When I first turned danielgreene.com into a blog in 2006 I asked the question Where are the ASL interpreters blogs? and found only a few. Since I’ve been in grad school for “interpreting studies” with a concentration in teaching, I’ve learned about and sought out other interpreter blogs—not ASL interpreter blogs, but interpreter blogs nonetheless. Here are two: (more…)
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Why I retitled this blog Daniel Greene’s Interpretation
Daniel Greene’s Blog-o-rama sounded too general. The “-o-rama” suffix implied a wide view and a surplus–which this blog is–but it sounded like it was about nothing in particular. I never put interpreter or interpreting in the title because I write about much more than interpreting. In the 16 years that I’ve been writing this blog, I’ve covered acting, singing, dancing, modeling, poetry, voiceover, web authoring (HTML & CSS), telecommunications, technology, typography, e-books, EPUB, products and services, photography, photo sharing on Facebook, Flickr, communication via social media, and more.
It was time to focus. I renamed this blog An Interpreter’s Interpretation for a few days, and wrote the blog description “of interpreting ASL-English language, Deaf-Hearing culture.” I had thought taking my name out of the title would show humility and focus. But people know me by name, and for more than just interpreting. Besides, danielgreene.com has been my domain name since 1998.
Yet I needed to add something about interpreting to the title. I thought about “take” because it is a short word for interpretation, perspective, opinion, etc. But I kept imagining it being pronounced tah-keh in some other language and meaning something terrible. Besides, the word interpretation would focus the blog while allowing for other, well, “interpretations,” such as perspective and opinion. So I changed the title to Daniel Greene’s Interpretation.
I then considered one of two descriptions: of interpreting, communications, media, and life or of interpreting, communications, media, and the world. “Daniel Greene’s interpretation of life” sounds like I’m a philosopher or guru, and “Daniel Greene’s interpretation of the world” sounds like I’m a news analyst or travel guide. I thought about using a general extender like and other stuff, and other things, and more, etc., or et al., but et cetera means “and that which follows,” and some things I write about don’t logically follow the others. My favorite general extender was et alia, because it means “and others / and other things” but it sounds esoteric. I finally settled on topics that were inclusive enough for me.
What do you think of the new title and description? Have you ever struggled with a similar dilemma?
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How I lost money trying to make money on this blog
I tried to monetize this blog with ads, and it backfired. Here’s how.
I used to earn about $100 a year in AdSense revenues on this blog when I self-hosted it. It took too many hours of my time to do manual updates, so I moved my blogs from WordPress.org to WordPress.com even though I knew I was giving up the right to have AdSense on my blog. Not having to bother with installations freed my time, and for months I was happy. Then I started getting more page views than ever on my blog posts–maybe because the ease-of-use allowed me to blog more–and I resented not making money. I was happy when WordPress announced WordAds, but I got tired of waiting for them to materialize. (more…)
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How to record a video chat with QuickTime Screen Recording
I made this video for people who want to record a video chat in Skype, FaceTime, Google+ Hangout, iChat / Messages, or any other videoconferencing app— but can’t record within the app. Not to worry. As long as you have the latest Mac OS and QuickTime, you can record anything on your screen!
Daniel Greene 