DS1 Wears Size 14 Shoes

Yesterday I mentioned DS1 wearing his daddy's big shoes... I haven't gotten my scanner hooked up, so I took some pictures of pictures:



I added a label cloud to my blog. Check it out.

Until next time.

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Warping Words with Kev

You know how some parents are less computer-literate than their children? I grew up without computers but was always fascinated by them.

I took a course for data entry in 1984 or 1985. My first data entry job was my first exposure to one of those room-sized computers. I worked for the department of revenue. You can imagine the records they had to keep.

I owned by first computer, bought it on time for $1800 from the company I was working for in 1988. Home data entry. My first computer actually had a hard drive, at a time when most computers had two floppy disk drives. And the floppy disks were really floppy.

My computer ran on DOS, and I had WordPerfect 5.0.

I remember upgrading to Windows 3.0.

All through the years, I've been more computer savvy than my children.

I earned the right to call myself "Techmama". I even had a license plate once upon a time that proudly proclaimed my talent.

But last night, I had to concede to my youngest son, Kev.

I had been struggling to figure out how to warp some words in a graphic. Granted, my programs are all elderly, so they don't do some things easily. I have Dreamweaver 4.0 and Fireworks 4.0, and Photoshop 5.0. All very elderly programs. But they still work flawlessly.

So... I was really struggling to figure out how to warp words. Like this:

It's unknown whether any of my readership uses Fireworks. But for my own second brain purposes, here's how I did that.

Open Fireworks and go to File > New and let's make the image 300 pixels wide by 300 pixels wide with a resolution of 200 pixels/inch. Canvas color: white.


Go over to your Tools, which should be at the right side of your screen. Well, that's where I keep *my* tools. If you don't see yours on the screen, go to Window at the top and make sure Tools is checkmarked.

You're looking for your ellipse tool. It's on the left column, fifth row down. Standard settings will show a square at that position, so you may have to hold your cursor onto the button and then you will see the ellipse tool. Move the mouse over to select it.

Go over to your screen and hold down the mouse and pull a circle.

Mine filled with blue color when I let go of the mouse because my Tool bar is set to fill with color. Look at the Tools image above, under the header "Colors" see where it shows a little bucket pouring and the color is blue? That's why mine turned blue. I didn't want it to, so I had to start over and make just a white circle, like the first one above.

Next, click on the Text tool. Click in a blank space at the top of your circle. Type anything you want. Here's what I typed:
Click Apply, click OK. It might seem as if your circle has now gone away.

It hasn't. Simply wave your mouse over the screen and you'll see it pop up in red outline. Move the mouse away, it will disappear again. But it's still there. It's called a path. See how the words have a blue box around them? Click your mouse one time, directly onto the circle's path.

Now the focus is off the words, and on the circle.

To highlight both at the same time, hold your SHIFT key (either one) while clicking the words. You will see now that both have a blue line around them. This indicates that both are selected.

While they are both selected, go to Text, then Attach to Path. Click on that.



You did it! Now you can move the positioning of the words by going to Modify > Transform > Free Transform. You can spin those words around to the top, or the side, or wherever you want them to be. Once you get them in place, hit your Enter (we used to call that the Return key) key.

Just for fun, I dragged the words over onto my blue circle, and then went to Modify > Transform > Skew.


How we figured it out. Kev and I both started searching Google for ways to warp words. He found Inkscape, the program I used to make the wedding guestbook (which by the way I have still not bound into a book!) He mentioned Dia to me when he had it halfway downloaded, so I opened my version and he told me the steps to take to warp words. It involved path, so once I did it in Inkscape, I was able to figure out how to do it in Fireworks. Whooo!!

This has opened a world of new opportunities for me and graphic design.

I was just thinking. Maybe that's what I want to be when I grow up. A graphic designer.

Thanks, Kev.

Until next time.

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Photoshop Actions!

Pioneer Woman's post in her photography blog today is about Photoshop Actions.

WOW, wow, wow.

I have used Adobe Photoshop for many years, let's see, I took a college course in the Fall of 2000 and I'd used the program prior to then. But I'll just stick with 2000. That means I've been using this program for eight years.

It has quite a learning curve.

I have Photoshop CS at work, but at home I only have Photoshop 5.0.

Guess what? So far, all the neat little tricks Pioneer Woman is showing us (that I've tried) I've been able to use with my ancient version of Photoshop.

Today, I read on her blog about Actions.

Actions are like macros.

Macros are used with Microsoft Access and Microsoft Excel. For example, I recorded a macro in MS Excel at work, on this one spreadsheet that we recreate every single month. It was a lengthy process to recreate this spreadsheet for the new month. I would say at least twenty steps to go through. But by recording the process, I was able to automate it, with the touch of two buttons.

I never, ever knew there was a way to automate a change to images using Photoshop.

When would it come in handy?

Oh, how about when I had over 200 photos of our wedding to lighten, crop, change the color balance on?

What about my friend's wedding, where I took over 200 photos?

WOW, wow, wow.

I am impressed and wow, it is going to make editing photos so much easier in the future.

Amazing. Simply amazing. I may have to write an action myself. I hear tell many Photoshop users do that. One I'm definitely going to record is the one where I fix the lighting when a photo is taken under fluorescent lighting. I know how to do that, and it comes up a LOT at my job.

Here's a sample of what I can do to fix a photo. Bear in mind this is a fuzzy shot, but it will work for my example. Notice what a strong orange tint it has to it. Plus, it's dark.


First I lightened the photo, using curves. Input = 87, Output = 140. Looks quite garish, doesn't it?


Next I toned down that orange coloring.


Now I just wonder if you can batch up a set of photos and have Photoshop automatically run the action to all of them?

Until next time.

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Now You Can PDF

PDFs are important when it comes to accessibility across the various platforms. If you use Microsoft Word and your friend uses Corel WordPerfect, or Microsoft Works, you will not be able to send files to your friend. Well, you'll be able to, but she won't be able to open and read them. Sometimes they'll open halfway, but all you can see will be a bunch of gibberish.

Enter PDF. Almost every computer has Adobe Reader, which allows your computer to read PDFs. You can't convert a Word document, or an Excel spreadsheet to PDF unless you have a program to do it for you.

I purchased a program from Serif sometime back that will create PDFs. If I remember correctly it cost under $15 for the program plus shipping. I can't find it, hence my discovery earlier today.

Primo PDF - a free PDF creation tool. FREE. Just download, install and it acts like a printer. When you pull down the menu to print in your program, choose the printer you'd like to use, you will see that PrimoPDF has become of your choices.

If you don't want to mess with downloading, and you only need to convert a document into PDF on occasion, they also offer an PrimoOnline, Free Online Conversion to PDF.

Until next time.

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My Progress So Far Today

Let's see what I've accomplished on my list so far today...

I put black photo corners on one picture, cut some scrapbooking paper into a 5x7 and put one picture in the wedding book.

Other than the things on my list, I did get something done. I played around with the Make Your Own Kaleidoscope making some more kaleidoscopes. Alright? It's relaxing for me to play on my computer. Aside from that, these are the other things I accomplished:

1. Washed and dried our bedding
2. Defrosted the our upright freezer
   
3. Inventoried the food in the freezer and posted a list to the front of it
4. Baked more butternut squash to make Pioneer Woman's Butternut Squash Puree
   
5. Washed two loads of dishes (put away one)
6. Wiped the kitchen counters
7. Mixed and blended the squash and refrigerated it for later

I've got milking duty tonight. It has been like a wonderful vacation that ds2 has provided by milking the past four evenings. Thanks again.

Until next time.

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Make Your Own Kaleidoscope!

This is a very cool online toy! Load any picture (it has to be online already) and then you can drag the photo around to create your very own kaleidoscope!

Here's one I made using a photo of the olive/pickle tray from our wedding:

Here's the original photo:

Isn't that cool? I could spend literally HOURS playing around with this site. Very fun.

Until next time.

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Fighting with Word

Do you use Microsoft Word? Does it drive you a little batty the way it tries to second guess your every move, how when you want to indent or tab or use bullets it decides when you want to do that again?

Oh, it has driven me to gnash my teeth and rip my hair out by the roots for the past five or so years. It wasn't so bad eight years ago, when I first started using Word. But with each enhanced version, Word becomes more of a smartie pants and irritates me more and more.

Finally, in frustration the other day, I typed these words into Google: make Word behave formatting

And I came across this wonderful, amazing tutorial that saved my hair and teeth:
Understanding Styles in Microsoft Word

I didn't even go through the entire tutorial, I just SKIMMED it and I learned some very important, tiny little details about Word and using STYLES.

Check it out and gnash and rip no more.

Until next time.

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October 17 - 11am Update

Yes, I have nothing better to do than blog throughout the day.

Tomorrow is my mama's birthday, I got her present in the mail yesterday. Then dh went to her house this morning to pick up the stress relief arsenal she's providing me so I don't end up in the loony bin.

I finally gathered up my nerve and went out to check on the pregnant doe about 7am. She's still pregnant, but seems to be okay. And maybe, finally, in early labor. She's moving her body around real funny, like she's trying to position kids. Sometimes her belly is jutting out to one side and flat on the other the way she's moving it around. I milked at 8am and around 9am I went out to observe her for a while. Still nothing happening. I have the baby monitor on so I should be able to hear her if she starts screaming - a sure sign pushing has begun. ;-)

I can't even begin to thank ds2 enough for the excavation job he did on the gate that allows me to access the pen that the pregnant doe is sequestered in. However, now that I think of it, he did thank me for footing the $26 bill from the pizza place last night.

I think I found the song for walking down the aisle. It is one of my MIL's favorites The Very Thought of You by Nat King Cole. I wanted to honor her in some way, for she has really helped a lot financially.

And before I forget, the program I'm using to make a diagram of the room setup for the wedding is called DIA. Here is another program that looked interesting that you can use online: Gliffy

Here's my mama's stress relief arsenal. . . okay, Blogger's having some difficulty with the upload image feature so I can't upload the picture right now. Here's what she sent:

• New Dimensions Kava Kava Root Tincture Supplement
• NOW Kava Kava Extract 250mg capsules
• Sundown B-Complex Sublingual Liquid
• Nature's Bounty Ester-C 500mg
• Hyland's Homeopathic Nerve Tonic
• Bach Rescue Remedy Flower Essences
• Hyland's Homeopathic Calms Forte

Picture forthcoming once Blogger gets their problem fixed. 8:27pm uploaded the picture.

Dh arrived home with lots of cake making materials.

I'm working on the wedding program. Did I mention yet that my plan for the room to be set up like pews has changed and now everyone has to sit at their table during the ceremony? Now I'm wishing I knew where the clear christmas lights have gone. Someone could have thrown them away. But I'm envisioning the room being lit by christmas lights, and the arch of course has lighting on it. If I only knew where they were. They may have been thrown away. I bought something like 20 boxes from Target at the 90% off clearance sale back in 2005.

Until next time.

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My Eye

Nothing wrong with my eye. I like the iris of my eyes. Hazel.


Then I decided to Photoshop my eye. I have Photoshop 5.0. A really old version, but I like it a lot. There is a free program very similar to Photoshop - it's called Photofiltre.

Here's my eye crosshatched. Clicking on each image will give a bigger version.


Here's my eye poster-edged.


Here's my eye reticulated.


Here's my eye note-papered.

Here's my eye neon-glowed.

And here's my eye stain-glassed.

Pretty neat, huh?

Until next time.

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Instantly Add 2.5 Hours to Your Workdays!

I don't recommend this method, but it's working for me.

My Dear Honey got his driver's license today after not having had one for many years. I am so excited! The way I see it is I gain at least 2.5 hours more on each work day since he will happily take over the driving. While he's driving I can look at grocery ads, put together the weekly menu and shopping list, compose blog posts on my laptop, KNIT, I said KNIT!! Whoooo!!!

Today we did our Friday Thang as usual, first stopping at Department of Motor Vehicles. Dh thought he would have to take the written and driving test again, but nope, they took their money and took his picture and we were out of there within an hour!

I retired my vanity license plate which had the letters ***MAMA. Dear Honey has suspected for some time that some of the road rage directed at me is because the other driver knows I'm a woman, due to the license plate. AND... he wasn't too excited about driving with my vanity plate...

I worked on my swatch for the pair of socks I'm planning to knit. I got several rows done. When we set out this morning I had the cast on row and one row of knit. I didn't knit every spare moment, but I got a lot more knitting done than if I'd have been driving the entire time!

We stopped at a little diner and had lunch together. Dh had a burger with fries, and I had a Reuben sandwich with fries. It was okay. Nothing compared to the Reuben sandwiches that ds2 makes.

We bought envelopes on Thursday afternoon for the invitations. $15 for 100 ivory colored greeting card envelopes. I stopped by the post office today to ask the postmistress if the envelope was considered "large" which would mean more postage. Whooo!! We only need to use regular postage. I have 1 book of the love bird stamps, but they don't seem to be available at usps.com, so I may use the wedding hearts for the remainder. I looked for a roller type thing to make the stenciling job quicker and easier, but no luck. There doesn't seem to be such a thing on the market.

I found my "test" material at Walmart today. Too bad it's not my color! Only $1/yard! It looks and feels like satin, the blue on the left side. I'm not sure why but the edge (selvage?) is pink and purple. I don't know if that was by design or some accident. The other blue doesn't really match, but it's to be the lining for the camisole. It was also $1/yard. I am starting with the camisole and hoping it won't be too difficult. I cut around the pattern pieces this afternoon. OH, and Walmart had the FF size of my wedding gown pattern. The pattern shows the price to be $16.95. I think the GG size is going to be way too big for my top. I was planning to buy the FF size from simplicity.com because it was $10.xx. I think $10.55. I still don't know if there was a shipping charge - didn't get a chance to see the packing slip invoice. Anyway, so I decided to bite the bullet and just buy the pattern in real life, instead of from the Internet. I was pleasantly surprised to discover after we checked out that the pattern was only $9.97! Whew. I seem to need a size 20 up top, size 24 for my waist and size 26 for my hips. Maybe I can combine the patterns. I wasn't able to find any lace for $1/yard. I might have to break down and buy it for $2.97/yard. I decided to wait on buying the lace since it will probably take me a couple of weeks to put the camisole and skirt together. I'm going to try to keep track of how much time I spend on it so I will have an idea of how long it will take to put the real dress together.

We stopped at a Super Joann's on Thursday after work and they every color you can imagine, with matching lace. But a very dismal choice for the dark green material. And no dark green colored lace at all. I am already beginning to wonder if this is going to be too difficult to find the green color that I want. I did see some beautiful brocade material that was marked down to 60% off, which would have made it $4.00/yard. I wished I could have bought some. I already have the material for two dresses, so I don't want to start some huge fabric stash that I'll never have time to use. I don't think I'll be able to sew while dh drives. ;-)

Here's a couple pictures of the adorable little kitties.


Ds1 drew a neat picture that I've decided to include as part of the RSVP card. He is so excited that Mom and Dad are getting married again. :-)

Also, I was looking at some ideas for making my own wedding guestbook, which I was thinking was going to be kind of silly since those books have pages and pages worth of lines for people to sign in. We probably won't have more than 50 people attend so only a page or two would be filled. I found this wedding book idea where you give everyone a page to write on and then bind it in a book later. I would love to do this. My friend who is going to do my makeup had the idea to make copies of the books and give out to anyone interested in having one. She said what they did at her daughter's recent wedding was to have a table with a Polaroid camera. Each person was to take a picture of his or herself and then write something to go with the photo.

I've been playing around with the files but it doesn't look like I have a program here at home that will alter them nicely. I do have the programs at work. OH, no, hold on... the program that the guy recommends is Inkscape and it's freeware! Neat! I'll have to check it out.

Until next time.

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Maybe Dead Trees?

The only one that seems to be alive is the apple tree... the citrus trees have crispy yellow leaves... the peach tree is totally leafless... I do hope they come back to life as it grows warmer. The garden is still alive. I am hoping to find some time to work on it this weekend. I need to do some weeding, and those radishes need to be removed.

Until next time.

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Make Your Very Own Font

I have wanted to make my own font for years. I finally found this really awesome program available on the Internet where for only NINE dollars you can purchase your own font. That is so cool. I have some tips to offer if you want to try this yourself...

The first thing you want to make sure you do when your template is printed out -- make certain that the entire frame is complete. I did try to pull my scanned template into Photoshop and fix the frame, but I was not successful. The resulting font ended up looking like the image to the left. Click on it to see a larger image. Basically what happened was The Fontifier scanner was unable to properly align the page using the frame lines, so my font ended up with lines at the top of every letter. NOT what I was expecting or hoping for. So when you get to Step 5, if you see those lines, you need to start over and make sure your frame on your template is complete. I actually ordered my font like this and it was such a mess that I requested to have my money refunded. It took them several days to get back to me, but they finally did and refunded my $9 so I could try again.

This time with a better idea of what I was trying to do, I had better success.

Another tip, be sure to use a black felt tip marker. A regular ink pen won't work. It is too light.

There are a couple of things I'd do differently if I had the chance. Of course I could just redo my font and pay another $9, but it's not that necessary. I don't know that I'd try cursive again, although that was my preference. The reason I wouldn't do it again is because it doesn't look as "flowing" as I thought it would. My goal was to be able to type, instead of writing by longhand as I can type faster than I can write, and my hand doesn't start cramping and my fingers don't go to sleep when I'm typing. Well, at least not as soon as they can when I'm writing with a pen.

I would also make my colon and semi-colon larger -- equal in size to an alphabet letter. Right now they are very tiny.

I did pull my scanned alphabet into Photoshop and futz around with it a little. For example, I noticed that some of my letters were not exactly on the "invisible line", so I was able to cut and paste the letters and move them onto "the line". The Fontifier directions do suggest drawing a very light pencil line so that you get your letters right on the line perfectly (but of course be sure to erase before scanning). I also took all my matching symbols, like open and closed parentheses and picked the one I liked best, then cut/pasted and reversed the image so that my symbols look the same whether they are the right or left symbols.

I would like to also make a print font.

I think it would be cool to have your young children write the alphabet in the template, scan them in and have a font of your child's handwriting at that age. You'd name it something like Johnny Font Age 7.

Oh something else I did was to customize two of the characters that I would never use, with two characters I would use. I use the temperature symbol a lot "°" which is created by holding your ALT key, then typing in the numbers 0176. The other symbol I use is "ë" for our --- no, oh no... no, no, no, no!!! I guess I am going to get my chance after all to redo my font. I thought it was the "o" with the two dots that I used all the time!! LOL!!! Anyway... this is probably geek to anyone reading it. Dang. I can't believe I messed up like that. Well, it will be another $9 if I decide to perfect my font.

So now I can make my letters look more personable by typing them in my own cursive font. Pretty cool. I have looked into making my own font and it can cost hundreds of dollars for the software (at least the last time I looked), so $9 is very reasonable.

Until next time.

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I'm Purple, Once Again

In spite of my busy life, as I said yesterday, sometimes I have to have a bit of fun and distraction. So I busied myself last night (was up until 11pm!) returning my blog to the purpleness it was prior to Blogger Beta.

In my journey I found a neat little freeware program called Pixie...


...what a spectular little gem of a program!! I was able to match colors so closely on my blog that you probably can't see the color differences unless I showed them to you. The difference is barely perceptible to the human eye. You can get Pixie from the creator's website, Nattyware. The Nattyware site was down yesterday when I tried to get the program, so it can also be downloaded from download.com

It works wonderfully in conjunction with Adobe Photoshop 5.0. I have the newest version of Photoshop at work, and it has some fancy updated features, but 5.0 works fine for me here at home.

I still haven't heard back from Mr. Hackosphere. Maybe today. In the meantime, since I decided to purple-ize my blog again, it won't be so easy to undo the hacks... I will have to go in and retrace my steps and remove code. I won't be able to just upload the last saved copy! I am sure I'll figure it out!

Until next time.

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Peekaboo Posts

I am testing out my newest hack from Hackosphere, Peekaboo Posts. This is where you have a summary of your post, and allow your readers...

...to read the rest of the post once they click on Display Entire Post. Neat! The only drawback I can think of is it will no longer be possible for me to print out my blog pages for hard copy archiving, since many of the posts will be in summary form to allow my readers to continue reading if they have interest in what I'm talking about, or not. I don't think I'll use it with EVERY post. [Update: Although I could go through the whole page, click Display Entire Post on every post and then print out, so it is still workable.]

Update: 8:47pm. There is actually another drawback, which is very disturbing to me. When using Internet Explorer, the title and labels disappear unless I move my mouse over where the links should be. I have written to the Hackosphere guy, to see if he has any suggestions. I am trying to be patient, but I hate SOOOO much that this is happening that I just want to upload my previous saved version of my template and be done with it and phooey with hacks!

I am going to leave my blog in place as is, though, at least for a day or two, to give him a chance to respond. Hi Mr. Hackosphere! If you are visiting my site, I hope you have some suggestions for what I might have done wrong.

Until next time.

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Labels at Top of Post and Drop Down Labels

I woke up at 4am this morning. I'm working from home this weekend, as I did last weekend. This is to prevent my having to drive into town 2 additional days each week. I have 15 days worth of work to complete in 9, so I'm having to take it home.

Instead of working... I'm playing with my blog. I have to have some fun, sometimes. And I did get up MUCH earlier than necessary, although I will probably need a nap later.

I have been trying to figure out how to change my labels to the top of my post so that my readers can decide whether to skip my post for the day due to label content.

During my search for the answer, which I never found, btw, so I guess either I'm using the wrong search words, no one else cares, or maybe it's so simple no one has bothered to post about it? Anyway... I found a beta blogger hack for making my labels into a drop down menu, rather than having them span such a long distance on my sidebar. So far, I like it. It was REALLY easy to do. If you are interested in doing the same, go to Hackosphere.

Then, I decided to play around with the HTML coding and see if I could figure out how to move my labels from the bottom to the top. Oh, btw, I did use the new easy, drop-n-drag feature in the templates section, and according to that editing area, my labels ARE at the top. However, they continued to show up at the bottom.


So here is what I did.

1. Save your template. Do not skip this step. You don't want to make a mistake and lose all the other changes you've ever made.

2. Check the box that says "Expand Widget Templates".

3. Search for these two lines of code:

<div class="post-header-line-1">
<div class='post-body'">

4. Remember where those are at as you are going to insert some code in the middle of the two lines.

5. Find this code, highlight these lines then go to Edit > Cut:

<p class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-2'>
<span class='post-labels'>
<b:if cond='data:post.labels'>
<data:postLabelsLabel/>
<b:loop values='data:post.labels' var='label'>
<a expr:href='data:label.url' rel='tag'>
<data:label.name/>
</a>
<b:if cond='data:label.isLast !="true"'> ,</b:if>
</b:loop> </b:if> </span> </p>

6. Now you are going to paste the above few lines of code, in between the first two lines of code as such:

<div class="post-header-line-1">
<p class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-2'>
<span class='post-labels'>
<b:if cond='data:post.labels'>
<data:postLabelsLabel/>
<b:loop values='data:post.labels' var='label'>
<a expr:href='data:label.url' rel='tag'>
<data:label.name/>
</a>
<b:if cond='data:label.isLast !="true"'> ,</b:if>
</b:loop> </b:if> </span> </p>
<div class='post-body'"> 

7. Now you are going to make one final change at this area:

<div class="post-header-line-1">
<p class='post-header-line post-header-line-2'>
<span class='post-labels'>
<b:if cond='data:post.labels'>
<data:postLabelsLabel/>
<b:loop values='data:post.labels' var='label'>
<a expr:href='data:label.url' rel='tag'>
<data:label.name/>
</a>
<b:if cond='data:label.isLast !="true"'> ,</b:if>
</b:loop> </b:if> </span> </p>
<div class='post-body'">

8. One more thing to do, and you are done. Find this line of code:

<p class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-3'>

9. Change it thusly:

<p class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-2'>

10. If you hit preview and get error messages, you will need to upload your saved template. Then you can try again.

Until next time.

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Blogger is Driving Me Mad

+++ = New paragraph

+++Okay, I just inserted an image while in "Compose" mode. Which would be the mode used by most folks, I would assume, especially ones that consider themselves "html illiterate". (hit space twice, now a third and fourth time).

+++I just hit enter twice, so I will have a space between the first sentence and this one. When I view the post in "Preview" there is no space. When I return from "Preview" to "Compose" my sentences are no longer separated by a space. So I hit enter once more to make a space between paragraphs. (Now I'm hitting enter twice again.)

+++Okay there should be a space between this sentence and the preceding paragraph. Let's check in "Preview". Now my spaces are gone again. I'll put them in again. (Hitting enter twice.)

+++Now I'll publish the post and watch, all my hard returns will be gone.

+++By the way... when I view this post in "edit html" there are dozens of "div" and "/div".

+++I have written to Blogger about this... I think it's a bug. Are you viewing this post, Blogger Team? Maybe it's just a Blogger beta issue? Anyone else having the same issue?

+++I have found two ways to work around this: 1) Only insert images via "Edit Html" or 2) Go into "Edit Html" mode and strip out all the dozens of unnecessary "div" and "/div" coding. Then, and only then, can I see hard returns where they should be, in my post.

+++One more factor: I am uploading images using "left" "right" or "center". I have not tried using no formatting yet. I am also using the "medium" sized image.

+++Blogger HELP!!

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A.F.5 Rename Your Files Program Review

I appreciate that Windows allows us to change filenames in one fell swoop, but I hate the naming convention. For example, if you want to change the name of ten pictures all in a row, click on (highlight) the first one in line, hold the SHIFT key, and while holding the SHIFT key, click on the last picture in line that you want to rename. All the pictures will be highlighted. Let go of the SHIFT key. While your cursor is hovering over the highlighted pictures, right-click for the shortcut menu. You will see an option to Rename. Click on that, and you will be allowed to rename the first picture in line, and all the others will be the same name, but they'll have a number appended with parentheses around the number. Like this: renamed_photo.jpg, renamed_photo(2).jpg, renamed_photo(3).jpg, etc. I just don't like those parentheses!

So about a year ago, I went looking for a program to rename my files the way I'd like to rename them. I found one I like and have continued to use. It's called A.F.5 Rename Your Files by Alex Fauland. It is a free program, and works quite well. I like to rename the photos that I take, since the camera names them something like 101_2875.jpg. Which isn't very easy to remember, nor very descriptive. ;-)

I'm slowly but surely working through labeling all my posts.

Until next time.

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Checking Out beta Blogger Templates

Oh boy, oh boy. I am so excited! I am not able to have my old template look, with my customized picture at top and my purple colors, but now I have the option for labels!! It is sooooo, soooooo easy!!!

Off to bed now!

Until next time.

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Why My Pictures Wouldn't Upload

I finally decided to take a look around at Blogger to see why my images wouldn't show up in my blog entries. I kept getting thumbnails that looked clickable, and the instructions to click "DONE" but there never was a "DONE" button. For days and days I've been putting up with it. I figured out how to steal the html coding to make the picture left-justified, right-justified or centered, but that was a pain in the neck.

I didn't really find anything on Blogger Help, but then I decided to check Blogger Buzz. I thought for some reason that might give me some information. When I got there, I realized it is Blogger's blog with regular updates on what is happening with Blogger. I also discovered that Blogger has a new blog for its beta version: Known Issues for Blogger in Beta. I'll have to visit there periodically to see what's happening.

So the solution turned out to be that I had to clear my cache in order to fix my problem. They did an upgrade on the 6th of September which caused the problem. Now I hope I remember the next time I have some weird problem that I need to check out Blogger Buzz...

But now you can see that we also had cinnamon rolls today. StarchyK strikes again.

Oh, one more thing. I bought myself a ten-pack of socks about four weeks ago. I washed all my clothes today and I'm down to two pairs. Now where have all the rest of my socks gone!! It was so nice having a matching pair of clean socks every morning to go out and milk.

Until next time.

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Next Blogger Goal

I really like Dan Rubin's "Thisaway" templates, but I'm craving a bit more customization. I'm longing for some purples and some different images. Soon I will do a makeover. I've written to Mr. Rubin and asked him about modifying his template, is that an acceptable thing to do. He wrote back within minutes, and said he knows of no copyright issues as far as his design, but I should check with Blogger. On Blogger help, I found this:

"How do I use my own template design? If you want to do more than just modify one of our default templates, you can even create your own from scratch, or download one from another site?"

I think that pretty much answers my question. So the first step I'm taking is I've printed out the current template. I'm identifying all the colors used, and will start making changes there. The only thing I'm unsure about is the images used and how to reproduce those. They are hosted on someplace called www.blogblog.com which says it is limited for Blog*Spot template images. Oh yeah? How would I access that, I wonder?

Until next time.

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