Kyle Thomas

The Website of Kyle Thomas (KyleWith)

Cirque du Soleil Michael Jackson

I have long since been a Michael Jackson music fan. I love his music, but I also love his dancing. I will admit I’m a closet dancer. Give me a greased kitchen floor, I can bust a move. Now that you have that image in you head lets move on.

If you watch interviews with many dancers and performers today they will tell you that Michael Jackson influenced them in some way and rightfully so, he was brilliant. After watching his music videos endless times I am fascinated with the world of dance and choreography. I’m envious of those who can move to the music and beat so well, in a coordinated manner. I can’t.

This Wednesday night in Edmonton, Ab I will be seeing Cirque du Soleil perform Michael Jackson THE IMMORTAL World Tour. I have never seen a cirque performance, but have always wanted to. They too have always fascinated me, taking dance and gymnastics and combining them into shows accompanied by music and themes is, again, brilliant. Needless to say I’m excited to see the show. Here is the trailer:

Pick That Theme!

Well as it seems I have finally decided on a theme for my blog I though I would explain a little about the importance of a good theme.

A Blog Theme
The theme is what people see first, it is the most important thing about your site other than the content. So that is why you need to pick the right one. There are hundreds and hundreds of themes out there for you to pick from so finding the right one isn’t always easy.

What do you want? Because of the very many configurations of themes it is best to decide what it is you want in the theme before you start looking. Do you want two sidebars? Just one?  What do you want to put in the sidebar, Flickr Badge, Twitter updates, blogroll, etc? Do you want a header with a picture and the title of your blog or just the title? Do you want page tabs above or below the header or just have them in the sidebar? Would you like full posts of the main page or just snippets? The list of question can go on and on. I bet at this point you think wow I didn’t realize there was so much to think about.

One of the main things to think about is “How visible is my content?” Your content is why people will be coming to your site therefore it is the most important thing on your site. So you want it visible easily and quickly. You want the colour of the font to show up the best it can against the background colour, as well as having the font size readable but not to big.  You also don’t want all your sidebar widgets distracting your readers. I’m sure there are many more tips on making your content visible and I’m sure I will touch on more soon.

The last thing I want to talk about in this post is something I’m not even good at, so I guess this post is another one of the “do as I say not as I do” posts.
Don’t Change! Since starting The Bushman 7 months ago I have had 7 main themes as well as some random ones I would throw up to try. That is what not to do. It is all right to change your theme every once and a while but not every month.  You don’t want to confuse your readers by always changing the look of your site; they want something that is constant and always there. You want them to be able to navigate through easily with out have to relearn where everything is.  I would suggest if you are going to change your theme ask your readers first, write a post explaining to them that you are interested in changing the theme and ask them for there opinion. A good way to gain loyal reader is get them involved.  A mistake I made was I wanted to go to fast. I constantly wanted a theme with more sidebar space for the extra things and then at one point I hit the peak and have now settled with a theme with less clutter in the sidebar.

So when you’re out there looking for the best theme for you, try and remember some of those things. Also when you are looking don’t automatically rule out paying for a theme sometimes they can be the best for your site and what you want to do.

If you have any tips or suggestion on picking a theme let everyone know below.

What Would You Do, to Do it?

I was on The Hour TV show website browsing around the forum when I came across this post about a 27 year old guy who wants to not only meet George Stroumboulopoulus but be on his show as well. That is all fine and dandy but the guy doen’t have anything to offer.

If you have ever watched the show you would know that Stombo is intense and always has interesting guests on the show. From politicians to rockers to authors, anyone with a interesting story to tell.

That being said this guy wants to go onto the show. What has he done, well nothing. He is just an everyday average joe except his name is David. There is nothing wrong with that but when the magority of viewers of The Hour are average people like him, why would they want to see some one just like themselves. It wouldn’t be very interesting in my opinion. When you read why the guy wants on to the show all he tells you is he is a big fan the show and has a rabbit, recycles and isn’t all that special. He believes it would be a good idea for a show, if just him and Strombo talked about “killer music” and “hockey” while shooting the breeze. Ummmm No. Maybe a radio show but I don’t think that would fly on The Hour. I think he needs a reality check. Check.

This Site is a self made Mess

Well I fail and this is now a mess.

I’m trying to accomplish too much I forget to do what I started with. I’m trying hard to find my niche and but I can’t seem to get it to click and it is preventing me from doing the things I started out with. When I originally start The Bushman it was going to be my personal blog about my life and adventures I encountered. So for the first couple month that was all well and good, I would have the odd topical post that would drive up my traffic like the Ice Thickness Chart but other than that my followers were just friends and family that knew me.

But then my imagination got the best of me, I started exploring the blogging world more and more, and got hooked. My idea for a blog changed, or maybe not so much changed but I saw two possibilities rather than one. I wanted to keep my personal blog going but also wanted to write a blog that was topical and I would write about my niche (which I still don’t have). So the first thing I thought of was and probably still is a simpler and better idea, was writing two separate blogs. I have a bunch of domains already and registering one is only 10$ a year so that wasn’t the thing that stopped me. I actually started to try that with my iTalkout domain. If you go over there you can even still see it….. The thing that made me just use one blog was the fact that The Bushman was already out there and established. I have it register with Technorati, Blogger and many others, have a Google sitemap set up, SEO intact with the blog and some people were already following it, so I initially it would just be easier to go with The Bushman. As I looked back on it now, it would have probably been just as easy to start a new blog and market it.

Lets move on to my niche, (A Niche being the topic I write about and am passionate about) if you look at iTalkout it is directed towards a Canadian Living. Let me explain how I got to that and my many other niches I tried.  You can all take a guess that I like the internet and technology, so one of the topical ideas I considered was a blog about whats happening in the world of the internet. Like Google, Facebook, Youtube, etc. like some of the things I have on The Bushman currently. But lets face it I don’t have the in’s to all the news when it happens to be able to blog about it quick enough for people to care for it and with me being so far away from where there is more of a tech population it just didn’t seem possible. My next idea was definitely more local, I wanted to write a blog to students and eventually get some of them to write posts. A blog with tips and tricks for students, where questioned would be answered and advice would be give, as well news from school would be posted. But with the all the social networking sites out there like Nexopia, MySpace and Facebook I would have to really work hard to try and make it appealing to students. Its funny as I write this I think of new ideas for that site and think it might just be possible, so I wont scratch that off the list yet.  I don’t remember if this next idea was before or after the students idea but it was a more broad idea. I wanted to write a blog about Yellowknife, not so much about the History of Yellowknife but more the happenings of Yellowknife. I have looked for a site such as this but have yet to find one. I find Yellowknife is still a victim of static websites or the original web, so by making this site would be a way to try and show that the web is now very interactive. I also had a personal goal with this idea which was to get more involved with the community. If I was going to run a site about Yk I would need to be out there to be able to write about it. The only thing that stopped me from doing this was the fact that at the same time I came up with that idea, I was applying for school which would take me out of Yellowknife. Knowing the possibility of leaving Yellowknife I had to broaden my idea to the entire of Canada. So that’s where My Canadian Living came from, I would write about things I encountered while living my life. This would be an excellent topic to full fill my life goal of working online while living out of my truck, driving across Canada. The reason I don’t think I could do this topic is that I am still too young and do not have the experience to be able to write to the fullest.

So now its your turn. You have read my blog and some of you know me personally. What do you think I would write about best? Think about what and how I currently write and think about who I am as a person. Then leave a comment below. Thank you.

So because I have tried to pull off doing two different types of blogs on one site it became a mess, at least I think. It is slightly confusing because only my “journal” category posts go to the blog page therefor making it difficult to find the topical posts. I also have that shop page but that is just for kicks. I wanted to make a Bushman shirt and then I ended up setting up a free online shop, I think I’m going to get rid of that. I also don’t think the recipe page goes with the site when I write about technology…hmm. Like above tell me your thoughts.