As well as a blogger, I am also a Graphic Designer and have been for almost 10 years.

I’ve been involved in various projects from instructional brochures for Nokia to background concert graphics for Roger Waters, and have worked with many more high profile clients such as HMV, Loreal, Elizabeth Arden, Polo Ralph Lauren and American Express Travel.

Recently, my projects have been web-based for both myself and fellow bloggers.

Here are a few examples of recent web projects:

Nutrition Health Store

This is my latest blog project- a niche site fresh off the press, modified from a fantastic free theme called SEOadMax by Garry Conn.

Buzz Pirates

Jeff Buzz from BuzzMyBlog.com hired me to produce a three pirate illustration and a logo for his brand new website.

The Random Forest

This site is slowly going through changes.  It is being graphically molded from the original Kubrick theme.

Blog About Animals

My blog about animals, also created from the modified free theme SEOadMax by Garry Conn.

I am able to produce logos, graphics and modify Wordpress themes  for web. For print, I am comfortable producing anything from business cards to building-size banners. I have the experience to take any project from start to finish.

If you are interested in talking to me further and possibly hiring me please send an email to forest.parks@gmail.com or leave a message below and I will contact you.

Popularity: 1% [?]

With all the recent COWpetition excitement between Garry Conn and John Cow, I almost forgot to mention that I published a guest post very recently.

I wrote about the fantastic Micro Niche Finder and tried to show readers how they could put it to use to bring traffic to their sites and uncover niche areas.

Here is the post: Micro Niche Finder Review - Find Long Tail Keywords - Keyword Research

Let me know what you think of the post and go give Brent a few minutes of your time. It’s a very useful blog with many tips for us normal guys who are in the learning phase of blogging and maybe even for all of you pro’s out there too.

Popularity: 4% [?]

I worked for over an hour trying  to shorten the title for this one!

GarryConn.com is running a fantastic competition where you could win WhiteSmoke.com’s fantastic looking software, worth over $250.

WhiteSmoke is an innovative software tool that improves and edits your English writing. Based on patented natural language processing (NLP) technology, WhiteSmoke performs advanced and context-based English grammar, spelling, and punctuation checking, as well as text enrichment to enhance your writing. 

Entering the competition involved writing an article with tips on how a family can stay out of debt.

The winning entry to the competition will be expanded into a professionally edited and finished ebook with the cover design being designed by myself.

As Garry says:

As you know, most all contests have a bonus. The winner of this contest not only will score the free copy of WhiteSmoke.com software but will also win an exclusive opportunity to expand on the winning article. This article expansion will then be professionally proofed and edited by Mark Sierra ($150 dollar value) and then professional typesetting and conversion to PDF will be performed my Mark Mason ($175 dollar value) into an eBook using which will become the flagship eBook of my latest successful niche blog. Lastly, Forest Parks will create a professional eBook cover graphic ($75 dollar value).As Garry says:

Christine Senter, a fantastic freelance writer and editor, will be picking the competition winner.

For full information on the competition and entry details, I suggest that you visit Garry’s Post:
Contest To Win WhiteSmoke.com Software Package Worth Over $250 dollars

So get your backside over there and enter this fantastic competition.

I have been a Graphic Designer for almost 10 years and I promise to make sure that this ebook is very well designed. A portfolio page of some of my work will be available on this site very soon…. so watch this space.

Popularity: 3% [?]

The last week or so has seen rumors flying around the blogging arena that John Cow dot com is a different and new beast. Basically the quality of the content suddenly went up and people are guessing that a new owner / writer is driving the herd.

Some people think it may be Garry Conn and due to all of this and Garry insinuating that the whole thing is a marketing tactic an interesting friendly fight has arise between the two bloggers (Cow V Conn is on).

This fight however does not rule out Garry Conn, it could be a great marketing scheme!

The Cow is insisting that he/she has had a brain transplant a few times, with comments over at Garry Conn’s such as:

“Was the “up for sale” a scam… nope but did the blog sell for $50000… bwa hahahah.. come on now, not sure why that rumour started. You see, we are what you call a “multiple personality” and all we can say is the personality that you are accusing is no longer but thanks for stirring the controversy though. Will everyone eventually learn who we are… sure but right now we are having too much fun seeing what people are guessing at.”

So it would seem that the site did sell, although not for $50,000.

Immediately only two people come to mind. It is either Bob, and he is pretending to be someone new by switching up his style or it is Garry Conn. The third option is most likely, this is another blogger, maybe even someone that the MMO niche knows very well.

Could it be John Chow?

Using the best skills I have, all learned from the greats (Columbo and Magnum P.I) I am going to try and build a profile of this man and then maybe we can work it out together.

When did he start with John Cow dot com.

The new Cow mentioned that he had been writing for 2 weeks. Looking back on Cow’s posts I could only assume that his first post was:

The Dip… is it time to quit?

…published on 26th April.

The main reason I think this is the first is because of the sudden change of language and sudden use of multiple punctuations (…. ???) that started to populate the posts. This could be just Bob changing his writing style but I also noticed that from April 27th onwards all of John Cow’s comments have come from Windows Vista, previous to that they all came from an Apple Mac. As a Mac user I know how unlikely it is to switch to a PC, especially using VISTA!!

Hi I’m Mac…

…. and I’m PC

I asked Garry Conn, where the comments from Cow were coming from and he said the IP was Canada. It would be rude of me to ask for the actual IP from Garry but using the Cow’s old tricks this could be used with Google Maps to pin point his exact location…. I may have to ask Garry to do this later :)!!!

So looking into the language the spellings have been either British or Canadian in recent times. For example using “favour” in a comment at Garry Conn’s. An old John Cow post was titled “Do Yourself A Favor, Don’t Be A ****”. Recent use of North American sayings such as “it got our hackles up” and the spelling thing leads me to believe that we most likely are dealing with a Canadian here.

Cow has also cut back considerable on the Bovine puns, his repeated use of the smiley has also cut down ten fold.

Now this really does hot up the case for John Chow being the new Cow…

• Chow is from Vancouver, Canada and we all know is a very clever marketer.
• The writing style of New Cow and John Chow are very different. Such a big blogger would definitely do something like this to hide their identity.
• Chow uses a PC
• Chows uses the in every one of his posts. Not using it on Cow could be intentional to help cover himself.
• Chow has already been head to head with Shoemoney for RSS subscriptions and he lost! The competition he proposed is very similar and he may be looking for new glory.

Now one problem here is that Chow is going to Asia for a month and is looking for Guest Posts for John Chow. However we could look at this as being a way to break from Chow and concentrate on Cow.

What do you think?

Also, why would he do such a thing? He makes plenty of money already.

If Garry would be so kind to pinpoint the IP for us this could fuel the fire even more.

I would be very disappointed if it is Chow as his blog has been publishing bulls**t recently much like Cow’s was!!

So if it’s not Chow then who?

We are looking for a Canadian professional blogger / marketer. Generally a pretty nice guy/girl who has been a prior reader of Garry Conn and John Cow. He/she has a sense of humor and seems to be luring readers with good marketing strategies and pretty solid new content. She/he over uses punctuation and may have been missing from her/his own blog for a few weeks.

Any idea?

Help us solve this riddle. Comment, gather evidence and weave conspiracy theories. We can do this….

Cow was kind enough to comment… so I nabbed his IP. Turns out it comes from Calgary. However reading up on the accuracy of IP this is still not certain. It could be a proxy, the home of the ISP or just a mistake.
Of course it could also be true, so we could be looking for someone from Calgary.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Why did all this have to happen on a Saturday? This weekend was supposed to be a time where I spent very little time trapped in the soap opera that is blogging.

However a new storyline developed and I was glued to my screen.

How can I even begin to sum this up?……… well I will have to try.

On Saturday Garry Conn published the following article:
John Cow dot Com’s Lifelong Dream of Scamming The Blogosphere

The article suggested that the recent improvement in the material that was being provided by the dwindling JohnCow.com was actually the beginning of a marketing tactic. He also insinuated that the $50,000 price tag that had been placed on the site in Site Point was actually part of the whole tactic or as Garry preferred, Scam!

People had also been suggesting that Garry was actually the new owner or writer. Garry did not exclusively say that he was not.

I was confused, I started to form my own beliefs that Garry was in fact the Cow and that this was possibly the biggest marketing tactic that MMO had ever seen. What do you think about this? It is still a possible situation.

Phew…. that was a long explanation but this is where the story really gets juicy.

John Cow obviously had something to say about this. He said:

So this suggests that John Cow is Bob no more. Still at this point, I was thinking it could be Garry.

……….. Skip to the end …….. (Spaced, quote, I suggest you check it out, especially if you like Shaun of the Dead and Hott Fuzz)

After a few back and forth comments Cow and Conn have entered into a “Friendly” battle to see who can make a better (based on Money, somehow!) website in 30 days. The rules and regulations are still being worked out and both bloggers are inviting you to give your opinions, ideas and comments. They are also both vowing to make this a great way to teach their readers how they did it. I suggest you go over to both posts and sign up to their respective competition related mailing lists:

John Cow VS Garry Conn in a COWpetition - MMO Case Study Enroll Today!

Learn How to Kill Your Competition - A Case Study of How We Beat up Garry Conn

So this leaves questions.

Is Garry actually Cow and is he starting an amazing marketing campaign?
I think the answer to this is a simple No (I’m going to look into this in a post tomorrow)… but I would love the answer to be YES.

Has Cow been sold? Is Cow still Bob, just with a new public attitude? If it has been sold, who is Cow? Is it a man, a woman, a genuine cow or a huge internet company employing writers and people from over the world?
I really do not know what to think. There is always the worry that Garry has entered into a competition against a very rich company that is now fronting John Cow.

Who is going to win?
Well I am a Garry Conn fan, I will be supporting him here on this blog. No blogger has helped me more than Garry and I also believe that all of his personal advice has benefited me in some way. Cow is no fool though, even if he is the old Bob it could make for a hard competition. There is no doubt this competition is going to be helpful to all of us.

I am looking forward to seeing this whole thing kick off. Already they are bouncing fighting talk amongst each other.

What do I do about this whole thing?
As I have said, I will be covering this in favor of Garry on my blog.

In an excited and slightly drunken state yesterday I purchased the domain name ConnCow.com with an initial idea to cover the story in an unbiased way. What I want to know is how many people would be interested in this idea?

If I can get enough interest from readers and blessings from Garry and Cow then I will definitely cover the story in the best way I can. I will gather interviews from Garry, Cow and hopefully many other bloggers as well as track their progress and give an honest opinion of how I think i is all going. Weekly stats could be published and we could all get a decent unbiased look at the Competition.

Please do leave your comments.

Popularity: 5% [?]

When I was 20 I went on a short break to Newquay in S.E England. It really was one of the best summer holiday’s that I have ever had and I will go back again some day.

Newquay is a place like no other in the UK. Sweeping sandy beaches and a real hippy town feel, the surf capital of England. When we went the UK surf championships were underway so it was packed with people from all over and the night life was great fun. We stayed at Matt’s Surf Lodge and met some cool people there.

I really do want to go on holiday again, some time soon and would love to look further afield that North America or England. I would like to look at flights to Hong Kong, New Zealand or Australia but probably won’t be going on holiday for a while.

If you are looking to book a flight and plan your holiday then Dialaflight may be able to help. They are a leading independent UK travel company. They offer flights, hotels & travel ideas around the globe. You can visit the website www.dialaflight.com for useful travel information for finding your next holiday. Search for flights, hotels, car hire for all your holiday needs including weekend breaks, beach holidays, spa holidays & much more.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Due to the hectic online lifestyle of the average blogger getting enough food to keep our survival pouches stocked can be problematic.

I would recommend that every blogger has at least 14 pounds of excess body fat to keep him or her going in times of extended blogging.

Many of you have probably noticed the weight just dropping off since blogging took over every waking and for many sleeping moment of your life.

So I have put together a list of my top ten weight gain tips and techniques to help you stay round and squishy.

• Coca Cola and other soft drinks are absolutely packed with sugar. This happens to be perfect for a weight conscious blogger as you can pile on a whopping 250 or so calories in seconds. Keep a 24 pack of soft drinks under your desk. Avoid Diet varieties at all costs
• This is a little soon but it is more future planning. Organic computers are in early development. If Bloggers can unite and help push and fund the growth of this research soon computers may be available that can literally grow high calories snacks for us to munch. So get typing and send emails to all the CEO’s of the major computer companies. Finally Apple will be able to make a genuine connection between their name and their product.
• Try and stay as still as possible. Any excitment or activity that results in movement also results in burnt calories. Be especially careful of repeated leg wobbling or finger tapping. If you need to pee then make sure you have a bucket stored under your desk. I suppose it can be understood you are leaving your desk for a number two.
• Ask your partner if you can eat the fat from their bacon and porkchops at breakfast and dinner. It is recommended that you have them bring the food to your work station.
• Download a picture of a Wendy’s cheeseburger onto your computers desktop. This will help promote your appetite and encourage you to eat higher fat foods such as burgers, fries, chilli dogs, chocolate and twinkies.
• Install a magic thinning mirror, like the fun house at the fair, either side of your desk. If you think you look too thin it will encourage you to keep working on that survivors pouch. Make sure you pay someone to come and install the mirrors.
• Only accept PayPal payments. Checks through the post will only result in you having to use precious calories to go and pay them in.
• Find another blogger to compete with. See who has gained the most weight on a weekly basis and make sure that you help each other to reach your targets. It is much easier if you have the support of a friend
• Train your dog to bring you beer, chips and dip. Beer is good as it suppresses the feeling of fullness and makes chips and salsa taste like the food of gods.
• Get your work station and bed moved into the kitchen. If possible install your bed so that it doubles as a chair for the computer workstation. Make sure you can open the fridge without getting up from your chair.

I hope these simple tips help you to gain weight. I would love to here any success stories and I am sure your comments would be appreciated and motivating for any other readers.

Image Source: http://www.southparkstudios.com/crap/downloads/preview/6826/

Popularity: 8% [?]

I have been using Google Talk for a while with a few close friends.

Only recently though, have I realized how convenient and great it is for talking to other Bloggers. I don’t have many people on my Google Talk contacts right now but am definitely looking for more, and that’s where you come in!

I want to be available if anyone wants to ask me something, check out their new article or send me something amusing or interesting. Whilst I am online, I want people to contact me for any reason they feel necessary.

So if you use or are going to be using Google Talk, then please add me. My email is forest.parks@gmail.com.

If you have no idea what Google Talk is then you may be missing out on something great.

When you log into Gmail there is box on the left hand side of the page called Chat. Basically you can add or manage contacts there and chat right from the browser. If that is too basic for you then you can download a stand alone chat program and you get even more features, such as file transfer.

If you need any more informaton or just fancy a chat…. then drop a comment below.

Popularity: 7% [?]

When I go on holiday I like things to be easy. Getting off a plane and pretty much straight into a car is definitely as easy as it gets.

I have been on vacations where we have had to get on awkward ferries or pay lot’s of tolls to get to the deitination using our own car. Sometimes it really is cheaper and more efficient to rent a car at destination.

One time when a group of us visited a small island called Guernsey we used car rental for two cars. One driver filled his car with Diesel instead of Gasoline and it could have been a huge problem. Luckily the rental service just too it back and sorted it out. If that was our car we would have had to deal with the consequences.

If you are going on holiday and want to rent a car then it may be worth your time checking out Advantage.com. They provide some great car rental deals, specials and discounts and operate worldwide. Their site is very quick and easy to navigate and you can quickly establish whether they can provide you with what you need whilst you are away. You could use their services to island hop in Greece or transport yourself from around various mountains in Italy or get to business meetings in Queensland. The convenience could be just what you need.

Popularity: 6% [?]

I was talking with Jane from PetRescuerCentral.blogspot.com and she was interested in adding Social Network buttons to the bottom of her blogspot posts.

Us lucky Wordpress users can just add Sociable but in Blogger you need to do it with code, as far as I am aware… please correct me if I am wrong.

I wrote this tutorial a while ago but it was a little out of date so I have updated it.

——————————————————————–

Social Bookmarking sites are becoming a popular and successful way for people to bring traffic to their blogs.

After reading and starting to use Digg and Stumbleupon I decided I wanted my post footer to display the links for people to promote my posts using some of these sites.

A quick search on the web revealed a few tutorials but after trying various things I just could not get it to work. Eventually by modifying some code that I found and pure guess work it is now up and running with my Blogger Blog and it was pretty easy!

So I thought I would show you how you can add these useful links to your Blogger Post Footer.

Here goes…..

• Log into www.blogger.com and click on Layout for the blog you want to add this to
  

• Click on Template and then Edit HTML
• Make sure the first thing you do is Download Full Template and save it in a convenient place

• Make sure Expand Widget Templates is checked
• Then either scroll down the HTML text, or if you have Firefox us the Edit>Find in this page tool to find the text class=’post-footer-line post-footer-line-3′

• Hit return a few times to create a few lines of space (it makes it easier to see where to paste your code).

• Copy and paste this code below into the space you created:

<span class=’socialbookmarking’>

<small>Share This Post</small><BR/>

<a expr:href=’”http://www.stumbleupon.com/refer.php?url=” + data:post.url + “&amp;title=” + data:post.title’ target=’_blank’><img alt=’Stumble This’ border=’0′ src=’http://www.feedforall.com/stumbleupon.gif’/></a>

<a expr:href=’”http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&amp;url=” + data:post.url + “&amp;title=” + data:post.title’ target=’_blank’><img alt=’Digg This’ border=’0′ src=’http://www.feedforall.com/digg.png’/></a>

<a expr:href=’”http://del.icio.us/post?url=” + data:post.url + “&amp;title=” + data:post.title’ target=’_blank’><img alt=’Add To Del.icio.us’ border=’0′ src=’http://www.feedforall.com/delicious.png’/></a>

<a expr:href=’”http://furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=” + data:post.url + “&amp;t=” + data:post.title’ target=’_blank’><img alt=’Add To Furl’ border=’0′ src=’http://www.feedforall.com/furl.png’/></a>

<a expr:href=’”http://reddit.com/submit?url=” + data:post.url + “&amp;title=” + data:post.title’ target=’_blank’><img alt=’Add To Reddit’ border=’0′ src=’http://www.feedforall.com/reddit.gif’/></a>

<a expr:href=’”http://www.technorati.com/faves?add=” + data:post.url’ target=’_blank’><img alt=’Fav This With Technorati’ border=’0′ src=’http://www.feedforall.com/technorati.gif’/></a>

<a expr:href=’”http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=” + data:post.url + “&amp;t=” + data:post.title’ target=’_blank’><img alt=’Add To Yahoo MyWeb’ border=’0′ src=’http://www.feedforall.com/yahoo.png’/></a>

<a expr:href=’”http://www.newsvine.com/_wine/save?u=” + data:post.url + “&amp;h=” + data:post.title’ target=’_blank’><img alt=’Add To Newsvine’ border=’0′ src=’http://www.feedforall.com/newsvine.gif’/></a>

<a expr:href=’”http://slashdot.org/bookmark.pl?url=” + data:post.url + “&amp;title=” + data:post.title’ target=’_blank’><img alt=’Add To Slashdot’ border=’0′ src=’http://www.feedforall.com/slashdot.gif’/></a>

</span>

These are just a few of the networks available. If you really want more then please let me know which ones and I will work out and add the code.

• Hit Preview to test that it’s viewing correctly and then Save Template and it should be working.

Easy customizations for your bar

• If you want to remove any of the Bookmarking sites them simply find the block of HTML and delete it.

• Also if you want to rearrange the order of the icons you can simply cut and paste these blocks of HTML and stack them in the order you want.

• If you have an alternate image that you would like to use for any of the icons then find the line src= for the correct service and change the url in the ‘image url’ to point to your new image url.

I hope this tutorial has been helpful.Please feel free to comment…..

….. and if it crosses your mind then maybe you could submit this article to Stumbleupon, Digg It or submit to one of the other sites in my footer bar.

Thanks to FeedForAll.com for the social bookmark icons. 

Popularity: 57% [?]