BillyStyle

After watching UFC 55 recently, the mental toughness of the fighters became very apparent to me. Some of the fighters scheduled for UFC 56 were interviewed, but it was different than other fighting sports I’ve seen. Two pairs of fighters were interviewed. Each pair that was matched up with each other were sitting side by side and discussing strategy witn the interviewer. Now, in boxing, I’ve seen competitors be friendly towards each other, but they always shy away from strategy. This was different, they were asked how they planned on beating the opponent (who was right next to them) and they would go on to explain weaknesses they saw in the other’s game.

I’m becoming more and more of a fan of the UFC. It has less feaux hype than almost any sport I’ve seen. When fighters say what they plan on doing right in front of their opponent, then go into the ring and somehow manage to still win the fight, that’s pretty impressive to me. Another thing I’m impressed by is the genuine mutual respect most fighters have for each other. It seems as though the fighters truly just love to fight, that they are in it for the love of the game. After most fights, each fighter will show their genuine respect to the other fighter and make sure they’re alright.

I’m liking this stuff more and more each time I watch it.

For the past few months, I’ve been keeping up on Darren Rowse’s blog, Problogger.net. Anyone who reads Slashdot has probably heard him mentioned a couple times. He makes ridiculous amounts of money from blogging. He has around 20 blogs and updates most of them at least daily. I’ve found it interesting to see just what it takes to make it to that level of blogging, as this is my first venture into the blogging world.

At the moment I’m playing with a few different ideas on how to approach making a little money through blogging myself. I think it would be a reasonable goal to get a few blogs going by the end of the year. I like how Darren has set his up. He has a couple root sites that hold all of his blogs one level deep. That seems to help any new blog get quick credibility.

This site uses Drupal as the content management system. I’m growing to like Drupal quite a bit. I just played around with it a bit tonight, and I think it will work nicely with a multi-blog setup like how Darren has with using WordPress.

I’m not sure how I’ll be at staying motivated, but the rewards if I do it correctly have potential to be great. There are a lot of great affiliate programs out there and I could always use some extra cash. I have no intentions of getting to where Darren is (from his revealed income, so far it appears as though he’s close to making over $300k per year from blogging), but I see it possible to have a side income at least equal to having a minimum wage job.

I probably won’t use BillyStyle as the home of any of these blogs, this site will remain the more personal blog where I don’t use any search engine optimization to gain ranks. I’m playing with Gallery and should have a decent looking photo gallery on here soon as well.

These, of course, are all plans and goals right now. It will take some motivation and consistency to make these ideas come into fruition. Hopefully by year’s end I’ll have at least 2 blogs up and running that I update daily. BillyStyle should also look better by then as well.

Update: I switched the site to WordPress 2.0 in January 2006. Short explanation here.

While listening to the television in the other room, I just heard a saying that amuses me.

Without (situation, person, major change in life, etc.), I don’t know where I’d be.

My thinking is that nobody really knows where they would be if anything of medium significance in their life was different. This particular case was a guy stating how his wife has changed his life for the better, and he didn’t know where he would be right now if it weren’t for her. Now, being a single guy, it would sound a bit odd for me to say that I’m so glad I’m single and I don’t know where I’d be without my solitude, although to me, this seems every bit as appropriate.

I realize that most who say this are giving credit to a person or life change that gave them some sort of direction. People seem to have a way of being less descriptive and clinging to cliche statements like that. I try to avoid them because they seem to have a dulling effect on what we are really trying to express.

That’s all for now.

The concert was the best I’ve attended in roughly two years. It had been a while since going to a large-venue hard-rocking concert – that was just what I needed. I quickly located myself near the mosh pit roughly 40 feet from the stage. The mosh pit is a great area from which to watch a concert. It’s close, but you can still get fresh air, when all the other people close to you are packed like sardines breathing in the fumes of the back sweat from the person in front of them.

I’m a decent sized guy, about 6’3″ and 190 lbs, so I like to do a little moshing. I got in there and had some fun. This was a good mosh pit, not great, but good. I got a good sweat going and then some nearby girls decided to make the surroundings much more enjoyable to look upon by removing some clothing. This I hadn’t considered happening, and was a total bonus to an already near perfect concert.

About halfway into the show, Nine Inch Nails played Wish, which I’ve realized within the past year is possibly the greatest song of all time for a mosh pit. I was rather excited, and stayed in the pit for the entire song, it was incredible.

During the physical contact in the pit, I took some good shots to the face. The first was an elbow from a shorter robust girl – that got the adrenaline flowing. I took a number of good injury-free hits. Toward the end, my mouth got a pretty good head or elbow or something and I bit into my lip enough to bruise it and tear it open a bit. All in all, a great pit experience.

The performance itself was amazing. Nine Inch Nails has been around long enough to really understand the aspects of a quality show. They had a simple set up on stage that was very intriguing. During about one third of the songs, the stage was draped with a mostly transparent curtain that was used for video projection. Lighting was used behind the curtain to bring the band into sight through the curtain. It was a great visual and audio experience. The great cap to the show was that there was no encore trickery. I don’t mind encores from time to time (Eels do them the best), but I respect a band who feels the need to respect the audience by avoiding the cat-and-mouse game of encores. I highly suggest attending a NIN concert.

Tuesday night at 7:30 pm I will be at the E Center in Salt Lake City for the Nine Inch Nails concert. I will drive 4½ hours straight to the concert, go eat at The Pie, an awesome pizza parlor, then drive another 4½ hours back for a couple hour nap before going to work at 7 am. Should be lots of fun!