Maybe I could put that a little more succinctly? “I’m no expert, but I love to tinker.” As a guy with an artist’s bent I love looking at everyday common things and finding one thing about it that’s special or unique. Be it blogging or composing I enjoy revealing the inherent drama any object or idea has by framing it in an attempt to reveal how a most simple thing can convey a lot of meaning, feeling, or emotion if it’s just looked at in the right setting or from a certain perspective. I studied music composition and theory for many years. This is my wellspring for almost everything I create. It’s where I come from. I love all kinds of music and a favorite genre is 20th Century orchestral music by composers like Stravinsky, Bartok, Debussy, Ravel, Harris, Copeland, etc. One thing I lear... 02/09/2012

Question: What is a search engine’s job? Answer: To offer up the most relevant and freshest content it has based on the terms we use to search. Why? Search engines like Google, (Bing and Yahoo) want to provide everyone with the latest and most useful on target content they can so we keep coming back. The more ‘eye time’ on their pages the more opportunity is created to click those paid-for-ads. That’s it in a (proverbial cyberspace) nutshell! Granted this explanation is a gross over simplification, yet... The more you understand what the search engine wants to accomplish the more opportunities you’ll find to get your brand out there and seen. Let me put it this way... We wouldn’t do over a billion searches a day on Google if they didn’t offer up the answers and content we were looking f... 02/04/2012

< Located in Maple Valley Heights, this property is conveniently located to 169 and 405 access, but falls within the Tahoma School District boundaries. Nicole Cuccia | RE/MAX Select Property Management | nicole@maplevalleyrealestate.com | (425) 432-4414 19036 SE 161st St, Renton, WA Private Home on .71 Acres with Territorial Views! 1BR/1BA Single Family House $900/month Bedrooms 1 Bathrooms 1 full, 0 partial Sq Footage Unspecified Parking None Pet Policy Cats, Dogs, Conditional Deposit $900 DESCRIPTION Quaint and Private 1 Bedroom + Bonus home on large level .71 Acres with great Territorial views! This home has a utility room and bonus room, big shed, carport and plenty or room for RV/Boats. Convenient location is close to freeways. see additional photos below RENTAL FEATURES - Bonus/Re... 01/27/2012

2011 Market Report Condos for Renton, Washington2011 Market Report Condos for Renton, WashingtonRenton real estate was on a lot of peoples minds this last year. Now that the year is over we can report activity, averages and trends in this 2011 Market Report Condos for Renton, Washington.Renton real estate activity was brisk and picking up through the last quarter of 2011. Based on the experience of the Phil Leng Team we're confident it's a continuing trend. We sold 68 homes in 2011, with an average market time of 49 days, giving us a unique viewpoint for our clients. The overall statistics for Renton are encouraging. Look at the graph below. The Red bar is the number of houses for sale in any given month. The Green bar is the number of houses sold in any given month. Which of these two ... 01/20/2012

4 Bedroom Home for sale in Kennydale - Renton, WAPicture-perfect custom 5000 square foot Lake Washington facing Kennydale home for sale with panoramic views in desirable neighborhood.  Ingenious design delivers many vistas of water and Olympics.  Luxurious throughout, from granite chefs kitchen to brazilian hardwoods to folding glass nanawall for al fresco entertaining.  This Kennydale home for sale has it all. The master suite wows with gym room, fireplace, deck, spa-inspired tub and shower.  Indulge in hobbies and impress guests in the media room with surround sound, wine cellar, and bar.  This Kennydale home features 5 fireplaces to warm those winter nights and add ambience.  Ideal locale for Seattle/Bellevue commuter.             View All Available Renton PropertiesView Available Ho... 01/19/2012

There's something terribly wrong when our elected officials even contemplate the systematic dismantling of our citizens ability to freely share its own creativity with each other. Scene 3 - (In the not so distant future): "I was so excited to share this really cool idea I had with y'all but I just got a DM from Congress." The Committee on the Suppression of Creative Thought and Freely Sharing has determined I would be in direct violation of paragraphs 193, 206, 319, and 573 of the Amateur Citizens Open Thinking Reform Act of 2016. Wherein it is clearly stated... No persons, citizens, nor foreigners within or outside our borders will posses any right to intellectual, artistic, or creative thought (no matter the origin) via the written word, image, audio, or video transmitted, conveyed, r... 01/18/2012

Evidently we’re making national news today. Our first snowfall of the season was just a few days ago on Sunday. The weather projections are telling us there’s a lot more on the way and by the looks of it this morning, they're right. It's really coming down. Here in the Puget Sound convergence zone we rarely get more than a day or two of snow in the winter so a lot of us don’t own studded tires or chains. What’s the point. Most likely, it’ll snow then warm up and turn to rain. Yet, once in a while the Arctic air mass just has to prove to the Pineapple Express who's boss and we get a snow dump that brings everything to a stop. It's not that we're weather wussy's in the Pacific Northwest. It's more about hills. No matter where you're going, work, home, or the store, you gotta go up 'em and... 01/18/2012

  How did the Renton, WA 98056 Real Estate Market fair in 2011? The good news is, more than 60% of all closed sales in 2011 were neither Short sales nor Bank owned listings. Definitely a positive sign! Here's a Market Snapshot of activity: Regular sales (those which are neither Short sale nor Bank Owned) numbered 201 with an average list price of $414,488. The highest priced sale was 2.4M and the lowest priced "Regular" sale was $70,000. 50 Short Sale Listings (Single Family) closed in 2011 with an average sales price of $275,224. The average days on market for these listings was 77 days. When sellers opt to either not pursue a short sale, or are unsucessful negotiating with their bank, the next step is foreclosure. In 2011, 73 single family REO (Bank/Asset owned) listings sold with an... 01/12/2012

2011 Market Report for Renton, Washington2011 Market Report for Renton, WashingtonRenton real estate was on a lot of peoples minds and in their conversations in 2011. Now that the year is over we can report activity, averages and trends for you right here. Real estate activity was brisk and vigorous if somewhat diminishing during the tail end of 2011. Our Phil Leng Team was very active for our select group of clients. Managed to keep the entire Team busy throughout. Even with a record number of sales last year we still managed to keep the average market time at 49 days. Yes, we are quite pleased with that feather in our collective hats.However the overall statistics for Renton are sobering. Look at this graph. The Red bar is the number of houses for sale in any given month. The Green ba... 01/12/2012

Laying out pictures with text... When you upload a picture to your Activerain blog you can easily change the size and justify it left or right on the page using the editor. Yet, on occasion I’ve fiddled with trying to wrap text around an image and messed up my entire layout. No fault to Activerain, every editor has its own unique temperament.You could delete the image or the whole post and start over, but uploading the photo again adds bloat to Activerain’s storage space.With a little HTML code you can place your image anywhere you like and re-size it on the fly if you need. 1st upload your photo to your draft post and save ( by clicking - post blog entry). 2nd click edit and change the view to HTML by clicking the HTML tab...Here’s the code that Activerain created for my uploaded image... 01/08/2012

I’m fortunate to have so many great memories of my family. I remember very well the stories we heard growing up about the old country, their travels to settle in the Pacific Northwest, dad’s WWII adventures, living and working the coal mines, and what it was like around here in the early 20th Century. Between Christmas and New Years I had a wonderful stay-cation. I have an old suitcase full of pictures and documents that belonged to Grandma & Grandpa Fabre. My brother Steve dropped it off a couple of years ago, but until now it’s been sitting in a closet. I spent a couple of days spellbound in discovery and scanned all kinds of treasures. Old pictures, my grandfather’s passport dated 1907 from Decazeville, France, letters from his cousins and a nephew in French, such wonderful memorabil... 01/06/2012

In part one we took a look at upsizing your font size in HTML... The easiest way to do it is to use the paragraph tag

and size the font using the tag. HTML on Activerain is easy because you only need the most basic tags, AR handles the rest. Part OneIt’s important when you’re working with HTML to remember that everything you turn on needs to be turned off... So if you want to make a font “big” throughout the document it may seem logical to start with at the beginning and then turn it off at the end of the document using . Not so...It’s best practice to turn “big” on and off in each paragraph, or single line you want separated from the rest.So every paragraph starts with

and ends with

. I save a lot of typing time by keeping the HTML tags in a no... 01/06/2012