I stumbled upon the Uncyclopedia late last weekend and was totally impressed. If you're looking for a laugh and have some downtime take the time to check it out and be sure to check out the random page link.

The article that I found first, and which is truly a gem, was the List of Melee Weapons that Don't Exist but Should. While not really safe for work (NRSFW) it's definitely a lot of fun if you're into over the top humor.

All together the site is very much like what I would expect if The Onion did Wikipedia.

I started work on a new theme last night and, after brainstorming a bit, put together a quick mockup in GIMP. This is only the second time I've used GIMP to flesh out a theme and I'm pretty happy with the results.

The index page of the theme, which you can see to the right, is meant to do something a bit different. Rather than showing the most recent 5 posts it's going to be setup to display the most recent topics from each category. I made this decision because I wanted the blog to look more like a professional news site than a true blog.

While the content block on the index page is setup to show categories and post titles the right column (which will basically be the sidebar) will house ads, widgets and badges. The big red blocks you see are how I usually consider ad placement. They basically represent hot-zones and are goodfor helping determine if there are too many ads in a given area.

If it looks like there are a lot of ads there it's mostly because that site is going to be aimed at making affiliate sales. Tonight I'll be blocking out the single post pages as well as the category and custom pages.

Let me know what you think,

Here's a quick list of five plugins that are great for bloggers.

1. Search Status: I started using Search Status on the urging of Everton from Connected Internet. The plugin, essentially the Firefox equivalent of the Alexa Toolbar, gives you a look at your page (and everyone elses) Google pagerank and Alexa rank quickly and easily. Search Status also gives you a look at some of the more subtle SEO related aspects of each site. Since installing it my Alexa Rank has gone from around 420k to 360k - I've also seen my traffic nearly double.
2. AdSense Notifier: If you're a Google AdSense addict this ad-on is absolutely essential. Once installed and configured you get a small entry on your status bar that can display up-to-date info from your AdSense account. Mine currently shares my current Pageviews, Clicks, eCPM, CTR, and Revenue for the day.
3. HTML Validator: The HTML Validator is mostly for anyone doing theme design. The ad-on gives you a sense of how "valid" your site is which is essential. Having a site that is designed cleanly makes it easier for spiders and bots to crawl your content. Keeping an eye on how well your site validates is a good way to keep manage this
4. Stumble Upon: Bloggers make the mistake of thinking that Digg is the king of driving visitors to your site. The problem, though, is that there are plenty of folks on digg who bury things for no really good reason. StumbleUpon is a bit more forgiving of some posts and can drive traffic in a very powerful way. Using the StumbleUpon plugin you can drive traffic to your blog and also locate items you'd like to post about.
5. Del.icio.us: The Del.icio.us ad-on I use doesn't have many bells and whistles. Its beauty is its simplicity. After installing the plugin you get two buttons, one sends you to your Del.icio.us bookmarks while the other basically acts as a Del.icio.us bookmarklet. I use Del.icio.us for two things - I use it to bookmark items I for my "hotlinking" posts and to keep track of posts I want to write about later. If you're trying to promote your site this can also be a great tool.

If you're a TLa Publisher (and if you're not get over there now) then you may have gotten an e-mail today regarding their new "post level" Text Link Ads offering.

Unlike their previous setup, which only offered site wide links to advertisers, the new system allows advertisers to buy text links that appear directly on some of your site's most popular posts.

With the growth of social networking news sites individual blog posts can be very valuable in terms of traffic and direct links to these specific posts.

You can now sponsor these specific posts with our new Post Level Text Link Ads.

The idea is novel - rather than buying a review or post Text Link Ads is offering their advertisers the ability to buy links on a site's most popular posts. This means that when a post gets dugg a single link could generate huge amounts of traffic for an advertiser.

After spending some time examining the service this morning (and looking at it running on John Chow's blog) I have to say I'm kind of impressed. Not nearly as impressed as I would have been if the links were PPC rather, but still impressed.

One thing that does bother me a bit about the links is that they're nearly invisible. Check out John's post "My Top 10 Best WordPress Plugins." Without using your browser's search feature find the added link and tell me it's not barely distinguishable from the post's text. The CTR on these will probably be pretty high... of course TLA doesn't pay by CTR though so that doesn't mean much to publishers.

While I haven't updated my plugin yet I think I might make the jump tonight. I'm curious to see what level of customization we can make and I'm looking forward to seeing how it boosts my overall rating on Text Link Ads. At this moment a Text Link Ads ad purchased on Bill2me dot Com is $20.

I'm definitely interested in seeing how much a post will go for and how popular that ends up being.

I was digging through some of my archives today and found this image ... I've seen it tons of different places so I really can't congratulate the original author - if you happen to know please share. Anyway - it makes me chuckle every time.