Lao Tzu is perhaps the world’s most popular author. In the 2600 years since its initial publishing, Lao Tzu’s masterpiece, Tao Te Ching, has been translated into more than 200 languages, and reprinted more often than nearly any book in human history.

Lao Tzu was a great teacher, and a master of brevity. Though the Tao Te Ching is merely five thousand characters (less than fifty pages of English text), it conveys profound wisdom. His writing was potent, concise, and meaningful: all qualities which would prevent Lao Tzu from succeeding as an AdSense publisher.

No, Lao Tzu could never support himself on income from AdSense, or other contextual advertising systems. He probably couldn’t even earn enough to feed his water buffalo. Why? [Read more →]

There are more than 50 million blogs on the Internet now, and thousands more are added every day.  If you want to keep readers’ attention in this hypercompetitive environment, you must create posts that both look interesting and read well.

This is an example of a basic pull quote.

Pullquotes are one of the easiest ways to add a little style to your blog post.  They break up large blocks of text, reinforce the key points in your post, and make your blog look more professional.  As common as they are in offline print media—such as magazines—pullquotes are rarely used on blogs; they are therefore an effective way to help your blog stand out from the crowd. [Read more →]

This is a continuation of Give Thanks to Your Blogging Inspirations.

From the All Marketers Are Liars Blog

Until recently, I had no interest in marketing.  Like so many other scientists and engineers, I considered marketing a necessary evil, unworthy of my own efforts. 

[Read more →]

When I first started the Martial Development blog, I wanted to use a martial-arts-themed design. Since I could not find any in the public WordPress theme library, I applied the Light theme by Stephen Reinhardt instead.  Until now. [Read more →]

After a few months of publishing a full RSS feed on this blog, I am contemplating a transition to partial feeds.  Here are my reasons: [Read more →]

In the spirit of the holiday season, I would like to show my gratitude and give thanks to some of the inspirations for this blog… [Read more →]

After dedicating most of my day to work and family obligations, I am lucky to find a spare hour or two for my martial arts hobby. Many of you have a similar problem, no doubt.

We could practice an hour per day for our entire lives, without exhausting the breadth and depth of martial arts. Considering the scope and challenge of the task, can we really afford to spend our precious time blogging about practice, at the expense of time spent in practice?

[Read more →]