I just made a donation to the Fisher House to support the great work they are doing. The Fisher House provides a home away from home for the families of America’s soldiers who often have to travel long distances to receive specialized medical care.

This is a great cause and your help is needed this holiday season to make sure the families of our wounded soldiers can be close to a loved one at these most stressful times.

• Fisher House home page
• Donate to the Fisher House Online

Thank you, and Happy Holidays!

To be considered in my top X “All Time” movies it has to pass one test. Will I stop what I am doing and watch it, whenever it is on, no matter what I am doing? With that as the criteria, here are my top 5 movies of all time:

1. Shawshank Redemption
2. Tombstone
3. Cincinnati Kid
4. Old School
5. Armageddon (don’t laugh! I think it kicks ass).

I’d like to see what my other friends choose as their top movies, so consider yourself tagged:

1. Pokerplasm
2. Grundy
3. Rock_The_Ice

Complete Poker Rules has teamed up with Poker Plasm to host the Twitter Poker Tour (TPT). It’s an online home game open to all players. The events are held each Thursday PM.

Since there are players with accounts on specific sites, we have created two circuits:

• TPT:Stars Hosted by Complete Poker Rules on PokerStars.com
• TPT:Tilt Hosted by Poker Plasm on FullTiltPoker.com

We hope that you can join us for the fun! You can follow the conversation over at twitter by searching the hashtag #tpt. And feel free to join in by tagging your own tweets: #tpt.

For more information and event schedule see TPT Stars and TPT Tilt or visit the Twitter Poker Tour homepage.

If you are not using Google Webmaster Tools then stop reading now, sign up and come back, we’ll wait. OK now, say we are analyzing the Diagnostics > Web Crawl section in Google Webmaster Tools and notice that there are some Not Found errors. One way to fix these errors is to redirect them in .htaccess using a 301 Redirect.

Here is a handy spreadsheet (301-generator.xls) that I use to create my redirects using the data I download from Webmaster Tools. If you don’t like opening spreadsheets from an unknown blogger, then scroll down to the bottom of this post for the formula! 

How to use it

1. Download the Not Found errors by clicking Download this table in Webmaster Tools
2. Copy the non-domain part of the bad URL in first column (URL) of the spreadsheet downloaded from Google Webmaster Tools. Paste it into the next open field in column A on the 301-Generator spreadsheet. The non-domain part is everything after the http://www.yourdomain.com part of the URL field.
3. Paste or Type in the new destination (in FQDN or Fully Qualified Domain Name format) into column B on the same row as the bad URL in step 2 above.
4. The 301 redirect syntax will populate column C in the same row. You can paste that into your .htaccess file.
5. All requests for the bad URL will now be redirected to the new destination.

Important

• Always make a backup of your .htaccess file before making modifications. 
• Always test the results of your changes, you may inadvertently redirect traffic from your homepage or otherwise make your site inaccessible.
• If you are using Wordpress you should use the Redirection plugin instead of .htaccess 

Excel Formula

If you just want the formula, and not the spreadsheet, read on:

• In column A1 type Bad URL
• In column B1 type NEW URL
• In column C1 type 301 Syntax for htaccess
• In column C2 enter the formula
  • =”redirect 301 ” & A2 & ” ” & B2
• Copy that formula to all cells in column C as needed.

I used to have a chronically messy desktop. Fed up with all the clutter I asked myself what the point of the Desktop was. For me it was to hold files and application shortcuts. Well, if I can’t keep it clean, can’t I just hide it and have it still serve it’s purpose? 

What I did was (I’m running Windows XP):

1. Right clicked the desktop
2. Clicked Arrange Icons
3. Deselected Show Desktop Items.

Voila! Clean desktop. But have I lost any functionality?

Access to Desktop Files?

I put a shortcut to the Desktop folder in my quick launch bar so I can click it to see my desktop as a folder. So I still have direct access to desktop files.

Access to Desktop Application Icons

I installed Launchy to quick launch any apps so I don’t miss having desktop app icons. I hit ALT-Space and start typing the app I want.

Hope this helps keep your desktop clean!

Well, at least they make *my* life better, and hopefully those of my readers! I use a lot of Wordpress plug ins for SEO, Event Management, Web Analytics, Communications, etc so I wanted to just list them out for all to see.

Here are all the plug ins in use over at Complete Poker Rules:

• AdSense Manager
  • For managing Adsense Ads throughout the site
• Akismet
  • Nearly eliminates the spam comments I receive. Some false positives but that may just be the nature of running a Poker Blog.
• Amazon Reloaded for Wordpress
  • Allows you to search Amazon from the post edit screen and insert the product image or text link complete with Amazon Associate ID.
     
• cforms
  • Contact forms with an excellent admin interface and highly flexible styling. 
• FeedBurner FeedSmith
  • Used in conjunction with FeedBurner to manage your RSS subscriptions.
• Google XML Sitemaps
  • Creates and keeps up to date you sitemap.xml file for assisting search engines with the structure and pages of your site.
• Headspace2
  • Make your Wordpress site SEO friendly with this very powerful tool.
• Highlight Author Comments
  • Call attention to the comments that you leave as admin so they stick out from the rest.
     
• More Link Modifier
  • Changes the behavior of the ‘More’ link in Wordpress posts. You can customize the copy that is displayed as well as disabling the “Jump To” behavior of the More anchor link when clicked.
     
• Redirection
  • Manage the redirection of deleted posts, etc without needing to edit your .htaccess file. Also great for 301 redirecting domain.com to www.domain.com or vice-versa.
• Robots Meta
  • Manage the index nature of your site. Some SEO expert say that duplicating content within your own site dilutes the link juice you would otherwise get from a single instance of a post. Also good for noindexing your Wordpress Login page among others.
• RSS Footer
  • Append a footer to the end of each post in your RSS feed. This is especially key if you have sites that scrape your content, it will include a link back to your site and you can at least benefit from the juice!
• Search Excerpt
  • Enhance the on site search experience for your readers with keyword highlighting and relevancy sorting. 
• Sociable
  • Allow your readers to share your content on social networks.
     
• Theme Tester
  • Allows you to test out a new theme without disrupting service to your visitors. 
• Ultimate Google Analytics
  • Plugin to allow you to include your Google Analytics tracking code on all your pages. Also allows you to set which user level should the tracking code be displayed for. For instance, you can disable to tracking code for admin users to avoid inflating your tracking numbers.
• Wordpress Database Backup
  • Schedule the backup of your Wordpress database tables to file or email.
• Wordpress Related Posts
  • Include links to related posts based on tagging. great for deep linking content.
     
• WP-Polls
  • Include a poll in your post. Highly customizable: user contributed answers, multiple selection answers, etc. 
• WP-PostRatings
  • Adds a ratings system to each post. 
• WP-Table
  • Insert a table in your posts or pages for a better handle on structuring your content without CSS.
     
• WPListcal
  • Create events and display them in any post, page or template. Flexible scheduling system to show x days out, only current and future events, etc. 

Over the last week I have been working to get a new poker blog launched. Complete Poker Rules is a blog that will have discussions (via blog posts and comments) about poker strategy, poker hand analysis, poker how-to’s,  book and product reviews, etc. 

While the site is focused on discussion and community, the Poker Rules section will provide all the info you need to a variety of card games and betting structures. The rules are presented by “Roberts Rules of Poker” authored by Bob Ciaffone.

Feel free to drop by: www.completepokerrules.com and join in the poker conversation!

‘Skate for Sully’ is happening tomorrow at 2pm at Smithfield Municipal Hockey Rink.

I want to make a last minute push for more contributions. We have received $205 dollars in contributions (thanks so much!!) so far.

Here is a news article in the Valley Breeze that tells Shannon’s story. (Excerpt below):

SMITHFIELD - When 5-foot, 1-inch Shannon Sullivan became the first girl to play varsity hockey here, in 1991, she despaired of looking dainty - so before each game she would tuck her flowing, flame-red hair into her helmet.

Her opponents cut her no slack on the ice; she remembers once being checked so hard that “I had to crawl back to the bench - I could barely catch my breath.”

Now, the glory of two high school championships is long past, and at 32, she concedes with characteristic understatement that “I’m kind of in a pickle.”

A fighter by nature, Sullivan is confronting hard times. And once again on her mind are those trademark, shoulder-length curls.

She pauses for a moment in a conversation laced with humor and composure, and then confides, “The first time I cried was last Thursday, when my hair was falling out in my hands.”

That was the private Shannon Sullivan few see as she confronts her second bout with cancer in four years - but true to form that day, she quickly reached for the positive. Her tears dried, she says, and she took control.

“I told myself, ‘Get the razor and shave it all off’ - then I was fine.”

If you have the time and the inclination, please consider making a small donation using the ChipIn widget below.

Related Links:

• She’ll Get By With a Little Help From Her Friends
• Shannon Sullivan Photography
• Do you have one of these Friends??

Here is a recap of week four of the Hundred Push up challenge (more info here):

Day 1: 22/16/16/14/37
Day 2: 22/17/17/15/34
Day 3: 25/19/19/17/33

I took my advice from week 3 and stretched out/warmed up prior to the push up sessions. Here is a chart of my progress through week 4.

The blue line indicates the total push ups for the day and the red line is the goal or minimum amount for the day. I am starting to create a little separation between the lines. Hopefully week 5 will be as big of an improvement as week 4 was.

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Week 3 took a detour and ultimately proved to be rather challenging. Here is a recap of week three of the Hundred Push up challenge (more info here):

Day 1: 20/15/15/13/20
Day 2: 22/17/17/15/29
Day 3: 25/19/19/17/22

The challenging part is that I am not stretching/warming properly before hand and I get tired and tight around the 3rd set. Mental note, stretch out and warm up.

Here is a chart of my progress through week 3. The blue line indicates the total pushups for the day and the red line is the goal or minimum amount for the day. If I am going to be able to do 100 pushups consecutively, I will need to create a consistently bigger gap between TOTAL and GOAL!

The "Total" is the amount of all sets combined for the day.

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