Category: Blogging

Issue #9 of the Musical Notes Newsletter went out Sunday evening. When I started the newsletter, I wasn’t sure how long I could keep it up, but I have found that it’s enough fun that I plan to keep at it indefinitely. I archive Musical Notes Newsletter one week delayed at my companion site. I think I have most of the kinks worked out now, since I’ve gotten some suggestions for improvement from friends and subscribers. I welcome any suggestions you might have — if you are a newsletter subscriber already, you can earn additional entries in the upcoming Violin GiveAway Sweepstakes by using the RaffleCopter form at the end of this post (or any other post on this blog) to leave your suggestions in the form of a blog comment.

I am also planning to include another bonus prize for subscribers with Issue #10, which I plan to send out next Sunday. I have a few things in mind, but again, if you have suggestions, use the RaffleCopter form to leave them in the comments below. I don’t guarantee that I will take your suggestion, but I do read every comment, and reply to as many as I can.

Note: You can leave a comment without using the RaffleCopter form by just scrolling down to the comment section. But if you do that, you won’t get any extra entries in the Violin GiveAway Sweepstakes. [note: the Violin GiveAway is now closed]

If you are not already a Musical Notes Newsletter subscriber, be sure to sign up today. All prizewinners in the sweepstakes will be announced only in the newsletter, so if you aren’t a subscriber, you can’t win. Also, if you don’t read the newsletter, you won’t win! Interesting, I picked 5 different subscriber names for my first bonus prize before I got a winner who actually read her name and claimed the prize in time. Don’t let that happen to you in the drawing at the end of the month!

Also, if I run into any really good deals that would be of interest to violin or viola students, their teachers, or their parents, I will inform my newsletter readers first.

Please leave a comment on any of the following:

• What you would like to see for a bonus prize for newsletter subscribers.
• What topics you would like to see covered in the newsletter.
• What topics you would like to see covered here in this blog.

Here is a picture of the iPod Nano won by Mary in NH (from the Amazon.com listing)

Those of you who have been reading my newsletter already know that I had announced a surprise bonus prize of an iPod Nano (5th generation, which currently sells for about $240 on Amazon) for subscribers only. Interestingly, the 5th generation iPod Nano is selling for a lot more than the current version. I deliberately didn’t publish the exact nature of the bonus prize outside of the newsletter, because the iPod Nano is something that would appeal to a larger audience than the folks I want to reach with the newsletter, and I didn’t want folks who would otherwise not be interested in my newsletter to sign up just for the prize. The prize was to be awarded by announcement in the newsletter, and the winner had four days in which to claim the prize. To my astonishment, that bonus prize went for over a month without being claimed!

The iPod Nano was successfully claimed this morning by Mary in New Hampshire, who saw her name & partial email address published in yesterday’s Musical Notes Newsletter. She also sent me a very nice note telling me that my string-change advice was very timely since she is about to change hers for the first time.

Congratulations, Mary, and thank you for reading my newsletter!

I may have an occasional bonus prize for current subscribers from time to time, announced only in the newsletter. These are in addition to the big list of prizes in my violin giveaway sweepstakes which will be awarded at the end of August, and I will try to make sure that any future bonus prizes are of interest primarily to string players (and perhaps their parents) and teachers. I already have a few items in mind for future bonus prizes… The winners will be notified ONLY through the newsletter, and all winners must be current newsletter subscribers to be eligible. I am using RaffleCopter to keep track of the entries (and to pick the winners in August), so check the form at the end of every post on this blog for ways to increase the number of entries, and improve your chances of winning a prize! The RaffleCopter form will be included at the bottom of every post up until the day of the drawing. So far, only a handful of the subscribers have made the effort to do the tweets, Facebook “likes,” and comments, that have earned them extra entries.

I’ve had feedback that some of the folks who have entered the sweepstakes would rather have that carbon fiber bow instead of the violin. Therefore, whoever wins the 1st prize will have his or her choice of either the 1st prize (violin, bow, & some accessories) or the 2nd prize (the carbon fiber bow).

Last week, I got an email from a friend in the North Texas PC Users Group that she was not able to register as a user on my blog. Sure enough, when I checked my user settings, I discovered that I had mis-configured one of the settings for the SABRE anti-bot-registration plugin, and it was just not letting anybody register. It took me several tries to get it fixed, but now it seems to be working correctly. So, if you previously tried to register on the blog, but got back an error, please try again.

…And all this time, I just thought nobody was interested in commenting on the blog. I suppose that I haven’t conclusively verified that one way or the other yet, but now that the registration appears to be working, I guess I’ll find out. If you still have difficulty registering, please email me at celticfiddler@gmail.com, and let me know.

Oh, and thank you, Diane, for letting me know about the problem, and having the patience and persistence to help me get it fixed!

P.S. There still appears to be some problems with the registration, but at least users can successfully register. One of the problems is that the user gets a message that the “automatically generated” password is in use, even though the password was not auto-generated. Another problem is that when the user logs in, he or she is presented with a scaled-down version of the WP Dashboard, and not the front page of the blog. In order to get to a place where you can enter a comment, you have to click on the blog title next to the WP logo at the top left, which is not particularly obvious.