If you type "Miguel Cabrera Stats" into Google Search, you don't even have to click on any links to get the results. Google will display them automatically. As you can see below. That's because Google is working with something called Rich Snippets. It's a way for web pages to have small images or information appear for certain pages.
I've noticed it a lot of pages have a picture of the author. So i tried to figure out how to get my picture to show up next to a link for my blog. Hopefully this would add to my increasing ways to increase traffic to my blog.
I'm not going to bore you with all of the details, but it's a bit complicated. A summary of what i did is:
Sign up for Google+
Update your Google+ Profile, checking certain boxes and add profile image
Update your Blogger Profile and add image
Add a link from the Blog HTML, linking to your Google+ Profile page
Add one link back from Google+ Profile to your Blogger Profile and actual Blog
Add a rel="me" tag in your Blogger Profile
Add a Privacy Policy to your blog.
It took a long time to figure everything out and i thought that i finally got rid of all the errors. I was able to check that my profile was Verified using the Google Rich Snippets Testing Tool.
Here's what it looks like when i checked my blog homepage. It said Verified in green and my profile picture was on the right. Everyone said that it would take between 2 days and a week before it shows up on Google Search properly. So I checked after 1 day...nothing. I checked after 2 days...nothing.
I was confused so i decided to look at the Rich Snippets Testing Tool page again. When i put in my Blogger Author page it seemed to work. Notice my picture on the left under the link. That's exactly how i want it to look on Google Search. So i continued checking other pages on the Rich Snippets Testing Tool page, most were like the first screenshot from above, with nothing to the left of the page title. But randomly when i put in the URL from a page i posted 5 days earlier my author image appeared. I thought "Great...it's starting to work."
BUT, when i went to the actual Google Search and typed in keywords to find the page it did NOT show the image. (3rd link down) Even more confusing was that when i put the URL in for another page, it put the author image up for my sister, who had commented on that post. I must not have clearly identified who the author was. During the entire process of reading about Rich Snippets, I did figure out how to add a Star rating and review number. This is typically used for pages like movie reviews. So what i did was put in 4.7 stars and 216 people, which is totally made up. But it makes it appear like my website has a high rating. Then a few days later it appeared in Google Search. But only on some pages and only the stars and review, not my profile picture. The easiest way to view all the pages at once is to type "site:davewirth.blogspot.com" (without the quotes) into Google Search. It brings up all related pages for that site. It showed me 365 pages, some with stars, some without, but none with a picture.
I feel like this will be an ongoing process and expect that at some point my profile picture will show up next to some of my blog links. I was interesting learning about all of the tricks to get a website noticed. And i think that i will try adding more rich snippet data to my page. That is something that Google will continue to emphasize. But as of right now, for me, it's a lot of trial and error.
Fierljeppen - i'm not sure how to pronounce it but it's Dutch for "crazy person pole vaulting over a giant river." Earlier i had talked about what was my Favorite Olympic sport. This would definitely be at the top of the Summer Olympics.
If you don't have HBO you can always watch the show online for free at Project-Free-TV, or one of the other free online TV show sites i wrote about earlier. The Game of Thrones series is set in a medieval time where different powerful families fight over who will have the power. There are lots of great characters and story lines that tie everything together.
My favorite character is Tyrion Lannister, played by Peter Dinklage. Last year he won the Emmy and Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor. He plays a character that cannot physically overpower anyone, so he has to outsmart his enemy's and sometimes even his own family.
The show is great, but in the final episode of season 1 i got upset. They killed off their lead character, Eddard Stark, played by Sean Bean. He was also in Lord of the Rings. There's not a lot of TV shows that would kill off their main character in the first season.
The show is based on a series of books, the first book was written more than 20 years ago.
Through all the different characters and story lines, there are several people you like, hate and can relate to.
Last week at Karrie's nephews elementary school fair, i walked into a classroom and saw this: Darth Vader preparing to do the cake walk. While some Storm Troopers watched. I didn't stick around to see who won when the music stopped. I did see them later in the library, and he was not holding a cake. But Boba Fett had joined them. "these aren't the books you're looking for..."
While waiting for our plane to arrive in the Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport, i made this time lapse video of Terminal 4. I used my Canon S95 camera with the CHDK program running the intervalometer script. Here's my previous CHDK post.
I took a photo every 3 seconds over about 50 minutes. I then compressed the images, converted them to a video at 8 fps.
Then i used Adobe After Effects to add the intro, sound, motion and other minor effects.
I used After Effects once before to edit a compilation of time lapse videos i created. The video below took several days and lots of reading of how to do each step.
This time though, it only took me a few hours. It goes to show that the first time is always the most difficult, then every time after that goes faster.
Last Friday was the premier for the movie The Hunger Games. It was based on the book by Suzanne Collins, which is the first and best book in the trilogy. Several months ago i listened to the audio books for all three. The first book was definitely the best, but the 2nd and 3rd were good too.
It stars a girl named Katniss who has to fight to the death against other kids from the 12 districts. It was set in the future but it reminded me of communist Russia, where everyone in lives in poverty except people from the Capital. The movie was almost 2.5 hours long and was actually really good. Though it seemed rushed near the end. But as with all movies that are based on books, like Harry Potter, they always have to cut out several scenes and characters. Otherwise it would be a 6 hour movie.
The other day Karrie and i made Shish Kabob. We cut up onions and peppers. And cut chicken into pieces. Then we each picked different BBQ sauce and shook everything in a bowl, with the lids on, until it was nicely coated. Then put everything on skewers. All set, but it was a messy job. Waiting for the grill to heat up. Just setting them on the grill. Almost done. We also made pasta salad. Here's the sausage and cheese cut into cubes. Boiling the pasta. All done with cheese and italian dressing added.
A few weeks ago, when i was using my DIY - polarizing filter and DIY - ND filter i broke my new Joby Gorillapod tripod. It was really cold and as i was shutting the tripod, the plastic leg snapped. So i emailed Joby Gorillapod, told them what happened, included my Amazon order information and the picture above. They responded that day saying that they would send me a replacement. Three days later a brand new Gorillapod tripod showed up in the mail. It was great. I actually didn't think they were going to send me a new one so i tried fixing the old tripod the day before the new one arrived.
Just gluing the plastic legs wouldn't work so i inserted the two ends in a piece of PVC tubing and then sealed it with some J.B. Weld epoxy. It didn't look so good but it worked. Now i guess i have two mini tripods.
Here's a slow-moving river near Flat Rock, Michigan. The ND filter makes a very calm effect. The blurs in the picture are a flock of geese. I used my new Manfrotto Tripod and it worked great, it was smaller and a lot easier to carry around. The same picture as before, converted to black and white.
Karrie and i decided to make homemade lasagna the other day, using her uncle's recipe.Here is everything set out and ready to go. Browning the ground beef. Layering of the second row, we used No-Boil noodles which made the recipe a lot easier. Lots of cheese on top of the noodles and sauce. Cover with aluminum foil then it's ready to go in the oven, 450ºF for an hour. All done and out of the oven. The first piece. It turned out great.
