Tag Archives: site news

A Guide To A Good Life

Introducing “The Elegant Gentleman”

I’d like to present a new project of mine, something that I’ve been thinking about and planning for a while. It’s called “The Elegant Gentleman”, and it’s going to be a journey on which I’ll hope you’ll join me, where we will explore clothes, manners and the finer things in life, in the search for a noble, enlightened existence as gentle-men, in this modern world of ours where stress and busy-ness seem to dominate the lives of those around us.

Raoul

Naturally, we won’t have an enlightened existence without the inner search for higher ideals. A preoccupation with “the finer things” alone will leave you empty in the end. But the practice and appreciation of character traits that ennoble us, and the search for meaning and happiness in the world around us, will make us enlightened. And I’ll tell you a little secret: when the search begins within and reaches outside, those “finer things” will begin to have a meaning that enriches our lives and helps us stay on a higher plane of living.

This all sounds somewhat esoteric, and on some level, it is. That’s why there are so few true gentlemen in the world. So won’t you join me as we seek membership in this exclusive club? The journey will be the initiation ceremony. The dues will be the experiences we will each have. And the reward will be a life better lived, a life worth living, a life full of wonderful memories for us and for those around us.

I’ll be creating and posting videos to my YouTube channel. Here’s the first one of the series:

And I’ll be posting frequently on my Facebook Page, and writing articles here on my site, where I’ve added a new category, called… you guessed it, “The Elegant Gentleman“. There’s even a website by the same name.

See you soon! Cheers!

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Events

It’s my website’s 12th anniversary

Earlier this month (on August 7th to be exact), my website turned 12. Yes, I’ve been writing and publishing online since 2000!

I also got two unexpected gifts around the anniversary date. One of my articles got featured on the home page of WordPress.com (in the Freshly Pressed section). It was the second time I was featured, so it felt pretty good. (This was my first featured post.)

Another nice surprise was to see my stats counter fly past 1,000,000 views.

That’s over 1 million views since January of 2010, when I moved my site to WordPress.com. I had been self-hosting a WordPress install prior to that, and before that, my website went through several iterations of static HTML designs and a home-grown blogging engine written in ASP, running off an Access database (it was surprisingly stable). By my own guesstimate, the total number of views on my website since 2000 is somewhere around 10-12 million, if not a lot more. I used to get about 3,000 visits (not just views) per day in previous years.

Web traffic is but one measure of a website’s value. I’m much more pleased by your interactions with my articles and your messages to me, particularly the ones where you tell me how much you like the content I publish here. I do put in a lot of effort into my posts, I’ve done it from the start, and I’m glad when people see the quality.

So, a hearty thank you to all of you who are subscribed, particularly to those of you who are long-time readers! I hope you’ll stick around for another 12 years; I know I will! Cheers! 🙂

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Events

New site design

A new site design went live yesterday. If you haven’t checked my site in a while, click through to see it, it’s worth it.

The new header image is a panoramic photograph taken atop the Parang Mountains, on the Transalpina Road, which I just wrote about. The header also celebrates the 10-year anniversary of my website and indicates my presence on various social networking sites.

There’s also a surprise re-design for my iPad readers. I’ll let you see it for yourselves.

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Events

Twelve years of writing and publishing online

➡ Updated 7/3/12: My website turns 12 on August 7th!

➡ Updated 1/16/12: I’ve checked the age of my domain name (raoulpop.com) and I purchased it on the 7th of August, 2000, so technically, my website is 11 years old, not 10. It will turn 12 this August. While I published my first article in August of 2001, the website was up and running in 2000, so I’ve updated the post and the site header to reflect this.

My writing efforts reached an important milestone back in August. Ligia and I were so busy with work on her new book that I didn’t even notice.

I published my first article on August 3, 2001. It was called “How to keep your exercise goals“. Back then, I wrote it in HTML, using one of the first versions of Dreamweaver, and published it to a domain I’m no longer using (amalgamy.com). As I upgraded to better publishing platforms and new domains over the years, I moved my growing collection of articles and posts along, keeping their original publish dates, so that I’d have a proper archive.

So here we are today… It’s October 9th, 2011, and I’ve been writing and publishing online for over ten years. It’s been an interesting time, during which many, many things have happened in my life.

My articles have had a surprising amount of influence — particularly my reviews. I’d often find, privately, that CEOs and senior executives were reading them. When I needed help, they’d step in and help, in spite of the critiques I leveled at their products. Even now I cringe at some of stronger language I used in my reviews, so I’d like to apologize for all those instances when I let my frustration get the better of me, instead of looking at the situation more objectively. I’d also like to thank all the people who’ve helped me after they got to know me through my website. Thank you!

Another thing that took me by surprise is the tail traffic, which is impossible (for me) to predict, but which provides a steady stream of traffic (and comments) on articles that are fairly old.

If you’ve been a long-time subscriber, you might have been frustrated at times by the diverse number of subjects you find here. You might have wished for a more focused list of topics. I’ve even been told that my website could have been a lot more popular if I could choose one or two subjects and only write about them. I’m interested in a lot of things, and I like to write about anything that catches my attention. Sure, there are some things I keep coming back to, like tech or photos and videos, but even there, I tend not to write about specific things. So I’d like to thank you for sticking around (if you have indeed been sticking around)! 🙂

The one thing I regret is not writing more. I get so many ideas, but there’s so little time. With better time management skills, I could have written and published more, so that’s something I need to work on.

That’s about it for now.

Cheers!

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Thoughts

What kinds of posts would you like to read here?

Are you a subscriber to my website? Great! Let me know what kinds of posts and articles you’re interested in, by filling in the simple survey form below. Thanks!

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