As anyone who has been following my thread on problems with Blogger (we started off with our most popular blog and then have moved all the others that were giving problem) and how we dumped Blogger to gradually transition to Wordpress knows that one of the challenges of Blogger is when you want to publish your whole blog again when you change the template (particularly in those cases when the blog is hosted on your own domain rather than on blogspot).  It just goes on and on and after a while nothing happens.

Well, I have found a way to edit the template and not have to go through this nightmare.  Go to your control panel and find the index.html file of your blog - it should be in the same folder as your blog.  Open it in a text editor and then edit it.  And then just save it.  Test your blog to see if it works.

Recommended link:  Switch from Blogger to Wordpress

I have been recently having a very interesting conversation with a very dear friend of mine - about avatars.  When people choose an avatar that is not just their photo, they reveal a lot about themselves and when I commented on what i "read" in her avatar she was surprised...

Any way a colleague of mine who is an artist drew this pencil sketch of me today and I thought I might make it my avatar.  Pretty neat!  And I think it doesn't tell much about me except that I am very thoughtful and do often get immersed in my thoughts.

I cannot even imagine the kind of numbers a company like GM can lose.  $10.6 billions in losses is mindblowing.  And the other day I heard that among the top cars in the US, none of them is American.  What a shame that we who literally invented the automobile can't get it right.  What's wrong with American automakers?

Remember I wrote about the fake scientists in the stem cell research debacle?  They have now finally discredited the Korean scientist.  I really hope that we make some progress in this area - I have friends and family members who could really benefit from the potential treatments.

My good friend Tomy Lee Jones is forming a new band.

Wel, I did say that I was on a low-carb diet but not Atkins.  I knew the dangers of Atkins diet before but now doctors say that people who strictly follow the Atkins diet could develop a potentially fatal blood disorder.  For me, nothing but more balanced meals.

While I am not fat by any means (I weigh 135 lbs at 5 ft and 7 inches), I still want to lose just that tiny amount of fat at on my waist (you know I prefer Speedo swimsuits and summer is on its way).  So I have switched to a low carb diet and am exercising regularly.  But what is interesting is that in the beginning I was just happy with 10-15 minutes of running because I would get so tired.  Then I read somewhere that fat doesn't burn for first 20 minutes.  So I started to go upto 25 minutes and that is when I realized that I could go longer.  And then each week I started to increase it by 5 minutes and now I am at 40 minutes.  I am hoping that by the middle of April I should be able to run one hour each morning on the treadmill.  Isn't that great?  While I used to get tired in 10 minutes, now I can go 40.

So those of you who are trying to lose weight or stay fit, you can do it.  It is not difficult if you have the will.  And remember that the only way to lose weight is through exercise, portion reduction, and change in diet.  Forget about those magic pills.

So first I wrote about how to make money from your blog but a lot of people wrote privately to ask me the secret to making money online using publishing/content as a tool.  Well, we have tried affiliate programs, ebooks, and Adsense and this is what we have learned (mind you this may not be universally true but is what happened to us)

1. There is nothing worse than affiliate programs.  You create great content, send people to someone else's website, and if they don't buy - you lose.  We have literally closed all our affiliate programs.
2. Selling ebooks is good when you write it and it is really useful to other.  But the book market is competitive - we never crossed four figures.  Finally, we have cut back on our marketing though we still carry them.
3. AdSense works and is 99% of our income right now.  But anyone who tells you that a robot developing websites for you by stealing content is going to make you rich assumes that the whole world is an idiot - it is not.  Yes, by having stolen but meaningless content (and very targeted ads) you can force some unsuspecting visitor into clicking but the reality is to create long term steady income, you have to provide useful information to people (that is what brings them back, and generates word of mouth).

So my advice is that you can make make as much as five/six figures a month with AdSense or similar ads but it is in most cases only by running high quality websites that people love.  By cheating the system, you might win short-term but if Google changes one line of code in its algorithm, your business would be wiped out overnight.

Apart from "Deal or no deal," there is another program that I like - "Project Runway."  Of course I also enjoyed "Dancing with the stars."  But I am so glad that Chloe Dao has won.  She, along with Daniel, was clearly hard-working, modest, talented, and a person I could imagine working with.

And I am so glad that Santino lost.  The guy was just obnoxious.  Even if he were a genius, I would never hire him.

Then I briefly watched Salma Hayek talking to Matt Lauer about her latest movie Ask the Dust.  I admire her a lot.  Not only she is cute, she also is a classic immigrant success story.  She admitted that she put on weight to look right for the movie.  No wonder she looked fat at the Oscars.