Thanks

The Black Angel of Thanks

Everyone needs a little help sometimes. For someone who wants to walk a path less travelled, that should probably read ‘a lot of help’. And so with me. Without the support and help from friends, family and strangers, my dream of a nomadic life would remain just that: a dream. On this page, I want to thank everyone who has helped me along my journey.

Emotional Support

First of all, I am indebted to all you who read, comment and share this blog. The fact that you are there pushes me to keep going in times when it otherwise would be too easy to just give up. Special thanks goes to Doug, Craig and Martin who have done a stellar job sharing the blog.

Last, but absolutely not least, I want to thank my family. They offer a very special kind of support while I travel. I know that no matter how bad things get, they will always be there for me. Having a loving safety net like that really sets you free. I love you so much for that.

Hospitality

The following have my thanks for letting me stay in their beds, on their sofas and even in their motor homes! I am grateful for the help this offers me in reducing my living expenses, but most of all, I am grateful for the kindness and guidance you show me.

• Alex & Oby, Padraig & Imogen, London.
• Yaron & Brandon, New York.
• Don & Jim, Long Beach.
• Tony, Steven & Bryan, Los Angeles.
• John, Mike & Jason, Jason & Wil, Dan & Rich, Scott, San Francisco.
• Xavier & Josep, Sassa & Ueli, Peter, Switzerland.
• Dick & Jeff, Rancho Mirage.

Awards and Features

I am surprised to even have this as a section. Slowly but surely, The Modern Nomad has been featured in the media or won awards. I’m clearly not above screaming about this from the rooftop! But my lungs are not quite as effective as this blog in reaching people, so here is the list.

The Modern Nomad was voted best in Structure and Design in my webhosts's "Best Site of the Month" competition!

• Chosen as the Blog of the Month (Nov 2012) by The Good Web Guide.
• I won the Battle of the Blogs as the best travel blog of 2012.
• A story I wrote from my Rodeo was published in the book, Travel Means Freedom.
• SIVA (Simon Vandi Entertainment and Solutions) featured me in an interview.
• I wrote an article on minimum paragraph widths which was published on CSS-Tricks.
• My Destination featured me in an interview.
• I’ve been writing a columns for Home Around the World.
• I was elected Man of Twitter by BosGuy.
• I was nominated Blog of the Year 2012 and won the Best Travel Blog 2012 in the Bloggies.
• The Modern Nomad was voted best in Structure and Design in Dreamhost’s Best Site of the Month competition!
• Süddeutsche Zeitung, a big German newspaper, wrote this article about The Modern Nomad.
• My Burning Man Guide was featured in the Jack Rabbit newsletter, the newsletter for Burning Man.
• I did an interview for National RV Parks.
• I appeared in my local newspaper, Smålänningen. Ahh, how sweet!

Technical Support

I have made use of some great free resources for putting this blog together. It is only fair that I give credit where credit is due. This may be a bit dry for non-techies, but if you wonder how I created this blog, read on!

First, a big great thank you to the people behind WordPress. It is an amazing blog and web page platform. I am so very impressed by it.

Also, a big thank you to Dreamhost, my awesome webhost. They have been rock-solid from the start, and I love their non-corporate way of speaking/writing. If you are thinking of going with a webhost, consider them. And if you are going to sign up with them, do me favour and use this sign-up link to do so, and I get a bit of referral money to help me pay my own hosting!

The look and feel is based on the free theme ‘Journal Crunch‘ from Site5. I have rewritten large parts of the theme to fit my needs, but it was very good to have a good place to start, especially since I had never used WordPress before.

This site of course uses a lot of plug-ins as well. The ones I use are:

• AddThis is used for the social media share buttons at the end of each post.
• I use Microsoft Word for spelling and grammar checks.
• Akismet guards me against disgusting spam.
• XML Sitemap help the search engines find me easier.
• Grunion Contact Form generates the contact form on my Contact Me page.
• ShadowBox is what makes the image pop-ups so cool and Photoswipe does the same for the mobile browsers. Enabling both are Add Lightbox and Title and Multiple Galleries.
• Google Analytics from Yoast and Google Analytics help me know how many people read my musings.
• Gravatar Signup Encouragement hopefully convinces you to get a Gravatar if you don’t have one.
• Subscribe to Comments Reloaded allows you to subscribe to comments on a particular post.
• W3 Total Cache help keep the site snappy.
• Feed Burner makes my RSS feeds easier to sign up to, and makes them easier to track.
• Admin Word Count help me realize when I’ve rambled on for too long.
• Edit Parent Comment ID help me clean up when you guys don’t realize that the commenting section is threaded.
• WordPress Backup to Dropbox helps me sleep at night.
• Degradable HTML5 audio and video helps me insert music and soundclips.
• Smarter Navigation enables you to navigate to the next/previous post within a certain category or tag.
• WP Smush.it compresses images so you don’t have to wait forever to download them.

I have also been kindly listed on the following sites:

• Nomadic Matt (A fellow nomad. Never met.)
• Oracle Doug (An ex-colleague of mine, and one hell of an Oracle!)
• Der Moderne Nomade (I know, my German alter-ego!)
• World Trip Forever (A great read and source of inspiration. [Although I am doubtful of the zero-budget life.])