I'm Not A Robot

Sometimes Blogger gets the message. Sometimes it doesn't recognise me and I have to type in words to prove my humanity. Who knew that one day we'd all be proving we're not AIs by copy typing nonsense letters that appear on a screen? I always thought a Turing test would be more interesting than that.

Every time it happens on this blog I want to scream.

1. Blogger is supposed to recognise me so as to not count my page hits, and
2. It shouldn't be asking anyone to verify they're not a robot, because I've turned word verification off.

Has anyone got any ideas as to how to get rid of it?

I did a silly thing

I didn't know it was a silly thing; I thought that setting my laptop to "hibernate" would save power. Only there's a "known issue" that Windows Vista can't cope with hibernating and hangs. The trouble is, the issue wasn't known to me. So I hibernated, then I tried to restart the laptop and it hung. And kept on hanging. By the time I'd done a number of power resets (ie pressing the power button until it turned off) I had buggered the disk and the computer was working like a slug on Prozac, only not so fast or so reliable.

I've now spent two or three days reinstalling all the Windoze updates, after resetting the laptop to factory settings. I've got all my data. I'm reinstalling my blog reader and my Twitter program and all the other bits that I need. I've nearly sorted out the font size issue. What I haven't got is my bookmarks or any idea of what I've been missing for the last few days.

So if I've missed something scintillating that you've said, feel free to let me know. Otherwise, have a good August Bank Holiday weekend and whatever you do, don't hibernate.

New ways to look at fairyhedgehog

Try cutting and pasting this http://fairyhedgehog.blogspot.com/view/mosaic into your address bar.

If you click on the word "Mosaic" in the top right corner, you'll get a choice of ways to view the blog. I'm not sure if there's an easier way to get at this; it's something Blogger have just brought out.

What do you think?

Where to get pictures for your blog

Lexi Revellian has written a helpful post over at BookBuzzr about How to Write a Popular Writing Blog.

One thing that struck me was

Use images – a picture is indeed worth a thousand words. Google images is a good resource; aim for striking images that are relevant (it doesn’t have to be in an obvious way).

I've started using Flickr for most of my images because they have a huge Creative Commons section, and that way I know I'm not violating copyright.

When you go to Flickr, you'll see a set of links across the page giving drop-down menus. You want Explore/Creative Commons. You'll then be offered a variety of licenses, you can choose any of them and click on See More. That will take you to a page of images with a Search box at the top and now you can search Creative Commons pictures for anything you like.

I know that Old Kitty takes her own pictures of Charlie every day - and very photogenic he is too! Where do you go when you want pictures for your blog?

Party on

I'm nearly packed to go tomorrow. Who'd have thought there'd be so much to do?

The cats are not happy. They know something is up. They don't have to go to a cattery, we have Animals at Home coming in twice a day, but they won't be allowed out. On past form, Rufus will bugger off for a few days when we get back.

We leave in the morning and I get the internet back two weeks later. If I can find an internet café I'll pop in and say hi!

I see Blogger has enabled spam filtering, so comment moderation is only set up for really old posts. You can have a party in here as much as you like! But if you make a mess with the food fights I'm not clearing it up.

Bye for now!

FAQ

If you visit this blog (not just use a reader) you might have noticed that I've added some pages and I've now worked out how to let you comment on them! It was a difficult process requiring me to tick a single box for each page but I managed to work it out.

So far only one person has found and commented on the FAQ page. If I don't get asked a few more questions then it's going to look a bit bare. If there's something you're dying to ask, why not do that now?

Blogger gets a face lift

Blogger has just brought out a whole load of new templates, bringing it more in line with Wordpress. You can choose from a host of background images, and have transparency and rounded corners, in fact there's almost anything you might need. Almost everything. There's still a bit of tweaking to do if you want a favicon or your own background image. But it's a big improvement.

I've spent all morning playing with it.

(The picture is in case you're reading this in a reader.)

Font poll results

Georgia (serif) 1 vote
Verdana (sans serif) 4 votes
Courier (serif, fixed width) 1 vote

The discussion was inconclusive but the impression I took away was that older monitors and machines do not render serif fonts well and that is why sans serif fonts have been recommended in the past for use online, although this is becoming less of an issue with newer computers. Serif fonts are probably easier on the eye for most people when they are properly rendered but as I have no idea of the age of your systems I will stick with Verdana.

Thank you eveyone who voted or joined in the discussion.

Which one do you like best?

I'm trying out different looks for this site. There is a poll in the sidebar for you to vote on which on you like best.

Mid-blue background

Light Blue Background

Blue Page Outline

Pale grey borders

Minimal

Let me know which you prefer, or if it doesn't matter to you either way. If you have any other suggestions then I'm listening.

PS There was a wonderful meet up of five of EE's minions yesterday but I'm too tired to post about it today. Photos tomorrow!

Rabbit Hole Day

Just in case you're interested, January 27th (Lewis Carroll's birthday) is Rabbit Hole Day when bloggers and journallers change their blogging style for the day.

Let's have a day where nobody's life makes sense anymore, where any random LJ* you click on will bring you some strange new tale. Let's all fall down the Rabbit Hole for 24 hours and see what's there. It will be beautiful.

*If you replace 'LJ' with 'blog' it all makes sense.

I wonder if there are blogs where we wouldn't even notice?

Do you want a reply?

When I first started blogging I was lucky if I got even one comment on any post. (Thank you, Jessi, Sylvia and Robin for being among my first commenters.) I made sure to reply to every comment to show that I was reading them.

Now I sometimes get four or five comments on a post before I get time to reply to any of them. Sometimes you talk to each other and I'm not sure you expect a reply. Sometimes you say something short and funny, or profound, and I'm not sure what to say to you. I feel awkward because I'm not sure if by replying to each of you I'm keeping a stranglehold on the blog, or if you expect me to respond.

My sense is that some comments need a response and some don't, although I'm not confident that I can identify which is which. So I decided that I needed to find out what you think. What do you want when you comment on a blog?

Rate this post

If you want to know about the little tick boxes that have appeared under all my posts then you might like to go and look at Polenth's Quill which is where I found out about them. Polenth's explanation about how to insert them in a Blogger blog is much better than anything I could write.

I'm not sure if I'll keep them. I think it depends on whether anyone uses them.

I'm an idiot

There I was, all proud of my geeky skills, and then instead of backing up my existing blog template I saved a new template. I can't get the old one back and I still haven't got the quick edit feature back that was my reason for fiddling.

I have lost* all my widgets.

I'll have to sort it all out when I've written my 2k for today. Bugger.

*Edited to add: not lost, just misplaced. I need more caffeine.

Why I've been quiet lately

I'm tired and ill and have been for a while and it only gets worse. I've had no joy from the National Health Service (NHS) so I finally found a private doctor, Dr. Peatfield, who has diagnosed thyroid disorder.

Technically Dr. Peatfield is working as a nutritionist because if you treat thyroid disorders in the UK you have to work within General Medical Council guidelines and basically they are wrong. If I lived in the US I would have been on thyroid medication since October.

Anyway, I'm much slowed up in body and mind. I'm hoping that with treatment I'll start to feel better over the coming weeks and months and be able to post and comment a bit more. I might even get back to writing. Now, should I do NaNoWriMo this year or get on with the science fiction novel I've started?

Stupid Filter

I've just tried out the Stupid Filter on my LOLcats post and to my suprise it found it

not likely to be stupid

It is my most visited post but only for the cute picture. I'd better put up some more pictures of my little monsters darlings soon.

Not blogging

I've found the solution while I'm learning to type again. The effing librarian put me on to The Lazy Bloggers Post Generator. It produced this:

Good heavens! I just had a cup of tea and realised I have not updated this since people stopped clapping and Tinkerbell died... You would not believe I spend all my time in front of a computer. Apologies to my regular readers! Even the little blue ones!.

I am tied up with discovering time doesn't stand still, spending my husband's money, just generally being a mother to my cats, my day is passing in a blur from dawn to early afternoon. I am not being a whinging Pom or anything. I need a nap.

I will try to remember I promised you I will write something that makes sense soon. Well, I'll try. I mean it!.

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

New Widget

I'm just trying out a new widget on this blog that will affect most of the links. Snap Shots offers a preview of each link's destination site, or else of a relevant Wikipedia article or the RSS feed or other stuff that I hope will be relevant. I don't get to choose what is displayed: Snap Shots does.

I've set it up so that there's a little icon by the side of a link for you to put your mouse over if you want to see whatever is on offer, rather than have the whole link bring up a preview. You can use the Options icon (top right-hand corner of the preview) to change the views you are getting: you can have larger or smaller previews and choose to view the RSS feed of a site or a preview of it. I rather like the way that it gives the reader so much control over what he or she is viewing. You can also use the Options icon to turn the feature off completely.

I found it is very easy to turn it off but not so easy to get it back. If you turn it off by mistake and want to restore it, you need to delete the snap.com cookies from your browser cache then restart your browser.

I'd be interested in any feedback. If this is annoying then I'll just get rid of it.

Picture problems

I've been asked for pictures of our adorable new kittens. Pictures will follow but there are two technical hitches.

Hitch no. 1: My camera is so slow it takes an appreciable time to take a picture. You press a button and then you have time to say "kerpow kerplunk" before the camera takes the picture on the last k of kerplunk. That's a long time for a kitten to move in! My phone camera is better but doesn't have a flash so it can give quite blurry pictures indoors. I'm not sure I've got any good pictures yet, where "good" means that you can see what they are.

Hitch no. 2: my new hard drive arrives tomorrow, and until then I don't have any software for getting pictures from my camera or phone onto the pc, or for resizing them once they are on. So even if any of the photos I've taken are any good I can't do anything with them yet.

The good news is that my son is going to install my hard drive when it arrives tomorrow and I'll have a wonderful fast pc. Yay!

Where do all the good posts go?

I'm walking into town, enjoying the fresh air and the greenery. It's streets all the way but with pretty houses and gardens, and hedges between the pavement and the road. There are two houses joined across the road by an archway. As I walk, I turn over in my mind what to put on this blog next. Ideas swarm into my head and I write two or three killer posts before I get into town.

I have a look round the shops and wander back. I get home. I sit at the pc. My mind is completely empty. Most people have to practice Zen Buddhism for years to get a mind as empty as mine now is.

Where do all the good posts go?