Hardcore Spin-Off

I like my new camera more than I like this pizza.

Chunked chicken does not belong on a pizza, so, I had to make another.

Any chicken here? Sure is. Plenty. I took a breast, grilled and shredded it. Mixed it with some Thai rub and a bit of BBQ sauce just to make it smokey and sweet. I used the shredded chicken-and-rub-BBQ as the sauce. Spoon it on and spread it around. The cheese here is a hard-to-melt English Coastal Cheddar, and some quality Mozzarella.

Olives were cut with a new sushi knife. Rings are forever gone. These things work much better.


Cooking is going nicely and the shape is going bowl-o. I had not expected this, but I have repeated the result many times. Here is a cooked and detailed ultra-thin dough. I've taken 1/8 of a recipe and made a 12" pizza. My neighbor loved it. I got one slice.

This was declared a paper-plate crust. Want one?

I don't deliver pizza anymore, but I will make a deal with you.

I've got enough pizza stuff to make a whole new blog, and there are some that have pestered me to purchase dough balls so that they can make their own gluten-free pizza. This tells me that I really need to make a blog just for the pizza thing. Therefore, I will do so.

Once the pizza blog is ready to go on-line, the first post will be the recipe for the classic gluten-free pizza crust that you see above. It works like a pastry and has a bit of forgiveness. Do me the honor and come back to this blog and check the "Links" section to find the haphazard, semi-live pizza blog.

Cheers!

Writing Overload

Overwhelm. Overload. Whatever you want to call it, the demands for my fingers to create characters either manually or by pressing keys is extreme. It's been nothing but writing every time I turn around. This is just one more task in the litany of words that I find myself awash in, and it has also become a release subject. Writing is one of those things, that when done well from the outset, bestows rewards along the way that keep you going.

Besides this weekly blog and my daily, I spend a fair amount of time here in the editing window. Words, unfortunately, are one of my better communicative abilities. Pictures work well to, and I've taken steps at improving my photographic capabilities. My abilities have not been in question for a few decades, just the availability of equipment. Now that I have direct-to-digital photo capability (which made its debut in the last post) with a viewfinder, you can look forward to more posts with pictures and illustrations. Cameras are another hobby that I had in years past, and something that is being rekindled. Not only as a pastime, but as a tool for modern life.

Here is a list of recent writing projects that I have undertaken or completed in the last few weeks:

1. manual addressing of advertising material for the daily blog


2. a colorful white paper documenting a circuit fix


3. dozens of 1,000 word explanatory technical e-mails


4. a magazine article abstract for my 4th industry article


5. my 3rd magazine article for a different industry publisher (coming soon)


6. my end-of-the-month bill paying

Yes, I list bill paying as a writing job. It uses a pen, and requires accuracy and thought. As far as this post is going, I realize that I am up against the deadline, and will be putting this through the spell check and making the final edits for grammar, clarity and content in about half-an-hour or so. I'm also letting dough rise for tonight's chicken pizza, and the Game Master icon is flashing for the help desk, begging me to check a message.

The GM reply is now clear, and I have discovered that the use of the numbered list tool here in the "old editor" has caused the formatting glitch to pop up again. No doubt that I will be adjusting the paragraph spacing yet again. I'm considering a switch to the new editor, if the spell check feature has been implemented in the tool bar. I live and die by spell check.

Pizza is slated for dinner and the stone needs time to get hot. I will likely not complete the pizza until after I've published this post. Therefore, there will not be a shot of tonight's pizza, however, here is a shot that is worth sharing.

Anyone who has shared my experience at Domino's Pizza will know immediately what the metal item in the picture is. I didn't have any PAM at the time, so there is a light layer of peanut oil on the screen, since it handles high temperature very well. It is precisely 12 inches in diameter, and is used to hold the skin, making it easier to shuffle the pizza around the work area. I bought two for about $8 each. They are valuable to have, and I will likely buy more for the party that I am planning.

The idea is to make dough and provide the stone and expertise to cook pizzas for guests. Bring your own Toppings comes to mind as a requirement, but I am also apt to collect some funds for the dough, cheese and propane. The grill will cook several pizzas per hour. If such a party happens, I will be sure to snap plenty of pics, and post what is permitted by the guests. Model releases are such a hassle.

So, thanks for coming by and reading the weekly update. I've had to keep from landing and running amok in a single topic, and hopefully, this is not as scattered as last week's post. This post is intentionally haphazard, as I am presently multitasking. The stone has been getting hot for the last 20 minutes, and it's time to work on my dough ball into a pizza crust. A Thin Crust to be exact. Perhaps next week, I will release the recipe for the classic pizza crust.

.... and tell you of some of the dangers of the previously posted recipe.

Making Netprints Visible

Perhaps you've returned to this site for another Domino's Pizza story. Perhaps this is your first visit to this Blog, ever. I really does not matter why you came, but I would like to make sure you come back. From a personal perspective, I would like to think that my random mutterings and witty writing style (if you can call it that) are enough of a reason to keep coming back on a regular basis. But how can I tell that I'm accomplishing the goal?

First, if you have not read the Privacy Policy, which is displayed in the administrative column of this blog (to the right on the current template), you might want to read it. It tells you that I might cause a cookie to be put on your machine, to help serve and track which advertisements you click on. Advertisements? What Advertisements?

If you read closely, I used the wiggle word "might" in the opening statement. Since I currently have an advertising supported blog, with an AdSense account, It's not too hard to add this blog to it, once it's approved by the Google content police. If you want to keep your ads, you'd better keep away from certain things - and with the audience that I know exists, I don't consider the Internet or the Blogosphere a place where it is safe to let-loose with the four-letter Anglo-Saxon set of colorful words, or anything that is strictly HBO fare.

Ah, you say. I've got you pegged, Mr. Blog Editor, you're here to earn advertising revenue.
I would not be able to disagree. I've seen the advertisements from Google "If you can Blog, you can Earn" and others like it. I have also read and reviewed a number of successful blogs, with lots of followers, comments, and a vibrant and living community. Yes, I created a blog because I believed that it was a marketable idea, and that means marketable on multiple fronts.


Of course, I did not know what markets my blog would appeal to until I got some kind of feedback. Like many other bloggers, my personal friends were happy to tell me what they think, and I took that feedback and stowed it. I keep looking for more of an indication as to the correct target market. After discovering a site that featured regularly updated fiction, I realized that I had created a daily blogfic that was worth listing, just because there were so few dailys out there. Generally, you're getting paid if you blog every day. Not me. Not yet.


Feedback in the form of a comment is great, but it's not all of the feedback that is out there. Just the fact that people other than I were visiting my blog would be enough. If people like it, they will come back for more, so page impressions would give me a nice counter to see. I thought of putting up a hit counter, like a little odometer, but thought better of it. It seems to be more like bragging than anything else, and my blog was not appropriate for a counter.


Then I got feedback. One of the fiction sites that I listed on had a couple of votes. 3 and 3.5 stars out of five. At least they did not give it the one-star-of-death. Plus, I am still writing. One reader also wrote a review, with feedback that I was able to use. Rather than just comply, making it easier for passersby, I used that same material as the seed for a marketing campaign.


I've been investing a good chunk of personal time on the task of pumping up the reader-base, and if you count visitors to the site as success, then I have had fantastic success. How many of those readers convert to regular readership, only time will tell. However, just like I crave feedback, I have come to realize that my readers might like some feedback as well.


Since the current campaign is via direct-mail, and I hand address each piece and pay proper full price postage, with a stamp, it's about as personal a request as I could ever make. The genius is the fact that it is a post-card, which means it's safe. It can't hold anything, like a suspicious white powder, and can't languish unopened, just with one face down. As soon as you uncover it, you recognize it. It's cheap. It's effective, and it's useful when reading the blog too.


So, here's the reverse-reward feedback. I hope it results in improved retention, as I have not had follow-on hits from the initial target states. Since you're not completely anonymous on the Internet, and are quite traceable, I've loaded my blog template with Google Analytics tracking code. Once you have an Analytics account, you can track multiple websites, with resolution as fine as the city in which the traffic originated. Every time a visit occurs from a new city, it will be added to the top of the list that now appears at the bottom of the blog.


Anyone who sees that list, is highly likely to see if their city is already named. If they come back, they will see new cities at the top. While this is a low-tech version of the "hits across the world" maps that feature pins or flags, I like it better for the following reasons.

1. I don't need another map of the English speaking world
2. 200 pixels is too small for a reasonable map anyway
3. the list is in order, most recent first, honoring those that came before
4. I can turn text into hyperlinks, and could get paid to do so
5. It's much more personal that a number on a counter
6. It probably loads faster than a graphic that needs a database of points.
7. It's trivial to update frequently.
8. It's only on the website.

This is February's twist on the marketing campaign. It also reveals that other people are interested in the blog, since the list is currently more than will fit on any reasonable screen size, but not so long that it prints on more than a single page. Being the beginning of the month, it is a good time to make such a change. I'll let you know how thing go with the marketing and the quest for readership. In the mean time, please rest assured that I am nowhere near done with Pizza.