoes?  I need to establish some goals for Year 2.  Beyond that, I want to keep writing in more and more meaningful ways that hopefully will contribute to the American political dialogue.  Maybe a site layout re-design at some point. Maybe a new unique domain.I've been meaning to ask Kevin Jackson at the Black Sphere how that's been working out for him. The blog is still up, but he's added another registered site. Of course he has a book and at least one Fox News appearance that I know about.  So it's really not apples to apples. But his success has been inspiring. As has that of other bloggers like Gateway Pundit and Robert Stacy McCain.

Saturday Learning Series - Free To Choose Part 10

The last in the Milton Friedman Series Free To Choose looks at an important topic, not just in the time of Obama, but always; How To Stay Free.

For more learnings on economics and history, search Nonsensible Shoes for "Saturday Learning Series".

Democracies have only recently been considered desirable. Historically, it was feared that democracies always self destruct when citizens, forgetting that you cannot remove want and misery through legislation, insist on government actions that physically and morally bankrupt their nation. Friedman explains why the United States has so far avoided this outcome and how we can continue to do so. This program includes an interview of Dr. Friedman by Lawrence E. Spivak.