Category Archives: Learning to Blog

“There’s an app for that…”

19 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by in Favorite Things, Learning to Blog, Reading, Review, Technology, Thoughts, Writing

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One must be an inventor to read well.
There is then creative reading
as well as creative writing.
[Ralph Waldo Emerson]

iPad-apps

Since I live in relative solitude, my blog gives me a place to share things that one would normally share with a person in the same room. This is a, “You’ve just gotta see this…” post. The thought has crossed my mind that I’m likely the last to learn all of this, but I’ll share it anyhow. I’ll make bullet points of my disjointed thoughts.

  • The image is a screen shot of one of my iPad folders.
    • I’ve never seen non-Apple devices, but am confident that they have reasonable counterparts to this.
    • It is worth the effort to learn how to organize apps in folders so you can find your stuff easily on one screen.
    • The desktop image is either (a) my backyard or (b) a tourist stop near Cardiff, Wales (UK). HINT: I have no backyard.
  • About the first row of apps in the image—these are primarily text readers. iBooks reads books from the Apple store, Nook reads Barnes & Noble books, and Kindle reads Amazon books. The apps are free and many books can be obtained without cost as well. There are also sale priced books available from such sources as BookBub.
  • The second row of apps in the image—these are specialized readers. Audible (an Amazon company) is an audio book reader and not only reads books from Audible.com, but also reads non-Amazon books from iTunes. Overdrive accesses the local public library. Using my library card, I check out both text and audio books using Overdrive. GoodReader could also be called Knitter’sHelper. I use this for my PDF knitting patterns because it allows me to easily mark my place and make notes.
  • The third row shows apps from Blackstone. These audio books are well produced and are now available with a built-in player as apps—one book per app. I bought these in the App Store for reasonable prices. There are many choices. One of my favorite mystery writers is Louise Penny. Her books, set in Quebec, present characters in such depth and with such sensitivity, that they make me want to jump into my little roadster and drive to Canada in search of imaginary friends.

eBooks, a new horizon

08 Saturday May 2010

Posted by in Learning to Blog, Review, teaching classes, Thoughts, Writing

≈ 1 Comment

You can teach a student a lesson for a day;
but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity,
he will continue the learning process as long as he lives.
[Clay P. Bedford]

Calibre I’ve been studying about eBooks—production, distribution, promotion, etc. In this image of my computer dock is a row of software I’ve been using: left to right is Adobe Dreamweaver, TextEdit, Calibre, Adobe Acrobat Pro, Adobe Digital Additions, Barnes & Noble Reader, and Amazon Kindle Reader. The first two help me in formatting and the last four are eBook readers but Calibre is the boss.

Calibre is a free and open source e-book library management application developed by users of e-books for users of e-books.

I’ve been successful in using it to save a piece of writing in three of the main formats used by eBook readers. Now I just need to polish my skills to get consistent and predictable results. When I get further along, I’ll share my discoveries on my blog.

A word about eBooks—I too love a paper and ink book to hold and read. On the other hand, I find that some books that I enjoy reading are handier to read in my iPod touch, and don’t clutter my bookshelves after I’ve finished with them.

A word about free software—if you like and use the software, do donate to its development so the programmers can afford to keep improving it.

My Weblog

24 Tuesday Jun 2008

Posted by in Learning to Blog, Thoughts

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If you’ve lost focus, just sit down and be still.
Take the idea and rock it to and fro.
Keep some of it and throw some away,
and it will renew itself.
You need do no more.
[Clarissa Pinkola Estes]

I started this weblog two years ago as a learning experience so that I could help my clients. I used an out-of-the-box design. Since then I’ve customized many client blogs but never got back to refreshing mine. This change is almost out-of-the-box. I only replaced the masthead photo with one taken by a friend of mine. He has spent his free time in the past couple of months taking flower photos. Thanks for permission to use this photo, Ron.

I’ve also welcomed over 37,000 visitors to my blog in the past two years. That boggles my mind. I’ve lived in towns smaller than that. It also visits upon me a sense of responsibility. It is my hope that folks are enriched by having been here.

For the toe-up sock knitters—I’m on my way up the foot and will post about heel shaping soon.

Blogging for a year

08 Wednesday Aug 2007

Posted by in Learning to Blog, Thoughts

≈ 1 Comment

While the spirit of neighborliness was important on the frontier
because neighbors were so few,
it is even more important now
because our neighbors are so many.
[Lady Bird Johnson]

A year ago, one of my clients asked me to help her set up a blog. I set up two for myself—this blog and the one on blogger.com—so I could learn the basic details of blogging. Since then, I have helped a number of my clients set up blogs that were customized to their own tastes and messages. I have also received more than 20,000 visits from folks who live all over the world. This has been one of the most enriching experiences in my life. Thank you, neighbor. The peaches are ripe on my little tree, and I’d bring you a fresh peach pie if you lived close enough.

QuantumHeart Life Coaching

15 Tuesday May 2007

Posted by in Learning to Blog, Review

≈ 1 Comment

The big secret in life is that there is no big secret.
Whatever your goal, you can get there if you’re willing to work.
[Oprah Winfrey]

QuantumHeart Life Coaching

I’ve been having such fun working. This is a new client website that will grow page by page as we get the content in place. This represents a new (to me) direction in producing websites.

When I produce websites, I usually build them from scratch—design, code, images, text, etc. That works well for large sites and ones that can be maintained by a technical person. It also gives me control over how the site plays and looks in a web browser. However, there are many people who want small websites that they can maintain themselves without knowing lots of tech stuff. The QuantumHeart Life Coaching site is my first adventure into that kind of site design and production.

Many web site providers offer an interface where their customers can build their own site online. In this instance, the provider is Web.com and their interface is called SiteBuilder. They have over 100 templates that a person can use as is, or modify to a great extent. We started with a basic template and changed all of the images and colors. My client (life coach Cheryl Gardiner) and I have worked together on this so she could learn how to use the interface as we produced the site. When we have it all finished including a matching blog, she will have the skills to keep the site updated on her own.

Another Browser Bug

05 Friday Jan 2007

Posted by in Learning to Blog

≈ 4 Comments

All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
[Author Unknown]

The Contemplative Photographer

My friend and client, Jim Miller, maintains a photoblog named The Contemplative Photographer. This morning, he called to say that he had looked at his blog on another computer and the header didn’t look right. It defaulted to the original template. If you have time, would you take a look at his blog at this LINK, and let me know if the header looks similar to the image above? What browser are you using? Are you on a Mac or a PC (Windows interface)?

P.S. (5:45 p.m.) This was great. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your help. I do believe it is fixed as far as I can fix it. Thanks so much.

Browser Bug

10 Sunday Dec 2006

Posted by in Learning to Blog

≈ 2 Comments

All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
[Author Unknown]

Blogs

This morning I discovered a glitch in one of my internet browsers. My two blogs should look similar to the photos above. The appearance of a blog is driven by code in a Cascading Style Sheet. Without that, this would all be in large, Times type with no background graphics. Internet browsers read those style sheets to form a page with…well, with style. Every version of browser software reads code a bit differently. That makes designing for the web a bit of a shot in the dark.

This morning, I checked my blogs in Internet Explorer (version 5.2) on the Mac and the pages were a mess. The content on this blog invaded the left navigation bar and pushed all the links down below the content. On my other blog, the type was too small to read and the content started down the page after the side links. I use standard templates that are commonly available on these blog services, and they look nice in my Safari browser on the Mac.

How do they look on your browser. If your view isn’t similar to the photos above, I’d love to hear from you—what do you see? What browser do you use? Do you use a Mac or a PC?.

My New Blog

06 Wednesday Dec 2006

Posted by in Learning to Blog

≈ 1 Comment

Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.
[Oliver Wendell Holmes]

Blogspot

I started my WordPress blog last summer as a learning experience so I could offer more to my graphic design clients. For me, this has been fun, fun, fun. I’ve only scratched the surface in blogging.

In the past two days, I’ve helped my Willowgreen client, Jim Miller, set up and customize his own blog—The Contemplative Photographer. In the past three months, I’ve studied WordPress, revised a blog design to match his taste, and tried to set up the blog on his server. His server wouldn’t accomodate the PHP/MySQL technology. Then another client, Janet Newell at Trilobite Media, pointed me toward Blogspot. In one morning, I was able to set up a blog, and edit the stylesheet to display a variation of Jim Miller’s blog design. The next morning, Jim and I oriented ourselves to the basics of posting on Blogspot, and he has already written two posts.

That is when I decided I needed to expand my learning experience by setting up a second blog—a Blogspot-hosted weblog named … and a time to knit using one of their standard themes. Now I have a point of comparison between the two. I find it easier to compose a post, insert images (that I keep on my server rather than the WordPress server), preview posts, and edit posts on WordPress. I find it easier to revise a theme “look and feel” on Blogspot. Also, Blogspot offers other services that I’m looking forward to trying such as Google’s AdSense and Search options.

This process reminds me of choosing a computer or software. Each has its own strengths. Each, its own drawbacks. The consumer needs to first decide what his/her use will be for the product then make a selection that will best serve that purpose. For many years, I used QuarkXpress for publication layouts. I encountered several production problems with that software and now use InDesign. I used Freehand for vector illustrations, but changed to Illustrator when a new version Freehand presented too many production problems. I’ve used PCs, but find that a Mac serves my purposes better in the graphic design industry. Although I have a certain degree of brand loyality to MacIntosh and Adobe because they have consistantly served my purposes for the past twenty years, I’m always open to innovation. My standard is, to use the tools which help me do quality work efficiently.

Blogging Report

18 Monday Sep 2006

Posted by in Learning to Blog

≈ 2 Comments

Nothing diminishes anxiety faster than action.
[Walter Anderson]

katherineI started this blog as a learning experience and have several posts about my progress and the resources I’ve found most useful. I wanted to be able to set up a Worpress blog on a server and customize the presentation (look and feel). I’ve succeeded doing that with help. If I knew PHP programming and understood more about databases and a few other technical things, it would have been easier, but I’m proof that a graphic designer can fiddle around and do it. When the two new blogs are actually on line for public viewing, I’ll include the links in a post.

Meanwhile, here I am wondering why I was so anxious when I started this journey. This photo was taken at my recent 45th high school reunion — calculate my age from that if you wish but just remember, if you quit learning new stuff when you graduate from school, you’ll face years of uninterrupted boredom to say nothing about withering away.

Entropy. That word has a specific, scientific definition but a friend of mine uses that word to describe her theory of a less-scientific process. She says that, if you don’t tend to the upkeep of something, it will deteriorate. Weeds will grow in the garden, paint will peel, the jungle will overgrow the relics of the past. Move forward or slide backward — those are your only two choices. I think of her theory every time I learn something new.

WordPressing

27 Sunday Aug 2006

Posted by in Learning to Blog

≈ 1 Comment

Silent gratitude isn’t much use to anyone.
[G.B. Stern]

… so I’m thanking all of those folks I don’t even know who open my window on the world wider and wider.

When I started my WordPress blog, the first thing I noticed is that it has a nice administrative console and it fairly easy to use. I saw where a person could install WordPress on a local server or an ISP server instead of having a blog on the ISP server at WordPress.com. I also saw where the look-and-feel (Theme) could be altered. That meant, I could have a blog look seamless with a web site I designed.

I know very little about servers and databases but I found this link (there are ones for PCs as well) so I could work on WordPress locally: michaeldoig.net

The MAMP server was easy to download and install. Then I went to this link and downloaded WordPress: wordpress.org

I followed the instructions that are on Michael Doig’s blog and had it up and running locally in 5 minutes.

Next, I wanted to change the look and feel but do not know PHP so I couldn’t figure out how to do it. I emailed Michael Doig and he referred me to this link (I don’t know who he is or where he lives, but he certainly is a kind and responsive person): urbangiraffe.com

I downloaded and printed the 66-page PDF instructions and have been working through them. The instructions are clearly written and easy to follow although I still don’t know if I can do this — it feels like taking calculus without knowing anything about math.

I have GOT TO succeed at this — I have a client waiting for a blog that looks like her web site.

P.S. After writing this post, I succeeded in making the browser background and header art with custom links look the way I wanted. Hope springs eternal …