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

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.

Later this year, somewhere in September, I’ll be packing my single little suitcase again, and head for Sweden for graduate studies. Now it’s not if anymore. It’s when — when the time comes.

That means I have about six months here in Ghana, six months in my new apartment, and six months to do all the things I have to do and clean up all the mess I create along the way.

The above is a photo exhibition at the Second House of Sweden in SecondLife.

Here’s Josephine Akyeampong with her little son, Kwame. Josephine was one of the few really great friends I had, until I lost her friendship to… eh… marriage. She hooked up with another good friend of mine, Donne Darku, about a year ago. The two are currently based in Nigeria.

We’re still in touch, and I spoke to her less than a week ago. But our conversations are not like they used to be anymore. Our conversations cannot be the way they used to be. Our conversations should not be the way they used to be… not anymore.

All the best, Jossie. Miss you dearly, Jossie.

Here’s a top top top (enough?) secrete for all my readers: if, for whatever reason, you feel you must embarrass me, here’s the easiest way to go about it: simply hand me a gift! Yeah, I know that sounds weird… but ’tis true nonetheless. This is one of the last few bits of my past life that still lingers on.

Growing up, I really lived in my own little world. I was completely all to myself, always deeply stuck in my own little world full of fantasies. I wouldn’t hurt a soul, not even the killer ants that often invaded our bedrooms at night.

And I wouldn’t let people go out of their way to give me stuff that, at the time, meant absolutely nothing to me. Indeed, my first real gift I ever accepted was a hand-crafted booklet, The Book of Love, given by my sister on my twenty-something-th birthday — way back at college.

I don’t know about you, but for me, if I had my way, I’d give it all… and take nothing back. But I understand I can’t always have it my way. To live is to let help live. So why must I prevent others from living?

Thank you Richard Matovu — my good friend from Uganda.

Above is my friend Cyril Mettle, and his pretty little naughty sister — Eileen Elsie Mettle. No, he’s NOT dead. He just packed out. Of course last time I checked, both of us were as straight as the long wooden TV poles protruding out of people’s houses at my village — and we both knew we were going to, at some point, find pretty little things each and… and go our separate ways with out little things… to have a whole lot of kids and live forever after. Or somthine like that. At least I though so.

But having lived together for such a long time, his moving out didn’t go without a scratch on this achy breaky little heart of mine. Sure, we’ve had our ups and downs, like all lovers friends do. But what would life be without these?

And I’ve always dismissed this feeling of emptiness that creeps in every now and then — making believe everything is ok, and telling lies to the only person I’ve become accustomed to (and comfortable with) lying to — myself. That is, until the next time when this emptiness creeps in again.

Hasta mañana, gool ‘ole friend, Cyril Mettle, hasta mañan.

If you’ve been reading about the struggles that I’ve been sharing here recently on this blog, let me tell you this is nothing new. I’ve been in in constant $h1t$ nearly all my life, often too personal for any one to comprehend, and often through no fault of mine. The above photo brings to mind three years of enduring pleasure in pain.

From January 1994 to December 1996, I had my secondary education at Fijai Secondary School in Secondi (NOT Takoradi, FWIW!) in the Western Region of Ghana. While at school, the entire year group was sent home and later made to sign a bond of “good behaviour”, for whatever crime I never got myself to understand. And our final exam, the (then) Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination (SSSCE), was cancelled nationwide, and we had to re-write the whole damn thing again.

But I digress. I just wanted to share this great photo of my friends, which I found today… taken over a decade ago back at Fijai Secondary School. From back to front, left to right: Fritz Williams, Moses Bentil, William Ayitevi, Emmanuel Insaidoo, Cyril Mettle, Gershon Worwu, [psss... can't remember this guy's name], Tsemeng, Maranatha Acquaye, and Manfred Amissah.

Where am I? Of course I’m not in the photo, but looking at this squad, I couldn’t be too far from the scene. Either I shot the photo, or I stood aside and opted to be out of the photo (the latter being more like it).

Guys… where are you all? George misses you all, dearly.

For most of yesterday, besides meeting a couple of really interesting people, I was flirting around with my new found love - my new Apple MacBook. So far things have been surprisingly easy-going between the two of us.

The biggest issue I’m grappling with now is how to quickly UN-LEARN my PC habits accumulated over the years. And I think I’m doing such a great job at that, being being the nerd I am. Here are some of the surprises I’ve been dealing with:

Unboxing and Plugging: After I unboxed the baby and inspected everything inside the box, I took the beautiful power adapter and looked all round the computer searching for where to plug it in. Before I could think “this must be it”, I felt this pull, and BAM! - the thing plugged itself in! No kidding, the damn connector plugged itself into the computer! At this point I started thinking: this Apple thing must be damn good — I’ve never been treated like an idiot like this before (get the gist?).

Anyway, I pushed the power button to start the baby. After a few clicks I was up and running with my user account, and the baby politely asked for my permission to connect to the WiFi in the room.

But it seemed like something was missing. Where is the right mouse button? Actually Macs have “right-click” functionality … except there’s no right mouse button — there’s just one mouse button! The “right-click” menu is, you go CTRL+Click. Apple must have a design philosophy behind this, but I’ve not had made time to read on this yet. Trouble is, I keep clicking on the right side of the single button and waiting for something to happen.

The Control (Win) / Command (Mac) thingy: Back in the PC environment, many keyboard commands and shortcuts are done with the control key plus some other characters (eg. CTRL+A - for select all, CTRL+C - to copy, CTRL+P - to Print, etc). There’s something similar in the world of Macs too, except this is the COMMAND key. But here’s the thing: There’s CONTROL key in addition to this COMMAND key, and the Command key is in the wrong position :-). So as you’ll expect, I keep hitting FUNCTION+something, and always getting the wrong results.

Installing & Uninstalling Applications: I’m yet to read on the RIGHT way to install applications. Sure, I’ve installed a bunch of applications already, but it seemed so easy that… I’m left thinking… there has to be something else I’m not doing. How can Apple take me to be such an idiot that they’d make things so easy to do round here?

It’s already Sunday morning, and I’ve not had any sleep within the past 48 hours. So I’m off to catch some sleep now. More love stories tomorrow.

I’m so full of life now, thanks to a brand new love I’ve found. I now have a spanky yanky pretty little brand new girl in my life: pretty and prim — but not too slim; with heavenly eyes — and just the right size; very smart … and she just can’t ever be bothered by any of those silly things I do.

She’s from the city of Appleland, the tribe of MacBooks. Vital stats: white, Intel breed 2.2GHz processor, 1G RAM, 120GB storage… and all the usual excellente goodies of the Apple MacBook tribe. But I’ve not been able to find a cool enough name for her yet. So why don’t you suggest a name for my new Apple MacBook?