Stoked About Leather Dye!
Ok, I was just looking at getting some leather supplies. As some of you already know, I do leather crafting in my spare time. I like making cool things with leather. Anyways, I just discovered how to properly use leather dye and I am stoked. Now I can make leather crafts with many different colors. Before I was just using natural color.
Pretty cool, right? I suppose I need to put up some pictures soon!
New Trajectory
I am trying to get myself on a trajectory over the next few months. If I can make it happen, I will be better off than I ever have been and I might be able to accomplish many goals that have been on the backburner for quite awhile. I can finally see things coming into views, if I can just make them happen.
I’m going to be realigning my small business to better focus on what I can do best. I am going to start getting some real training done. I am going to complete a few certifications. I am going to better myself.
Let’s see if I can do it.
Three Tools For Working Offline For Online Money
Working offline for online money sounds a little confusing, doesn’t it? Well, in reality it’s not that confusing when you abroad. Remember, when you are abroad, you don’t always have a stable internet connection. Working offline for online money is all about using offline working tools in order to maximize your online income so unstable internet connections don’t slow you down.
Here’s 3 tools for working offline for online income that I utilize myself when I’m traveling and living abroad.
Windows Live Writer
Windows Live Writer is a free tool from Windows that gives you an offline interface for your blog. You can create blog posts in a WYSIWYG interface and then you’ve got it looking the way you like it, you can use post directly to your blog.
Windows Live Writer works with most online blogging platforms including Blogger and WordPress, both hosted and self hosted. You can set up Ping Servers in it so that every blog post you make is automatically pinged to the various services. You can set it up so that phrases are automatically linked (think affiliate marketing applications) as you type them up. You can set up an unlimited number of blog accounts on it so that every one of your blogs can be posted to directly from the interface.
If you are not using Windows then there are other programs out there available but they just don’t have the feature set or the access to different blog services that Live Writer has. You can download Windows Live Writer at the Microsoft Live Essentials site.
Best Reason To Use: Windows Live Writer allows me to type up a post whenever I get the inspiration and then later when I get stable internet access I can post it to my blog.
Mozilla Thunderbird
I find Mozilla Thunderbird to be about the best offline email client out there for those of us working abroad. It certainly isn’t the only one out there though. I really enjoy using Opera Mail that’s integrated right into the Opera browser but proxy support for Opera is weak and it doesn’t have the rich extensions like Mozilla Thunderbird.
Why not just use web based email when traveling and living abroad? Well, it certainly is convenient to log into your email from any browser, but there are certain security risks that you take on when you do it. Many travelers have had their email hacked because they accessed by a compromised browser and if you are running a business online, you could lose your entire online income stream from a single email hack.
I like how Thunderbird is easy to use proxies with and it presents no hassling when adding a Gmail account. Just type in your address and it quickly ascertains the correct settings for IMAP email, even when you are using Google Apps. Give it some time to download the email and then you are set.
You can download Mozilla Thunderbird from the Mozilla site.
Best Reason To Use: I can find a wifi hotspot and quickly download and send email. When I have free time, I can respond to email offline. Bonus: You can reply directly to your Facebook notifications from inside your email client.
XAMPP
If you are doing any kind of web development then you need to be running Xampp. Xampp is a PHP equipped Apache webserver, a MySQL server and several other server programs. With Xampp set up on your computer, you have a testing webserver wherever you go. This means that you can develop themes, do PHP programming, or work on databases without any connection to the internet. No longer do you need to test out every change on an unstable connection that seems to go down every 10 to 15 minutes or makes you wait for what seems like hours just to pull up a page to edit.
You can download XAMPP from the Apache Friends website.
Best Reason To Use: I can customize a WordPress or edit a WordPress database without doing a lot of uploading and downloading just to test each and every change I make.
Other Tools?
Got other tools for working offline while earning online income? I’d love to hear about them in the comments.
Finding Information On A Business
One of the things I enjoy doing is looking up information from companies on the BBB site to find out a little more about them, especially if I am thinking about doing business with them. There is a lot of information out there on their site so that you can even read information on business in an area, types of businesses in an area and even a single business in an area, like triangle direct media. Everything is all right there and it’s easy to deal find out more info.
What do you when you are looking for information about a business?
A Little About My Squidoo Lenses
It’s been awhile since I last talked about my different Squidoo lenses that I have and how I use them in my overall strategy. In fact, I don’t know if I’ve talked about them on this blog, but now is as good as time as any. Why? They are a great way to make money a little money and get a message out there without a lot of hassle. Heck I even made a Che Guevara lens for fun when Geocities closed up.
You can see all of my lenses out there on my lensmaster page. You can see a list of my favorite lenses as well as a list of my lenses that I have built on different topics. I really suggest that you look at my lenses and see if it is something that you’d like to pursue.