The London 2012 Olympics are underway

This weekend the Olympics began, they began with an opening ceremony just like any other world competition. I was not that impressed by the opening ceremony but it had its moments of awesome entertainment like when Mr Bean was doing what he is famous for (making people laugh). I also enjoy it when all the athletes from all the participating nations walk into the stadium. The big teams like America, China, Great Britain and other countries have hundreds of participants thus increasing their probability to win more medals, whilst the smaller sporting nations have fewer participants. South Africa, my country does not have a lot of participants as always but hopefully we are going to get more medals than in the last Olympics in Beijing.

Some events like rowing, tennis, badminton, hockey, soccer, basketball, archery, gymnastics, cycling and possibly other sports which are not that popular have already began with China and America leading the medals(no surprise there). Oh I forgot to mention that swimming has also been one of the main attractions on the early days; there have already been a few finals and Olympic/world records broken.

How South Africa Is Doing So Far

4 years ago South Africa only managed to win 1 medal and it was a silver medal. That was a very disappointing year for us. This year on day 2 we have already managed to win 1 gold medal in the pool. Last time no medals were won in the pool even though the swimming pool is one of our strongest events.

The South African soccer team Banyana Banyana managed to qualify for the Olympics, being only one of two African representatives at the London Olympics. Banyana Banyana is the lowest ranked team in at the Olympics so basically the odds were stacked against them. They were beaten 4-1 during their opening match against Sweden, and then beaten 3-0 by Canada, they face Japan tomorrow, and it is not looking good for the South African ladies as the Japanese ladies are the current world champions. They were unlucky to be grouped with teams that are all in the top 7 in the world when they are not even ranked in the 50s.

South African Swimmers

A few of our swimmers managed to do well in the heats in the first couple of days on to do badly during their semi-finals and finals.  But the highlight of the London Olympics so far has been Cameron Van Der Burgh who became the first home-bred male South African to break a swimming world record. He got better with each round, he broke the Olympic 100m Breast stroke record and went on to break the world breast stroke record during the final to win South Africa’s first gold medal during the London Olympics. The South African 100 relay team did well during the qualifiers and were neck to neck with the French, who eventually won the gold in the final, but South Africa’s performance during the final was disappointing and they did not win a medal.

That is all for now, let us hope there are still more medals to be won by South African Athletes in the coming events.

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Glee has become too Gay

I loved the first season of Glee, because I am a musical person at heart, it was a awesome to see people of different backgrounds, from the cool cheerleaders and football players to the less cool gays and theatre hopefuls hanging out together. It was cool to see music bringing different cliques together; it was even more amazing to see them sticking together even when the rest of the school was against them.

hit TV show glee too gay

I know that the show is far from being realistic just like a bollywood movie, life is not a musical, but it was sort of more realistic in the first season then it is now. Most of my male friends do not watch this show because it s a bit on the gay side, they prefer watching something like supernatural. I am a series guy in general hence I watch most series.

There are a few things I disagree with in general with the direction the show has taken in the most recent two seasons. They give people the impression that all boys only private schools are filled with gay guys or atleast that the guys in the glee clubs are homosexual which is actually not true, I have friends who went to all boys schools and were in choirs and they are certainly not gay( not that there is anything wrong with being gay). In Glee they makes Kurt’s boyfriend (Blaine) who used to be the leader of that all boys school private school glee club gay, they also make his replacement gay as well.

They also make the big bully guy (karofsky) that used to bully Kurt gay. I know that they are trying to say that it is okay for kids who are gay to come out of the closet, and they are trying to show them they are not alone but I do not think it is the right direction to lead the show. The last time I checked I thought the show was about music and not sexual orientation, I feel that the show could potentially put off a lot of straight guys from being in glee clubs if that gives off an impression of being gay, kids are not nice especially to gay kids (I know the show is trying to stop bully especially because of sexual orientation but I feel this leads to more bullying).

Oh and one final thing they also make the Santana chick a lesbian and her girlfriend Britney who really does not know herself is bi-sexual since she swings both ways, making a large portion of the regular cast homo sexual which is not a true representation of the real world. I still like the singing part of the show but I do not get the direction they are taking with the show.

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Cool 20 minute series on TV

I love television, I love watching documentaries especially those by National Geographic Channel, and I love watching cool movies every now and then.  What I love the most is watching series especially those 40 to 50 minute series such as True Blood, Vampire Diaries, Secret Circle, Supernatural, and Homeland and so on. I like series because do not need to cramp the whole storyline into only two ours; we get to explore the story and understand the characters. Series leave us wanting to see more, there are always mysteries and unanswered questions that keep us coming back for more week in and week out.  When I do not have time to watch hour long series there is nothing better than watching something for just 20 minutes and then going back to which ever urgent matters demand my attention afterwards.

As I said before I am a series guy, and if there is a series old or new that I have not watched I will watch it to see if I like it, often I will watch my favourites first, then when the shows are still in production I will catch up on series that I have never watched before, For example I only started watching Boston Legal last year and I have since watched all 5 seasons and I thoroughly enjoyed watching it. I only watched lost for the first time last year and I enjoyed the first couple of seasons until it started getting boring for me. There are so many awesome series out there waiting to be watched, there are so many of them, that you can’t really watch them all at the same time.

When I am bored and have watched all my favourites I give other series a chance and may end up enjoying them. I am not a critic I do not really compare series, I appreciate what the writers were trying to portray.

Going back to the 20 minutes series or whatever you call those I would like to mention some of my favourites at the moment.

JESS YOU cute Dork YOU

Okay here goes my favourite at the moment has to be New Girl; this series is based around a dorky girl Jess who catches her weirdo hippy like boyfriend cheating then moves out. She then moves into a loft with 3 weird single guys (Nick, Winston (who replaced Coach), and Schmidt). Jess has a hot model as a best friend (Cece).

SHELDON YOU GENIUS YOU

My other favourite 20 minute sitcom is the popular Big Bang Theory which is about the lives of 2 geniuses (Sheldon and Leonard) and their friends. It is very funny and sees the world, dating, fun and friendship through their eyes. My favourite character there is Sheldon by a long short, his comments always make me laugh and the fact that he does not understand sarcasm is very amusing.

Community bunch of weirdos

Another show I love watching, that cracks me up is Community, this show follows a group of friends in community college, one of whom used to be a hot shot lawyer (Jeff), another is an old sort of racist white man who is rich and always says wrong offensive things (Pearce). I loved the first season of this show it was killer, especially the characters of Troy and Abed, I like the second season but not as much as the first.

oh TEDDY boy when will you meet the mother

Oh and how can I forget How I Met Your Mother, yes this story follows Ted as he narrates or tells his kids how he met their mother, the show follows him and his friends, Lilly, Marshall, Robin and Barney. Barney is by far the most entertaining character on the show, the guy is Legend.....wait for it...ary! All he does is make up rules about getting women and the Bro Code. He is a womaniser but I’m sure even girls grow to love him as he is a good person. Also Barney Always wears a suit unless other people are wearing a suit or in sad situations.  

Old 2 and a half men crew

My other favourite show used to be Two and a Half men – The show that used to be based around Charlie Sheen as Charlie, his brother Allen and Allen’s idiot son.   Charley is basically like his real life character, drinks too much and uses women and also solicits prostitutes.

SCrubs

I used to love Scrubs as well, Doctor Dorian is a legend. I still re-watch Scrubs when I have got nothing better to do just because it was so awesome. It followed a Doctor with a very active imagination and his unusual bromance with Turk his best friend , the show went downhill in its final season when Doctor Dorian who made the show what it was, was no longer the main character.

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Ways to Use Tumblr – How to Increase Visitors on Tumblr

Tumblr is a blogging/social network on the rise. It owes its popularity to the fact that it acts as both a blogging platform and also like a social network. Short image posts are what works best on Tumblr, but   text based post work as well especially if the text is made into an image or printing on top of an inspiration background. Tumblr has a very viral nature and if people love your stuff they reblog it and your message spreads like a wildfire and followers follow suit.

Get traffic, followers and monetize your Tumblr

There are lots of ways in which you can use Tumblr, such as using it as a mini-blog to increase your blog network and get your message across to a different audience.  You can use Tumblr best if you are an image based blogger, to spread your photography around the web for more people to see with a link back from you the original source. With enough followers and traffic you can monetize your Tumblr blog so that you make some coffee money while social networking.

How to Grow Traffic and followers on Tumblr

First I will tell you how I began using Tumblr, I was trying to do some back-linking by creating little web 2.0 satellite sites. I posted only one article at the time which was a long text article (not knowing that the Tumblr audience favoured image posts) with a link pointing to my fitness blog. I had no idea of the viral nature of Tumblr’s reblog function. I later on posted a more image based post with some text, Upon check my Tumblr a few months later I realised that my post had been shared and that my links in the post were still intact in the other people’s Tumblr’s, I also realised I had gotten followers.

From then on I saw the value of Tumblr to promote my non-Tumblr fitness blog. I decided I would be more active on Tumblr. At first I would post once or twice every week and would notice that every time I posted I would get more followers, I also realised that not all posts got reblogged the same, some were more popular than others. In fitness blogs the inspiration quote on an inspirational background was the most popular amongst fitblr (which are fitness bloggers in Tumblr language), also images of aesthetically muscled guys and fit hot babes were a hit. Once you get to a certain number of followers on Tumblr they reblog everything you post (I am yet to reach that stage, I just recently started working on increasing my efforts on Tumblr).   

I realised that the most reblogged and followed Tumblr’s posted very often more than 5 times a day sometimes, they also follow a lot of other people (some people follow you, if you follow them), popular Tumblr blogs also like a lot of other peoples posts and comment on other peoples Tumblrs. It is also important that you reply to messages from your followers to build a great community environment.

Another way to build Tumblr traffic is to not focus all your efforts on activities on Tumblr alone, try to target search engine traffic and rank for your key word. You can do this by mixing the types of posts you make from images, to text to video and quotes. (If a lot of people ask you question that could be a lot of helpful content when you are having question and answer sessions).

Try link building outside Tumblr and doing article marketing to promote yourself where you share your Tumblr in your author bio box. Going back to your onsite work, you should have static pages like your about me where you can write long text descriptions to help people know where you are coming from and why you do what you do, also you can make other static pages where your non-image content can be shared. Make sure it’s long, descriptive and well optimized for search engines then you could build backlinks pointing to those static pages. If they rise in the search engines, more people will be exposed to your blog. Your static pages could include links to your other social networks that you use and your main blog.    

Ways to Monetise Tumblr

Tumblr is tricky to monetise, and let me tell you why, it is more of a social place so people might not like to have ads show when they visit your Tumblr, it could chase away visitors or followers, and secondlyfollowers hardly ever need to visit your blog after they follow you because Tumble shows all updates to blogs you follow in a dashboard format which does not show blog format, but only the post itself. A way to make followers click so they actually go to your Tumblr would be to post image based pictures in sets with post describing the images so that followers would have to click to view the whole thing.

One of the most popular ways to monetise Tumblr is using ad networks like Google Adsense,  if you use Google adsense it would serve you well to read some of the suggestions I made above so you can get more search engine traffic as its more targeted traffic then traffic from within Tumblr.  If you are a text based Tumblr you could use ad networks like infolinks to advertise. There are a lot of adsense alternatives you can find if cannot get approved for Adsense such as Bidvertiser, Exit Junction, Chitika, Clicksor, I am not sure if they cater for Tumblr blogs but they are worth a try.

Also you could be an affiliate for a Clickbank product if you are into affiliate marketing, make sure your Tumblr does not look made for that affiliate product though, that is frowned upon and may get your Tumblr deleted. You could have a reviews of products and have some affiliate links (not every post though, but maybe one of your static pages) or banners on your side bars.

You could also sell your own services on Tumblr, especially if you become a Tumblr pro-blogger. You could sell your own product on Tumblr to your loyal and growing followers.

That is all for now, I will update this post should I acquire more information in the near future, good luck in your blogging endeavours, I hope I have been helpful.

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Citizen of the world

Many people will grow up in a certain town, state/province and then they will get married to someone from there and never move away from that place, I do not agree with that kind of a life where you live your life not having seen anything not having explored your country or even other countries. I am not saying that there is anything wrong with living like that, I just think is boring and we have got to see more of the world since we only have one lifetime to live, so we have to see as much as we can and live life until our battery goes empty.

There are many reasons people never move away from the place they are born, but the most common is that many people cannot afford to, they live from “pay check to pay check” so moving and travelling can be a difficult task. Others just enjoy being in their comfort zone, within reach of family members, where mommy and daddy can lend a hand. They need to know that should any problem arise then they will have the family structure to support them. The place or area where you grew up is also the place where you have child hood friends who you have known forever and you trust they also form part of your support structure.

the globe is a big place but its much easier to travel now

Another thing that always keeps people from seeing the world or even their country is the traditional structure of life, people simply finish high school, find a job or go to university then finds a job and pretty soon they have kids and get married and it’s all downhill from there, you will never really do anything you wanted before you had all this responsibility, you are now caught in the parenthood trap (although many people aspire just to be good parents). If you get a great job you might still be able to travel with your family but it rarely happens.

For some it’s going to university that lets them see a different part of the world far away from home, which will give them a new perspective and they will probably never go back home because they now know just how backwards or boring home is. They recognise that there are more opportunities for growth both financially and personally elsewhere. For many other people university is not an option (as my friend ED once said “university is a privilege”). People who do not go to university are most likely to stay in their home towns or states/provinces doing menial jobs that do not afford them the opportunity to see the world (and that are a shame). They are also more likely to get caught in the baby trap much earlier than university goers which in turn will make life more difficult and make it harder for them to pursue their dreams.

I am not saying this is true for everyone but these are just generalisations based on what I have seen. I do not want to live in one place for a long period of time; I want to see different places, to experience different cultures. I do not want to get caught in the baby trap before I have lived as an individual, I want to find myself first before any major life changes, and I also just do not agree with the norms, maybe I just like to be the outcast all the time. 

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