Google recently released its “+1″ service, which is a button you put on your blog or on your website, which lets people who visit the page tell Google that they like the page they are on. Google will then use that in determining which sites to display, and will show you which of your friends have “plus oned” a page, when it comes up in the search results.
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Good search engine rankings (especially at Google) depend mainly on two things:
I’m reading the book Scientology, a New Slant on Life, for the first time in 30 years. This book, by L. Ron Hubbard, was recently re-released, with typographical and other errors cleaned up; all the basic books of Scientology were gone through carefully, compared closely against the original author’s manuscripts so as to make them exactly correct as they were originally written, and reissued. It was big news for Scientologists. Over the years many typographical errors had crept into the published books. I had found some differences myself between versions of the books published in England and those published in the US, so it was good to see these resolved. I’ve read through most of the newly released books and I’m just finishing up the last ones.
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Today is the 61st anniversary of the publication of Dianetics, the Modern Science of Mental Health, by L. Ron Hubbard.
When I first picked up a copy of Dianetics on display at the Greyhound Bus terminal in Medford, Oregon, in the summer of 1968, I read the back panel of the book and rejected outright its claims of that it could bring sanity to those using its techniques. My exact thought at the time was: “If what this book claims is true, then the world would be different than what I have seen. There would be lots of sane, able people somewhere, and I am pretty sure there aren’t any.” I put the book back on the rack and bought Dune, by Frank Herbert, instead. I devoured that book on the three-day bus trip to El Paso, Texas.
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My friends over at Citizen’s Commission for Human Rights (CCHR) Florida are having a music video contest. If you can sing or play an instrument, or are otherwise creative when it comes to making music videos, free to enter the competition. Sounds like a lot of fun.
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The South Fork of the Coquille River, about 5 miles south of Powers along County Road 219 (which turns into National Forest Development Road 33), cuts a beautiful channel through the hills. There are lots of waterfalls including this one, Elk Creek Falls, which is about 50 yards from the road.
Our county road runs past our house here on the ranch, and up the hill further into the wilderness. There are two houses past ours. Yesterday those neighbors had some trouble getting to town because the road slid down the hill a few feet. The road crew came out and fixed it within 24 hours, but not before we could take some photos.
This was all caused by the excessive rain. In the last week we’ve had 7 inches of rain, as reported by my handy rain gauge. When you get that much rain, the “blue clay” substrate under the road slides down the hill. There are about 25 acres of blue clay, which makes for a lovely oak savanna. But it is hell on the roads around here.
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I just read Ken Blackwell’s essay called “Purple Fingers Aren’t Enough”. He has given eloquent voice to the thoughts running around in many of our heads as we watched the revolution succeed in Egypt. In effect, most of what he said can be summed up in the quote he gives from Edmund Burke: “Men of intemperate minds cannot be free; their passions forge their fetters.”
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Late in October 2010, before the rains started in earnest for the year, we did some burning on “Hell’s Half Acre”, our Oak Savanna restoration project here on the ranch. The burning was done to get rid of endemic poison oak and invasive blackberries, salmonberries and Douglas Fir trees, among others, that had pretty much over-run the entire oak savanna.
We recently updated the WordPress software for this blog, and the old theme (had it in place since 2003!) finally broke beyond all repair.
So – we have a somewhat new look, which you’ll see on all the pages of the site now.
The new design incorporates part of the old design (kept it in the image at the top of the page) and some of the colors. But I think it was time to update it anyway. My significant other simply detests all things Art Nouveau, but she somehow managed to convince me to keep the Art Nouveau design above anyway, because, she said, “You like it and I want you to be happy.”
So, guess what! I am happy with it.
We’ve incorporated the Yoost DeValk SEO module and many others, to make it as search engine optimized as it can be.
If you run into any problems using it, please let me know.
