Learning curves

Gradually, I am finding my way around my Note (which I think was named especially to amuse people like me, with a Hull accent!) This afternoon I thought I'd try the next step. Can I remember how to write a blog post without Ms writer?  Since there isn't a Squarespace Android app right now, I'm back to the old days of writing directly to the Squarespace interface.

 

Patience needed then.

The other small issue is that I haven't really got anything to blog about.  So, I'll simply ask your advice about why the weeds are slowly strangling this hebe,  ask what you reckon is eating our irises, and invite you to enjoy the wonderful scent of the freesias on the kitchen windowsill.  You might also like to admire our one snail free hosta in its special snail resistant pot. We need more - hostas and pots with a lip which snails find too difficult to negotiate!

Meanwhile, George is wondering if he'd be brave enough to parachute from Linda's church tower.

I'm trying a new picture editor too, as I work out if I am going to manage without baby laptop on our travels. So far, it's not looking that hopeful.  But I am optimistic, because each day brings a new discovery!

Taking a deep breath

I’m doing my best not to sink and determined not to call for a  lifebelt!

I thought it was time to get out the “Samsung Ultrabook” and give it a whirl.  Put it through its paces and make sure it could manage what I had in mind for it.  Mind you, my hero has been doing a bit of  laptop-whispering in the last few days and I believe he has made it (almost) watertight. 

Windows 8, that is.

My knowledgeable and very computer-literate friends have resorted to all kinds of desperate measures and I’ve heard all kinds of stories from those who have swum in this pool already.  We’d have been very happy to have continued with Windows 7, puttering along doing what we do and knowing how to do it.  But a new machine meant a new operating system, so we pinched our noses, took a deep breath and jumped straight in at the deep end.  Well, my hero did the jumping in…I’ve just swum a width at the shallow end.

Enough of the metaphors!  Before I even hit the “on” button, my hero reduced the number of tiles on the opening page, making sure there was no unnecessary clutter to distract us from what we wanted to do.  We don’t need a complicated laptop, just a machine which would do the normal, everyday tasks we expect it to do: email, photo management, reading and writing blogs and browsing the internet.  We’ve got our favourite bookmarks there, customised the toolbars and that’s about it.

Oh, and I haven’t put any photos on it yet.

Did you guess?

Update on Wednesday, February 13, 2013 at 10:33PM by Gill Thomas

One thing did defeat me in the end - I couldn't work out how to shut it down.  Cntl-Alt-Del delivered the "shut down" option in the end.  Seemed pretty drastic to me!

The days fly

I began recording the days as a result of a suggestion from my Mum that by doing so, I’d somehow be able to keep these special times forever.   At this time of the year there is so much happening, so many lovely things to do and to see, I can’t help myself but simply make the most of it all. Of course, if I’m busy doing then that doesn’t leave much time for recording.  Hence the lengthy silence at this end.

Well, of course, I am recording it all, just not quite in the finished state.  I’ve got folders of photographs which tell the story of secret santas and party games.  I’ve got little piles of tickets and programmes from choir concerts and other bits of ephemera which will eventually find their way into my December Daily journal.

I’ve got records of meetings and rather more serious training events, to which I did my best to bring a little seasonal cheer.

Thankfully I have no battle scars from braving Oxford Street on the busiest shopping day of the year.  Well, we walked all of a hundred metres or so, keeping our little group of family and friends close together amidst the excitement of it all, on our way to an early supper and Tra’s recital. 

A huge surprise to find familiar faces on the front page of Vietnam+ then, but even greater amusement when Google Translate offers “Mark Thomas in a province west of the capital, near the coastal city of Bristol, and his wife train more than two hours to get to London.”   Most important, however, were the great reviews today!

Sadly, Diana had to return to Los Angeles yesterday but we brought Mary home with us and have settled into an easy week-before-Christmas routine of a little light mooching about local places and fiddling about in the studio and kitchen, talking twenty to the dozen, catching up and making plans.  Oh, and watching the last series of Downton again with Mary, ensuring she gets a head start before it’s shown in the USA after Christmas. Jane, you should be here too!

So for now, we’re savouring the days and leaving the recording of them till there’s more time, when the house is quiet and I can sit and recall how lovely it is to be home in all the twinkle.

The little “topiary” dog in the photo above made us smile, the more so when we walked a little further down Long Street in Tetbury to the flower shop and turned around.  The general opinion though, was that the joke has now worn thin, especially since other dogs have taken to using it as an example.

See what I mean?

Moving right along

For a while, I’ve known that friends have had problems leaving a comment on my 365 page, over on Blogger.  I have been similarly frustrated by the new interface and the lack of flexibility, not to mention being at the mercy of Google’s every little whim.  Over the last few days I’ve been making a few small changes, quietly moving my four year’s worth of photographs from Blogger to a page here, just next door to this one.

The 365 link above, which used to lead to an archive of photographs displayed in an ipad-unfriendy Flash format, now holds my daily photograph and will be updated daily – or very nearly!

I’ve also tweaked a few links and removed some others, since my Kindle has made LibraryThing a little redundant and Pinterest has come along and needs a link, I think.  You might also spot that I’ve added a “search” feature, which might prove useful, too. 

Hope it’s all working fine and that leaving a comment is no longer the challenge that Blogger seemed to make it.  Let me know if you find something amiss, won’t you?

A few things to think about

Like quite a few friends, I’ve been grabbed by the Pinterest bug.  I won’t say I spend hours on there, but I can see how easily I could get sucked in.  Like the old days of internet surfing, it’s easy to follow one bit of eye candy to the next and before long, an hour has passed and little has been achieved!

We’re currently planning our summer road trip and South Dakota will feature, so I was amused to find the SD Pinterest board.  In fact, I was impressed by the fully featured website for the state which made planning our visit really easy!  I repinned a couple of the photos to my own Pinterest board and moved right along. As I did,  I muttered something about it to the Chief Road Trip Planner sitting beside me, which prompted him to look up quizzically and ask “What?  Pinterest?  What’s that then?”

Question #1: Is Pinterest a woman thing?

Generally speaking, I use my Pinterest board as a repository for things I might otherwise lose track of, as inspiration for a project or to store one or two ideas and thoughts.  It’s a great way of storing all these visual prompts and I would say that it fulfils the same purpose as my bookmarks did – before it was quicker to google everything!

So, here we are in February and I notice that my blog has suddenly rather a lot of referrals from Pinterest.  That provokes a little curiosity so I dig around in my stats and find the picture above was pinned by someone onto their Valentine page.  Fine with me – no problem.  I posted a tutorial on how to make the little cards last year and since it’s hardly rocket science, I wasn’t really giving much away.  But once again, the word “pinterest” was on my mind, even if it was for a slightly different reason this time.

Today, however, I am reaching the conclusion that Pinterest must have reached a critical mass.  Firstly, I come across this article which raises all kinds of very pertinent points about ownership of images, ideas and material and certainly offers food for thought regarding what I share and how I protect my photographs and ideas.

Question #2: Have you given any thought to potential copyright issues?  Will it change how readily you share ideas and post photographs of your work?

No sooner had I read this, than I came across someone else asking herself this very same question.  Amy has written a blog post about how she is thinking carefully about to protect her work too.  Well worth a read, as are the posts immediately preceding that one.

And then, as if to hit the message firmly home, I opened the “Social Media” section of Zite as I was reading my ipad and what headline was there, staring me in the face? 

How to Market your Consumer Based Business on Pinterest.

Which brings me to my final question #3:  How much longer will it be before Pinterest is overrun by commercial sites and marketing men?

I haven’t even begun to think about this aspect yet.

Oh my.