Blogging
All Narfed Up photography and words by Bryan Villarin
Can you please change your links to me?
If you’ve linked to me from blogged.btvillarin.com, can you please change that to allnarfedup.com? I’m just trying to get everything consistent, that’s all. Thanks!
P.S. If you’re using WordPress, try the Search and Replace plugin!
AllNarfedUp.com in the house
So, I’ve switched the blog from blogged.btvillarin.com to allnarfedup.com. If you’re reading this from your RSS reader, you shouldn’t notice any problem. I changed the URL in my FeedBurner account. I’ve also installed Matt’s no-www plugin, which makes my site Class B validated (and I don’t know what that means, but it sounds good to me).
James: The only hard part would be relinking all of the images, media files, etc (if you didn’t use relative links).
From the looks in August and September 2004, I guess I did use relative links. Yay for that not being broken!
Thanks to James Huff for the .htaccess line that’ll redirect people from the old domain to this new one, the feedback that I should just stick with one blog, and the “Moving WordPress” Codex page.
Any questions?
I’ve lost the inspiration to write
Looking at the previous posts on this page, it’s extremely noticeable that I haven’t focused on writing as much as I used to. I’m loving del.icio.us, so I use that when I come across cool articles worth sharing. I camp in Bloglines when I’m on the computer. When I’m not on the computer, I’m either hanging out with friends, catching up on TV shows I’ve “recorded”, or gaming on my ghetto PS2.
I believe the thing that’s changed is that I’ve “evolved” to using two blogs to keep personal and technology-related separate. Now, I feel more…pressured…to write more meaningful topics here, and I inadvertently created a mental block. I definitely don’t think I’ve been doing blog-worthy things lately to warrant regular posting at Bryan Off Topic.
Does any of that even matter? With RSS, I don’t really care if someone writes bi-weekly. There’s always content out there to read, watch, or listen to. I’m not doing anything controversial or questionable.
- Should I buy a new domain name and start fresh? (My last name is tough to spell when you hear it the first time. It isn’t exactly spelled like it sounds, so it can get frustrating.)
- Should I delete Bryan Off Topic and go back to using one blog?
The people that prompted me to think about this is Alex King and Matt Mullenweg (Photo Matt). Both have recently redesigned their website (and they look excellent!) More specifically, I like the use of the articles plugin Alex created, as well as the elegant simplicity. On Matt’s site, I love the header and navigation. Too bad I can’t design - maybe I should try and learn how to over the vacation period?
I love thoughts, especially if they’re from you. 
Performancing ads to come, new theme?
If I can get a couple bucks from my blog, who am I not to take advantage of that? I’ll be putting some non-intrusive ads up, in hopes to generate a little revenue. (If Performancing can hook me up, why not?) I’m no A-lister, but it’s worth a shot.
I have yet to create a theme for myself, but only because I haven’t had the need to “reinvent the wheel”. There’s tons of WordPress 2.0 themes out there! I’m sure it’d mean much more if it came from me.
Any ideas or starting points on how to go about this? Let’s just say I have no clue with all this. Help!
Using a blog for teachers and students
In January 2005, I wrote “Why teachers should blog“. I still think that stands.
My good friend, Andy, has been teaching now for four years. Two years ago, he wanted a website for students to refer to. Instead of manually creating webpages from Dreamweaver, I got him to use WordPress and he’s been using it ever since. In fact, I’ll be wiping it out and updating it to the latest version since the new school year started today.
Since Andy started the class site, he doesn’t upload photos to the server. I got him hooked on Flickr, and he now has a Pro account for both the class and himself; he just links to the photos. (An alternative to Flickr is Zooomr; notice the three o’s, not two.) He also bought his own domain name, so he’s not using a subdomain from me. (I’ll link to his new site once I update WordPress.)
If that sounds too scary, there’s also WordPress.com. You don’t need a webhost to set one up, and it’s free. (Cons: You can’t install your own themes or plugins.)
Aside from the blog, I suggest having a few pages that have links to good learning resources, MLA reference, etc. Andy has a contact page, upcoming events, and reading minutes for each student.
If you do install your own blog, look for WordPress plugins that’ll help protect and enhance your it. For starters:
Oh yeah, know your audience. If the majority of your parents and students use dialup, use a minimalistic theme and keep the images small to speed up loading time. (Enough said.)
For support, WordPress has their own forums. If you’d like to hire me, let me know! I feel I know enough to get by pretty well. However, FreshlyPressed has a solid group of people that might interest you if you want a more professional route. (Perhaps I should ask if I can join them?)
If you have a blog for your class, please link to them in the comments so others can see some examples and gather ideas. Thanks, and happy blogging!
Related articles elsewhere on the web:
Update: Andy’s site has been up - I just forgot to update this post. See mrandychang.com. It uses K2, which I’m liking a lot.
All Narfed Up marks two years
As of yesterday, I’ve been blogging here for two years. Incredible. Here’s a list of random things to wrap up my second year:
- If you wrote a quality post that you think a lot of people will like, find a site that posts similar topics and email them!
- According to Bloglines, I have 7 subscribers. I should really switch to FeedBurner to keep track of this, huh?
- I’m subscribed to about 110 feeds. Out of those, four are comics, three are deals sites, two are for music album releases, 23 are productivity-type blogs. The rest are personal or tech blogs.
- In terms of content, my blog has been all over the place for a long time. Fortunately, I think I’ve narrowed it down to tech and GTD pretty well.
- I miss the forums. I’ve lost contact with the majority of people that used to participate there.
- I’m trying not to reblog. I figure lots of people subscribe to most of the popular sites out there already.
- It’s funny when I look through the busy months and I’ve barely posted anything. What isn’t funny is knowing that there’s a lot of people who still don’t use news readers and might’ve deleted my bookmark because of inactivity. Crud.
- Along those lines, I wish news readers/aggregators became more mainstream. I’ll follow my own advice and see if emailing Kurt the Cyberguy will persuade him to do a report on the importance and effectiveness of news readers.
- The more I’m away from the computer, the more I can notice things to write about.
Now, for some posts (which I deemed interesting) from this last year in blogging:
- How [do] timesheets work? (Humor)
- My methods of troubleshooting computers (Computers)
- Trash bags in your car (Cleanliness)
- Reduce Windows XP size (Computers)
- ScanR (Camera phones)
- Spamgourmet (Email)
- RSS Tutorial (Productivity/websites)
- Protect yourself from check washing (Identity theft)
- Hamachi (Computers/Connectivity/Security)
- Train others how to use email (Email)
- One task at a time (GTD)
- Utilizing [the grouping tag] with iTunes (Music/iPod/iTunes)
- Power strip liberator (Electronics)
- Get back to them later (GTD)
- Using a Post-it with ATM cards (Lifehack)
- A blogging epiphany - trying to remove the stereotype (Blogging)
- Chill a bit (GTD)
- Why is Outlook broken? (Email)
- Have a laugh with some comics (Humor)
- How to speed up podcasts for free with Audacity (Podcasts)
- Fight traffic tickets with Ticket Assassin
- Review of Yahoo! Maps Beta (Web 2.0)
- Hack your cell phone to save minutes (Cell Phones/Lifehack/Money)
You’re one of the main reasons why I keep blogging…that, and I hope I become famous. Thanks for sticking around, and I hope I help you even more in the years to come!
Adding Flickr images to your blog post
Tom Raftery wrote a quick-and-easy guide on how to insert images in his blog posts. In this case, he uses Flickr. (I do, too.)
When I want to use an image in a blog post I use the copy of the image which is stored on Flickr. This has the advantages that:
- it saves me diskspace from my hosting account,
- it saves me bandwidth from my hosting account and
- it is easy because Flickr provides the code to use the image from their site!
Tip: You might like the Flickr Photo Album plugin (related post), but only if you’re running your own install of WordPress. (That means you’re not using WordPress.com.)
[Read "Adding images to your blog post"]
Add to Any
Have you heard of Add to Any? I just did, and I’m really excited about implementing it here.
I initially wrote a quick plea for someone to develop a WordPress plugin that’s a dropdown box for multiple feed reader services. You know, I’d hate to turn you away because I didn’t have a button to add my feed to your feed reader. Fortunately, I didn’t post that question because I wouldn’t have used it after finding Add to Any.
Basically, I want you to be able to:
- subscribe to my feed with whatever feed reader you use, or
- submit a post (or the whole site!) to your favorite bookmarking service
If you’ve got a site or blog, integrate this. I’ll be doing this soon. If a site doesn’t use Add to Any, you’re in luck - there’s a bookmarklet! Man, great job, MicroPat!
Update: Thanks to James, I’ll be using iFeedReaders.
Customizing Regulus with a header image
If you’re a WordPress.com user, you’ll notice the huge improvements Matt and his crew have made. For awhile, themes were just slowly released, with not much customization. Widgets came along, so that helped a lot. Now, I just realized that the Regulus theme offers one of the biggest customizations people will ultimately want: their own header image! (The default Kubrick theme allows you to change colors in that header image, but this is so much better.)
So how do you create your own header image? I know little when it comes to image editing, so Paint.NET (freeware) is my choice of software. It’s supposed to be MS Paint super-sized, and then some. If you want more power, then Gimp is a Photoshop contender (except it’s not as pretty). Remember: the dimensions of the image has to be 730 pixels wide by 140 pixels high.
Why am I writing this? Well, at the moment, two of my friends are using Regulus [because of that feature], but one of them created another WP.com blog to link to the image. So if you didn’t know, you can upload the image into your own account and link to it. (The file doesn’t need to be on some other server.)
- When you’re done creating the header image, upload the image to your WordPress.com blog.
- In the “Write Post” page, click the “Browse All” button to find the header image you uploaded.
- Click it and make sure its options are “Using Original” and “Not Linked“.
- “Close Options” then drag the image into the post area to get the URL to the image.
- Copy that URL.
- Go to the “Presentation” tab, and make sure you’ve already selected Regulus as your current theme<./li>
- Go to “Current Theme Options“.
- See the “Header Image URL”? Paste the URL you just copied.
In the header I created, I think it’s best to just type in the title of your blog into the image. It’s more personalized, especially since you can be using your own font. If you do this, uncheck “Header Text” so it doesn’t display your blog title for you. Lastly, pick a color scheme that doesn’t clash with your header. Gorgeous!
A blogging epiphany - trying to remove the stereotype
I started blogging viciously in August 2004. However, I’ve been more offline lately. I was even keeping up with listening to a lot of podcasts, but with nine of them to keep up with, I find myself listening to the shorter ones.
What happened? Basically, I figured how to manage my life more efficiently, and I stopped tinkering to get down to business. For me, business is school, work, coaching, friends, and music (not in order). Right now, my mentality is that when I learn something new, and it isn’t mentioned anywhere else, that’s the only time I’ll write. Now I’m leaning towards content quality, not quantity.
Since blogging is becoming more mainstream, it’s taken a bad stereotype of people who have no authority ranting without any basis of facts and proof. I’d hate for someone to come across my blog, read an entry, and think, “Man, what an idiot! He’s spitting out a bunch of garbage! Blogs are stupid.” Really, I’m not even being sarcastic.
It’s all about networking and creating relationships. To me, blogging is like Myspace for everyone else, except it looks better.
Oh yeah, this also has to do with the fact that I got the ball rolling with a lot of my friends; they’ve been using services like Flickr and WordPress.com.
How about you? Why do you blog? Do your readers know anything about you?
Tip: If you use WordPress, create an “About” page, then state the topics you’ll be talking about and where you’re coming from. It’ll help new visitors understand whether they’ll want to subscribe to you right off the bat. Quality subscribers, not quantity.
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