Due to a medical condition I have which is apparently causing me to give the appearance of growing a beard I have been searching for options to remove the hair from my face. I started out with shaving, but that gets tiresome as it needs to be done at least every other day if not daily. So while shopping at my local big-box store, I picked up some Nair Face Cream.

The directions say to apply a thick layer of the cream to cover the hair being removed, and then to wait 5 minutes and test a small area to see if the hair is coming off. If not, leave on for a few more minutes, not to exceed a total of 10 minutes. Unfortunately, after 10 minutes, the hair on my face still wasn’t coming off. I dutifully wiped the cream off my face and rinsed, and yes, some of the hair came off, but I have to say, the face cream was not nearly as effective in removing hair as the regular Nair for your legs.

The package does state that hair removal results will depend upon the thickness of the hair that is being removed, but still. Having used Nair products before, I expected much better performance. I think I’ll try a different product next time, as this one definitely did not meet my needs.

Ok, so not really. I’m not famous and I’m sure I’ll never be a famous DJ. I’m not going to be on any of the local radio stations anytime soon, nor will I be nationally syndicated for my witty interjections between songs. But I am able to let the world know what my favorite songs are, quickly and easily, plus interject witty prose along with them via my new favorite toy, Blip.fm.

Not to be confused with Last.fm which either has you doing a radio thing or tells everyone what you played last via your media player on your computer, Blip allows you to spin your tunes Twitter style. You can even @ reply other DJs.

Let’s put it this way – its’ Twitter with music. You can either talk to other DJs or give comments about your song choices. You can do @replies, reblip, add people’s blips to your playlist, and give them props for a song you like. Blip.fm also keeps track of your listeners, the people you listen to (favorite DJs), how many songs are in your playlist, how many blips you’ve made, how many @ replies you’ve received, and how many props you’ve received.

It will even updated your Twitter, FriendFeed, LiveJoural, Jaiku, Tumblr, or AudioScrobbler account if you ask it to. Just add the services you want updated and it’ll update them for you. It’s easy, and it’s fun. Just be careful that you don’t overload your Twitter followers. LOL

You can even keep Blip from updating Twitter, etc by putting an exclamation point (!) in front of your blip, which will prevent the updater from updating your services with that blip. I’ve seen a few of my Twitter “tweeps” letting their blips through, so I decided to let mine through tonight.

But check out Blip.fm, it’s awesome.

Have you ever noticed that one thing everyone wants in the “blogosphere” to have their blog seen. Actually, on the entire web, blog or not, the goal is to have your site seen, even if it is only by friends and family. But when you have a blog or a business website, you obviously want to have it seen by more than just a couple of friends and your family. You want everyone to see it.

One of the ways you can get your site/blog seen is to join up with web directories. These are usually collections of websites in general, but some cater to specific types of websites, such as blogs, fan listings, fan sites, fan fiction, etc. One of the newer and promising sites is The Listing – A Webdirectory.

The requirements are easy. Just submit your site and put a link back to The Listing on your site. There are some banners and buttons to choose from on the site, or you can just use a simple text link like I did. Once you’re finished adding your site, you can browse the other sites that are listed. It can be a great way to see and be seen on the blog/site scene. Not only can you browse to other sites/blogs, leave comments or guestbook entries, but other people can browse to your blog/site and do the same!

Definitely a great way to get some traffic coming in, and for you to find some new friends and blogs to read. Happy listing!

Sometimes, web searches do not pull up the results you are hoping for. I was searching for online schools that offered coding courses. I mean PHP, etc, but ended up with results for medical coding training courses. Whoops. Guess I should have paid attention and made sure I put the PHP in there. Kind of an idiot today.

One thing I do want to make a note of is searching the internet though. I’ve been learning a lot about branding yourself. Now if you happen to go to Google and search for Charity Lynn, I am not the top result. I’m the second result. This is probably more due to my domain name than due to me asking people to link me using Charity Lynn, or putting Charity Lynn in my meta tags. I have a penchant for choosing domain names that end up with my site being one of the “above the fold” results if you search for that particular phrase. Don’t believe me? Go search for Gothic Peach. I’ll be right here.

See? Search for Gothic Peach and I come up as the first site you’ll get. But for some of us, like the ones who are in web design, mortgage, etc where sites for our markets saturate and sometimes over saturate the market, getting our sites displayed in the top results on the search engines can be a real pain the rear end.

It takes time. That much I will say. Do not start asking everyone and their brother to link to you, don’t ask all of your Twitter friends to link you. Trust me, Google will notice and penalize you. For their purposes, your links have to come naturally. Sure, tell people about your latest blog post. If people like it, they’ll Digg, Stumble, Reddit, or whatever you offer for it. If you dont’ offer the option, they might even submit it for you. If they really like it, they may just go ahead and link to your blog/site to let others know that they feel you have great content. That is the natural way to build links.

Launching big campaigns asking people to link to you in exchange for money or links can cause Google to say that you are doing something wrong in their eyes, and believe me, they will penalize you for it. Be patient. Your time will come.

I am blogging this evening to give my 2 cents on the topic of web design dos and don’ts or, as I call them, yes and no. Things that you should or should not do in order to get new visitors and keep those visitors coming back for more. This is based on my experiences on the web, if you have any thing else to add, feel free.

Don’t –

• Use light colored (ie – yellow or aqua) text on a white/light background. It’s very hard, if not impossible to read. You won’t win any design contests or clients with a website like that.
• Use anything other than white text on a black background. Anytime I look away from a computer screen after viewing a site that has a black background with anything other than white text, I end up seeing lines for at least 15 minutes. Not a good thing.
• Use the tag. Most browsers don’t even recognize it and the ones that do, well, it annoys the heck out of visitors to see blinking text.
• Have your page full of large images. Load time is a big factor in how long a person stays on your site and whether or not they come back. If you have a lot of images to load and they are all large in KB/MB size, visitors on dial up connections will leave and most likely never come back.

Do –

• Use dark grey or black as your text color when using a white/light background color. It is easy to read and is more natural than light colors on a light/white background.
• Use white text on a black background. But not if you’re going to have a very long page. One or two paragraphs is fine, but if it’s going to be more than that, see about using a div layer with a white background and black or dark grey text for your information.
• Use something to make your links stand out. If you want them the same color as all other text, an underline is a great way to allow people to know there is something to click there. You may also make links bold or italic, but remember, if you use those attributes for emphasis as well, your visitors won’t realize where you emphasized something and where you actually linked something.
• Use thumbnails. If you’re using WordPress and you uploaded your image via WordPress then you’ll have a ready-made thumbnail to use. Otherwise, use a graphics program and make a smaller copy of your image and link to the larger files. Let your visitors choose whether or not to view the larger image.

Just a few tips for the budding designers and people who are creating their own web pages and sites for their own personal pleasure.

If you’re needing help with good color schemes, try COLOURlovers, a web forum that can help you find the inspiration you need, as well as some help if you want to know if the scheme you’re thinking of is too garish or hurtful to the eyes.

Also, know that just because you write valid code, your site does not have to be plain. You can have color, graphics, and other things that make your site look great, without sacrificing valid coding. Proof can be seen here and atGothic Peach. Both are my sites – this one and my other blog, and both have valid XHTML and CSS coding.

If you have never tried to validate your code at W3, don’t be afraid to do so. Yes, you’ll probably get errors when you do it, but they tell you what should be fixed to eliminate the errors. A lot of times, it will be something simple, like an improperly nested tag or a tag you forgot to close. It happens. Sometimes correcting one error will actually cause 2 or more errors to be corrected as well. So take the time to try validating your HTML, XHTML, or CSS coding. It is well worth it in the long run.

If you need a brush up on your HTML, need or want to learn HTML, XHTML, or CSS, W3 Schools is a great learning tool. They also offer certification in HTML, XML, ASP, and JavaScript, so if you’re looking to be a web designer, you have the option of getting certified in your field.

I hope you enjoyed these tips and will find something useful among them. My goal is to help provide my readers with some valuable information and not just fluff and crap.