Here’s a list of things it is going to say so far – I want you to add to it! What would a butler say?

Good morning.
Good afternoon.
Good evening.
The time is x:xx AM/PM.
Today is January x, 2009.
Right now it’s x degrees and fine outside.
It’s expected to reach a top of x degrees, and a low of x degrees today.
You have x items on your to-do list for today.
I’ll wake you again in x minutes.
Welcome home!
I hope you had a wonderful evening.
You have x unread emails.
While you were out, you had x visitors.
Rain is forecast for the next x days, why not consider doing a load of washing today?
It looks like it will be beautiful weather tonight. Perhaps dinner outside would be nice?
What a beautiful day it is today!
I love thunderstorms. But if it starts to get too close, you might want to consider turning me off!
Aah… Friday. Finally!
I hope you had a restful weekend.

Thanks.

This morning I have spent all morning cleaning up (mostly Pepper’s little surprises), and paying bills. There’s washing up to be done, our lounge room is a mess, and our office is worse. Not to mention our bedroom floordrobe.

Talia is currently at school 3 days a week, and I’m at uni 2 days a week, school on 1, and usually at work on 1 (total:4). That means that although we’re both usually out of the house, we do have 3 days between us each to clean and tidy.

Of course, those 3 days are usually taken up with school and uni work. But I won’t to know how families with working Mums AND Dads keep their houses clean!?!?

All that for this point:

There is definately a full time job in being a house-wife or a house-husband.

Does anyone want to do our housework?

One of my jobs as a youth leader is to be in charge of a small group of boys. It’s about building relationships with them, and mentoring them.

The guys I have are okay. I mean, there are a few of them that are a bit ratty. They’re still young (grade 8-9) and going through that whole ‘be cool in front of my friends’ stage. I guess when I really think about it, I got stuck with the ratty ones.

Here’s why I think it will be good though…

Building close personal relationships with these kids is great. We can focus on individuals, where they are spiritually, socially, or anything else, and build these kids up to be great people of God. I feel that this is a much better foundation for a youth group, as opposed to the normal weekly games and fun that usually happens at youth groups.It’s a more personal approach.

I’m looking forward to this challenge. I feel as though I would make a good mentor (that’s mentor, not Mentok) (ooh-eee-ohh). So stay tuned, you will probably see some of the stuff we’re doing posted here. There are some good times to be had.

I just have one question that I hope my readers will be able to help me with.

My guys play up a bit and aren’t always listening. What are some behaviour management strategies that will allow me to retain a mentoring, friendly role with these kids, not the hard-ass mean teacher guy that I’m starting to come across as.

Often, I get quite annoyed when someone hasn’t updated their blog in a few days. It makes me loose interest in the blog, and I remove it from my list. Others only check their blogs maybe every second day, and might be too overwhelmed with blogs that are updated multiple times daily. With too much to read, the blog drops off their list.

My point is this: A key factor to retaining readers is knowing how often they check your blog for updates.

Here’s how to do it (It’s really easy).

You need to have Google Analytics installed on your blog. If you don’t have it installed, head over to Google and sign up for it. It’s free and easy to set up. If you’re using Wordpress, there are plugins that make it even easier.

Okay, first of all, sign into your Google Analytics account, and click Visitors, Visitor Loyalty, and then Loyalty.

By default, you should be looking at your visitor loyalty settings for the past month. This will give you some indication as to how often your visitors come back for more. But because of the way Google Analytics groups some visit types, it’s hard to get a clear picture of what really goes on.

So I use this method:

Luke’s reader frequency method.

At the moment I’m not interested in the people who have only visited me once, or twice – as they are unlikely to be regulars. 4 times means once per week. I’m really interested in here up.

We’ll group together 4 – 8 times. Adding the visits and the percentage makes it 18 visits, or 10.52%.

Now we need to average out the groups.

Take your 4-8 visits (mine is 18) and divide it by 5.
Take your 9-14 visits (24) and divide by 6.
Take your 15-25 visits (26) and divide by 11
Take your 26-50 visits (5) and divide by 25

I’m left with the averages of:
4-8: 3.6
9-14: 4
15-25: 2.36
25-50: 0.2

Now I can clearly see that most of my readers come 9 – 14 times a month. Which is roughly once every three days (an average of 11.5 times per month, or once every 2.7 days, if you want to be fancy).

Conclusion

My average reader visits once every three days – which means I should write a new post once (or maybe twice) every three days, to keep them satisfied. Much more then this might overwhelm them, and any less than this might bore them.

I hope you found this useful! Let me know what you think.

Some of my friends use a nifty little thing called RSS, which allows you to quickly view all the new posts from your favourite posts, conveniently arranged neatly in the one spot: your RSS reader.

I can’t stand to do this.

Why? I’m glad you asked.

Well so many people put SO MUCH TIME into making their blog look nice. When you visit a blog, the theme sets a mood, the sidebars give you the option to click and browse at your hearts desire, and everything is set out the way that the blogger wants you to see it!

If you’ll allow the analogy, I like to think that using RSS is like eating well prepared meals in one concrete cell, with the table always in the same place, with no waiter there to serve you if you feel you need something more.

I much prefer to visit each site, and just remember what I have and haven’t read yet. Kind of like eating at different restaurants with different kinds of meals and different atmospheres and waiters.

Now don’t get me wrong – I’m not completely anti-RSS. I think RSS is a great option for being updated on the latest news (who needs the atmosphere of a news room?), and as a standard for syndicating blog content into other mediums. I just think that using RSS for blogs kinda defeats the point a little.

Know what I mean?

Previously, I have simply defined who I currently am, faults and all, and tried to love that. It works, to an extent, but I believe that taking the ‘growing into what I want to be’ approach will work much better.

I will always have faults, but this way, I can work on getting rid of the bits about me that I don’t like, and focus on improving other areas of me that I do. So anyway, here they are.

1. Jobs I would like

• Student studying to be a teacher, at uni
• Children’s pastor
• Living and working overseas
• Working with family
• Professional Whateverist

2. Hobbys I would like

• Serving more at church
• Learning more Italian
• Musicals
• Haidong Gumdo
• Outdoorsy Adventures (ala kayaking on inflatable mattresses)
• Song writing
• Acoustic guitar
• Better bass guitar
• Romantic whims

3. Impressions I would like to make

• Quiet
• Sensible
• Less childish
• More mature
• Friendly
• Nice
• Happy
• One of those people that everyone loves
• Less of a ‘try-hard’
• Less esoteric
• Less know-it-all
• Less out there

So there you have it. That’s the person I want to be. Feel free to throw in your own suggestions.

Next step: figure out what I have to do to get there.

When asked why, the response was that Talia writes about fluffy, gossipy, fun stuff, while I write boring ideas about life, the universe, and everything like that.

So, I asked myself the question – what makes a good blogger? And I’ve come up with these five answers.

1. A focus

It’s good to have a particular topic or point or idea that you blog about.

2. A plan

You need to know where you are and where you’re going. You can’t blog if you’re not sure which way your life is headed.

3. An audience

Nobody reads a blog that they’re not interested in. Make sure your blog is targeted at a particular audience.

4. A style

Lets face it – as nice and clean as this blog is, nobody other than me likes the way it looks. People want something bright colourful and exciting. Style also extends to writing style – some people have a style of writing that is entertaining to read.

5. A reason

Regular updates are an important part of a successful blog, and if you have no reason to blog, you have no motivation to blog, and then you have no blog.

And so in light of this revelation of mine, I have decided to start a new blog, just as a trial, doing all the right things. It will be called The Life of Luke, and it will be bright and colourful and fluffy and gossipy and it will have a niche.

I’ll continue this one for those few who prefer to read something with a little substance.

I’ve recently got a job at Dominoes.  I think that for me, delivering pizzas (although I do enjoy it), is a bit of a morale killer. I head shrinker. A blow to my ego (I should be a rapper).

And I think that has had an effect of my wanting to post on my blog. That, and the fact that there are only a select few who read it.

So anyway, working at Dominoes, as working in any fast food, retail, or similar position will do, has forced me to ask a question that I just can’t find the answer for.

Why do customers always come in ‘waves’?

Ask anyone in retail or food. It gets busy for a while, then dies down to nothing, then (usually when you least expect it) it’s busy again, followed by a period of quietness.Is there some sort of global sub-conscious that says ’shop here now’, or ‘pizza for dinner tonight’? Is it somehow embedded into the human psyche? Can people telepathically communicate on a sub-conscious level? Or is it something simpler?

Further to this, I have made a very interesting observation, which still requires much more research, but here it is:

Can the desire for pizza (ergo many/any/all things) being location specific?

What do I mean? I mean that it seems to me that each night 75% of my deliveries are to a specific area (sub-suburbs, if you will), and the rest are kind of dispersed elsewhere. Can there possibly be a pizza ‘vibe’ around Buderim Meadows, or is this all just coincidence?

Aah, well, it’s all in fun.

I’d love to know: who are you, why are you here, what do you do, and if you had a third arm protruding from your chin, what would you use it for?

Please leave me your message in the comments for this post.