We all love a good discussion, right?

Okay, maybe not that type of discussion where one person is yelling at you the whole time. But we all love sharing our opinions.

I’m going to integrate the new Question of the Day feature that I introduced yesterday to kick off to­day’s blog post.

Question of the Day

This question is a recurring question that comes from a variety of different people that used to read my original blog, titled Five Minutes in My Head, hosted on Blogger. The question is, “Now that you switched to the second version of Five Minutes in My Head and no longer use Blogger or WordPress, why is it that we can no longer comment on your blog posts?”

First of all, my readers were able to comment on my blog posts back when I used Blogger and WordPress because the software that ran the actual blog came with a commenting feature. Thus, I didn’t have to program anything on my own, and could simply accept, publish, and reject comments through a user in­terface.

After I moved my blog to my own website and started using my own PHP code to run it, I didn’t really want to write a commenting script. I was going to at first, but ended up getting lazy; also, I decided that my blog would be cleaner and neater without commenting.

Eventually, I thought a good amount about letting others comment on my blog posts, and concluded that it’s too self-centered to prevent others from contributing to my work. I decided that with the release of the third version of Five Minutes in My Head, I would re-enable commenting.

But then, when I came down to programming the comment script, I had second thoughts again. Back when I used WordPress, I had massive amounts of spam comments. Fortunately, WordPress came with an automatic spam filtering plug-in, but unfortunately, I won’t be able to implement it into my website.

To satisfy both my desire to allow commenting and my undesire to receive spam, I decided to make it a bit more difficult to comment on my blog posts. Effectively automatically filtering out comment sub­missions to only those who truly want to comment, I decided to allow comments only via direct e-mail.

In order to comment on a blog post, a person must send me an e-mail. In the body of the e-mail, he or she must include the date of the blog post and the comment he or she wishes to submit. If any of this information is missing, the comment will not be published.

Please note that even if all components of the e-mail are included, if the comment itself is not something that would incite a discussion, or is not intelligently written, it may be rejected regardless. Also, keep in mind that all spelling and grammar errors are subject to correction before publication.

That’s all for today, come back tomorrow to read about another new feature coming to Parkzer’s Blog.

Discussion

To participate in the discussion, send me an e-mail with the date of this blog post and your comment.

Are you familiar with a website called FormSpring by any chance?

FormSpring is a relatively new social networking and self-profiling website that has recently been gaining popularity surprisingly quickly. Two individuals interact via the website by the anonymous visitor asking the owner of the profile a question using the form on the profile page, and the identified owner publicly responding to the question. Essentially, the visitors create a FAQ page for the profile owner, but instead of a FAQ, it’s an AAQ (the A in All replacing the F in Frequently).

Go to a mirror and say AAQ (the sound the letters make as a whole, not the letters themselves) twenty times without laughing or expelling snot and I’ll give you a cookie.

(Of course, it doesn’t necessarily have to be all asked questions; if the profile owner receives a question he or she does not wish to answer, he or she can simply delete it from the unanswered questions queue.)

If you’re wondering, yes, I do have a FormSpring page at formspring.me/adamparkzer. However, you may notice that I have not answered any questions for about a month. I have been asked numerous times why I am not answering more questions and if I am going to answer any more in the future, and decided it would be a good idea to respond on my blog, then use my response as a cue to cleverly introduce a new feature on my blog.

So to keep it simple, the straightforward answer is No. I will not be answering any more questions on my FormSpring account. The reason for this is that I have had too much of my time wasted with Form­Spring, particularly from people submitting things that are stupid or aren’t even questions. I have 255 answered questions publicly visible, but I got over a thousand submissions that I did not respond to, most of them relating to the length of my genitals or my sexual orientation, or were conversational (meaning they were not actually questions). I wasted too much time sifting through and deleting ques­tions I didn’t want to answer that I felt it would be best if I just stopped using FormSpring entirely.

However, you’re not completely out of luck for asking me questions that you would like me to publicly address. Starting from tomorrow, I will be answering one question on my blog every time I post a blog entry. These questions will either be questions that I’m asked frequently in person, or specially re­quested questions by my blog readers.

If you would like to submit a question for me to answer, feel free to e-mail them to me. If you would like to receive credit for your question, be sure to make note of that in your e-mail.

That’s all for today, humans. I’ll see you tomorrow to discuss discussing.

So, does this website look familiar to any of you?

Before you proudly declare “Yes,” it’s actually not supposed to look familiar, especially because I never actually officially released it to the public. The only people that should know about it are 10-15 people that were included in the private testing. If you were not asked directly by me to visit the website and suggest improvements, then you probably heard about it from someone else that wasn’t supposed to tell you about it.

It’s okay now though, don’t worry about it.

I won’t eat your soul.

For the people that weren’t included in the private testing of 365Parkzer and don’t know what it is (which should be most people), 365Parkzer was a daily photo blog that I was going to make. The point was to upload a moderately high-resolution photographs relating to something significant I did that day. I would do this once a day, 365 days a year (which is where the 365 in 365Parkzer came from).

Unfortunately, that didn’t work out too well.

I got all the back-end software written and ready, but I just couldn’t get a pictoral representation of something significant that happened on a daily basis (especially because something significant doesn’t happen every day of my life). In addition, I was also posting pictures on my blog, and the picture on 365Parkzer frequently ended up being the same picture as the one in my blog entry for that day. After a few weeks or so, I gave up on 365Parkzer entirely and stopped adding new pictures.

A few weeks ago, I came across Picasa Web Albums, the photograph sharing and storage extension of Google. I actually knew of the website long before, but I never really found motivation to use it because I already had a Photobucket account. After drifting away from Photobucket because they updated the website to be much more confusing, I took a closer look at Picasa Web and found it suitable for my needs; the only thing I needed that it was missing was an in-browser bulk uploader. I switched to Picasa Web and uploaded all my photos to it using a desktop client.

If you’ve been checking out my photographs lately, you’ll notice that the navigation button no longer links to the old photographs page on my website, but instead links to my Picasa Web account. All of the photographs that used to be on my website have been moved to my Picasa Web account.

With that being done, I decided to drastically increase the number of photographs I upload on a regular basis. All throughout June, I have been uploading random pictures that I’ve been taking, essentially turning my Picasa Web Album into the new 365Parkzer. For those interested, the old pictures that used to be a part of the 365Parkzer website are now available on my Picasa Web Album, along with lots of additional recent photographs.

As if that’s not enough, I will also be including a high-resolution picture on the days that I come across something worth sharing and include it in my normal blog post for that day under the “Photograph of the Day” category. For example, if I were intending to present to you today a picture of my dog sleeping on a gray recliner in front of my desk, it would look like this. Notice that you can click on the image to make it bigger.

Photograph of the Day

That’s all for today, I’ll see you tomorrow to discuss questions.

SO I PUT MY HANDS UP, THEY’RE PLAYIN’ MY SONG

THE BUTTERFLIES FLY AWAY

YEAH-AHH-AH-AHH, YEAH-AH-AH-AH

IT’S A PARTY IN THE U.S.A.!

Want to hear me sing that song, along with other songs by Avril Lavigne, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, and Taylor Swift? You’ll find out how and why shortly.

Back in March of 2010, I made a bet with one of my good buddies saying that I would blog every single day of the month, or else I would have to film myself doing 500 crunches while singing songs by Miley Cyrus and post it as a public video on my main YouTube account.

Oddly, if I were to win this bet and successfully blog each day of the month, I would not receive a prize. I don’t know why I agreed to this. I must have been hypnotized at the time.

Anyway, a few days into the month, we agreed on a condition where any article posted on my website, including all critical analysis articles, could substitute for my blog post for that day. Basically, all I had to do was come up with one new page for my website everyday and I would win the bet.

Another few days after that, we agreed to postpone this bet until the summer when I had more time on my hands. In return, I agreed to make my blog posts much better. Unfortunately, summer has arrived, and now I have no choice but to blog for 31 days straight. And hopefully, the release of the third ver­sion of my blog, longer blog posts, and more interesting twists will be sufficient to meet the condition of “much better.”

Back to the point: even though this bet started as a one-on-one thing, now, pretty much all my readers know of it and are interested to hear me sing Miley Cyrus songs. It’s almost as if nobody has faith in me, and all expect me to fail the bet. Which is slightly depressing.

Regardless, I think it’s time to present the specifics of the bet.

The Conditions of the One Month Blogging Bet

1. Adam Parkzer must post a blog entry on Parkzer’s Blog once a day for thirty-one (31) consecutive days, starting on Thursday, July 01, 2010, and ending on Saturday, July 31, 2010.
2. The blog post for the day must be posted and visible to the public between the hours of 12:00 AM and 11:59 PM, according to the United States central time zone, in which the current residing of Adam Parkzer is.
3. In the case that Adam Parkzer does not post a blog entry for one day, he must upload a video of himself singing a song of the blog readers’ choice within three months of the missed date as a public video on his main YouTube channel.
4. In the case that Adam Parkzer fails to post a public video on his main YouTube channel within three months, he receives one additional month to do so at the penalty of uploading another video of a different song.
5. Blog readers may start voting for the song of their choice starting from the day following the day Adam Parkzer does not post a blog entry. They may vote via instant messaging or electronic mail by contacting Adam Parkzer directly and suggesting a song.
6. Blog readers that wish to see videos of Adam Parkzer singing these moderately embarassing songs are encouraged to remind Adam Parkzer on a daily basis to forget to blog that day.

Actually, the sixth condition wasn’t a part of the actual bet, but I threw that in there anyway.

That’s all for today, I’ll see you tomorrow to discuss photographs.

Notice: I have been advised by various individuals to place this message of warning at the top of this blog post. If you do not care about the history, the evolution, or the future of my blog, I strongly dis­courage you from reading this post, as it will most likely be a waste of your time. Thank you, and enjoy this picture of a dictionary.

Drum roll, please. It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for! … Okay, let me rephrase that – it’s the moment some of you have been waiting for. … Actually, now that I think of it, there probably wasn’t anyone waiting for this moment but me. But saying that this is a globally anticipated event makes me feel special. In a good way.

So, how was your day? Was it sunny? Did you eat a delicious, healthy, high-fiber breakfast? … What did you say? Did you just ask me what this drum roll deserving moment is? I knew it! All of you were waiting for this moment after all! … Okay, now I feel special. In a bad way.

Anyway, congratulations! You just read the first two paragraphs of Five Minutes in My Head, Version 3. The best part is, it’s not even called Five Minutes in My Head anymore. If you shift your eyes slightly upward (sort of like those shady individuals you find hiding under your family room couch), you’ll see that my blog is now simply called “Parker’s Blog.” The main reason for this is that far too many people asked me what FMiMH stood for, even though on all of the blog posts, I had both the abbreviation and the full name written out. For those of you that still can’t figure out what FMiMH stands for, I will tell you once and only once, so pay close attention. FMiMH stands for Five Minutes in My Head. Don’t forget to use environmentally friendly economy light bulbs.

Ironically, I’m drifting away from the FMiMH name, but drifting closer to the original concept of Five Minutes in My Head. If you’ve never read the original Five Minutes in My Head (both the first and second versions) and are too lazy to go back and read them, the core concept was that the reader would spend five minutes in my head, or more literally, five minutes in my thoughts. The intention of my blog was to get my readers to spend approximately five minutes reading my thoughts on a particular topic every day, then respond and discuss using the commenting system. Not much later, I ran out of controversial topics to talk about and ended up writing so abstractly that nobody wanted to spend the thinking power to try to understand what I was writing about or the effort and energy to try to reply to me. My popularity and appeal were declining rapidly.

In order to stop my own demise, I had a brainstorming session with myself one day during my Modern World History class. Although I failed to realize at that time that the instructor was preparing us for an in-class essay exam scheduled for the following day, and ended up going into the exam the next day with no idea what to do, I still got some good ideas for my website. I thought about what would interest readers enough to make them keep coming back for more, wanting to read what I had to say. I came up with something simple: short, funny blog posts.

Starting from the release of Five Minutes in My Head, Version 2, I spent less time elaborating and more time thinking of short, funny summaries of things that happened during my day. At first, the plan was a success. However, as time went on, I tried harder and harder to entertain my readers with things inducing short bursts of laughter, and ended up making my blog posts shorter and shorter. People needed to put zero thought into reading what I had to say. What was once Five Minutes in My Head became Five Seconds in y Head, because five sections were really enough to finish reading some days’ blog posts. I had taken my ideas to the extreme, and now they were acting negatively toward my blog.

One of the main focuses of the update to Five Minutes in My Head was to simplify the blog in ways other than content so all excess and irrelevant additions could be removed. As stated earlier, the title of y blog is now simply “Parkzer’s Blog.” Also, those of you that paid particular attention to the URL may have noticed that the date is now formatted as YYYY/MM/DD instead of YYYYMMDD. Believe it or not, people have asked me what the series of numbers at the end of the URL was because they were unable to identify the date in it. These two updates, along with a few others, minimized all distracters, reducing confusion and opening the door for an opportunity to create more in-depth content without losing people’s attentions to other random things.

Now that the format was set, it was time to find a good balance of Five Minutes in y Head, Version 1 and Five Minutes in My Head, Version 2. I couldn’t simply go back to Version 1, because they I would start losing readers out of boredom. On the other hand, I couldn’t stay with Version 2, because doing so would make it pointless to even have a blog – I could just Tweet on Twitter a few times a day, call it my blog, and end up sharing more information than I did with my blog. The solution? Keep both.

Unless I am running severely short on time, all blog posts will have a short, funny part at the beginning, and a slightly longer part after it. Those who simply want the quick laugh can read the first few lines, look at the photograph if there is one, and leave. Those who want more can keep reading and be enlightened.

So now that I wasted your time telling you the history of Five Minutes in My Head that you probably didn’t want to know about, and gave you a preview of what’s to come, go build a rocket and fly to the moon. I’ll see you tomorrow.