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TheRagens Newsletter
May 1, 2005

Current Thoughts

The web really gives everyone, literally everyone, a chance to communicate. I'm thinking of this as I consider a recent piece of feedback that I received from my website. The entire text of the note that was sent to me by some unknown person is:

Evolution is wrong and there are things to prove it's wrong!

It's probably not worth going into the merits of the statement - like whomever the sender is, I guess I can take this statement at face value (or is that faith value) and not question why this is so. What is interesting is that the Internet gives everyone a medium to reach out and touch different people to easily spread any message and, without any proof, assume that some percentage of people may actually believe it -- just like some people will send their bank passwords to someone else by email. Even if this message had included a website as 'proof', it would still have the same ability to reach people.

Last time, I reported that a major algorithm change at Google had appeared to significantly reduce traffic to our website. This continues to be true. The only silver lining is that visitors are now consistently looking at more pages -- so I can take this to mean that I am getting better targeted visitors. Still, the number of monthly visitors I receive has been cut by 50% and this has definitely impacted results with some of the affiliate programs that help pay for the site. Hopefully, this will recover some time by itself; I haven't done anything that would cause my site to be penalized.

In This Issue

New Photographs

After completely finishing the overhaul of my photography site last month, I've had time to work on some new photographs again!  Here are some of the new pictures that I've added in the last couple of months.

Bookmarks

In March, I had just finished adding some Book of Month lists from Outdoor Photography Magazine because I hadn't found any other current source of great photography books. The magazine's editors provide nice thumbnail reviews of the books. As of April, I have added the the Book of the Month list from Black And White Photography, the sister publication to Outdoor Photography where I just started a subscription.

Wine Tasting and Vineyard Updates

Spring -- and the vineyard has sprung into action. We had an early budbreak in Seattle as March was unseasonably warm and then the weather turned chilly again and the vine growth slowed dramatically. Only in the last week or two have the shoots started to grow. At the time that I write this, the longest shoots are now about six inches long and growth is accelerating. Very nice to see things moving forward again.

Websites Worth Visiting

I must be in a rut this month - I haven't visited many sites that are truly memorable this time around. I'll have to track some of my site visits more carefully next month so that I can list something new.

Cheers!

About TheRagens

TheRagens.com is a family website that highlights our family history in addition to wildlife and nature photos, wine tasting notes, favorite book lists, and other interests. We are happy to share this with you and you may pass on this newsletter to friends as long as you don't change the content. If you are receiving this newsletter from a friend, you may sign up to receive it by by email by visiting our registration page. If you wish to be removed from the distribution list, simply reply to this message and replace the words in the subject line with REMOVE. We keep an index of our back issues on our site.

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