They're back: Blog Tool Reviews

Blog Tool Reviews

One set of posts I want to bring back to the mix are my Blog Tool Reviews.  These posts detailed the different tools and services I commonly use on Folaji, and served to document helpful hints and tips for those out there who were looking to create their own blog or site.

The series, which originally started on this site, was moved to a new site a while back.  I was hoping to use this new site to post Software Development and IT posts, but quickly found out that I did not have the time to run two sites at once.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed writing these posts, which is why I will be bringing them back into the Folaji fold.

This dog will be replying to your emails (when she feels like it, of course...)

Ask Koji

A new series of articles I’m going to be bringing to the site are fan letter responses written from the point of view of my dog: Koji (a 3 year old female Basenji).  This is an idea I’ve been toying with for a while now, and I believe it’ll be fun to see how Koji would react to certain fan written letters.

So if you have any questions or comments you would like to send our way, you can leave a comment on this post or take a moment and write an email to koji@folaji.com.

Equanimity

Obviously one of the new series on the site will be Equanimity: the short story I’ve been preparing for almost the past year.  I expect we’ll see some posts for this story before the end of the month, so keep an eye open for them!

I have a camcorder!

Some Kind of Video Project

I’ve finally taken the plunge and bought a camcorder a couple of weeks ago.  I’ve since been walking around and taking random videos of things, but I’m looking for ideas for videos that I could post online.  As some of you may know, I had a blast making videos with friends while in highschool (take a look at this for an example, though I warn you that its both in French and pleasantly horrible  ), and with my new camera, I hope to start making videos again.

I’m not quite certain what I want to do just yet.  I have a few ideas rolling around in my head (mini web series or mini documentaries for example) but nothing concrete at the moment.   Regardless, once I’ve something ready to show, you can bet I’ll post it here.

In the meantime, if you have some ideas as to what I could do video-wise, feel free to share!

I like it because this is probably the first site that I’ve ever created for myself, and after a year and a half online, I find nothing more relaxing than sitting back and looking at my site, which I built the way I wanted to, without the constant input from some external party about advertising revenues and traffic statistics.

Its not that I hate developing sites for other,  I’ve been doing that for as long as I can remember, and I don’t see any reason why I would stop.  But there is something liberating about creating a site that is yours and yours alone, a site where you have final say on content, look and feel, and overall organization.

And that’s what Folaji.com is for me: a place I can escape to and be myself, where I can publish ideas, stories, and videos that had once only been a sentence on a piece of paper in an old binder.  A place where others can come and read those stories, discuss them, and share their own if they would like.  (Ok, maybe the Folaji.com community isn’t big enough for that yet, but hey, I can dream, can’t I?)

Alright, so why am I writing all this?  Well, I came to the realization a few days ago that none of this would be possible if not for the array of wonderful free web tools available online.  When you look at this site, you should understand that the look and feel, the blog engine, the different tools showing up on the side bar, were all developed by a large online community of bloggers and developers that offer their products for free.  If it weren’t for these people and their willingness to share their tools with the online community, then Folaji.com would only be a shadow of its current self.

So I decided that, as a thank you for everyone’s efforts, I would take the time over the coming months to review each widget, plugin and tool I use on Folaji.com.  This would be my way of thanking the community for such great work, and for allowing me to create this site, and hopefully will encourage others to do the same.