Striking Thoughts

Martial Arts News 10.26.08

October 26, 2008 · 3 Comments

  • Bob Patterson to try Praying Mantis Kung-fu. Yeah it’s not really news but it’s MY blog so sue me! Expect a beat-down report after this Wednesday!

Sifu offered me a free lesson before I pay for the real deal!

St. Pierre’s recent signing with the blue-chip entertainment and sports agency signals that the 27-year-old from Montreal is a desirable commodity – and that the corporate world is beginning to take notice of the sport of mixed martial arts.

The organization, whose last show featured a 14-second fight, calls it quits after losing $55 million.

A Toronto police officer told a jury yesterday of the “complete mayhem” that erupted on a busy downtown street when innocent bystander Jane Creba was shot and killed on Boxing Day 2005.

Forty Girl Scouts from around the county earned their self-defense badges on Saturday morning.

He taught self-defense at the Montana Law Enforcement Academy and, having lived in Japan for 15 years, acted as an interpreter for the state at the Kumamoto Center in Helena.

Kuk Sool Won students pledge to be drug-free and that is the goal of Drug Abuse Resistance Education.

  • Women’s boxing in 2012? I’m all for it!

THE International Boxing Association (AIBA) has submitted a formal proposal to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to have women’s boxing included in the sports programme of the London Olympics in 2012, they announced today.

Slice never saw the punch. It was short and quick, similar to the one Muhammad Ali (then Cassius Clay) delivered against Sonny Liston during their heavyweight rematch in May 1965.

From the blogs:

Lets close this week’s news with something a little traditional. I give you Judokai-Kan JuJutsu!

I’d never go jogging in public while wearing my dobak!

~BCP

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Categories: Martial Arts · News · Video
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The only thing that’s certain is change…

October 26, 2008 · 4 Comments

Several of the usual suspects are using Google Analytics to gather good information about their blogs. Unfortunately the free WordPress platform that I’m using does not allow me to use Google. From what I can tell the WordPress analytics feature is just as powerful as Google and it’s free. I’ll post on that in a second…

Sort of related to all this is the fact that I just started a professional blog so I have blog on the brain. Well there are two Ning groups that are related to my profession. I’ve been a member of both for a while now but rarely visit them. As fate would have it Nathan of TDA Training moved The Convocation of Martial Arts to Ning. Since he’s known to break cinder blocks with his head and scare nuns I thought I had better join too. I’ll be updating my weekly news posts to include a shameless plug for his group.

Since I have blog on the brain I found this post at Occam’s Razor. Mr. Kaushik talks about six ways to measure your blog success. The big key here is that he argues blogs are different from traditional websites.

I don’t like to spend a lot of time tracking or measure stuff. For me blogging should be easy and free. In my job I spend way too much time in a cage match with technology the way it is. However, after reading his post I did decide to move to Feedburner. Since my old WordPress theme had feeds built in the template and I could not make them disappear (it’s free! what do you expect?) I had to change themes. This explains why I freshened up the dump. Now if I could only get rid of the feet smell.

As for analytics…

Monthly Traffic:

Monthly Traffic 10.26.08

Monthly Traffic 10.26.08

(click to enlarge)

I switched to the free WordPress service in December. What is notable is how my traffic has grown since then.

Top Referrers of All-time:

So I guess I really do owe Patrick Parker a Christmas ham! Anyhow, thanks to all of you who send traffic my way!

Top search terms:

chuck norris
fred flintstone
jesus
“chuck norris getting his ass kicked”
martial arts
lockup raw criminal ninds
lock up raw criminal minds
myth “can’t prove a negative”
eastern philosophy humor
round kick

push up
what does ki yap means
yip man the movie
yip man movie
akido
yip man film

Misc. Statistics:

There you have it!

Since moving to the WordPress free platform I’ve noticed my traffic increase significantly. I’m not really sure why but if you are shopping around for a new home you should consider it. Oh and you can easily download all your old blog posts from most blogging platforms and import them into WordPress.

One other great thing about WordPress is their featured blog service. To get featured you need to:

  1. upload an avatar if you haven’t already,
  2. use the categories above when you blog on relevant topics, and
  3. attract lots of readers to your posts.

As of 10.26.08 I’m pleased to report that WordPress has featured Striking Thoughts!


(click to enlarge)

Lots of people have posted screenshots of the front page and their traffic graphs the first time they see themselves featured. That’s a nice trophy but the best part about being on the front page is that you can attract even more readers who might be interested in your blog.

Final note: A favor for those of you who feed my blog. Please re-subscribe via the Feedburner link that’s at the top right side of my page.

And before I forget…

I recently came across the coolest screen saver ever.

Twingly screensaver is visualizing the global blog activity in real time. Forget RSS readers where you see only what you’re interested in. With Twingly screensaver you get a 24/7 stream of all (viewer discretion advised) blog activity, straight to your screen.

You can configure your blog to be indexed by Twingly too. And if you want to see what it looks like when it’s running check this out!

Next post: The news!

~BCP

Categories: Announcements · Blogging · Opinion · Technology
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