Update 2:
The site reviewed below no longer exists and was replaced by a site containing objectionable content (to both myself and the person who pointed this out). The links have been removed and the article will remain for posterity.

Superstar's Blog asked for a review of her blog, so here goes. Like many Americans, I only know the English language, although I can recognize bits of French. At first glance I see a very clean layout, and a great color scheme. The pages take way too long to load, but I'm sure that's an easy fix. There is plenty of content and that's the key to a successful blog. She also doesn't use the No-Follow tag. Allowing links to be followed is a great way to get other bloggers to take an extra second to post on topics they have opinions about but not necessarily strong enough to take the time to craft a response. This also gives the visiting blogger a bit of a reward for participating, and the original blogger gets additional intelligent responses that contribute to the sense of community at their site.

The site looked so good that I took the time to run it through Google translation, which made the site even slower to load than it was originally. Google gave up twice, seriously Google, it only took 35 seconds to load each page, why give up? Therefore, I can't comment on what the translated site looks like because it never translated.

Final words, Superstar, you have a great looking site, improve the page load times and you'll be on your way to becoming an A-List blogger in your language.

Update:

Superstar has responded on her site, I have copied it over to GRLT.com for archival.  She has improved load times of her site in FireFox, after her site was down for a while this morning, I think it was the whole server because I can't access the root of her domain either.

Thank you Superstar, we really appreciate the review.

Kacey Green
KaceyGreen.com
"This post brought to you by Tangent's randomly firing synapses."

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According to one employee, most of the McDonald's in South Carolina no longer offer bagels for breakfast. Personally, I did not care for the taste the bagels at first because of what I thought was butter, McDonald's actually calls this breakfast sauce. Once I started ordering the bagels without the "breakfast sauce", the bacon egg and cheese bagel became my favorite McDonald's breakfast. For now, I'm going to say this is just a rumor because I have no way for me to verify this claim. She also said that they're no longer going to carry the steak products either. I know McDonald's is not very environmentally friendly, or socially responsible as a restaurant, but they're fast cheap and easy. What is your preferred fast food breakfast when you're on the run? When you're in a hurry do you still take into account the environmental, or social responsibility of the establishment? Would you do when a merchant stops carrying a product you like?

Kacey Green
KaceyGreen.com
"This post brought to you by Tangent's randomly firing synapses."

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Google Reader gets updates and polish

I logged into Google reader yesterday and noticed that the "loading" screen was different, but that's not all the numbers of items available have been bumped up from 100+ to 1000+. "But wait there's more!" this little gem was also on the screen

You might say yeah, so what, Google's businesses are search and advertising, and you would be right. Finally, they have made it possible to search within the Google Reader (GR) interface. This couldn't have come at a better time, as I was about to dump GR because I'd fallen behind on my feed reading and they were auto expiring my content, but now all I have to do is whip up a quick query and my posts come streaming back faster than I can blink. There also seems to be a smidge more vertical space to work with, and when you are working on an entry-level wide-screen, you need all the vertical space savings you can get.

I'm not quite sure what I'm going to use this blog for yet, it still needs a focus, right now it is holding musings that are far too random for GRLT or GChybrid. Maybe this will become like John Chow's site where I post whatever the hell I feel like. I'm nearly positive this should be a personal blog seeing the domain name is somewhat personal. I am not a cussing person but also not a saint so I may let some PG phrases slip here, unlike on the business pages where language needs to be rated E or G, if I cross the line, just let me know. 

Speaking of JC, as an entry to his latest contest, I'd have to say what's holding me back from daily posting is: I've picked a semi-restrictive niche and sometimes I'm too timid to post what's on my mind, I don't know where this came from, because at GRLT's old incarnation I'd do it in a heartbeat. The other thing holding me back is I do too much tweaking, one day I'd post and the next I'd tweak, on an alternating fashion like that, but if I'd post more, more people would show and I can tweak and get better feedback in batches like every Saturday or something like that. Therefore, from now, I resolve to post once a day for 20 days straight here and on GRLT.com. The goal is to form a new habit that feels as natural as waking up, and eating. I will not let work or family distract me from my goal. (Family is still before all else, I'm just going to protect some time) Please understand if I put up shorter posts, I will still be thoughtful but possibly more brief than normal, this is all for you the readers.

This site is also the testing site for GCustom, GRLT and the hybrid sisters (GC and FL hybrid). As a testing site you will notice it is slightly fresher looking but also lacking some of the features you've come to expect at a GCustom (GC) site. More importantly this place probably has features you have been asking me for at the other sites. You have come to expect quality form GCustom (GC) sites, so I am working on ease-of-access making all the content highly accessible, useful functionality, and lastly making it all look good, this will soon be one of the most advanced and pleasurable GC sites on the web.

I will be re-enabling the contact pages on all of my GC sites shortly, so that readers will be able to send me email right from the sites. The benefit is that this webmaster won't have to worry about spam bots picking up his email address (even though the older sites all have anti spam technology for when someone posts an email addy right on the page) Spam-bots just make me queasy, you?

Until I get comments enabled on this site, feel free to contact me any way you know how, ex. Email, phone, on the street, I would particularly like blog-to-blog communication to happen every now and again.

Kacey Green
KaceyGreen.com
"This post brought to you by Tangent's randomly firing synapses."