If…

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And - which is more - you’ll be a Man my son!

-Rudyard Kipling

Real Chicago Pizza

I’m in Chicago for the rest of the week. First thing we did when we got into town yesterday was go to Ledo’s in Brookfield for some cheese and sausage pizza. The lighting was really bad, and it was a cell phone camera, but this was what real pizza looks like lol…

Web Crash 2007

All is lost…

300

This is at least partially due to my love of ancient warfare and my long-held particular respect for the culture of Sparta, but I thought that 300 was one of the best movies that I have seen in a long time.

The visual effects were amazing. I like how 300 and Sin City were made to look like comic books, unlike all the other comic-based movies. The Persians looked like demons, the wolf’s eyes glowed red, and they recreated exact scenes from the comic for the movie. They weren’t trying to make something that looked “realistic,” just to stay true to the comic.

The story was good. They didn’t derivate from actual history too much, as far as I know, just told an interesting story around it. They even included some famous Spartan quotes, such as “come back with your shield, or upon it.” Though that quote was actually said by a Spartan mother to her son, not a Spartan wife to her husband, as depicted in the movie.

I’ve seen it twice now, once at the midnight showing on Thursday night, and once last night at the new Movie Tavern. At the midnight show, type of crowd this movie attracted can best be described by this: When the Spiderman preview came on, a hush went over the crowd. It seems that the MySpace marketing really paid off for them, three separate rooms sold out for the midnight showing at the theater we went to. I’m looking forward to seeing the numbers for opening weekend. The Movie Tavern, where we saw it last night, was very nice, access to a decent restaurant and full bar while watching a movie. If you live in Lexington, KY or Texas, you should definitely check it out.

The HillSeven Concept - A Blog Network

Starting in January, I am going to begin serious work on my new business venture, HillSeven. HillSeven.com will primarily be a blog network. There will be supplementary businesses, such as eBay stores, ebooks and perhaps even Second Life operations, but they will all tie in with building a network of high-traffic blogs.

Why blogs?

If you are one of the many people who hear the word “blog” and think of teens ranting about their lives, you many be wondering what the hell I’m talking about, so I will provide a bit of education…

Monetized blogs can actually drive some serious income. There are many blogs out there that pull in $5,000+ monthly. Of course, that level of income takes some serious time and effort to set up. Good content must be created on an almost daily basis for over a year to pull in any serious amount of traffic. But the people who can do that can pull in some serious income as well as a variety of other perks.

Why don’t I just set up my own blog and focus on that?

I am, sort of. I have this site that I write for once in a while, and I have StockWeblog.com that I write for, but there’s lots of other people out there who can produce much better content than I can, I’m sure. So I want to help new bloggers by giving them a professionally designed site to write on and just let them worry about creating great content while I manage the business side of the operation. Some of these blogs might be team efforts, like StockWeblog.com, and some will be for individuals, like this site.

Why can’t these potential bloggers just set up their own site?

That would be possible for some people, or anyone can go to WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal, MySpace or one of the other major sites and get a cheap yourname.whatever.com free blog right away. But I have spent months learning how to set up blogs. Including how to design and market blogs, how to work with PHP and CSS (and this is with a pre-existing strong knowledge of computer programming), and how to effectively monetize them. I think I’m pretty decent with computer graphics, as well. Plus, I will have a dedicated server and the resources to fund new sites.

So anyone who wants to blog on their own will have to spend their own time learning all this, or they could just work with me and get the benefits of this knowledge without spending the time or effort that they could be using to create content. And not only will the site that I create not cost them anything, but they will have me working every day to make them a lot of money with it, because I’ll only make money if they make money.

Why a network?

Synergy. Along with the benefits described above, creating a network of blogs and other related business should greatly improve the traffic flow. The blogs can be linked together in various ways to get visitors to the site on the network that they will enjoy the most. I can’t give away too much of this part of the operation, but I have some ideas that I think will work very well.

Who do I want to work with?

Anyone. I want to talk to people who may be serious about blogging, but even if you only have the slightest interest in writing about anything that you enjoy, send me a message and we’ll see what we can work out. I am currently talking to a few people about this but I will constantly be looking for more who are interested.

Any topic has potential. Political, Religious, Tech and Personal Development blogs seem to be the most popular but there are some highly specialized blogs (e.g. scrabbooking) that seem to be doing well. Anything you’re interested in and could write about often would work. Video blogs are becoming quite popular as well (via YouTube). I would like some of these new blogs that HillSeven sets up to be a combination of written and video content.

Even if you just think the idea is interesting and might want to be involved in some way other than writing, let me know. I would also like to find a few recruiters/designers to work with as well.

Contact me here.