Astronomy news and reviews

Astromart.com is a website that has astronomy equipment reviews as well as a classified section where people can list their un-needed equipment for sale. Their main page is a jumping off point to get into the meat of the site.

Their news section is full of current news. The latest story (at this time) is a story about the total lunar eclipse that happened last night? Did you see it? My wife woke me up at 4:45 to show me the view. There was just a sliver of the moon showing brightly. The rest you could still see, but was grayed out.

In the reviews section of the site they have digital camera reviews showing how to get better pictures from certain cameras through your telescope. There are also reviews for different astronomy equipment.

Don’t forget to check out their classifieds section. They have almost 1000 items listed for sale. There are not too many items available in their auctions section though.

[This is a sponsored post.]

Better Google ranking

A couple of months back I gave a list of podcasts that I broke down into 5 Podcast Categories. That posting was inspired by a group writing project that was being sponsored by Darren at ProBlogger.net. It garnered a lot of links back to My Thought Spot. So much so that my Google page ranking went from 2 to 4. For those who may not understand that, it basically means that Google now sees MTS as an important website when returning search results. If you do a search for something that I have blogged, I am more likely to show up towards the top of all the search results.

This month Darren is hosting another writing project that has the theme of blogging tips. This will probably generate a lot of links back to My Thought Spot. This is a good thing since Google ranking is based on the links you have coming into your blog. Those links can be external coming in, or internal links to your own pages.

With group writing projects you are able to get a good number of incoming links. If these links come from other highly ranked blogs, that adds authority in the algorithm which can bode very well for you.

Therefore, the two main factors to rising in Google rankings is to have many links coming into your blog and then have those links be from highly ranked sites.

There are many other factors as well, but those are the two big ones.

One thing I have seen that shows a lack of understanding in how the web works is that I have read many pages that talk about people or websites, but do not give links to those sites. A link to the main page is all it takes, though a link to a specific post or page at the linked site is always more preferable (also if they have trackbacks/pingbacks turned on, you will get a link back to your site just for deep linking to a specific post.)

Get out there and link to other sites and spread the joy of helping others move up in the rankings. They may return the favor by linking back to you. If not, someone else will.

Fresh bread

Have you eaten any freshly baked bread recently? It is wonderful. Have you eaten freshly baked bread that you made with your own hands recently? It is even better.

This morning one of my tasks was to buy wheat. I made my way downtown to the man I found in a back alley. He has whole grained wheat for about $0.30 a pound. That is a great price. My friend Pancho and I found this man after spending quite a bit of time in the downtown market looking for someone who sells whole grained wheat. We met him on Thursday of last week and asked him to get us 20 kilos (about 45 lbs).Fresh made bread

He was waiting for us this morning with a sack full of wheat. But, there was a reason it was so cheap. It still required a bit of work. It was not completely dry (which can encourage bugs) and it had quite a bit of trash in it. There was still a goodly amount of chaff as well as other grains mixed in. It also just smelled bad.

We decided against buying the wheat from him. He was not at all offended.

Since our quest was to get wheat today, we went back to a store where we had previously seen it for sale at 5 times the price. It was clean. It was ready to grind. It quickly became ours.

Pancho has a wonderful wheat grinder at his house. We buzzed over there and ground up my 2 lb. bag. When I got home this morning I set the wheels in motion to make some bread this afternoon.

Though it has been a few years since I have regularly made bread, it came back to me pretty well. Bread making (by hand) is an art form. You make lots of mistakes and wonder why others can do it but you can’t. This goes on for quite some time until one day it just works. And it works well. You start to learn what it is supposed to feel like at the different stages and then you become a craftsman. Apparently I have not lost the craft.

It is amazing to slice the bread and know that this morning the contents were still little grains sitting in a plastic bag, but now we have had a wonderful loaf of bread.

I really encourage anyone to try your hand at making bread. A bread machine is nice, but there is just something special about going through the steps on your own.

My Thought Spot 13: A Church Service

This episode was inspired by a request that my friend Gordan had, when he was wondering if I had any of my sermons available on line. I do not. Currently I preach in Spanish, and worse yet, Sign Language. For my English speaking listeners, Spanish is not quite easy to understand, and Sign Language is hard to record on an audio podcast.

However, I took up the task. I wired myself for sound and hit the record button. Fortunately for you, I also know how to edit. This short podcast was whittled down from about 1.5 hours of audio.

I must apologize to Spanish speakers. I can easily criticize other people’s Spanish when they speak. And, I found out that I can criticize my own. This recording does not have the best grammar. It is grating in fact. Why though, can I hear it now, but don’t catch it before it comes out of my mouth? Oh it is embarrassing. But I am consoled in the fact that most of you won’t know or care.

You will also be subjected to my singing in this recording. You will soon realize why I work with the Deaf.

Good things to come

I am working on a couple of projects that I hope to reveal here in either the next few hours, or days.

The first is a new website. It will be about Spanish and the curious words we find. Sometimes the information will revolve around grammar and usage, but mostly about the nuances of the meanings of words. Even if you don’t speak Spanish, I think you might find some of our discoveries to be interesting. We are in the design stage of the site now, but I will announce it here while still building long before I start promoting it to the general public. You will get a chance to take a gander and tell me what you think of it.

Also, I am working on a new episode of MTS Podcast. I finally got my sound editing software installed on this machine (I was without this for almost a month). I had to do my last couple of episodes on my notebook for both MTS and Missionary Talks.

I should be able to get out an MTS Podcast tomorrow morning.

Good things are a-coming.