If you had been wondering the reason for my silence for nearly two weeks, here’s why: I had to travel to The Kingdom of Far Far Away to see to some really important urgent issues back home — at the village.

And while I was there, I couldn’t resist the temptation that is girls food. So I overindulged myself, and got sick — seriously sick — as a result.

Anyway, I’m back to Accra and I’m doing pretty well. Time to get started with the much talked about changes and new stuff on this website. Let’s get going.

I have observed many of my readers are not into all this blogging stuff. These people often hit the front page, read the first ten items there, and run away — thinking that’s all there is. This is a big shame on my part, as it clearly means I’m not helping my readers to find my content.

So I’ve been working on ways to make it easier for the Mr. & Mrs Non-Techie Joes to quickly find their way around this website. Here are some of the current navigational aids:

1. Archives Page: The archives page lists all the past journal entries, neatly arranged in reverse chronological order. Note that this page lists only the journal entires (powered by WordPress), and doesn’t include those pages outside the WordPress system
2. I’ve got some really neat hacks and guides coming soon. These will live outside the journal, but will have a clear navigation on the left like this Einstein collection and the great quotes
3. Site Search: Look up, to the right. I’ve just built a search tool for this site, using Google’s Custom Search Engine solution. This should be the easiest way to quickly locate any information around here
4. Pagination: I’ve also implemented a numbered pagination system at the bottom of all archive pages of the journal. See, for instance, the front page of the journal.

I’m still tinkering around over here. My goal is to make it dead simple for everyone to quickly find their way around this website. If I’ve gone through the trouble of writing something, I’ve got to do all it takes to make it easy for people to find what I write.

Mine is apparently worth US$5,000. That’s the price the poor fellow who owns the domain name “appiah.com” is asking for at BuyDomains.com. The other two generic flavours “appiah.org” and “appiah.net” are owned by another Appiah, Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah of Princeton University.

While I’m glad I own my name [georgeappiah.com], I obviously cannot share this with my family, if I ever happen to have one. So I was hoping to grab the last name, but it looks like was too late to the game. Actually I didn’t expect this generic domain name to be available, and I was willing to buy it, if the price was right. But US$5,000 does not smell right at all to me.

Of course, some domain names have sold for millions of dollars (“sex.com” reportedly sold for 2m), but I didn’t know my last name was this valuable

This morning, while unpacking some documents to scan, I found a little piece of paper with these words below, written in my own hndwriting. I don’t know exactly when and why I wrote this piece, and I don’t even remember the subject here.

Yet this little piece of paper drew down buckets of tears — salty tears of sweet descent — as I read line after line. I wasn’t crying because of the content of the poem though: I was crying for the part of me that I’ve has slipped by. I was crying for my childhood writings I lost — literally hundreds of poems and short stories. I was crying for never daring to take my pen and paper to write once again, after all these years since I lost my writings.

And I was crying for all the days gone by, and for all the dreams left behind.

Update: From some other scribbles on this piece of paper, I’m almost certain of the context of this writing now. I wrote this piece, back then during college days, to my sister. But the subject is someone else. You see, there was this cute little girl, who was my sister’s roommate, who….

I wonder where she is now and what she’s doing. The memories are all coming back to me now. The tears are falling, once again, except faster this time. The battle continues. But who can see me? Who can rescue me?

When I first registered the domain georgeappiah.com for this website, one of my goals was to control my identity online. I knew that while I couldn’t control what someone would write about me, I could have much say in what people discovered about me through a web search. And I wanted to make it easy for people to find what I wanted them to find about — about me.

So after many turns and twists and two fatal database crashes, today if you google “George Appiah” (without quotes), you’ll find information about me all over. At the time of this writing, the entire first page results (1-10 web pages) were all about me. In fact, but for a few usurpers, the entire initial 100 websites (first ten SERPS) would have been about me.

Obviously I’ve more than exceeded that particular goal of controlling my online identity, even though — I will confess — I’ve not done a decent job at building one coherent personal brand yet. More about that later.

But I want more, ya know. I’m up with another goal, this time a more specific and measurable goal: I want to be the #1 on the search result page for the name “Appiah”. Here’s the current competition:

As you can see, Stephen Appiah’s Wikipedia entry is right at the top. That his name is at the top is neither surprising nor interesting at all to me. What’s interesting to me though is that his personal website, www.stephenappiah.com does not appear on the first page at all.

Aside this Stephen Appiah anomaly, the rest of the page, and in fact, most of the first 100 results, is dominated by Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah of Princeton University (no relation to the soon-to-be Prof. George Kwabenah Appiah ).

This is the competition I’m putting myself against now. I don’t have any plans yet to win at this game, but I’m going to cook some ideas and share the progress over here.

Today marks the 51st anniversary of Ghana’s independence from British colonial rule. To all my Ghanaian readers: you’ve (presumably) worked very hard all year, and you certainly deserve a break. Go put on your best clothes, hook up with your favorite human being(s), and enjoy yourselves. It’s your day, enjoy it to the fullest.

[As for me, I'm still busy at work with a large entourage of professionals (who are much smarter than myself!!!) -- trying to put my new apartment in shape]

[Beautiful cat dog photo from DonnitaMae on Flickr, and edited with iPhoto on my MacBook ]

When I tell people I don’t listen to the radio or watch TV, they often stare at me in utter disbelieve — wondering what kind of beast I am to live without “news”. The thing is, I’m very selective on what I consume, whether it be food or information. And when it comes to information, I prefer to be selectively ignorant on issues that I consider not essential to my personal growth.

So yeah, I don’t own a TV or radio, and it’s been long time since I even held a daily newspaper. But I do consume a huge amount of information on selected topics and from carefully chosen sources. Today I’m sharing with you 6 of my favorite blogs on personal development. Trust me, I’ve read every single article on these blogs, and I’m subscribed to their mailing list and/or RSS as well. Here we go:

• I Will Teach You To Be Rich: A blog on personal finance (banking, saving, budgeting and investing) and personal entrepreneurship, authored by Ramit Sethi, recent graduate of Stanford and co-founder of PBWiki, a Silicon Valley (USA) startup.
• Escape From Cubicle Nation: How To Go From Corporate Prisoner To Thriving Entrepreneur, authored by Pamela Slim
• StevePavlina.com: Personal Development For Smart People, by Steve Pavlina.
• Get Rich Slowly: Personal Finance For Real People
• LifeHack: A frequently updated blog providing news and articles to hellp you to get things done in a faster pace.
• SiteSell Blog: The SiteSell Blog is, IMHO, the single most important Internet marketing resource for small businesses. Dr. Ken Evoy and his SBI! team dig through the mess out there and give you only those gems that matter, so you’ll stay focused on building your business instead of chasing every single SEO trick that comes around.

Got your own list to share? Drop them in the comments below. Other than that, have a good day, and look out fore more great stuff.

The way we apply for jobs is changing. More and more savvy employers are turning to the web these days to do their recruitment. The benefits to these savvy recruiters are enormous: it’s cheaper and sometimes even free, they can have shorter recruitment cycles, and services like JobsInGhana.com give recruiters great tools as well as access to a library of resumes to just pick from, without even placing an ad.

Even though I’m not an HR guy, I’ve been involved in recruitment drives for several small technology firms in Ghana — all of them through the Internet. And I’ve seen some potentially smart Ghanaian professionals do some really dumb things in their applications. On a couple of occasions (when I’ve had too much chocolate!) I’ve had to call applicants and guide them to properly re-submit their applications.

If you’ve been sending online applications but have never gotten any invitations for interviews, perhaps it’s time to sit back and ponder over what pitfalls you’ve been falling into, and how to void them to improve your chances of getting those needed invitations for interview. Here are the ten common pitfalls I’ve seen over the years, along with suggestions on how to avoid them. Read the rest of this entry »

Ramit Sethi, a personal finance blogger at I Will Teach You To Be Rich recently did a survey in which he asked respondents how they spent money on Valentine’s Day. 1,031 people took part in the survey, and Ramit has just published the results embedded below.

Note: Click on the left and right arrows at the bottom of the slideshow to move through the slides.

Personally I didn’t spend a pesewa extra than I normally do… but that’s not so difficult to explain: I don’t have a girlfriend, and I don’t watch TV or listen to the radio — so I hardly even noticed the day slip by.

How about you? How did you spend money during the recent Valentine’s Day celebration? Is this a special day to you at all? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.

You recently married. I got to know about it just 3 days to the event, and even then, from someone else. You never gave me the slightest clue, and you still haven’t. But I had my own plans made already, so I couldn’t be around. Besides, you surely had a reason for not telling me about your marriage — I obviously wan’t wanted around. So coming around, even if I did have the time and inclination to, would have been rather disingenuous on my part.

I’m not complaining. I’m human, and I do understand why you didn’t want me around. But your family and our mutual friends obviously don’t. So they keep bugging me about not being around when you tied the proverbial knot. If only they knew what we both know.

Good luck, my dear little thing. May the Divine Wisdom grant you the desire to dream once again, the strength to wake up from your slumber and live your dreams, and the courage to live your life, your way. Hasta mañana.