Blogging Pratfalls and Resurrections: Day Twenty-One

The formatting of one of our posts was misbehaving today. We kept repeating the same action until we realized that something must be awry with the HTML coding. Bravely, we ventured into the "edit HTML" box of blogger.com and started the detective work. It was not as daunting as you might imagine; If you can master Sudoku, you can check code... Look for the patterns. Using this approach we scanned all the HTML code and found two lines of code had run on to each other - and noticed that the string of code didn't mirror what was written at the beginning of the text para. One deletion of a pointy bracket later, problem was solved.


As Blogger.com opines: "CODE IS POETRY." And that was one helluva poetic moment.

We also learned that video clips should be under two minutes. Oops--we've had a fair few well above that. Ok, ok, the following clip exceeds the requisite by 23 seconds, but it was hilarious, so we posted it anyway.






Lists are another untapped blog tool that we have largely ignored. People love lists, according to our blogging expert Carrie Rickey, and we have deprived our reading public of this popular device. To make up for that glaring omission, we offer you a list of lists:

1. The 10 Most Hated Foods
2. The 1000 Best Movies Ever Made
3. Books Banned in the United States
4. World's Wealthiest People
5. Most Popular Ice Cream Flavors
6. 7 Words You Can't Say on TV or Radio
7. Top 10 Wierd Anomolies in Medicine
8. Best and Worst Fashion Trends of All Time
9. 100 Most Popular Cocktail Recipes
10. 100 One-Hit Wonders

Finally, after our proud moment of shooting and posting a video clip, we learned from a tech-savvy 14 year old (the offspring of one of us) that Iphoto is not the preferred method to perform this task. Actual quote, "Duuhh, Mom. Of course you can do it in Iphoto, but Imovie is much better because you can edit it. I used it for my final history project, remember? If you want I can give you a lesson." So, we look forward to our upcoming lesson, and you can look forward to a cinematic tour de force, coming soon to a screen (very) near you. Well, if not a tour de force, at least some edited clips.

Posted by: Claire and Keri

Day Two: Blogging for Beginners

Do you ever feel like you are climbing Mt. Everest? We do.






Well, we built the thing. We are posting on it. But what exactly is a blog? In short, what fine mess have we gotten ourselves into? Can we expect nothing but trouble?

Not big on reinventing the wheel, we came across a great description of a blog that addresses the subject from several angles. Thank you, Parm Farm. We also found a great how to create a blog video. Thank you, YouTube.

Having been advised by some cyber marketing gurus that blogger was the best host in terms of generating traffic because of its connection to Google's ubiquitous search engines, here we are.

The blogger site is pretty user friendly if you know the jargon:

--"Templates" are the ready made layouts; just pick one and name your blog. No messing about with margins, spacing or any of those headaches.

--"Gadgets" are anything you add to the blog besides the textual material; title--which they call a 'header', photos and illustrations, video clips. We just discovered that there is a feature on blogger that enables you to post video, which might have saved us a lot of time on Day One fiddling with the Zoolander clip although now that we are in the know on YouTube's 'share', it couldn't be simpler.


--When in compose mode (aka "posting"), the little icons at the top of your text box are quite handy. Bold and italic are self explanatory. Just highlight the text you want to emphasize and click on the appropriate icon. Spell check works the same way it does in Word or any other program we have used in the past. The green thing that looks like an overweight inchworm wearing glasses is for hyperlinks--just cut and paste the link as directed and you get one of those cool blue underlined or highlighted phrases that enables you to jump right to another place. The mini postcard adds a picture--click it, then click 'browse'. Select the picture you wish to post from your desktop, then click "upload", then "done". When you return to your posting/edit screen, there should be a bunch of gibberish there. (This is html--the language spoken by your computer--don't mess with anything inside the pointed brackets--the things that resemble the 'greater than/less than' symbols in elementary math--your computer will translate the html into a picture, boldface type, or whatever you have told it to do. But not if you change so much as a period.) Next, hit "Save Now" then "preview". If all went according to plan, you should be looking at the picture you wanted to post. If not, try, try again. That's what we do.

Or, put another way, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." --Lao-Tzu

Posted by: Keri