A few years ago, Mark Cour of Wilkes-Barre Online/Circumlocution for Dummies came up with the concept of the "Flapdoodle" (as he calls it). I admired him because he had several informative videos posted on Youtube which showed various photos set to music in a slideshow format. The definition of flapdoodle, according to Merriam-Webster is simply nonsense. His video (below) "All the Madmen" is anything but. Featured in the video, are all of the popular NEPA Bloggers in 2006, a history lesson of blogging/bloggers in Northeastern PA if you will. Sadly, my personal blog is missing from the video as I was nearly dooced from my job around the same time this video was created.
He is my inspiration for creating the below NEPA Blogs flapdoodle 2.0. I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed creating it. The theme of this video is "Changes", because in order to remain relevant you need to accept and embrace change. I'd like to think that I've helped NEPA Blogs change for the better, but that's for you to decide.
~Michelle
A clearinghouse providing links to blogs and other sites about Northeastern Pennsylvania or by people from Northeastern Pennsylvania. Submit blogs to nepablogs@gmail.com
Monday, October 31, 2011
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Spook-tober
We are a day away from Halloween and one of the most scariest things that could happen, did happen. We got snow! AHHHHHHHHHHHHH! This is by far more frightening than venturing into the area's haunted houses (kidding, those things do really scare the crap out of me!)
Here's a photo from my house in Sweet Valley:
On a more serious note, I figured that I'd post some blogs and websites from the area that are related to all things spooky. So.....here.....we.....go!
(Previously Linked)
NEPA Paranormal Society
http://www.nepaparanormal.com
"The NEPA Paranormal is a group of 13 investigators all out to seek the truth. We have all come together with our own paranormal experiences and questions, and we all want to see what we can find out there. We do believe the paranormal exists, and want some answers." They have also been recently featured on "Ghost Adventures" Season 2 Castilla De San Marcos and "The Haunting" Curse of the Black Horse Inn and now are on Fox 56. If you are looking for a quick way to get goosebumps, checking out this website is the way to go!
(Previously Linked)
Pennsylvania Haunts & History Blog & Website
http://hauntsandhistory.blogspot.com
http://sites.google.com/site/hauntsandhistory/pennslvaniahaunts&histroy
"Pennsylvania and its neighbors are bursting with tradition, legends, tall tales and ghosts. Each week we'll introduce one or two of their strange and spooky stories to you. Click on Pennsylvania Haunts and History to get to our website's home page." If you are into Haunted houses and the like, this is a great place to visit because you can read and learn all about them in the State of Pennsylvania, not just limited to NEPA.
(New)
Poconos/I-80 East Haunts & History Website
http://sites.google.com/site/hauntsandhistory/poconosi-80east
"The legends, lore and ghost tales of Bradford, Carbon, Clinton, Columbia, Lackawanna, Luzerne, Lycoming, Monroe, Pike, Potter, Sullivan, Susquehanna, Tioga, Wayne & Wyoming counties." I was happy to find that the Henryville House was located on this list. I lived in the Poconos growing up, and my friends always told me that this place was spooked. Also, it appears that this website was created and is maintained by the same folks who run the Pennsylvania Haunts & History website.
(New)
Paranormal Investigators of the Poconos Website
http://www.piofthepoconos.com/index1.html
This is similar to the NEPA Paranormal Society, except they cover the Pocono Region. From the About Us page: "Founded and established in the picturesque Pocono Mountains by researchers Diane & Kieran Pryor, the Paranormal Investigators of the Poconos (henceforth referred to as PIP) is a serious non-profit organization that is committed to the research and study of unexplained phenomena. We do this free of charge."
If none of that is your cup of tea, then I suggest heading over to NEPA Mom, and check out the list of local Halloween Attractions that your little ones are sure to love.
Have a safe and Happy Halloween everyone!
~Michelle
Here's a photo from my house in Sweet Valley:
On a more serious note, I figured that I'd post some blogs and websites from the area that are related to all things spooky. So.....here.....we.....go!
(Previously Linked)
NEPA Paranormal Society
http://www.nepaparanormal.com
"The NEPA Paranormal is a group of 13 investigators all out to seek the truth. We have all come together with our own paranormal experiences and questions, and we all want to see what we can find out there. We do believe the paranormal exists, and want some answers." They have also been recently featured on "Ghost Adventures" Season 2 Castilla De San Marcos and "The Haunting" Curse of the Black Horse Inn and now are on Fox 56. If you are looking for a quick way to get goosebumps, checking out this website is the way to go!
(Previously Linked)
Pennsylvania Haunts & History Blog & Website
http://hauntsandhistory.blogspot.com
http://sites.google.com/site/hauntsandhistory/pennslvaniahaunts&histroy
"Pennsylvania and its neighbors are bursting with tradition, legends, tall tales and ghosts. Each week we'll introduce one or two of their strange and spooky stories to you. Click on Pennsylvania Haunts and History to get to our website's home page." If you are into Haunted houses and the like, this is a great place to visit because you can read and learn all about them in the State of Pennsylvania, not just limited to NEPA.
(New)
Poconos/I-80 East Haunts & History Website
http://sites.google.com/site/hauntsandhistory/poconosi-80east
"The legends, lore and ghost tales of Bradford, Carbon, Clinton, Columbia, Lackawanna, Luzerne, Lycoming, Monroe, Pike, Potter, Sullivan, Susquehanna, Tioga, Wayne & Wyoming counties." I was happy to find that the Henryville House was located on this list. I lived in the Poconos growing up, and my friends always told me that this place was spooked. Also, it appears that this website was created and is maintained by the same folks who run the Pennsylvania Haunts & History website.
(New)
Paranormal Investigators of the Poconos Website
http://www.piofthepoconos.com/index1.html
This is similar to the NEPA Paranormal Society, except they cover the Pocono Region. From the About Us page: "Founded and established in the picturesque Pocono Mountains by researchers Diane & Kieran Pryor, the Paranormal Investigators of the Poconos (henceforth referred to as PIP) is a serious non-profit organization that is committed to the research and study of unexplained phenomena. We do this free of charge."
If none of that is your cup of tea, then I suggest heading over to NEPA Mom, and check out the list of local Halloween Attractions that your little ones are sure to love.
Have a safe and Happy Halloween everyone!
~Michelle
Friday, October 28, 2011
NEPALife
Here's another find by Michelle: NEPALife (http://gerardhetman.tumblr.com/).
The subtitle on this Tumblr blog is "Bringing NEPA flare to talk on sports, politics, community service, and more!" Unfortunately, as with many Tumblr blogs, there aren't any links that I can see to an "About" page or anything else of the sort. We can cleverly surmise that the name of the blogger is Gerard Hetman, perhaps this Gerard Hetman, reporter and photographer for the Times Leader.
NEPALife consists mostly of image posts, with a few links and blog entries sprinkled in. From the first blog post:
I decided to call this blog “NEPALife” because I plan to talk some about life here in Northeast Pennsylvania. Of course I have lots of other topics to discuss as well, so I am looking forward to good times ahead!
Be sure to check out NEPALife!
The subtitle on this Tumblr blog is "Bringing NEPA flare to talk on sports, politics, community service, and more!" Unfortunately, as with many Tumblr blogs, there aren't any links that I can see to an "About" page or anything else of the sort. We can cleverly surmise that the name of the blogger is Gerard Hetman, perhaps this Gerard Hetman, reporter and photographer for the Times Leader.
NEPALife consists mostly of image posts, with a few links and blog entries sprinkled in. From the first blog post:
I decided to call this blog “NEPALife” because I plan to talk some about life here in Northeast Pennsylvania. Of course I have lots of other topics to discuss as well, so I am looking forward to good times ahead!
Be sure to check out NEPALife!
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Country Baby Handmade
Country Baby Handmade
http://country-baby.blogspot.com
Country Baby Handmade is the blog of Amber; a mother, wife and nurse from Northeastern PA. She is extremely crafty and uses her blog to chat about her love of DIY and Handmade everything. She also has an Etsy store where she sells stuff she makes located here. You can find Amber's adorable daughter modeling some of her fashions. According to Amber, her daughter is her inspiration for a lot of the items that she creates. "...a lot of these items I originally made for her to use but because of my love for hand crafting things I decided to make it a lucrative business to help supplement my income while I stay home and spend valuable time with her."
http://country-baby.blogspot.com
Country Baby Handmade is the blog of Amber; a mother, wife and nurse from Northeastern PA. She is extremely crafty and uses her blog to chat about her love of DIY and Handmade everything. She also has an Etsy store where she sells stuff she makes located here. You can find Amber's adorable daughter modeling some of her fashions. According to Amber, her daughter is her inspiration for a lot of the items that she creates. "...a lot of these items I originally made for her to use but because of my love for hand crafting things I decided to make it a lucrative business to help supplement my income while I stay home and spend valuable time with her."
Blogger Meet-up
via Michelle
....announce the upcoming NEPA Blogger Meet-up. This event will be actually focused around the bloggers…what a novel thought!
We are inviting the usual political suspects, but don't think that many of them will be showing up because of the close proximity to election day. I'm sure that they will be busy vying for last minute votes.
Here are the dirty deets about the event:
The Who/What: NEPABlogs.org will be hosting an informal Blogger Meet-up. Come out and meet the NEPA Blogs (dysfunctional) family. ALL ARE WELCOME. There is no admission or cover charge. It is absolutely 100% free. You have to buy your own drinks though. Unless you serenade me with an off key version of Lady Gaga or something like that.
The When: Sun Nov. 6, 2011 starting at 5pm. Stay until the cows come home….or last call. Whichever comes first.
The Where: The Metro Bar & Grill in Dallas. For directions to the Metro Bar and Grille, please visit: http://www.themetrobarandgrill.com/
***More details here: http://nepablogs.blogspot.com/2011/10/blogger-meet-up.html – We put the "fun" in dysfunctional.
I hope you can stop by and partake in some libations with cool kiddies.
The Saturday OT Commitee and Operatic Society will also be attending to infuse cash into the malt beverage industry to insure it's liquidity. This a gathering of bloggers, readers, political types, friends and anyone else that is interested. All are welcome. A quick check of the agenda reveals that there isn't one. Michael Rennie, the unofficial Social Secretary of the Northeast Blogging Council has announced that his organization has sanctioned the event saying "It's a good excuse to drink beer."
Edit (by Michelle): You can RSVP on our Facebook Event page here.
....announce the upcoming NEPA Blogger Meet-up. This event will be actually focused around the bloggers…what a novel thought!
We are inviting the usual political suspects, but don't think that many of them will be showing up because of the close proximity to election day. I'm sure that they will be busy vying for last minute votes.
Here are the dirty deets about the event:
The Who/What: NEPABlogs.org will be hosting an informal Blogger Meet-up. Come out and meet the NEPA Blogs (dysfunctional) family. ALL ARE WELCOME. There is no admission or cover charge. It is absolutely 100% free. You have to buy your own drinks though. Unless you serenade me with an off key version of Lady Gaga or something like that.
The When: Sun Nov. 6, 2011 starting at 5pm. Stay until the cows come home….or last call. Whichever comes first.
The Where: The Metro Bar & Grill in Dallas. For directions to the Metro Bar and Grille, please visit: http://www.themetrobarandgrill.com/
***More details here: http://nepablogs.blogspot.com/2011/10/blogger-meet-up.html – We put the "fun" in dysfunctional.
I hope you can stop by and partake in some libations with cool kiddies.
The Saturday OT Commitee and Operatic Society will also be attending to infuse cash into the malt beverage industry to insure it's liquidity. This a gathering of bloggers, readers, political types, friends and anyone else that is interested. All are welcome. A quick check of the agenda reveals that there isn't one. Michael Rennie, the unofficial Social Secretary of the Northeast Blogging Council has announced that his organization has sanctioned the event saying "It's a good excuse to drink beer."
Edit (by Michelle): You can RSVP on our Facebook Event page here.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Jefferson Stolarship
Another find by Michelle:
Jefferson Stolarship
"The 100% Official Jeff Stolarcyk Website Blog Thing."
http://www.jeffersonstolarship.com/
From his "About" page:
Hi, I’m Jeff Stolarcyk.
Over the past few years I’ve been a gaming journalist, a comic book reviewer, a college teacher, an IT trainer in a large hospital system and, most recently, an SEO and social media “expert” at Solid Cactus Web.com. Currently, I’m Solid Cactus’s Affiliate Marketing Manager. I’m a frequent contributor (my name used to be in the masthead) at eBiz Insider magazine, have spoken about blogging and social media to audiences at conferences and other events. Not-so-professionally, I’m one fourth of Alert Nerd Press, a digital publishing imprint focusing on geek literature. Currently, I’m working on a comic book with my friend Matt Springer and I’m about halfway through a novella that I’ve been releasing serially in Alert Nerd Press’s semiquarterly magazine, Grok. I like writing things; if you want to work with me, send me an email.
I’m also a giant nerd. I love movies, comic books, video games and the dozens of gigs of music on my iPod in the same way that more sociable people love puppies. I’m pretty okay; I even have testimonials:
(For the testimonials, continue reading here.)
Frightened? Confused? That sounds about right. Go over to Jeff's blog and have your head spun around with movie reviews, rants about last-minute design changes by clients, mortal terror spawned by a repurposed U-Haul truck, and the very real possibility that a clever campaign ad by a very nice lady may result in carnage on the roads. And that's just from the first three posts I read.
Jefferson Stolarship
"The 100% Official Jeff Stolarcyk Website Blog Thing."
http://www.jeffersonstolarship.com/
From his "About" page:
Hi, I’m Jeff Stolarcyk.
Over the past few years I’ve been a gaming journalist, a comic book reviewer, a college teacher, an IT trainer in a large hospital system and, most recently, an SEO and social media “expert” at Solid Cactus Web.com. Currently, I’m Solid Cactus’s Affiliate Marketing Manager. I’m a frequent contributor (my name used to be in the masthead) at eBiz Insider magazine, have spoken about blogging and social media to audiences at conferences and other events. Not-so-professionally, I’m one fourth of Alert Nerd Press, a digital publishing imprint focusing on geek literature. Currently, I’m working on a comic book with my friend Matt Springer and I’m about halfway through a novella that I’ve been releasing serially in Alert Nerd Press’s semiquarterly magazine, Grok. I like writing things; if you want to work with me, send me an email.
I’m also a giant nerd. I love movies, comic books, video games and the dozens of gigs of music on my iPod in the same way that more sociable people love puppies. I’m pretty okay; I even have testimonials:
(For the testimonials, continue reading here.)
Frightened? Confused? That sounds about right. Go over to Jeff's blog and have your head spun around with movie reviews, rants about last-minute design changes by clients, mortal terror spawned by a repurposed U-Haul truck, and the very real possibility that a clever campaign ad by a very nice lady may result in carnage on the roads. And that's just from the first three posts I read.
Past headers
One of the changes we made when Michelle Davies revived NEPA Blogs this past April was to the header. For a few years a single image had been posted at the top of the page, separate from the "NEPA Blogs" title. Michelle worked out a way to incorporate the title into the image and post the entire image as a header in place of the text title. It then became a simple process to create new headers and post them on a regular basis. For a while this was twice a week, but as we went along we realized that we were burning up the available supply of iconic images of NEPA, and any submitted images weren't being displayed long enough for anyone to show off to all their friends. So now the image changes once a week, every Wednesday.
The image layout has some basic rules for consistency: all images are 72 dpi and 920 pixels across, with the height being no more than two-thirds of the width (or so.) The words "NEPA Blogs" appear in 96-point Times Roman Bold, while a description of the image and its location in NEPA is included on the image (whenever possible) in 18-point Akbar - a font based on the handwriting of Matt Groening, creator of the Life in Hell comic strip and "The Simpsons." If desired, credit, copyright, and website information can be included as well, sometimes in an appended bit of blank space at the bottom.
We're always looking for submissions for the header. Complete instructions are here, though these are just general guidelines; we can (and do) crop and resize images to fit the header, and creatively dodge around the image to avoid obscuring anything critical. Not all of these images actually come from bloggers; one of the most striking was posted to Facebook by a non-blogger in the aftermath of the September floods, and was used after securing permission from him.
We've been posting past headers to an archive on Facebook, but not everyone is on Facebook, so this isn't available to everyone. So, after the jump, I will begin adding all of the headers we've used in the past. This will be a huge and ever-growing post, so I may have to break it up. Also, I may have forgotten to archive an image here or there - it wouldn't be lost in that case, just sitting in the "unused/current" folder instead of the "past" folder. We'll post them all eventually. But please submit new ones so we don't have to start repeating them!
(Cick on images to see larger versions.)
For headers from May 7, 2014 on, see Past headers, Part 2.
The image layout has some basic rules for consistency: all images are 72 dpi and 920 pixels across, with the height being no more than two-thirds of the width (or so.) The words "NEPA Blogs" appear in 96-point Times Roman Bold, while a description of the image and its location in NEPA is included on the image (whenever possible) in 18-point Akbar - a font based on the handwriting of Matt Groening, creator of the Life in Hell comic strip and "The Simpsons." If desired, credit, copyright, and website information can be included as well, sometimes in an appended bit of blank space at the bottom.
We're always looking for submissions for the header. Complete instructions are here, though these are just general guidelines; we can (and do) crop and resize images to fit the header, and creatively dodge around the image to avoid obscuring anything critical. Not all of these images actually come from bloggers; one of the most striking was posted to Facebook by a non-blogger in the aftermath of the September floods, and was used after securing permission from him.
We've been posting past headers to an archive on Facebook, but not everyone is on Facebook, so this isn't available to everyone. So, after the jump, I will begin adding all of the headers we've used in the past. This will be a huge and ever-growing post, so I may have to break it up. Also, I may have forgotten to archive an image here or there - it wouldn't be lost in that case, just sitting in the "unused/current" folder instead of the "past" folder. We'll post them all eventually. But please submit new ones so we don't have to start repeating them!
(Cick on images to see larger versions.)
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For headers from May 7, 2014 on, see Past headers, Part 2.
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