My friend, Armen over at TimeLessInformation.com had a recent article about why sometimes words don’t work as well as they should on a website.  He has many great points about how things can be misinterpreted or how words are not as powerful as they are intended because people skim them or don’t read them with the same thought put to them as experiencing it first hand.  Also, he mentioned how video can be better for those areas.  So, while I agree with his points on video while recognizing, each method has its own dangers of being communicated poorly, to me video has many more dangers, and this article covers some of the things that video posts are often lacking or have as problems. I’m sure there are more risks with video than outlined here so I’d love you to comment with your own feelings on video posting.  Here are several big reasons from my experience that I don’t like video on most websites from bloggers.

Egocentric

This has got to be the biggest one to me and unfortunately, while I have seen many good videos recorded without the host being ego centric or self-promoting, I find that video bloggers on the whole, spend a lot more time mentioning their own names or websites or achievements than they do in written form. Even introductions and mentioning who they are seems weird to me on a video cast since anyone watching is doing so from the website anyway, or there could be references at the end, instead of the beginning of every video cast. It seems very self promoting and even worse when a video caster spends more time trying to convince you of what they have to say is useful or important, instead of just saying it.  The added details or background information on what they have done or discovered seems to be more prevalent with video bloggers than with writers.  Or at least, that is what I have experience with seeing hundreds of video bloggers and thousands of bloggers who write text only.

Perhaps there is something about getting behind the camera that adds some nervousness or risk factor that people then overcompensate for by trying to hard to prove their point.  Perhaps it is because video bloggers are more free-flow with how they communicate.  It seems likely to also be because of assumptions of the audience.

Unedited, Less Concise or Impactful

Another big one for me is how often video bloggers don’t prepare well or finish their content well enough.  This is not the case for all video bloggers but many I’m sure don’t even watch their content before they publish it.  Unedited video is like reading from bloggers who obviously don’t even read their own written content before publishing it.  It is messy, disjointed and often repetitive instead of concise.  Many video bloggers are actually, very poor speakers as well so can be hard to understand or even listen to.  Poor speakers throw additional words like “umm”, or “ahh” into their message and it can be incredibly distracting from what they actually want to say.  I know that video takes practice, but even a beginner writer knows not to add “umm” into their writing, so they can usually get their point across easier with words.

Most writers spend a lot more time on the actual words they are going to write than do video bloggers, who often shoot with less notes, editing or planning of their content.

Impersonal

Video is often said to be more personal since the person is visible and the audience can learn a bit more about the person in the video.  Thinking on this however, it is actually, the opposite because communication is only more personal when it is delivered in a way that is pleasing and fitting to the audience, not the speaker.  The audience is not engaged in video and there is nothing in video more personalized than in writing.  I think video has a great danger of stereotypes and appearances from actually killing the personal content of the words themselves as well, since most people are so quickly and easily distracted by first impressions and appearances.  This leaves the deeper meaning of the words and message that may have been more personally reflected on to be masked by superficial and unneeded video distractions.

Out of Place Body Language

Body language is up to 70% of all communication and so the human brain is very in tune to body language with conversations.  Body language however is something that is normally delivered in a unique personal way, that matches the audience and often in response to the body language of the viewer.  With pre-recorded video content, you cannot have body language that is appropriate to the viewer (at best, you have a guess) so it is out of place more than it is suitable.  This problem once again, distracts from the message itself and makes the content less convincing, especially if the body language is considerably different than what is expected or common in conversation with that particular person.

Technical Limitations

Last but not least, there are several more reasons why I don’t care for video that much from bloggers.  They start with eating bandwidth on servers on the web for little or less value than reading written text.  They are much slower to listen to than to read even if you listen instead of watching.  Taking content offline for reading or watching on planes/transit is much more difficult and troublesome.  Most video is not searchable or indexed well (if at all) so it doesn’t have as many ways to find it after first being published in the news/feed circles.  Video is often harder to share with people as well since it cannot be printed or distributed easily except on the web and to the demographic of high bandwidth users.

Please add your comments about written or video blogging and some of your own personal tastes, I’d love to hear them!

Posted by Mike King under Personal | 7 Comments »

I love it when I discover something new about myself or in life that I really connect with or develop a quick passion for.  New things that really interest me often take a strong presence in my mind and Parkour has done exactly that to me in the last couple months.  While Parkour is definitely growing it isn’t known by everyone and so it needs an explanation.  In fact, it can be a bit hard to explain though quickly, so bear with me.  I’ve taken the description from the AmericanParkour website as I think it describes it best:

What is Parkour?

Parkour is the physical discipline of training to overcome any obstacle within one’s path by adapting one’s movements to the environment.

• Parkour requires… consistent, disciplined training with an emphasis on functional strength, physical conditioning, balance, creativity, fluidity, control, precision, spatial awareness, and looking beyond the traditional use of objects.
• Parkour movements typically include… running, jumping, vaulting, climbing, balancing, and quadrupedal movement. Movements from other physical disciplines are often incorporated, but acrobatics or tricking alone do not constitute parkour.
• Parkour training focuses on… safety, longevity, personal responsibility, and self-improvement. It discourages reckless behavior, showing off, and dangerous stunts.
• Parkour practitioners value… community, humility, positive collaboration, sharing of knowledge, and the importance of play in human life, while demonstrating respect for all people, places, and spaces.

Fluid Movement

And there are millions of Parkour and Freerunning videos on Youtube. Many of them show ridiculous stunts, with no context to the training required to achieve them or the risk in jumping in without the proper training and conditioning required. There are if you look for tutorials, training and progression videos though a lot of help for learning these skills as it really has taken speed because of the internet and the ability to share content and inspire one another around the world. One of my favorite videos is below that I think does a great job of sharing a bit more about the thoughts and inspirational aspects of Parkour. I hope you enjoy it.

Posted by Mike King under Personal | 21 Comments »

As a blogger (and many of you reading this as well) I regularly visit others’ blogs, new blogs and surf through socially connection blogs.  In doing so I’ve come across a huge variety of sites.  As much as I’d like to say its always about the content, we all know that while that is an important factor for the quality and impression of any blog, there is one other big component of a blog that is just as important, the overall blog etiquette at the site.  By etiquette I mean how well the site and the voices on the site are behaved and what impression this leaves the visitors.

Stay on topic

Often I find that bloggers shift away from what they know about to publish popular content that is way off topic or not related to their blog in any way.  Usually I see this from bloggers who are seeking growth, popularity or other “traffic” generating measures so they are willing to bring in unrelated content or popular at the expense of their existing readers and visitors who expect consistent content.  I think it is much better to publish off topic items or content as guest posts on sites where that is a regular topic.  This would benefit everyone more by exposing to a new audience, by helping create great content for another blogger and by sparing existing subscribers of unrelated content they may not be interested in.

Be honest, don’t act like you know everything

Often I see bloggers responding to questions, comments or stating opinions as if it is fact and true.  While there is nothing wrong with writing your thoughts (after all, that is what blogging is all about) but it is misleading and dishonest when a blogger states opinion as if it is fact, or leads readers to believe that they know a lot about a subject when in reality they do not.  It is best to be honest with your readers and state how you have learned something or where you learned it and why you are sharing it, instead of making it seem like an absolute true when in fact, it may just be an opinion.

Don’t reply publicly to every single comment

Reading blogs is great for the content, but the best part of blogging is the connections, the discussions and the people you can meet through commenting.  It’s because of this that I like to read through comments after a great article and you often get a lot more insight, opinions and additions to the original article.  However, some bloggers feel a weird need to reply to every single comment and its incredibly distracting and simply unnecessary.   Some comments are as simple as “Thanks, I liked the article” and then the blog owner goes on with some comment that adds no value and simply repeats what was already said.  If you have something valuable to add, then by all means add it and welcome your visitors but to set a guideline to always reply publicly is just poor etiquette for the discussion area.  There is no reason why a blogger can’t reply to many of these visitors to welcome them in a private email to keep their comments and discussion focused and on topic so they are more enjoyable to read.

Spare your visitors of all popups

I’m sure that this is a personal preference but I think it is safe to say that in general, people don’t like popups showing up.  I am seeing more and more sites using newsletter subscriptions and popups to entice visitors to sign up.  What I really hate is when I visit a site and it says I’ll only see the popup once, and then it keeps showing up or it shows every time I visit.  Unfortunately, many bloggers see this as a necessity and use popups to grow their followers but I find it to be far too aggressive and unnecessary. Personally, I often find that these are the very sites that leave my reading lists first and since I enjoy visiting sites for the comments, they often are the first to leave my news reader as well since every visit to a page to read comments leaves me with some popup subscription.  I am much less likely to share these sites in social media and I would always prefer to promote a clean article, then one with annoyances that will face those I share it with.

Never copy content

I wish everyone had the moral compass to know that copying content is wrong but sadly, it is not true.  Copying other people’s text, full articles and images is wrong and you should never do it without permission.  I have found my own site’s content and even my own pictures I have taken scattered onto other sites often without permission.  On one hand, it is nice to know that it is valuable enough for others to want it, it is also nice to know that that value is attributed to the right person for their hard work to create it.  This one is simple, good blog etiquette means that you just don’t ever copy content without permission.  Period.

Always site your references

Related to other people’s content is then in how you use it.  I often read people quote someone or mentioning an article they read, but they fail to include a link or proper reference where the original context could be read.  If you are going to use references or external content, please always include the appropriate links and detailed reference so that the content could be found.  This is especially useful from blogs as often blog articles become the search engines top pages for studies, articles or interest or other things one might be doing research on, and if the reference are their the site is still useful to such a visitor, if it mentions it without the link, it is next to useful.  Do your readers a favor and always site your references.

Accept criticism and allow healthy conflict

Some bloggers hide comments that they perceive as negative even when they are respectful and simply differing in opinion.  I’ve had my own comments removed from sites, seen whole discussions get removed and even seen many bloggers completely remove commenting from their site because of criticism or conflicting opinions.  It’s important to have this interaction on a blog and any blogger not willing to have any, might as well not be blogging as it only shows they are close minded and one sided.  If you can’t learn from your visitors who are interested in the content in the first place, then who will you learn from?

Reduce the ads for direct visitors

This tip goes far beyond etiquette but I will start there.  I first learned about doing this from Steve at My Wife Quit Her Day Job which shows you how to put ads into your pages only for search engine traffic visitors and not people who type your URL directly.  I’ve implemented this on my site and it works great and have seen many versions of it at other blogger’s sites as well.  Basically it lets you show less ads to visitors your link or type your site in directly which is a huge benefit since those visitors are less likely to click your ads anyway, since they are usually repeat visitors and after your content, not the ads.  The second advantage of this is that you will get a higher click through ratio on your ads since the ads are shown to general visitors, not the people less likely to click.  This results in higher payouts by google since the click through is also higher on your site and it can make a significant increase in your ad earnings.  My ad impressions went down by about 25% implementing this but my ad revenue went up by 30% immediate and has been sustained.  The value of this to your visitors makes your site more attractive to regulars.  I wish that bloggers would implement this for the popups and subscription notices in the section above on popups.  It would provide the same benefits to the visitor and clean up a blog.

Don’t spam the network

Growing attention to your blog takes work, no doubt.  It requires guest posts, back links, other site commenting and social media.  Using all or any of those is easy to abuse and so you must learn to put similar effort into those areas with proper etiquette as your site itself.  Don’t go on a commenting rampage unless you are adding valuable comments, as it can easily be seen as spam.  The same is true of social networking and back links.  Most of the social networking sites either work by computer algorithm or simply by followers, either way, they naturally detect spam and if there is not a mix of others’ content, promotion of friend’s sites and a healthy mix of content, your efforts could easily be considered spam.  The more you promote other people and build your connections in pretty much any social media, the more successful you will be in that network.

Focus on giving value, not selling it

Many bloggers dive right in to focusing on making money before they really are providing strong value and usually results in a poor blog or sort lived one.  Those that look to provide value first, grow the value and then look to benefit from it do much better.  As for your content whether it be subscriptions, ebooks or services, if you give enough of that away for free and give away that value, the sales will come as a result of the value, instead of having to continuously sell it.  Giving away a number of ebooks before you start selling them will allow visitors to know what value to expect and see examples of your work, which increases the likeliness that they will actually buy something as well.    My own example of this is with my free ebooks I give away.  They have created tremendous traffic, comments and feedback for my site and they are consistently downloaded more than 7000 times per month!  Please if you haven’t seen those before, do take a look.

Do you have any additional blog etiquette tips??  Please add them in the comments below.

Posted by Mike King under Learning & Personal | 16 Comments »

Mountain unicycling is a regular past time for me, which I’m sure you have read about before if you are a regular reader.  Its a sport not many venture into as it has a steep learning curve and there are simply not that many people who do it to be encouraged by or to learn with.  I have to seek people out who have the same interest, as I am not very likely to just come across other unicyclists.  Surprisingly, once I do get out and go riding, I run into a lot more people who are able to ride and will tell or show me when I encounter them.  I’d never know though without being out on the unicycle in the first place.

For the most part, I definitely enjoy to ride with other people, but with my level of experience in the sport and endurance, I do not have other riders who get out on one wheel with me in the mountains.  So, because of that, I often ride with mountain bikers who will easily give me a run for my money with all of their mechanical advantages.  Other times, I simply ride on my own, off in solitude, just me, my muni and the mountain.  That is what I truly love about the sport.  Getting away from the city, the traffic, the stench, the thick polluted air and of course gobs of people.  In the mountains you can literally ride for hours and not see another soul.  Its a place of peace, a place for thought and to be content.

The trails I ride are certainly not easy, most are hiking trails, but rated as more difficult ones as I love to ride areas that are known as very technical.  If you don’t know, that is when a trail has a lot of roots, rocks, boulders or obstacles to navigate and will typically be more windy with more ups and downs than other easy hiking trails.  It’s in that kind of riding where I am challenged and can get into a state of flow and enjoy the ride the most. Flow is all about movement on the unicycle.  Its not easy to navigate rough terrain on one wheel and it requires years of practice. On a mountain unicycle, to ride advanced trails, one must learn to ride with their whole body for motion. I don’t simply peddle with me legs and steer with my arms.  I have to put everything into the trail, my whole body, mind and motion in order to stay on top.  I have to bend my body, thrust my upper torso up and over rocks, whip my shoulders and head around to steer the trail, and pull with all my strength up on the seat handle to lunge with the muni overtop of gaps or logs.

It’s a great workout for the legs and core, but more than that, it forces me to focus and to free my mind of all the other daily activities, thoughts, problems and feelings and simply enjoy the ride, the workout and the environment where I am riding.  It feels very free to have these times of solitude and solitude is something that really strengthens me.  It always has and it’s always been my sports where I can enjoy this level of solitude and freedom.  I have other sports that are the same, windsurfing and I am just getting into snow kiting as well.  I’m sure that is what attracts me to these sports even if it has never been intentional.

So my title may need some explanation.  The fortress of solitude is a reference to Superman’s Ice fortress that he has to escape to, away from all people.  He goes their to seek answers to his struggles with the world and he goes their for freedom and solitude.  That is exactly what I feel like I have in my escapes to the mountains or on the water in incredible winds.  My focus shifts at those times not just to the sport, but more to my fortress of solitude. It is a place to recharge my spirit and mind, to be free and to be content and enjoy life.  So let me ask you, do you have a fortress of solitude that you rely on for a similar freedom?

See some more of my unicycling pictures in my photography section of panoramas on this site.

Posted by Mike King under Personal | 10 Comments »

What is Beauty?

Its hard to express sometimes what beauty is.  It is something we each have our own idea of, our own experiences with and so obviously beauty is also subjective.  Luckily, it is something that we can easily find if we simply choose to see it and with that mentality, beauty can be found all around us in this world.  Beauty is in the people around us, the love shared between friends and family, within the nature surrounding us, inside our body’s with every breath and heartbeat and around us in the color, smells, and sensations we take in absorbing this beautiful world.  All of that beauty is there for the taking, the viewing, the seeking and longing.

The way I capture beauty in this world in through adventure, nature and memories.  The easiest way I have to share those memories is by capturing them with photography and by finding beauty in the resulting image so that I can remember it and share it more easily.  I’ve recently shared some other photography from various day trips hiking in the mountains and learning about the important of perseverance when climbing a mountain but I have to say this most recent trip of mine tops those in beautiful by many times and I want to share some of it with you.

Backpacking

So during some of my holidays this summer, I had booked a week long backpacking trip with my brother who I don’t get to see all that often living across this huge nation.   We planned a backpacking trip in the Kootenay National Park on the edge of British Columbia next door to my home province here in the great Rocky Mountains of Canada.  Anyway, we planned to do about 75 km of backpacking through and around what is known as the Rockwall.  I understood it to be one of the most beautiful scenic trails with fantastic views and open landscapes through several incredible passes and camping destinations.  This was also my first overnight backpacking trip so there was plenty of prep to do, unknowns to discover and a clueless approach that is the perfect recipe for discovering beauty with no expectations.

I have to say that those elements I listed for me to capture beauty in this world were in perfect combination with this trip.

• Adventure since it was something I had never done before and being out for 5 nights tenting in bear country sounded awesome to me!
• Nature since its 15km away from any roads and the wilderness offers majestic views when there is minimal human intervention.
• Memories since it was a great vacation, good time spend me my bro and a chance to spend a lot of time in thought, photography and simply remembering the trip.

Photography

Photography is definitely something I enjoy and as a 3D artist and life long hobbiest with video, photography and artistic imagery, I certainly have some skills in capturing the moment and scene with a camera.  I don’t use elaborate equipment, or any fancy camera, I simply use a simple and old Canon Elph Powershot SD700IS point and shoot.  Do I know how to use it well?  Definitely, I get the best photos I can from it and am looking forward to getting a newer camera when this one finally dies.  I’ll always be a point and shoot pocket camera kind of guy as I know I can still get a good shot, despite not lugging around an expensive DSLR with extra lenses.  I just like to have the camera in my pocket wherever I go and being able to quickly snap photos at a moments notice and have it securely tucked back in my pocket in the rain or rough terrain just a couple seconds later is my favorite part of a compact point and shoot.

Landscape and nature photography is definitely my favorite and so this trip provided endless opportunities for shooting great photos.  My brother is a big fan of photography as well so two addicts on the trails together meant scouting out the best shots, best angles, best lighting and an onslaught of photos of course.  I’ve said before my favorite kind of photos are definitely panorama wide shots and they are best with the kind of scenery we were surrounded by.  I generally take about 4-8 shots wide for panoramas but this time I did a lot of bracketed exposure panoramas that stitch together into high dynamic range panorama images so I had total control of the colors, light dynamics and contrast like you cannot get with standard shooting.  I’ve included a number of those final images in this page and gallery along with some regular photos and a few of my favorites.  Obviously I have many others I could share, but here is a sample of the beauty I lived in for the week.  Hard to compare with that is for sure upon returning to the concrete jungle landscape.  I will definitely admit I was happy to come home though to my beautiful wife, wonderful food and some clean clothes and things to do again.  I didn’t have those luxuries in the woods.

Posted by Mike King under Personal | 13 Comments »

There are many analogies that bloggers use in their articles and this one is no exception.  I’ve always looked at my hobbies and certainly my mountain unicycling as an example for many things that reflect my personality in my life.  Learning to ride a unicycle is not an easy task and it requires perseverance and a high level of dedication to stick to it until you get it.  It’s a skill I’ve mastered and having that mountain unicycling skill always reminds me that I can take on new things by perseverance.  Well today was no exception, I planned to seek out a mountain top about 2500m and day hike it with my unicycle so I could ride back down (as much as possible anyway).

I decided to go up Mount Allen in Kananaskis about 1.25 hrs from my house in the Canadian Rockies.  It’s 2800 m high actually and a very difficult ascent with over 1500 m of elevation gain.  This task proved to need serious perseverance.  I had read it can take 10hrs to hike to the summit and back due to the technical hiking and steep slopes.  I was hoping to complete it in about 6-7 hours by packing my unicycle and riding whatever areas I could to cover distance faster.  Plus I had some new hiking shoes to break and I really don’t like going anywhere in the mountains without my unicycle.

So, I started the trail head at 9:30 am and starting heading up.  I was able to ride some of the lower sections through the forest and a few areas above the tree line but most of the slopes were steep switchbacks and loose rock, not something I wanted to even attempt riding up (down is another story though).  Pass a few marmots, plenty of squirrels and chipmonks but didn’t see any other wild animals.  Lots of signs of bear with prints and scat in the snow and on the trail.  I didn’t see any bears directly though.  I was the third hiker up (I could tell from the snow prints and by meeting people coming back down once I got closer to the summit) and when I did summit, the group behind me said they saw about 25 areas dug up on the trail by a bear digging out bugs and whatever else it could find.  I didn’t see these dug out areas until I headed back down so the bear was between me and that next group only about 30 minutes behind me.  Anyway, back to the point of this article.

Along the climb, its funny how perseverance comes into play.  At many points I was thinking that I would turn back early since my pack was heavy, my back was already a bit sore and my feet and calfs were definitely feeling steep slopes early on.  Luckily, I keep thinking about getting to the next point, bit by bit and then continuing to push myself again once I get their.  That is really what perseverance is all about, it simply motivates you keep going and persist on your goal, in this case, the summit. Surprisingly, I came across a group of adventure runners and I knew one of the women in the group and she was quite impressed to see me doing the hike with my uni, so she had to take a picture together.  I hadn’t seen her for a couple years so this was yet again, another thing that inspired me to persevere and press on to the summit instead of turning back. The final summit climb looked the most daunting and fortunately by this point, my back and feet were sore but not getting worse, so I knew I could press on and get to the summit.  There was a lot of snow and some areas you had to hike up 30-40° snow slopes on skree which made it a little risky and I definitely had to go very slowly and carefully to keep my footing without slipping.  A slide down a mountain with half snow, half rock is not an experience I ever want to have!!

So, I made the summit at 1PM so the hike took 3.5 hours.  I stopped for lunch, a break and many photos and to chat with the next group that reached the summit after me.  So 50 minutes later, my pack back on, I headed down the mountain.  I found a safer route than what I climbed that was mostly rock, with little snow, so the summit descent was much safer than the climb luckily.  I then enjoyed many of the downhill areas and technical rock areas riding my uni so was able to get down much faster in about 2 hours.  So it perseverance of course that keeps me riding my cycle to places many people wouldn’t even dare walk and its perseverance that got to the summit and back in 6.5 hrs, which I was quite happy with.  I’m sure you have your own stories of perseverance, I’d love to hear them and I hope you enjoy some of the pictures from my hike today.

Posted by Mike King under Personal | 23 Comments »