Mr Al Young Dot Com

One of my friends has described blogging as “Scrap booking for Men”. I guess there is some truth to that as all my friends who blog are males. I think in general there are much more male bloggers than females. For men, blogging is their creative outlet where they can share random thoughts with others. Females prefer more intimate personal conversations while men prefer sharing dumb videos we found on You Tube with the world as our means of communication.

Blogging is a lot like scrap booking that women enjoy so much. We get to organize our thoughts, and events of our lives in a blog much like a scrap book. Except we don’t have to be as creative if we don’t want to be. Also, we don’t have to deal with the cutting and pasting, and we don’t have to get together with others to blog. Yet a blog captures our thoughts and events of our lives, and is archived on the Internet just like a scrap book. And unlike a scrap book, the memories of a blog are stored safely on a server, and cannot be accidentally ruined like a scrap book could.

Besides my blog, I also do another online version of scrap booking. Each year I gather all the thousands of family pictures I have taken throughout the year and try to organize them into a photo book to tell the story of our family for the year. It is a big job to go over all the pictures for the year, pick out the best pictures, clean them up, and arrange them to tell a story. Once I get all the pictures, I use MyPublisher to arrange the pictures, and upload it to a coffee table bound book to keep. MyPublisher gives you lots of options on how to arrange the pictures, and you have different book templates to choose from. You can order these photo books from any online photo service such as Shutterfly, but I prefer MyPublisher because the software is easy to use, and you don’t have to upload the pictures until your book ready. Its just like scrap booking without the cutting and pasting. You are also more limited in your creativity because you can only work with the formats MyPublisher has, but for me that’s not a problem.  It is also good to get some pictures off your computer into a book you can look at from time to tome.

I have just finished our family’s book for 2007, and waiting for it to arrive.  However, you can see it online here.  You can look at just like a real book, flipping the pages with your mouse, and zoom if you need to.  As an added bonus, there are many pictures of my daughter Mia who turns 4 next week in the book.  Many of my readers have complained that there has not been as many stories or photos of Mia on the blog as I have of my son Marcus.  There are several reasons for that.  First,  as a Dad, my son and I do many things together which I enjoy.  So, its easy to for me to write about fun things we do such as spring training or going to the football games.  I do enjoy spending time with Mia, and I will be posting more on those things in the future.  Secondly, Mia does not take good pictures.  She loves to laugh and smile….until you point a camera at her.  Then, she just stares and scowl at you.  In my photo book, I was able to go through the year and find some decent pictures of Mia.  Enjoy