I’ve noticed that foodbloggers (in addition to loving food) all share one other trait: They love life. Its solidified my belief that foodies are as such because it’s part and parcel of the wonderful colours and vibrancy that makes life… alive.

I think places like foodbuzz are great because it creates that community, like a camaraderie and that we are truly not alone… because as you can tell from my stumble post, there are so many foodlovers out there. In addition to getting connected on stumbleupon, I’m posting here to give everybody a little highlight and shout out. The blogosphere is such a wonderful thing, the more connected we become, the more popular we become – well and truly the information age.   One of my favourite blogs is worldfoodieguide. Helen replies to every single comment, go on her site and check it out. It is just such a nice feeling when the reader gets acknowledged by the blogger. Her blog just turned one, so go check her out guys. So following in her foodsteps, I’m going to try and reply each and every comment as best I can. I may miss out a couple but if you don’t hear from me, nudge me again, and I’m sure you’ll catch me the 2nd time round.

So here’s a shout out to my new foodie friends both on foodbuzz and stumbleupon:

• Megan’s Munchies

Megan, that is one umami charged potato chowder recipe. Did I mention I love potato chowder? Megan for stumbleupon, try adding more friends, then navigate to your blog post you want, then click ‘Send To’ on the stumble toolbar and send it to your friends and ask them to stumble it. The more people stumbling it, the more traffic you should see, Try that!

• Zesty Cook

Cory, I want a chewy brownie too!

• Hey I can eat that!

I am a firm believer of trying all kinds of food, food is an adventure and it really can be so much fun! I tried scorpions and fried ants once…. though I won’t go there again

• Bentoism

I love your website and I love bentos. I get mine at a place in London called Japan Centre, especially the spicy cod with rice, half boiled egg on the side is so nice.

• Chicago Dining Examiner

Emily the Chicago Eater! You know, based on your blog, I think I might have to pay chicago a culinary visit!

• Tasty New England

The big E in new england is AWESOME. I wish I was there!

• Cajun Chef Ryan

Ryan, your recipes are pretty mouth-watering, just reading about this hearty breakfast casserole, wow, potatoes, eggs, saugages, garlic, pastry. Im happy just reading it.

• Red Cook

Kian, the mid autumn festival looks great! Infusing chinese style with harlem, wow, that is just so unique! Im sure it tastes as good as it looks! Guys, this is a chinese foodblog, chinese food is a very rich and diverse cuisine, lots of interesting and tasty dishes. It’s part of my heritage so its got a special place in my heart. Go read it foodlovers, you’ll like it.

• Over the hill and on a roll

3 tips to the best french toast recipe ever. I love toast and i love eggs, mixed together is something lilke, ummm, food heaven

• The Hungry Engineer

On this post, she’s talking about the canning process, its actually quite an interesting read! By the way, I love your blogname, engineering is quite dear to my heart too.

• The Top Floor Flat

Meaghan, your travel blog is really cool, and spoonfed, the website startup she works for is really cool too, check out both guys.

• Kittens in the Kitchen

Kittie, you’ve been stumbled and your recipes are nice chocolate banana cakes. mmmm..Its about 9pm here, but I’m running out to get some cupcakes after reading it.

• Flavors of Italy

I didnt know foodbuzz sends free gifts?! I’m just signing my fp contract now and sending it off, hope i get some free aprons too! you have been stumbled!

• Eat. Show and Tell

Your blog is so tastefully designed, I particularly like the clean layout and the feature post at the top. very nice, I love sydney by the way, I was there 2 years ago and my mates took me to the fish market for fresh lobsters. I was also at a place called makoto, what great sushi! I also ventured out to the vineyards in hunter valley. Sydney’s great, keep writing, I’m a faraway fan.

• The Pink Peppercorn

Gail, That is some nice food photographs! Are you a nikon or a canon girl?

• Dirty Kitchen Secrets

‘Lick your plate clean’ Tantalising Bethany! I’m loving the food pictures on your site! Konofa rich, creamy, cheesy, crunchy, sweet and savory desert … sounds like my kind of food

• La Fleurau Cacao

Hey this is a nice recipe, couscous is one of my favourite foods. I’m always under the impression that coucous are is one of those rare healthy foods that manages to taste great too.

• Fig and Cherry

We both love hummus bros … except her banner is sooooo nice. the bokeh in the background is so nice. Your photos are great, I wish I could take pictures like some of the blogs here, are you nikon or canon? I’m nikon d40, still learning about the golden triangle of aperture/shutter speed/exposure

• The Hungry Mouse

Jessie, thanks for linking me on your website, its much appreciated :), I’ve added you to my blogroll too! Say hello to the barking sous chef for me, I’d buy him a special treat if he ever comes to london!

• Endless Simmer

You’ve got a cool blogname, love it! and again, great pictures, wow. fan fan fan.

• James Starmer

Waffles look so great and the pictures nikon d300, I knew it! That’s like my ultimate dream camera for now, well aside from maybe the D900, pictures are too nice. You must give me tips. fledging food photography i am.

• Simmer till done

Marilyn, you being a pastry chef….your husband is a lucky man! I can picture him coming home from work and you’ve just been experimenting with 10 different puddings and he has to taste them all! Heaven.

If I missed out anybody, let me know and I’ll update this post to reflect it. You know I got into foodblogging because I love reading foodblogs and now I’m discovering there is a world of great foodblogs out there which are yet to be discovered by the general public, hopefully this can help rectify that, I hope you all keep posting guys, I’m a fan first, blogger second.

Finally, anybody need a stumble or a foodfriend, you know what to do.

How to get 1000 per day?

I’ll admit now its not my idea at all, but rather, an excellent post on how to grow a young blog on problogger. To cut a long story short, here’s what you do:

1. Open an account on StumbleUpon
2. Download the stumble toolbar for your browser
3. Gather 25 foodie friends on stumbleupon, if you need a foodie, my username is londoneater (shameless I know).
4. Once installed, the toolbar will appear at the top of the browser, navigate to the page you want to stumble (ie, a post you just wrote that you want people to see), click ‘send to’ and ask (very kindly) your foodie friends to stumble your blog. You can include a message too, so be nice.
5. And in return, help stumble your foodie friend’s blogs, so it’s a win-win situation.

Skellie, who wrote this post, claims that if you have at least 25 friends helping to stumble your blog, then it can drive thousands and thousands to your webby every day! The full post is here and I really recommend reading through it.

My plea to fellow foodies

We should go on stumbleupon, become friends, start a group, add me as a friend on stumbleupon and send me your blog, I’ll review it and stumble it for you! And please also help me do the same, and hopefully together, we can help get more people to come and discuss about food…and convert new foodies along the way :D

Ah yes the beauty of web 2.0, the more we network, the merrier it is…It’s really that simple!

What are you waiting for? You can stumble me just on the bottom left hand corner under ‘share and enjoy’.

Thanks in advance and happy fooding

The Logo

I started out with a simple idea, to have a simple and effective LONDON EATER in big letters scribbled across the top of the page. But I thought it looked abit too bland.

So my next idea was to have LONDON EATER, still in big fonts, but this time accompanied by an orange. That orange didn’t look that appealing to me either, I need something with greater impact, something with omphf. 

The following iteration, I threw the orange out (it looked so lonely) and replaced it with the a mock up of the underground map. I wanted something that stood out, represented london and london eater all at the same time. Replace the station names with food names and put london eater on the map and we’ve got a winner! Not quite.

At this point, I was beginning to wonder if I had inadvertently conditioned  myself to critiqing my own work to the point where I reject almost every idea I come up with. Maybe I’m just fickle minded. Anyway, I go back to basics and this time, its a chicken. I still havent found the design that ’feels’ right.

Feeling it

In order to go down the long and winding path to discover the true ‘feelings’ I have for my blog, I eat out. I’ve duly reviewed the places I ate and will post them online in the following days (keeping things exciting for you). It’s strange how most of my ideas seem to materialise while I’m near food, maybe the release of gastric juices somehow trigger my brain cells to working harder (wow, that does sound strange).

It occured to me while I was staring at some wonderfully sumptuous shui mai at royal china, and thats it, I wanted my logo to convey that exact image. So here’s my brilliant idea (open to raging debate of course), take mind blowingly sumptuous food photos. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, I have a sneak suspicion the ‘feeling’ might be among those words. 

Behind the banner 

Now that I have my banner, I still want LONDON EATER in a simple and effective way at the top of the page. Adobe fireworks is a great program and its got plenty of really cool fonts, but, you know, it doesnt have the one I want. Luckily for me, I stumbled upon Urbanfonts. Several hours of tinkering later…

“Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, the londoneater banner” Hooray.

Oh man, that was hard work.

My new tag cloud and call me (that’s right, call me)

This is my favourite widget, the cumulus tag cloud. It’s so cool! You’ll need flash installed, hover your mouse over it and the tags will start spinning. Everything is clickable and it’ll take you to the posts which have that tag associated with it. Try it now in the sidebar.

Someone left me a comment and wanted to contact me, but I didnt have my email on the website. So now, I added a contact form. Try it here, send me a message, rest assured, I will get back to you shortly.

Site construction is 80% complete 

I don’t want to start making promises just yet, so I don’t want to say ‘I’m ready’. I’m saying I’m almost there. Afterall, this site is still only a few weeks old, and I’m sure there’s still lots of improvements to make. Having spent a solid ten days tweaking the design, cleaning up the code, deciding on the themes, I think it’s about time I start adding to the reviews section. I’m aiming for one post per day, ok, maybe one every other day. That’s more realistic. Like I said, I’m almost there.

Watch this space.

I just dugg myself. If all works well, then you should see the digg me button above, and to make sure it really works, you can digg me. Shameless publicity stunt to gain popularity, I do try. Right now, I’m in the process of adding some bells and whistles to the site. I think I’ve settled on the combination of colours. Have spent alot of time changing things around, till I’m a little cross-eyed over what actually looks good and what doesnt. Hopefully it looks ok to you.

Widgetising. I succeeded in putting the ‘about blog’ into a little blue box. Yay. Added Google ads (do click on them) and also a digg Top Stories widget too. I configured it to show the top food and drink stories, I wonder how long it’s going to take me to get to the top 10 list, if ever, that is. I’ve also added a youtube widget, I’m not sure if they just show random vids, but the last time I checked they had videos of a guy playing a mean guitar and another guy showing off some mean piano skills. I like the youtube widget. It’s my favourite so far.  

The Logo, again. I think I went through about seven or eight logo revisions. In my last post, I mentioned the great big orange idea. Well, it’s now become a tiny orange on a mock tube map. With names of foods swapped for tube stations. Being what seems like me spending half my life on the underground, I thought it fitting to have it as my banner as it quite accurately represents how this london eater gets around.

Content is King. Up until now, I’ve been knee deep in trying to make the site look nice and really haven’t blogged about anything yet. I felt I needed the basics and foundation intact before I build on it, don’t want it all come crumbling down later on! From now on though, I want to try and actually write some stuff on food. I will say, before I started, I did feel like I had so much to say, now that everything seems to be in place – its rather ironic that I’m finding it difficult to start. I wonder if that’s just me, or if it happens to everyone.

Getting the word out there. So let’s see. Open up Safari. Point to www.google.com. Search: londoneater.com. Not Found. Next go to my account. analytics. Visitors today, 1. Unique visitors today, 0. Total Visitors, 1.

Oh dear.

People say that protecting information is getting harder and harder these days because of the internet. Yet, here I am publishing to the entire world and the only person reading this is, well, me. When I get to a good number of posts, I should try and get the word out that I ‘exist’.

At the moment, Google doesnt know I exist, Yahoo doesnt either…so if nobody is aware of my existence, do I even exist at all? Ive used exist far too many times in one sentence.