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Category: Blogging

Happy blogger

Fellow UCF’er Shawn a couple of days ago posted seven very good tips for being a happy blogger. At first, I claimed in comments that I already follow all of his advice, but just a few days later I come to one of my periodic blogging crossroads, where I want…

Burlaki.com RSS feed

I know there is a handful of people out there who subscribe to my RSS feed via FeedBurner (which is where the “Subscribe” button on the navigation bar pointed to until today). FeedBurner was bought by Google some time ago, and they are gradually getting around to migrating their service…

A new look

Don’t worry, you’re in the right place. I decided to redecorate, is all. Comparatively loud colors and large fonts tired me after a while. So, I chose a more subdued look instead. Because the selected template was seriously different from the old one, it took me somewhat longer than expected…

Burlaki World Map

Burlaki.com are happy to announce our newest feature: The very cool annotated World Map. Made possible by the excellent Flash tool by amMap.com, it puts every place in Europe that we have ever graced with our presence onto the interactive map and provides short capsules of visit context and timing…

On Travelog

As I have mentioned elsewhere, for the last few weeks I have been chipping away at our old travel diaries, transcribing the observations about sights, museums, restaurants and hotels into Travelog entries. To my own surprise, I’m actually finished with that now. While I have what I think is a…

Find your answers here

I don’t get hit by too many weird search queries – I guess my Google rank is not high enough to push me near the top of the results for your basic cuckoo searches. But checking my Google Analytics stats the other day I came across this gem that apparently…

I’m gonna be on TV

Ok, not really. But a recent comment on my smoking in Canary Wharf illustration suggests that a French TV channel may be interested in using my photos from that post for their program. I honestly do not know how any of those photos could be very much useful for a…

Post #500

On 799th day from this blog’s inauguration, I finally reached my 500th post, at the rate of only .63 posts a day. Not very prolific, I know, but I wasn’t really aiming to be such. In fact, in the first 466 days of this endeavor, I only posted once every…

An unexpected honor

I learned today that my friend Jason conferred the “I Love This Blog” award upon my humble soapbox. I sincerely appreciate your kindness, Jason. It is a bit embarrassing to me that you emphasize “a fascinating outsider’s perspective on American and British life”, which is something that appears less and…

Looking at stats

I check my blog stats practically every day, more out of idle curiosity than for any marketing insight. The traffic to my site is pretty steady, not in the grand sense of the word, but in terms of an established small core audience, and it fluctuates wildly only on days…

New heights

So, Natasha posted the link to my lessons learned little soliloquy to Fodor’s and challenged people there to share their own expat lessons. It generated a discussion on Fodor’s that pushed her thread to the top of most active, and it also caused a heretofore unseen spike in visits to…

Questions, anyone?

It occurred to me a while after writing the previous post that there may be topics of interest to my readers that do not cross my mind on their own. Therefore, here’s an open solicitation for all manner of questions that people may want to hear answers to on my…

State of the Blog address at 2 years

Exactly two years ago I posted this brief welcome message and embarked on the exciting adventure of being a blogger. The purported thrills turned out to be less than thrilling and whatever illusions I had been harboring about my writing aptitude have been long dispelled. But look at the bright…

No new pictures for the moment

I hate to disappoint people waiting for recent pictures from us, but they are unlikely to appear until some time in September. We, as a rule, post photos only after our resident Photoshop maestro, Natasha, had a chance to apply some improving touches to frequently already brilliant shots, and in…

WordPress customization is quick

WordPress is tailor-made for customization once you have the layout of your page pinned down. Then, you only have to play around with your stylesheet parameters to get your site looking just as you want it. It gets a bit more annoying if you decide to expropriate someone else’s theme…

An [un]expected present

I received a package today from my UCF friend Janiece. Since I am pretty sure that everyone else in the group had received theirs ahead of me (I am one of only two “offshore” members of the club, and the other person is “near offshore”), I can safely divulge what…

Stupid spammer bots

Remember my post on spammers’ creativeness? Lately, I’ve been bombarded quite regularly with bot-produced comments that appear as “compliments” from accidental readers. The idea, of course, is that I’ll take them for genuine praise and allow them through my spam controls, opening the door for future deluge. This looks like…