A Few Things To Clarify

I wrote Top 5 Muscle Cars Of All Time as an entry for the Top 5 - Group Writing Project at Problogger. Since then so many people have commented and congratulated me for owning such amazing cars. Some even want to know if I want to sell them. I would like to clarify something here: I DO NOT own any of those muscle cars! I repeat, I don’t have any one those cars! Even though I really wish I did own one (specially the Pontianc GTO, the Mustang or the Camaro SS), the fact remains that I don’t. I love muscle cars and that’s why I chose to write about them. The cars you see in the pictures belong to other very fortunate people, who I hope will take good care of them. Each one is an invaluable gem. I compiled those images from around the web.

1990 Nissan 300ZX

That’s the car I drive, a red Nissan 300ZX. It may not be worth as much as those Mustangs and Camaros, it’s hell of a car nonetheless.

Photo by surf1punk.

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Real Madrid Win Their 30th La Liga Title (3-1)

Real Madrid played one of their most memorable matches on Sunday against Mallorca, and ended the season with a very happy ending winning their 30th La Liga title. Despite previously falling back to third place on the leaderboard behind Barcelona and Sevilla , they managed to win their way back to the top and eventually become the champions!!

They played in front of 80,000 thousand fans the Santiago Bernabéu stadium.  Goal scorers were Reyes and Diarra, scoring 2 and 1 goals respectively. One of the reasons this match will be remembered for years to come is the departure of football’s two great players, David Beckham and Roberto Carlos. It was their last match as part of the Real Madrid team. David Beckham is set to go the US and would be playing for one of the West Coast teams for a huge sum of money (don’t remember the exact amount) after playing 4 seasons for Madrid. The player I will, and probably others too, most be missing is Roberto Carlos who was with Madrid 11 seasons. He has a special place in the hearts of the fans, and will be greatly missed.

Beckham’s family were joined by Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes to watch Beckham’s last ever game for Madrid. Check out MEDIAFAX Foto for more pictures of this amazing event.

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Top 5 Group Writing Project - Recap

I am finally getting a chance to do a recap of the Top 5 Group Writing Project organized by Darren Rowse . It’s been a great experience to have participated in this project, for which Darren received an overwhelming 893 entries. I would really like to thank him for making it all happen. He also announced the winner of the $1001 prize soon after the project ended, and it is Nancy R. Callahan who won for her post “Baby names from Video Games“. Congratulations to her, and everyone who participated.

Everyone taking part in projects like this are winners, because we can all benefit in multiple ways.

Pojects like this are wonderful opportunities to get to know and connect with other bloggers. Just the way you would find great new blogs and bloggers by participating, others also will find out about your blog. It can mean some new visitors and linkbacks to you which will in turn affect your search engine positioning, which again means more visitors.  I wanted to write a ‘Top 5 reasons to participate in group writing projects’ post but there are other more experienced bloggers who can teach you about the value of networking better than I can (e.g. Darren Rowse himself).

I would like to thank everyone for the links and comments. Special thanks to Gerald for being the first commenter and Tom from PixelPruner.com to be the first linker(?). The jumt follows some link love to all the  participants of the project. Happy blogging to all.

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Top 5 Muscle Cars Of All Times

This is my entry to join Darren Rowse’s Top 5 - Group Writing Project.

 I’ve chosen to make a list of the top muscle cars for this Project. I’m personally very passionate about muscle cars, and there are many different great makes and models of muscles. But for the sake of this project,  we will stick to 5. Each of the following cars have been icons of their times, and to a vast extent, their companies owe their current growth and popularity to these cars. (Click on images to enlarge)

  1. Pontiac GTO: Known as the “First True Muscle Car”, GTO is a high performance car built by Pontiac from 1964 to 1974. Pontiac general manager Elliot Estes approved the GTO (as an option to the Tempest model) despite violating the GM policy due to its 5.4L V8 engine. It became a great success, and marked the beginning of the muslce cars era. Even today it is loved and considered one of the most famous muscle cars ever.

    1966 Pontiac GTO Convertible

  2. Ford Mustang: Probably the most famous of all muscle cars is Ford’s Mustang series. Mustang saw a great deal of success, and inspired a whole new breed of muscle cars, the pony cars. Mustangs have become the dream of every car enthusiast. Many movies, e.g. Gone In 60 Seconds, and computer games have featured this car, adding more to it’s popularity.

    1969 Shelby Mustang GT500 (Eleanor)

  3. Chevrolet Camaro: Chevrolet’s Camaro has been the number one competitor of Ford Mustang ever since they were built. In fact, Camaro is categorized as a pony car, which means it was initially inspired by the Ford Mustang. Despite its great success in the 60’s and 70’s, Camaro was always beaten by Mustang in terms of sales. Nonetheless it is a wonderful car, and it is back to compete with Ford’s Mustang Shelby GT500. Look out for the new Camaro around the end of 2007 and/or beginning of 2008.

    1969 Camaro SS

  4. Dodge Charger: Have you seen The Dukes of Hazard? Yes? Then you have seen a Dodge Charger. A wonderful car indeed! Even though Charger entered the battle of the muscle cars a couple of years later, it left a great impression on the competition.

    1969 Dodge Charger from The Dukes Of Hazard TV series

  5. Chevrolet Chevelle: Another great muscle car from Chevrolet is the Chevelle. This car was below Camaro in Chevrolet’s product line, therefore was lower in terms of performance. It is still one of the favorite among the muscle fans.

    1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS

There you have it, the top 5 muscle cars of all times. Of course, there are other cars that I have missed which probably deserve to replace one or more on this list. This is based on my knowledge (which is quite limited) and opinion. The cars 1 to 4 are quite similar from a performance perspective. They were all mounted with V8 engines and were built as high performance vehicles. My personal favorite muscle car is the Ford Mustang, preferrably a 1969 Shelby GT500, followed by a 1969 Camaro SS. I hope you liked.

PS. I hope you also participated in this writing project. It is a great opportunity to network with other bloggers, and with $1001 to be won there shouldn’t be any reason for you not to participate :)

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Does It Enrich Your Life Or Define It?

You know, Charlie, there are two kinds of thieves in this world: those who steal to enrich their lives, and those who steal to define their lives. Don’t be the latter. Makes you miss out on what’s really important in this life.

This is a quote by Donald Sutherland’s character, John Bridger, in the movie The Italian Job. I watched it last weekend on Channel 9, and this sentence stuck in my mind. I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Now, he talks about thieves and stealing because that is the context of the film, but it applies to everything we do. From the simplest daily routines to the bigger and more complicated things, such as our careers, can be evaluated under this mindset. And I think we should do so regularly.

I know quite a few people who are teachers, doctors, mechanics, etc and that’s all they are. Their lives revolve around their jobs, and therefore there jobs DEFINE them. They don’t have a social life and no hobbies, their relationships are going down hill;  and they are the teacher, the doctor and the mechanic. That’s all! It might be fine for some (for as long as they don’t notice it), but the majority of us don’t want a life like that. We want to live a life that has a bit of everything in it.

Computer related activities are particularly the type of activities that draw us away from other things in life, according to my experience. The main reason for it is that we can spend hours behind a computer very comfortably, without any feelings of loneliness or boredom. It is much easier and safer to talk/chat to someone on the net than it is in person. And as per our nature, we always choose what seems safe at the time being, which may not be the best thing we could do.

So what is true in your situation? Do the things you do define your life or enrich it? I certainly hope it is the later.

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Leveraging Your Past Success to Launch More Blogs

Darren Rowse of Problogger.net draws our attention to a post by Raj at Performancing.com that outlines some of the solutions for those of us who have too many blogs but ‘not enough resources to run them all.’   

That is a very common issue among bloggers, especially among new bloggers such as myself. I, for one, can confess of having been in this situation. I still do have many domains waiting for me do something about them. But I have learnt my lesson. I used to have many blogs on Blogger, and for a few weeks I managed to do 3-5 posts per week/blog. But I gradually lost my interest, until I completely quit. The major discouraging factor for me was the lack of traffic. I worked really hard to keep updating my blogs, but because they didn’t get any exposure, it all seemed useless. Unlike our diaries, we want our blogs to be read by as many people as  possible. But it is very discouraging when no one visits the damn thing. The feeling is amplified when we have 4,5,6 or more blog. 

So what to do?

Focus on one blog first. You still have to go through the same phases of getting from nothingness to where you have a good level of readership and regular traffic. BUT, because you are putting all your time and energy into one blog, it will grow much faster and go through those developmental phases in a shorter period of time. This way, you also have a better shot at having a GOOD blog, rather than ten dying ones. After that…..

Leverage You Success.

That’s right. Leverage the success of your GOOD blog to launch more. At this stage, launching a second (and a third, fourth …..) blog is much more likely to become a success. First of all, you get instant visitors through your first blog, who will hopefully provide with feedback and encouraging compliments. If there are other bloggers among your regular visitors, they are very likely to review and link to your new blog, and therefore, send a portion of their traffic to you. Not to mention the value of the links in your future search engine visibility. In fact, all of this can happen before any search engine even finds your new blog, IF you are already known in the blogosphere. Secondly, from running your first blog you already have the expertise (hopefully) required to make this one a success as well. You learn a lot from running one blog for a longer period than running ten for a few weeks.

An Example

Let’s take Darren Rowse himself as an expample. He is a very well known personality in the blogging community with tens of thousands of loyal readers and many more monthly unique visitors. If he happens to launch another blog, regardless of how unrelated it is to blogging, it will get a tremendous amount of exposure. In fact, I found his photography and camera/phone review blogs through Problogger.net. But if on the other hand, I launch another blog, it won’t even get a thousandth of the exposure of Darren’s blog. Why? Because I am a nobody; no-one knows me, no-one cares about me. But Darren, well he is the Darren Rowse. He has already proven himself to produce great content, and we all know that he will do that with a new blog too, no matter what it is about.

It is the same as a well known company, like Google, creating a new product. People would try whatever new product Google develops. They are associate with quality, so whatever they introduce in the market will get a great deal of users, at least initially.

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Welcome!

Hi and welcome to my online Crib. My name is Quais Waseeq, and I am a to-be marketing student and a casual blogger. This is where I will be rambling about things that interest me most (which might interest you too), such as technology, blogging, cars and soccer.

I have been involved in blogging since mid 2006. My blogging experience has mostly been with Blogger/Blogspot, and I hope that I have a better experience with WordPress.

I am a huge fan of the Spanish soccer club Real Madrid, and a proud supporter of the Australian Soccer Team who did a superb job in last year’s FIFA World Cup. Unfortunately, I am not much of a soccer player myself (I’m really bad, believe me).

Well, that’s something about me. I hope your enjoy your visit. Cheers.

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