March Blogger Awards

66 BBC'ers blogged at some point in March, but I don't know if that's higher or lower than usual. Below you will find 7 of the posts that I enjoyed the most. I remind you, once again, that my opinion is super important.

Lindy's Bible Study Method
Kirk's Back Hair Baby
AP's Hand of Fellowship
Kristi 7 Years Ago
Kristi 30 years now what?
Kelly on 'The Good Wife'
Lisa is a Crazy Cat Lady

And for the 1st time ever, I've gotta give the monthly award the same person as the month prior. The award for best Blogger during the month of March goes to:

Kirk Perry:
Life on the Rock. A Habhaters Tale

January: Elizabeth S
February: Kirk P
March: Kirk P

***'s

Alright, enough people have been IM'ing me about the ***'s that I suppose I will make a blanket reply, against my wishes. As per request, I have changed the blogroller setting from "alphabetical" to "most recently updated." Frankly, I've always preferred this system since I'm extremely lazy and it eliminates scrolling down. Furthermore, I feel it heaps burning coals on sloggers.

The downside, of course, is that it's harder to find a name of a person who hasn't updated lately (but why would you want to?). Also, some people still aren't recognized by blogroller or haven't changed their settings, so they'll be trapped at the bottom. (by the way, if you hold your mouse over a name, it should tell you when they last updated. Everyone got ***'s on January 20th, so only people who updated since then are above "Aaron H" on the list).

Feel free to applaud or argue about the new system and I will take your comments under consideration.

#2 The Name Game

Blog Commandment #2
Thou Shalt Win the Name Game

A great name can bring fame to your blog. Can your blog survive without an awesome title? Sure. Can it thrive? Not likely. One's actual name (ie. Matthew Rose) can take most of us only so far. A famous person (like Will Wheaton and Michelle Malkin) can get away with naming their blog after their name, but you and I can't. Instead, we must come up with a great title.

So what does a great blog title look like? Wrong question. The right question is, "what does a great blog title do?" And the answer is, a great blog title CATCHES and CONVEYS. It catches the attention of your reader and conveys the purpose of your blog. Take my title as an example. Toward the former, it utilizes alliteration, rhyme & a play on words to catch your attention. Toward the latter, it conveys the reality that (because of my introverted personality) most of my readers were never able to get to know the real Matthew until my blog came around.

Here are the top 3 BBC blog titles:
Kayla's "Momologue" Good play on words, accurately describes her site
"Sarah's Zona" Very memorable and highly personalized
Liz's "A Bowl of Stew(art)" Whoever thought of that is genius

Have you thought through your blog's title?

Idol #10

It's Wednesday again and I just finished fast-forwarding through American Idol. Sort of a boring episode in that there were no amazing or brutal performances. Nevertheless, here's my review:

Weekly Awards
Best Performance:
Phil Stacey
Worst Performance:
Chris Sligh

Overall Standings
Top 3: Melinda (49) Jordin (47) Lakisha (46)
Low 3: Chris S (38) Haley (36) Sanjaya (24)
*Parenthesis show points I've awarded to each singer

I Murder Frogs

I am a murderer. I murder frogs. I don't mean to. I don't want to. But, at times, it's unavoidable. I don't know if it's like this across the continent, but in my town frogs love hopping across roads. If it's a rainy day, I'll see anywhere from 10-100 kamikaze frogs on my 12 minute drive home from church. Needless to say, I can't dodge them all. I feel bad.

I deserve the guilty feelings. To be honest, I have a history of torturing frogs. I remember many years ago, during Houghton Family Camp, playing a game involving frogs. The challenge was to catch a frog, run up to the top floor of the dorm, throw the frog out the window, and then run down the stairs fast enough to catch it again for Round 2. I feel really bad.

I'm sorry about my past. I don't remember if I ever dissected a frog in school, but if I did I'm sorry about that too. Truth be told, I like frogs. I used to have a thick picture book filled with tons of animals. My favorite pages were the frog pages. I especially appreciated one frog that looked just like a big juicy burger. Hmmm. I feel really really bad.