newdilemma.com

The internet is trash. Yeah i said it. There is just way to much junk in it. It reminds me of a garage that becomes so full of crap that the car is no longer seen inside of it. Why is it the focus of my angst today?

Well, I’m a guitarist. Remember? My band plays covers song. (Blech!) As such, at times I am forced to look for tablature for a certain song the band may want to play. Have you seen the crapload of tabs that come up for one song? How many of them are way off (wrong)? How many stupid tab sites there are? Ech! Throw them all away. We’ll start one called Wikitab, so the tab can be updated until infinity or until everyone determines that the tab displayed is finally the absolute correct one.

But wait, while I’m off on this wild tangent, why stop there? What about all the blogs that never update. I have an idea for Internet 4.0. Make it smart. If your site is labeled as a blog, and you haven’t updated in a year, the internet itself throws it away. That’s right, you won’t even feel cheated by your webhosting company because they didn’t do it. The internet did. I’m sure the blogger wouldn’t even care, because if he/she did care, they would have updated. Moving on.

Porn. The internet is porn. All sites that are not porn are merely fillers in between the porn. But why, just why are there so many damn porn sites? It should be broken down into 6 websites labeled as such:

1) Poontang
2) Dongs
3) Poontangs with Dongs
4) Poontangs with Poontangs
5) Dongs with Dongs
6) All the weird stuff that involves either a poontang or a dong, you sick bastard.

If you put all the porn that exist on the web onto those 6 websites, I bet the web would zoom. Big corporations like google could shut down a couple of servers worlwide.

Lets not leave out the spammers. Spammers should be required to list there personal email to other spammers. Not the public, we don’t want them to receive hatemail right. But rather, if they all spam each other, maybe some would quit, not to mention they will be too busy going through their own inbox to email us. Failure for a spammer to list their personal email address should be punishable by prison time.

I could go on and on with my awesome ideas, but I can’t, I don’t want to add anymore trash to the internet today. It would be like littering in a landfill.

Do you guys have any suggestions on how to fix the web?

I always liked that Megadeth song, Sweating Bullets, where he is talking to himself. I talk to myself all the time, so the song is not an alien concept. So here is an interview of me interviewing me.

Me:Hello Mr. New Dilemma, thanks for letting me interview you!

The Real Me:Yeah yeah, no problem, lets hurry though, I have alot of blogs to check out on various different networks. Not to mention practicing guitar.
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Me:Yeah, speaking of guitar, how is that going for you?

The Real Me:Well I guess it’s going better than it ever has. I’ve learned alot and can definetely say I am playing the best I ever have. But I still suck!
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Me:What makes you say that?

The Real Me: I still struggle remembering all the notes on the fretboard. Also I have huge problems transitioning from playing rhythms to lead. Like my fingers get locked into the rhythm and don’t want to float.
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Me: Hmm, must be hard on you? What are you going to do about it?

The Real Me: I plan to whine and complain about it until the Rock Fairy comes to visit me in the middle of the night and help me.
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Me:The Rock Fairy?

The Real Me: Hell yeah! One time my cousin’s brothers’ aunt’s roomate’s son’s cousin twice removed was sucking pretty bad on guitar and the Rock Fairy came and they had sex and now he is an accountant in Hoboken.
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Me: What?

The Real Me: Well she knew he sucked at guitar, so she got him a real job. Cool huh?
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Me: Um, I don’t think the Rock Fairy actually exist.

The Real Me:Dude! How dare you come in my head and tell me something like that. The next thing you’ll do is say Santa Claus isn’t real, or that Jonny Appleseed planted weed instead of apples, or that Paul Bunion’s ox was red. You should be ashamed of yourself!
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Me: But I …

The Real Me:…No Rock Fairy!!! You Suck! Tell Yngwie Malmsteen that, tell Eddie Van Halen that, Dave Mustain, Kirk Hammett, Suriel*, Les Claypool, Flea, Jimmy Page. I’m so finished with you!! This was supposed to be a nice interview.
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Me: But, but….

The Real Me: YOU ARE NOT TMZ! DIE!!!!!
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…The Real Me Walks out…

Sorry ladies and gentleman, that’s as far as the interview got. You know how high strung some artist can be.

*I still don’t think you actually read this blog,lol.

For a few weeks I have been trying to give my blog a little more exposure. As some of you know, a couple of weeks ago, my main way of advertising my site, Entrecard, had a huge glitch in their system which rendered them useless for about two days. During those two days I watched my site stats fall tremendously. So I decided to look for some alternatives. But I will speak about all of them which I use.

Entrecard

When I joined Entrecard I really liked them. I would visit my 300 blogs daily and drop cards on them. There was and is only one thing I don’t like. I drop on 300 sites, and only 90 to 100 sites drop back. The amount of site reciprocating drops sucks. I have tried over and over to find a way to push the reciprocated drops higher but have had no luck. Some people use drop list, and I certainly understand sites that can’t reciprocate on me because they have reached their 300 a day limit.

The fact that some people simply don’t read your blog exist as well. It is very easy, simply to go to a page, find the widget, drop, and be gone. I try not to be like this, and read alot of what I land on. I save time by blasting through the sites that have not updated. Those exist in abundance. The paid advertising part of Entrecard almost buried them, but people are learning how to co-exist with it so it isn’t much of an issue. The choice to show paid ads is up to you, so no beef there. I personally don’t show paid ads, but that is for the good bloggers who wish to advertise with me, 100% exposure.

Overall, I highly recommend Entrecard as a tool to promote your site.

SlogBite

Slogbite bores me a little bit, mainly because I can’t find a way to truly put myself out there. I mean I play the slogbite game, but it gets on my nerves a little with having to load after each play. Other than that, having your blog displayed on someone else’s widget is the only exposure you get, but unlike entrecard, I have not seen any incentive to click on those blogs. Maybe I am wrong, so if someone knows the system better, feel free to chime in. This has not provided a substantial boost in my traffic.

Overall, I can not give a positive or negative review of slogbite, so try it if you like.

Adgitize

Adgitize is a bit different from the other blog promotion tools in the fact that it is a cash payout system. (Entrecard is too, but different) I have not paid for advertising through them, rather I only publish their ads, but they have a point system for ad views on your site, and give points for articles written, all which earn money. So far with them, I have earned 17 cents. Hell Yeah!! That means that by the year 2235 I should be a millionaire! I like them though, because the incentive to click the ads in the widget is there, and have found many a cool blog there. I usually leave a comment and hope they will visit my site in return. I have had a decent amount of success with this method and traffic has increased somewhat with them.

Overall, good stuff, highly recommend them, I mean come on, your getting paid to use them, nice!

BlogExplosion

I like Blogexplosion. No money, but incentive to surf member blogs exist through a credit system. What I really like from them, and what differentiates them from Entrecard is you are only rewarded by staying on a site for 30 seconds. If you leave before then, no credit. So what are you gonna do while you wait? Read the blog of course. Kudos to them for giving people the incentive to actually read the blog.

What I don’t like is that things could be explained a little better. I still don’t understand exactly how everything works. I asked my blogging buddy, and he helped me somewhat, but I very well can’t ask him to explain everything on the site to me, so hopefully, soon they will lay it out a little more clearly to users. Again, feel free to let me know what you know about this system, as I am very new to this system. I still do not know the effect on my traffic from this site, but I hope it works well because I like it.

Overall, I like this system alot, and give my recommendation, based simply on the fact that people have to at least sit on your site for 30 seconds. Keep them entertained and they may keep returning.

Thats all I have for now, If your using something I haven’t listed and would like to recommend it, tell me which and why. I would love to hear it! C-ya!

As a guitar player I can’t even begin to tell you how many guitar cables I have bought. They all end their lives the same though. Snap. Crackle. Pop. I usually solder them together a few times before we say our final goodbyes.

I think of all the chords I have bought. Cheap 10 dollar chords, expensive 40 dollar chords, braided, non braided, gold tipped, crap tipped, straight tips, angled tips, hell, I even bought one of those sixties spiral telephone chord guitar chords. Yet, suprisingly enough they all die quicker than I want them to.

If you think of it, they do have to stand up to a fair bit of abuse. Getting snagged out of the guitar, setting your guitar down on top of the chord tip, missing your stomp box and stomping your tip. Poor things, never really get much of a break.

I would love to try a wireless unit. Something like this minus the price. I would actually love to get a unit to hide within the guitar body with only the antenna exposed. That would be great. If any of you guys have used one, let me know what it was and what you thought of it!

Well do you guys remember when I got the van? How hyped up I was? How I was going to to tour the world? The ambition? The Hope? The Dreams?

Yeah well forget about that.

Yep. The van is for sale. Cheap. 700 dollars cheap. Why? Two reasons. One, it does need some work to be a worthy road vehicle. Two, nothing is slowing down my families bills and they must be paid.

It’s on craigslist and I have two people wanting to come see it tomorrow, both are motivated and have cash in hand. The van will go. The dreams will remain. Rough times!