Hi there! Thanks for visiting. I really appreciate your taking the time to check out my blog given that there are no doubt forty million other things competing for your time!

This page is just a quick run down for you, the first-time visitor, to give you a quick tour and to help you get a feel for what it’s all about.

There are a few places you should go:

1. Read the “About this blog & me” page

2. Use the search box to find “First Post” or just go to “Archives, September 2007″, which is when I started this blog.

Originally I thought about setting up the “First Post” as a welcome page that always displays as the landing page, but then I thought this would be inconvenient and irritating for regular readers because they’d have to click around to find the most recent posts, instead of just having the most recent posts in the main category simply show up.

My solution (for the time being) was to add this page!

3. So once you’ve read “About this blog & me” and the “First Post” (and watched the awesome videos there!), go to “Categories” or “Archives” and surf around a bit. See if you and I “click”.

What I have to say may not be your cup of tea. No hard feelings… there’s no shortage of blogs or newsletters out there that you could more productively spend your time with if you’re not groovin’ to what’s bein’ laid down here. Thank you for giving this blog whatever slice of your valuable time you did.

4. If you do enjoy what you read, however, make sure you subscribe to the RSS feed. You can do this by clicking on the RSS icon in the left-hand column. You should sign up for an RSS Reader service, if you haven’t already. There are plenty to choose from (just click on the icon and you’ll see; it will ask which one you’d like to subscribe with). I use Bloglines, personally and find it to be fairly intuitive to navigate. I’s also web-based so it’s like being able to check your email from any computer with an internet connection. I imagine that most of them are the pretty much the same.

The first half dozen times you visit, by the way, the blog will detect whether or not you’ve signed up for the RSS feed and give you a little reminder box at the end of each post. This will go away after a little bit (or when you subscribe!)

5. After that, take a look at the other little things I’ve dotted around the site.

I’ve spent quite a lot of time selecting what to put on the page and I’m sure I’ll be doing a lot more tweaking over the coming months! But the recommendations that appear really should be investigated. Things like Simpleology, FreeIQ, & Tony Buzan’s iMindMap. These three are truly awesome!

If you’re looking for great hosting (because, say, you’d like to start your own blog!), try the one I use, Hostgator. I have several sites with them and I’ve not had any problems, only plenty of good support when I’ve had questions. They have a great online Knowledgebase which answers all sorts of questions, and LiveChat support, which I like a lot. Just click on the gator to the left.

And, finally, if you’re studying Japanese, take a look at JapanesePodcast101. Again, just click on the banner to take you there.

This site is, after all, called i really recommend! And all these things come highly recommended.

There are currently three other things on the site that I have only limited control over the content of and I’m seeing how they perform. I’ll explain what they are here:

The first is the big block of Google Ads you see on the left. Some weird things load in there sometimes! It’s all got to with what the GoogleBot thinks that page is most about. Then it serves ads based on this. If you live in a region without any relevant ads, you’ll get some kind of Public Service Announcement appear. At the moment it seems to be one for hurricane disaster fund or something. Hopefully they turn out to be relevant to my readers! If not, then I will remove them.

The second is the little boxes that appear for things on eBay. These are real-time auctions currently in progress on eBay! Again, some weird things load in these boxes sometimes, but at other times you can find real bargains and things you’d forgotten you were even looking for! Let me know about your experiences with this.

And lastly, there is a box on the left which randomly displays posts from other blogs within the same category as mine. This tool is called BlogRush. It’s brand new (released yesterday, 15th September 2007) and, again, I’ll see how it goes. I’ve already visited a few other blogs using it–from my blog and from others that I read (and whose authors have already signed up too). If you’re a blogger, click on the bottom-right of the box and it will take you to a page explaining how it works. It’s free and could bring you unexpected traffic. I certainly wouldn’t have found the three other blogs I read today, for example, if it weren’t for that tool. Two weren’t my thing, but one was okay. And I found some very interesting links to other stuff that it turned out was way more interesting! And useful.

Oh! And don’t forget to check out the main site, of course! The one that this blog kind of piggy-backed onto and that I can already feel is going to end up being the “add on” to the blog! It’s here www.ireallyrecommend.com

To your success!

Leslie

Say, my creepy Orwellian computer system (actually, just a simple WordPress plug-in and nothing to worry about. Honest!) is displaying this message automatically because it wants to help you get the latest updates to this somewhat irregular blog delivered to you direct, hot off the press via RSS! Huh? Via...WHAT??? Don't worry, it's just a fancy email thing without the spam. Easy. Painless. Safe. Click here to subscribe via RSS..

Thanks for visiting & I hope you find some good stuff here! Leslie