The Blogger’s Toolkit:

Here are some content and notes from the "The Blogger’s Toolkit: Success Strategies" presentation given at the Workshop titled "Saturday Success Series: Elevate your Voice and Vision" held by Toastmasters District 65 on 4 October 2025. The "The Blogger’s Toolkit: Success Strategies" was one of three presentations given during the workshop.

Agenda

• Pathways Project – Write a Compelling Blog
• What is a Blog?
• Where to Start?
• How
• Finding your topic
• Growing and Keeping an Audience
• Posting eight blog posts in a month
• Getting Help
• Q&A

Pathways Project – Write a Compelling Blog

The "Write a Compelling Blog" is a Level 4 Elective Project in Pathways.

Key Points

1. Pick a platform
• Pick a theme / topic area
2. Post 8 times in one month
• Engage and grow your audience
3. Give a speech about your experience

What is a Blog?

blog

/blôɡ,bläɡ/

noun

a regularly updated website or web page, typically one run by an individual or small group, that is written in an informal or conversational style.

"he runs a personal finance blog"

verb

add new material to or regularly update a blog.

"it's about a week since I last blogged"

Source: OxfordLanguages

Where to Start?

Select a Platform

So Many Choices

• WordPress: https://wordpress.org/ or https://wordpress.com/
• Blogger: https://www.blogger.com/
• Medium: https://medium.com/
• Wix: https://www.wix.com/
• Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/

How to Choose?

• Do you know someone who uses one of these or another platform? Can you use them as a resource when you have questions?
• Pick one and give it a try.

How - Finding your topic

Picking a topic and purpose for your blog is the first place to start.

• Familiar
• Broad enough so you will always have something to write about.
• Narrow enough so your audience knows what to expect.

Topic Ideas

• Hobbies
• Interests
• Phase in your life
• Single
• Parent
• Retirement
• Caregiver

How - Growing and Keeping an Audience

Does the audience know what to expect?

• Clear theme/topic area for the blog
• Schedule – When do you publish a new post?

Get the word out

• When publishing, create announcements on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.
• Create a short video if you are comfortable to promote the blog or each post

Respond to comments

• Recommend turning on comments/discussion for your posts
• Require review and approval of comments
• Require commenters be signed into the platform
• Respond to comments promptly (1 to 3 days)
• Be positive & polite in your responses

Recommended Settings for Comments - WordPress

WordPress – Settings > Discussion

• Default post settings - Allow people to submit comments on new posts
• Other comment settings
• Comment author must fill out name and email
• Users must be registered and logged in to comment
• Show comments cookies opt-in checkbox, allowing comment author cookies to be set
• Email me whenever
• Anyone posts a comment
• A comment is held for moderation
• Before a comment appears
• Comment author must have a previously approved comment
• (Optional) Comment must be manually approved

Recommended Settings for Comments - Blogger

Blogger – Settings > Comments

• Who can comment? - Users with Google Accounts or Only members of this blog
• Comment moderation – Always or Sometimes
• Email moderation requests to
• Add your email address
• Or ask someone to be a moderator and use their email address
• Reader comment captcha – Turn On (We may hate them, but it does help prevent spam comments.)

How - Posting eight blog posts in a month

Plan & Staying on Schedule

• Use the scheduling feature
• Add multiple blog posts in one sitting when ideasare flowing
• Set a future date for publishing

Finding Content

• Create a list of topic ideas for posts throughout the month
• Reference other published content
• Comment on you experience following a how-toarticle or post
• How you were inspired to try something different
• Agree or disagree

Getting Help

Platform

• Google or Bing Search
• AI
• Other bloggers
• Other club members who have completed the Write a Compelling Blog project

Content

• Family & Friends
• Ask your audience what they would like to read about

Engagement

• Family & Friends
• Club members & VP of Public Relations
• Make use of Social Media

Q&A

Key Points

1. Pick a platform
• Pick a theme / topic area
2. Post 8 times in one month
• Engage and grow your audience
3. Give a speech about your experience

Disinformation Age

Introduction

On Friday, 6 May 2022, I gave a speech at the Morning Knights Toastmasters club, regarding the Disinformation Age. I referenced an article in the NATO Review, titled Countering disinformation: improving the Alliance’s digital resilience, published 12 August 2021.

The article referenced a study by John Hopkins, Imperial College London, & Georgia Tech that provided some information that we as individuals can do to limit our contribution to the spread of misinformation as well as recommending some tools that social media sites may use to help slow the spread of disinformation.

Today, I received an email from Flipboard that commented on the Supreme Court's recent leaked decision to overturn Roe verse Wade. The article that caught my eye and I followed up on was Ben Franklin’s Abortion Recipe, published by Slate.com. I read the article and thought it interesting, so I wanted to follow up on it to see if Ben Franklin really did publish a recipe for abortion.

I did several searches to see if I could find an online version of Franklin's book, The American Instructor. I did find a version at Evans TCP. It looks like it is an uncorrected optical recognition (OCR) scan of the book, but it is readable. The recipe which Slate.com referred to is Suppression of the Courses. Reading the recipe, gave an idea as to what Suppression of the Courses refers to and it begged the question, 'Is this really a recipe for abortion or a recipe to encourage regular menstrual cycle?' A bit more investigation was required.

Additional searches seemed to indicate that Suppression of the Courses is indeed the suppression of the menstrual cycle, a.k.a. missing a period, which may be caused by several things including pregnancy. This still does not give a great deal of confidence that one can state that this is a recipe for abortion although it is possible. It would take a few historians looking it over to provide a definitive answer but is quite possible. It sounds more like a story meant to draw readers to Slate.com.

I wanted to know how reliable and bias Slate.com is so my next search was to find out. I found an excellent site, ad fontes media that helps answer both questions. I found the page on their site for Slate, which provides their analysis. At the time of this post, they gave Slate scores of 37.04 for reliability and -15.27 for bias. These numbers really do not mean much unless you know what the scale is and how these scores match other publications. Fortunately, they provide a quad chart that provides this information. Using the quad chart, one can see that Slate is "reliable for news, but high in analysis/opinion content with a skew to the left.

Conclusion

The email from Flipboard led me down a rabbit hole, that I was not intending to go down, but I wanted to show how slowing down and thinking about something before sharing may be a good thing. I'm still not certain if the recipe that Ben Franklin published was truly for abortion or not. I will leave that up to the historians to discuss. It very well may be, and if it is, then we all could use a history lesson. If it is not, then it is another example how media companies take something and turn it around to cause users to come to their site and spread the story to drive more traffic.

I know I will not be sharing the link to the article with others and claim it is the truth. I'm not certain if the article is correct, but I can be certain it came from a biased point of view. I would have liked to see the article have some historians discuss the recipe and state if it indeed included abortion or if it was simply a recipe to help women have a regular menstrual cycle. If nothing else, it shows that these things were discussed in the open in Franklin's time. It does make one wonder if our ideas of the past really reflect reality. One would not have thought that information on women's menstruation would have been published in a general textbook of the times.

Remember stop, think, and if not certain, validate. This was a much deeper analysis than you need to do most of the time but it shows how media use our emotions to help drive traffic to their sites.

Rollback Changeset in Team Foundation Server (TFS)

I needed to rollback a changeset in TFS. The changeset had 35 files in it so I really did not want to do each one by hand. I found that with TFS Power Tools it is possible to roll them all back at once, however when I issued the command "tfpt rollback /changeset:14699" I recieved the error "Unable to determine the workspace."

I was thinking that this makes sense as I did not specify the TFS server to connect to so naturally I woundered how to do so. Well after looking through a few search results, I finally found that I simply need to be in a mapped directory in order for this to work.

My project is mapped to D:\MyProject_Root so that is the location which I need to run the command. Below are the steps I took to rollback the changeset.

1. If you don't have TFS Power Tools installed you may obtain the software from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/bb980963.aspx
2. Start the PowerShell Console (Regular CMD Window may work as well.)
   Start > All Programs > Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2008 Power Tools > PowerShell Console
3. Change to your mapped directory
   PS C:\Documents and Settings\Developer> d:
   PS D:\> cd myproject_root
4. Execute the command to rollback the changeset
   PS D:\MyProject_Root> tfpt rollback /changeset:15699
   NOTE: You may get an error if you have any pending changes which have not been checked in. Simply do as the message states.
   "Cannot proceed because you have pending changes in your workspace. You must move to a shelveset, undo, or check in all pending changes before reverting a change set."
   
   
5. You will then be prompted to update your workspace. Click "Yes" to continue.
   
   
6. Prepare to wait for awhile. It seems that it needs to update all mappings from the server. I have three projects on the same server. The two other projects are mapped to folders outside of D:\MyProject_Root but were still updated. So your wait time will depend on the number of projects you have on the TFS server and your connectivity to the server.
7. Once your wait is over, you will be prompted to select the files in the changeset you wish to rollback. Since I want all of the files rolled back, I left them all checked and clicked the "Roll Back" button.
   
   
8. Your changes will be rolled back. When you open the project you will see these files have been checked out and modified so you will need to modify them or simply check them back in.

I hope you find this useful.

Server Name Considerations - DNS and More (Mar. 2, 2010) (273750)

This editorial was posted on the SSWUG.org website in the editorial section on 2 March 2010. This is a great read on server naming conventions. I have copied the text below as this will become lost on the site.

Server Name Considerations - DNS and More

I hadn't planned on more naming items - but this is great feedback from a more "holistic" sense and I wanted to pass along this note from Johan.

"I know this is a pure Database Admins forum but when you start discussing server names, you are also referencing one of my other networking tasks. As I am working for a globally operating company with limited ICT staff, I am responsible for Databases, Active Directory, Server installations and Business Continuity Management. The server name standard I introduced uses ISO country code (Char 2), City Code (Char 3), Virtualization (‘V’ or not present), primary function (Char 3) and a number (Char 2). This results in NLEHVSQL03 for the third physical SQL server based in The Netherlands and the city of Eindhoven. This way the location of a server and its primary function is always known by its name.

The thing you are missing in your fine newsletter is the fact that your example server "GGSH389FKSJJS" can have a DNS Alias (technically called CNAME) that also describes another function. So your file server can have the Windows Active Directory and DNS name "GGSH389FKSJJS" and another DNS alias (CNAME) "FSBookKeeping" for the users.

This has multiple advantages:

• When the server fails, you can bring a new one online called "JXZ596JVSUT", point the DNS alias "FSBookKeeping" to this server and no scripts, unc paths and documents have to be changed as the users use file://fsbookkeeping/fileshare
• When your location has a Business Continuity crisis. Only DNS aliases have to be pointed to the servers in the backup server room. This also limits the scripting and configuration tasks during a crisis
• Your server can have multiple functions to the user under different Aliases.
• DNS entries can be updated with a script so they can be prepared for the case of an emergency. (see http://www.vansoest.it/v1/uk/default.asp?file=Hotlist.whc and click “Domain Name Server (DNS) Tips” for more information about the DNSCMD command line command)

There is a fileserver security option “DisableStrictNameChecking” that must be set before a fileserver (SMB) can be accessed by a DNS alias (CNAME). You can also find more information here: http://www.vansoest.it/v1/uk/default.asp?file=Hotlist.whc and click “Domain Name Server (DNS) Tips” I hope this gives your readers a lot more possibilities for efficiently naming their servers."

My Review of Celestron AstroMaster 114 EQ Reflector Telescope

Originally submitted at Telescopes.com

If you're looking for a dual-purpose telescope appropriate for both terrestrial and celestial viewing, then the AstroMaster Series is for you. Each AstroMaster model is capable of giving correct views of land and sky. The AstroMaster Series produces bright, clear images of the moon and plane...

Celestron AstroMaster 114 EQ Reflector Telescope

Good beginner scope

By Rich from Sterling, VA on 12/22/2009

 

4out of 5

Pros: Strong Construction

Cons: Poor Finder Scope

Best Uses: Astronomy

Describe Yourself: Casual/ Recreational

This is a good beginner scope. This is the second telescope I have owned and I find that the construction and quality are much better than the previous telescope I had owned. This scope is steady once it is balanced and will stay were you point it. It is very difficult to get this telescope on target with the finder-scope and lens which comes with it. The field of view for the lens is much too small. This telescope needs to have a few lenses included to allow the user to line it up with a lower magnification/wider field of view and work your way up to higher magnification/narrower field of view. I can not figure out how the finder-scope is intended to work. (How can you use both eyes to line up the telescope?) I line it up on the object I want to look at and it is no where to be found. Only after playing with Dec and RA controls am I able to find what I am looking for and when I look through the finder-scope it looks like it is still lined up. I am a noob when it comes to using telescopes but in my opinion this telescope needs more lenses with a wider field of view and a much better finder-scope. My other scope had cross hairs and it was much easier to get it right on target. I am sure this should be easier to use but I just don't get it. Right now it is way too cold to spend much time with it so perhaps as the weather warms up I may have more time to spend on figuring this out and perhaps I will get the hang of it.

If you have an older computer the software which comes with the telescope may not work. I tried it on two computers and it would not run as it stated it needed a better video card than what I have.

Even though I have stated several issues I have found with the telescope, I am still convinced that it is a good telescope and am happy with my purchase. It gives you a lot of bang for your buck. Like I said I have not had a great deal of time with it yet but once I have more time I am confident I will be able to work through the shortcomings. I do plan to purchase more lenses for it and possibly a better finder-scope.

(legalese)

Eee PC | Easy to Learn, Work and Play

I received my Asus EEE PC 1002HA a few days ago and am trying it out now. It has Windows Live Toolbar installed in IE. I noticed the "Blog It" button on the toolbar and decided to set it up with my Blogger account. No guarantee that I will actually write more here but lets see if it is in my face when I am using the machine I may make use of it.

BTW: For the little bit that I have used the 1002HA I have to say I like it. I tried the 4G version of the EEE PC earlier and gave up on it in short order. I like to have a small device but I want to do a lot with it and the 4G did not fit the bill. It looks like the 1002HA may do the job. We will see after a few weeks.

Eee PC Easy to Learn, Work and Play

Update to my previous post regarding USB issues: I wiped the machine and started from scratch. I would have liked to know what the problem was but many times you just need to start all over again.

Overview
-------------------------
I bought a Western Digital External USB Hard Drive and was able to use it on my desktop without any issue. I then attempted to use it on my laptop and was presented with the "Found New Hardware Wizard." After reading hundreds of posts with a few claiming to have a solution, I found no solutions which would work, short of reinstalling Windows.

It was very frustrating reading many of the posts as most of the responses were asking for further information about the hardware when the poster knew it was a software issue or telling the poster how to initialize the drive. If the respondent had read the poster's question they would not have posted an unrelated answer as the drive needs to be recognized by device manager before it can be used in disk manager.

I am posting what I did to get my USB HDD to work however it is not a solution to the underlying problem. If anyone knows how to fix the underlying problem please post a reply here. In the meantime I hope this helps other who have been searching for a fix for connecting a USB device which uses Windows default drivers but Windows prompts the user with the "New Hardware Found Wizard."

Troubleshooting Steps
-------------------------
- Rule out the hardware
+ Checked that the HDD worked on another PC
+ Used VMWare to ensure that it worked on the Laptop's hardware
- Used Goggle to search on the issue & checked a few things which made sense but were correct in my case
+ Checked that the Cryptographic Services was running
+ Checked the registry entry for the path of drivers (I do not recall the registry path but the value was %SystemRoot%\Inf;...)
+ Other things such as the location of files and others that I do not recall

Workaround
-------------------------
I found one post at http://www.ureader.com/message/1083780.aspx, which led me to try copying the registry entry from a working machine to the laptop. When I copied the registry entry from the machine which worked to the one which did not, the HDD worked. As I said earlier this really does not fix the problem but did get the HDD working.

Steps
- Using Device Manager I looked for the device under "Other Devices". Right clicked on the Unknown device and selected properties. In the properties dialog, viewed the "Details" tab and noted the "Device Instance Id". In my case, the "Device Instance Id" was "USB\Vid_1058&Pid_0705&MI_00\6&344189D4&0&0000" for a Western Digital Elite 500GB USB Hard Drive.
- On the working machine, I opened regedit and went to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\USB\Vid_1058&Pid_0705 and exported the registry
- Copied the exported registry entry to the laptop and attempted to import it into the registry but ran into some permission issues and was unable to update the registry
- Opened regedt32 on the laptop and gave Everyone full access to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\USB\Vid_1058&Pid_0705 and imported the registry file, which worked fine this time
- Removed the full control access for the Everyone group
- Connected the HDD and it worked as expected

Summary
-------------------------
I was very frustrated at finding no solutions to fixing the issue of Windows not using the default drivers for hardware such as USB Hard Disk Drives (HDD), USB Hubs, USB Keyboards, etc. I decided to write this post to help others who may be very frustrated as well and ask if anyone knows what the underlying problem is and has a solution please follow up with a solution.

Thank You
Rich

Eee update

Well it is the end of March and I still do not have my Eee configured the way I want it. I am asking a lot from the little guy and since I do not want to count on the SSD, I am trying to run off an external hard drive and it is proving to be more challenging than it should be. If I had more time to work on it I would have been done a while ago.

The main problem I ran into was that when I installed Nitro PDF on the device and rebooted, I received the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) and could not repair it. I had to start over. As a result of this I wish to be able to recover quickly. I have created a bootable USB Flash Drive with DOS and Ghost 9 to use for backup and recovery. Using Ghost takes a large amount of time so it has been slowing me down quite a bit.

I hope to wrap this up shortly and post the steps I took as the best I remember them.

Asus Eee 4G (701)

I just got the Asus Eee 4G (701). I plan to run XP off of an SDHC card and possibly Ubuntu. So far I have been impressed by this little guy. I have been into PDAs for a while but miss the usefulness and practicality that the Psion devices provided. It looks as though the Asus Eee may more useful than any other similar device that I have owned for nearly the same price.

I plan to post how to's on this Blog however if the past is any indicator it may not happen. Let's see how it goes.