I Made a Birthday Card – so why do I feel so bad about it?

Wow it’s been warm today – our summer has arrived at last – just when we are well into Autumn!  I have been sitting in the garden today and it has been like a Summers day.  If it is still as warm tomorrow I wonder if it will break October records as I certainly don’t ever remember it being this warm in October.

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I made a birthday card which I must say looked really quite good for my first attempt at making a pop-up card. I should have thought to have taken a photo of it to show you  before I put it in the envelope!   I saw the instructions on StumbleUpon a little while ago and thought I would have a go.  Now why is it that I feel a bit of a cheapskate to send a handmade birthday card – will they think I am too tight to buy one I wonder.  I am sure some people will appreciate that a lot of effort has gone into making it rather than just popping one in the supermarket trolley but then I am sure some others will think I don’t think enough of them to pay for one and just made one instead.  It’s hard to know what people think about this isn’t it.  It’s funny really but somehow I feel that if I make one it is a bit like making one for Mothers Day at school.  It’s a sort of Blue Peter / school / Sunday school project rather than a personal thought-out and spend time doing thing for adults.  I think my card looks quite good, although a tad on the amateur side.  Oh well it is done now and I am certainly not going to just dump it after all that work and buy a cheap one down the shop.  I will try to judge by the reaction when they open it but then it is just the same when you buy someone a present – you can sometimes go to a lot of trouble to choose something you think is particularly suitable for that person and yet they don’t seem particularly enthralled when you give it to them and you wonder if you would have been better to have just bought them a bottle of plonk like nearly everyone had done.  So does it seem like I am being “cheap” if I make a card?

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It’s a bit like my pendants – I try to keep my prices to supermarket / clothes shop type prices, as money is so tight for everyone at the moment, and yet would people think “that is expensive for something handmade” or would they think “that must be rubbish to be that cheap for a handmade item”.  Would people rather buy a pendant that they think is better because it is manufactured and sold in a supermarket or clothes shop, even though there may be thousands of others wearing the same pendant, or would they prefer to buy one that they know is unique and that no-one else will ever have?  I would rather make a little on a few sales than a bit more on just one sale and I also want to get my Pendant-Heaven name known so I do like to keep my prices low.   Somehow though, it always seems easier for people to pop a pendant in the supermarket trolley with the groceries than buy something online.  I am sure the crystal lovers and people more into new age type things, Healing, Reiki, Tarot, Angels etc., are likely to appreciate them more as they know about crystals and know they are all unique, each and every one. 

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I am sure everyone who makes and sells their items have similar problems.  Why buy a handmade card and pay the postage twice to send a card to someone?  Why buy a scarf that has been made by hand when you have the choice of hundreds in shops where you can actually see them?  Why buy a handmade candle when you could probably conjure one up yourself if you had the time?  So many reasons as to why should anyone buy handmade?  Would you appreciate it more knowing the effort that someone has put in to make it?  Would you like it better as it is individually unique?  Which some aren’t of course, as some artisans make loads of identical items or use very slightly different materials, although they are still handmade.  I buy one-of-a-kind bears as you know and although they are all a bit different each artist has their own style and whereas some will say a bear is a limited edition and make 5 of them another artist will make one but if other people also wanted one like it they will make 5 others but all slightly different so they are all one-off.  Other bear artists will only ever make one like that and once it has sold they will never make another similar one.  I can only ever make one of all my pendants as they all look different because they are all made by nature.  They can be cut in the same shape but the natural patterning is always different.  There are a few exceptions of course as it would be hard to tell the difference between Rose Quartz gemstones for instance – they do have different patterning of course but it is not so obvious to the naked eye.

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Then of course there is the debate as to whether your handmade item will be well made or a load of rubbish but just look good in the photo.  There again some photos can make a bad thing look good or a good thing look bad or not do it any justice.  Personally I find continuous comments in my ebay feedback that my pendants looked even better than the photograph – LOL now is that just a complement about my pendants or does it prove I am useless as a photographer?  I know I have improved a lot as a photographer as time has gone on.  We as a family rarely took photos and indeed I had to buy a new camera when I started selling my pendants online as the old one was nowhere near good enough.  I have now learnt to brighten them using a photo editor which I think has brought them up more or less back to how they really look but I need to try different ways and different places to take the photos as the bathroom windowsill in definitely not ideal (especially for my bad back, to have to lean over the sink to take them).  It also restricts what time of day I can take them as I only really have about a 2 hour interval when the sun has moved round but it is still bright enough to take the photos, and yet I still have to be careful not to get the reflection of the window opener on the gemstone.

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I suppose a buyer takes a risk buying a handmade item online as they only have a photograph of the item which can be deceiving as to what the buyer will eventually end up with.  You could buy a handmade bag, for example, that looked great in the photo but when you receive it the stitching is messy and the material is frayed which gives way after 3 weeks of using it.  You are really out on a limb when buying something from a photo when you don’t know how well made it is or how good the quality is of the materials used and the workmanship.  I suppose reading feedback on the seller is the only way to make sure you are buying something that you will be really wanting for yourself or as a present.  I am lucky as I have excellent feedback on ebay and have some wonderful complementary comments rather than just “great item and fast delivery” or something similar.  My customers have made great statements in the few keystrokes they are allocated in the feedback section on ebay.  But on ArtFire you can only comment if you are a member, so all the items you sell to non-members (which I presume will be the majority) will not get any feedback which seems silly to me and I hope they change that.  It is early days for me on ArtFire but I did want to have my own little online shop rather than keep selling on ebay.  I hope to eventually just use ArtFire but until sales pick up on there I have to use ebay too as I do sell a lot on there.  I think here in the UK we are not really “into” handmade items and don’t really know of online sites such as ArtFire and Etsy etc.   They do seem to be more popular in the US but hopefully they will get more of a foothold here in the UK soon.

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Although yesterdays blog had a little bit in about deleting a wrong entry on Google Chrome it was mainly about my life so I probably wrongly titled it so please do give it a read if you like just reading my “normal” stuff.

LOL – and after my long post today, here is my usual snippet of trivia:

An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.

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And here is todays chuckle:

SENIOR DRIVING
As a senior citizen was driving down the motorway, his car phone rang.
Answering, he heard his wife's voice urgently warning him,

"Vernon, I just heard on the news that there's a car going the wrong way on the M25. Please be careful!"

"Hell," said Vernon, "It's not just one car. It's hundreds of them!"

How to Delete a Wrong Entry in Google Chrome's Autofill and the rest of my day

Well I had a very frustrating but a very successful day yesterday.  I managed to finally work out how to delete the stupid mistakes I had made with my login details when logging into websites.  Unless you have Google Chrome you wont realise what I am talking about – but it has this brilliant feature that stores your logins, address etc. so that you can put in a few letters and it fills in the rest for you – not passwords of course).  So instead of having to type in your whole email address you only have to type in the 1^st letter and a blue box comes up with your email address for you to click into so with 2 clicks you are done. But you know how your fingers run away with you on the keyboard and you mistakenly add the password to your login or your put the first letter and then thinking you had clicked into the blue autofill choice you click the return button so you have a one letter or a couple of letters now as an alternative choice to login.  Of course these are saved for all to see so I needed to do something about it.  Well I have been looking for ages on the Google Chrome help site and all the other help sites online and I found loads of people had the same problem and there were a number of solutions but the ones that worked were for a Mac and not for a PC.  Well in the end I tried some more things myself and found the solution, for me anyway,y as it has cleared my extra bits that I didn’t want.  So if you are on Google Chrome and have the same problem this worked for me so I have posted it here and hopefully anyone else searching for the answer will find it.  I did also put my solution on the help sites I had been looking at, the ones that didn’t need me to register just to leave the answer.

How to Delete a Wrong Entry in Google’s Autofill

On a PC use this to delete any entries added in error (i.e. wrong email address or a missing letter etc.) and if you put your password in by mistake. Or even those one letter entries that saved when you clicked them without looking.

To delete an entry type enough letters in the box to bring up the one you want to delete so that it shows up blue under the box (as if ready to load) then click Ctrl+Delete. 

The other thing I managed to do was sort out a problem on my ArtFire website shop where my pendants were not automatically listing to the Google search engine since a new thing had kicked in.  It was all to do with variants being listed but of course I haven’t got any variants in other colours etc. as my pendants are all one-off unique ones.  I finally had so many failed listings that I decided to sort it out myself as I didn’t seem to be getting any help again – why is it that help sections never have answers to your particular problem or it they do then it is invariably something you have already tried.  Well I finally worked out that the ones which had failed (which were ok before) had their automatic colour as # or the code for black (I can’t remember what that was now).  The others may have the same erratic colours but I was only concerned about the ones that weren’t showing up on the search engines.  So I went through all the problem ones and changed the automatic colour to something similar to the gemstone colour on the pendant and hey presto they worked.  I am sure they would have probably worked whatever colour I put in as it was at least a different colour but I did my best and tried to match the pendant to the colour chart.  This took me ages and was very annoying as I had more important things to do like improving my earlier photos of pendants on there.

So it was a trying day but rewarding in the end because at least I could finish what I started and to me that is important otherwise it would have been a complete waste of a day.

I don’t know what the weather is like where you are but it has been really mild and sunny here for the last 3 days so we are actually having a late summer.  In the real summer we were having to put jackets on to walk the dogs in the evenings and yet for the last few nights we have been walking them in t-shirts!  In fact last week we nearly put the heating on in the evenings and now we are back to summer weather and saying how muggy it is!

Here’s todays snippet of interest:

A cat's urine glows under a black light.   

(I wish I had known that when I was trying to find out where the blessed cat had peed on the carpet – although not sure what a black light is or where I could get one).  Look at him - "butter wouldn't melt in his mouth" as they say.

And here’s a little chuckle:

ROMANCE
An elderly couple were lying in bed one night. The husband was falling asleep but the wife was in a romantic mood and wanted to talk.
She said: "You used to hold my hand when we were courting."
Wearily he reached across, held her hand for a second and tried to get back to sleep.
A few moments later she said: "Then you used to kiss me."
Mildly irritated, he reached across, gave her a peck on the cheek and settled down to sleep.
Thirty seconds later she said: "Then you used to bite my neck."
Angrily, he threw back the bed clothes and got out of bed.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
"To get my teeth!"

The “Should I be on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Google+” debate

It seems to me from the short time I have been on all of them (2/3 months so far) I have found that they are all totally different from each other.  They all have different things that you need to be able to use and they all have plus and negative points.  Here are my views of them at the moment.  This may of course change once Google+ and the new Facebook changes have settled in.  Read my thoughts and please do let me know your opinions and experiences too as I would love to hear them.

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At the end of the day if you only want to use it for keeping in touch with friends you have no choice but to be on the same site that they are using.  You may well prefer Google+ but unless, or until, your friends are using it as well it doesn’t matter a hoot as you can’t talk to them on Facebook if you are on Google+ and vice versa.  You will probably find you need to be with at least Facebook and Twitter anyway as your friends probably use both.  As Google+ progresses, and as it is now being flooded with new people, you may well find you need to be on there as well if you have friends that will be using Google+ more than Facebook.  It has thrown a bit of “a spanner in the works” as it may split the Facebook community in that some of your friends may like Google+ better and hang out there more without going into their Facebook account so much, which will mean that if you want to chat to them you both need to be in the same place for it to work.  Most will probably use both unless they hate change and then they will stay where they are on Facebook, unless all the new changes on there upset their stability enough for them to try another site altogether. 

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Twitter is a bit different in that there is no content as such but is easy to use to send quick short messages to your mates (and without a fee for texting).   I find it annoyingly a bit too short (200 key strokes maybe - but 140!!!).  I have a job to précis what I want to say to 140 key strokes and sometimes have to send 2 single sentence tweets.   LinkedIn is only really for the people who are in for more professional discussions or looking for job opportunities although I have noticed there are “less serious” groups on there too.  Although I have noticed that even in the less serious groups the discussions can turn into heated debates sometimes.  So much so that I tend to stay right out of them even if I do have an opinion as I don’t want to get into all the “muck throwing” and would rather leave them to get on with it.  But it is a totally different environment to the other sites and would probably be quite boring for the average Facebook and Twitter users.  Whereas Google+ will attract a lot of Facebook users, I think a lot will still use both.

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In a nutshell this is a summary of what I personally have found and seen on these sites:

Facebook   - mates discussing everyday things as they would face to face

Twitter      - short messages, mainly with links to sales or other people

LinkedIn    - “professional” discussions & some rather heated debates

Google+     - friendly discussions, showing products, media discussions

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If I had to describe each of their content in one word or two it would be:

Facebook   - mate chatter

Twitter      - marketing

LinkedIn    - serious debates

Google+     - friendly discussions

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Or if you wanted to join a site for a particular reason, try these:

Facebook   -friends

Twitter      -sellers

LinkedIn    -jobs

Google+     -acquantances

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There are of course extra things on all the sites but this is the type of things that I see mainly in my newsfeed/follows/groups/stream.  Yours may be entirely different because it all depends on who we connect with on these sites.  They all work different in whose feed you actually see and who sees your feed.  The new changes on Facebook mean you can now also decide what particular information you want to see from your friends, so if you are fed up of seeing all their holiday photos or photos of their dog then you can opt out of seeing them.  LOL – they may notice that you have stopped commenting on them though even though they wont know that you have stopped receiving them.

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Apart from the time it takes up (LOL - as I well know!) it doesn’t hurt to build up some friends on all of them, even if your local friends are all on just one site.  They are all there for us to use free of charge so just enjoy them.  You can spend as much or as little time as you like on all of them.

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And on to todays trivia snippet:

Butterflies taste with their feet.

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I thought I would add this for you to have a look at today as I found it very interesting.  It’s about how many people notice if a change takes place right in front of them:

http://www.thatvideosite.com/video/psychology_experiment_75_of_people_dont__notice_huge_changes_in_front_of_them

Privacy Issues on Facebook and Stalker Problems

This blog is only my opinion and my thoughts but as far as I can see Facebook have handed it on a plate to all possible stalkers.

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Stalkers can now see every single thing their victim does on there.  Every single Like, every single comment, who they befriend (I know they could see that bit before but now they can see it in real time).

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There are posts going round asking by lots of people asking everyone to un-tick their “Likes and Comments” because they don’t want everyone to see their every move and rightly so but it is up to all their friends to do that.  I know I have done that with all my friends and it has thankfully slowed my Ticker right down and now I only really see what the pages I have Liked have recently added, instead of the very fast flow of all my friends every comment and Like as well as their posts.   

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I know we all have the choice of who we befriend but how many times do you hear of a stalker being in the peripherals of your friends so you could easily be “friends” with a possible stalker without realising it.  So many of us have huge amounts of friends on Facebook and we certainly don’t know all of them well as they are often just Facebook friends that we wouldn’t even know if we passed them in the street.  It must be paradise for a stalker if they can see everywhere you are going, what you are going to be wearing, all your thoughts you tell friends, all your photos, all the things you like and your tastes in everything, all your moans and all your tittle-tattle.  Unless these are done in Private Messages they are there for all to see.   It makes it very easy for a possible stalker to slide into your life without you realising as they could pretend to like all the things you like.  It is just putting it all there in front of them for them to be able to use and abuse.  Instead of allowing your friends to un-tick your “Likes and Comments” they should make it that you yourself tick them if you are happy for others to see them.  I doubt in anyone would tick them.  It seems they are trying to make the new Facebook a totally “Open Book”.

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I think this leaves a huge hole in the privacy issue and this doesn’t even touch on the facts that are now coming to light, according to all the social media experts, that Facebook now tracks all our website moves outside of Facebook as well, whether we are logged into Facebook or not.  They know that most of us stay logged on to Facebook all day as we all suffer from FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and even if not, we are on other sites so wouldn’t erase our cookies after leaving Facebook until we turn the computer off, which some people never ever do anyway.  They are saying that they are not selling this information but why would they track all our moves otherwise?  It seems a lot of wasted resources if they don’t intend to do anything with the information they are gathering.  I would like to think they are putting it to good use in filtering out paedophiles or terrorists etc.  with some suitable algorithm but I am sure if there was a way to do that then it wouldn’t be Facebook needing to do it but some security agency.  This seems a rather “Big Brother” issue to me (and I don’t mean the TV programme)!  This is seriously infringing on our privacy.  I read recently about “Don’t write anything you wouldn’t want read out in court” and adding “Don’t go to any sites you wouldn’t want to be shown in court” or something similar.  I think they should also add “Don’t make any comments you wouldn’t say to a whole room full of your friends and enemies”.  I guess we should always weigh up if what we want to say should be in a Private Message or should we just go back to emails instead? 

Just remember BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING so be very very careful what you say and to whom as it is all logged down and may come back to bite you!

Please let me know your thoughts on this.

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Todays snippet of trivia:

111,111,111     x     111,111,111   =   12,345,678,987, 654,321

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And todays chuckle:

OLD FRIENDS
Two elderly ladies had been friends for many decades.

Over the years, they had shared all kinds of activities and adventures.

Lately, their activities had been limited to meeting a few times a week to play cards.
One day, they were playing cards when one looked at the other and said, "Now don't get mad at me... I know we've been friends for a long time but I just can't think of your name.. I've thought and thought, but I can't remember it. Please tell me what your name is."
Her friend glared at her.

For at least three minutes she just stared and glared at her.

Finally she said, "How soon do you need to know?"

Why do we keep “spare” rooms in our house?

Our grandparents used to keep a “best room” or a room called something similar for when guests came round but funnily enough whenever we went to visit older relatives we never went in the best room.  Hmm I wonder why?  Now who did they keep that room for?  Obviously not for the relatives visits and a I doubt it was there for the neighbours visits either so I wonder who ever went in there.  The vicar if they ever had one visit?  A passing celebrity?  We had quite a few relatives who had one of these rooms and I don’t ever remember going in them (only to peek in) even at Christmas time.  Looking back it does make you wonder how special a visitor you had to be to be allowed in the best room J 

It seemed an awful waste of a room especially if the family was quite large.  I suppose it may have had something to do with heating and the room they all sat around in had the fire going so they didn’t want to use 2 rooms with 2 fires.   So everyone seemed to congregate in what we would now call a kitchen diner, which funnily enough everyone is going back to now.  But considering I am not that old and they had central heating when I was a child I thought they could use all the rooms in a house with ease.  I suppose it was hard for them to break with tradition.  It never happened in the house I grew up in as the kitchen wasn’t big enough for us to all sit around in even though we ate our meals at the kitchen table rather than in the dining room and the only other room downstairs was a lounge diner.  Of course this is the English way and as I have a lot of American friends you may be wondering what on earth I am talking about as that just doesn’t or never did happen in the US.

It’s the same with bedrooms – why do people keep a “spare” or “guest” bedroom unless they have friends or relatives who stay often.   Most people we know have turned their spare room into an office or put it to some other use as few of us ever have anyone to stay the night.  Maybe as we get older we like your own bed so would rather designate a non-drinking driver for the evening and go home after a dinner party or evening out.  It does seem a waste of a room to have a double bed and wardrobe in there “just in case” anyone wants to stay.  A bed settee or a blow-up mattress is probably the better idea for those very occasional overnight visitors.  If you can manage with one less bedroom for 340 or so nights a year you might as well downsize. 

That’s why I would quite like to use our dining room for a craft room.  I don’t know why we have a dining room as such anyway.  We used to eat in there a lot more than we do now.  We used to have dinner there when we were going out dancing and to different clubs in the evening.  Now we eat late as we have nothing to rush for and so we eat with trays on our laps watching television.  Very unsociable I know.  We only have friends round for dinner occasionally as in-between we go to their houses as well or eat out.  So all in all I don’t think it would be too bad if I took over the dining room for my hobby room apart from the major upheaval when friends do come round.  LOL – perhaps I will have to arrange things so that they come to us in the summer for outdoor eating.  It does seem a waste of a good space to keep the dining room for just the odd occasion.  I am sure I could keep a bit of space free for us to eat there if we did want to eat at the table occasionally.  Watch this space.

And time for todays trivia:

Elephants are the only animals that cannot jump.

Today I thought I would show you this link to the Blue Angels as I found it brilliant:

Why It Is NOT Morbid To Make A Will

We were talking about Wills earlier and how you not only need one at any age but also what happens if you don’t have one or if you don’t change it to keep up with ongoing changes in your life.  This came to light recently as a whole family were going on holiday together (3 generations) and what would happen if there had been an accident in which none of them survived and who would the estates go to, as everyone down the line was in the accident.  They found it would actually all go to the grandparents that weren’t going on the trip as they were the closest relatives of the youngest child which everything would have gone down to.   Not that the set of grandparents didn’t get on with the other grandparents who were not going on the trip but the brothers and sisters of the grandparents in the accident would have got nothing and it would all have gone to a different family altogether.  It is bad enough when someone has not made a Will at all but sometimes it is just better to think of making one as an insurance policy rather than think of it as a Will that only old people need.  It is not tempting fate.  It doesn’t make you wish your life away but it does ensure that any possessions you have or your children go to where you want then to go to.  I think it should be made a necessity for everyone when they either buy a house or have a child.

We have been watching a television programme about people making Wills and it has brought up all sorts of problems.  The programme helps people who own land or a company decide which is the best way to leave their estate, as most of them want their farm or business to continue.  They help them mull over the options and discuss it with the family.  Oh boy does it open a bag of worms!  All the children expect different things and so for the business to continue it completely wipes out any chance of a cash share for any of the children who would prefer that when the parents pass over.  Sometimes for the business to continue it most definitely upsets at least one of the children.  It makes interesting viewing because you can see it from all the different points of view and the decisions are very hard to make.  I can see it is a lot easier for people without land or a business to split their assets in the Will.  The stupid thing is that it can cause a big split in the family while the parents are still alive as the children know what is going to be in the Will.  Normally children would only possibly fall out over what they get or expect to get when their parents actually pass over rather than from the point the Will. 

The worst part I suppose is if parents of young children haven’t made a Will and so the question of who looks after the children comes up as the parents have made no arrangement for that eventuality, and it could be that they end up with relatives that they would never want them to live with, so it is always best to make provision for such a circumstance.   Some of the families on the television show were having a really hard time in working out how to split their assets amongst the children.  It is relatively easy for a “normal” family when the only assets are the house and other more minor things like the car etc. but when you have a company or a farm it becomes much more complicated.  A “normal” family would probably just give the children equal shares so the house would be sold and the money split between the children (after the last parent passes over).  If the family with a farm or a business isn’t bothered about the farm / business after they have gone and the children don’t work on the farm / at the business then the same thing would apply as the farm / business would be sold and the assets split.  What happened with the families on television though is that the parents wanted the farm / business to continue afterwards and one or more children worked there.  As they didn’t want it to be sold then how could it carry on with one or more of the children working there when the other children would gain nothing from it and would rather have their share in cash.  The ones who worked there couldn’t afford to buy them out and the parents wanted the farm / business to continue.  This caused a lot of problems as you can imagine.  But it does bring to light how important it is to make a Will.

And on that note, here is todays trivia snippet:

Right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people.      

I read this today and it made my chuckle so I have included it here:

1981 & 2005 - Two Interesting Years:

Interesting Year 1981
1.  Prince Charles got married.
2.  Liverpool crowned soccer Champions of Europe.
3.  Australia lost the Ashes.
4.  The Pope died.


Interesting Year 2005
1.  Prince Charles got married.
2.  Liverpool crowned soccer Champions of Europe.
3.  Australia lost the Ashes.
4.  The Pope died.

Lesson to be learned:  

The next time Charles gets married, someone should warn the Pope.

Adding Extra Things to a Blog Design

It shows how silly I am – I thought the Labels I had to add on the blogs were like meta tags and I had such a long list showing down the side of my blog it was ridiculous so I have spent some time sorting them out into less sections (why don't they call them that ???) so it is easier for anyone to find them under subjects.  As I just write a lot about my life in general I could only think of “me and my life” to cover that group which will probably end up quite large as I think my readers are probably more interested in general meanderings rather than continual blogs about how I made this pendant and how to bead a bracelet.  I am still adding things and rearranging the side of my blog too, until I have it just how I want it.  It is nearly there but there are a few other things I may add as it is always nice to see things right down the side when you are reading down more than one blog rather than it just going blank.  At this stage though I definitely don’t want to add any adverts (I probably never will) and most definitely not any of those annoying flashing images that distract you.  I want my blog to be fun to read and each blog to give multiple things to read as well like the trivia and joke bits at the end.  If you have ever seen anything on the side of other people’s blogs that was particularly interesting then please do let me know and I can see if I can add it to mine too.  I am still looking out for a bank of buttons to have the choices of forwarding my blog too, rather than the patch of buttons I have.  It would be nice to get a strip or bank of them that are easy to click so that you can all share my blog, in the hope that I get more followers.  They don’t have to read all my blogs but they can at least follow them so they have the choice.

As much as I say it myself I am getting a dab hand at finding ways to get things on the side and bottom of my blog though.  LOL – I am spending more time doing that recently than writing my actual blog or making my jewellery.  I want to get it right though.  It’s funny how much you learn though in a short space of time if you put your mind to it.   I am a bit of a ferret when I get going, trying to find things and how to add them.  It’s fun but also very frustrating sometimes.  I like the rewarding bit when something I have added actually works.  I have made most of my buttons actually work down the side rather than just sit there so I am pleased with that.

I have spent a lot of time recently going to other peoples blogs to get information about how to do my blog – you know all the buttons and extras they put on their blogs as I wanted my blog to look interesting.  The must frustrating thing I found, even with the really good SEO blogs and Media blogs is HOW TO FOLLOW THEM!  If I have found their blog interesting I want to be able to see their future blogs and maybe even go back to see another older blog but I spend ages sometimes searching up and down trying to find a way to follow them, other than by email or RSS.  I want to be able to follow them on Google+ preferably, or if not on Facebook as they never ever use Google Friend Connect or Networked Blogs.  Obviously when you get to a certain stage in blogging and have “Your Own” blog site then you expect people to follow you with RSS.  But some of us novices would like to follow them too so please give us the basic follow buttons.  I suppose I could follow by email but I never like giving out my email to these types of sites as you tend to get inundated with requests to buy things, go to places etc. etc. so I would rather play it safe and just be able to follow their new blogs when they are posted via Google+ or Facebook.  With all the tips they give you on how to do things you would think that anyone too much “in the know” wouldn’t really need them so aiming at the “need to know” market would mean we novices need to follow in the basic ways like Google+ or Facebook.  Unless they feel we would only visit the once so wouldn’t want or need to follow them.  They have whole banks of buttons to share their information to others via our connections on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, bookmarking sites etc. so why not use another bank of buttons for us to follow them???

Autumn has definitely seemed to settle here in our part of England as the evenings are getting chillier and we have toyed with the idea of putting the heating on a few times but can’t quite bring ourselves to put it on yet J  So we have put more clothes on instead.  The annoying thing is that our lounge seems to be quite cool (which is great in Summer) so when I come out of the office upstairs or the kitchen to go and sit and watch television for a while then it feels very cold as the computer in the office or cooking in the kitchen keeps it warm.

One good thing about Autumn is that some decent television programmes come back on and some new ones start.  Doc Martin is a favourite one of mine that has come back on now and a good new one has started called The Body Farm which is good.  I remember reading a book about a Body Farm which was either Patricia Cornwell or Minnette Walters which are both favourite authors of mine.

Time for the trivia snippet:

The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.       

And a chuckle to finish on:

An elderly man is stopped by the police around 1 a.m. and is asked where he is going at this time of night.
The man replies, "I am going to a lecture about alcohol abuse and the effects it has on the human body."
The officer then asks, "Really? Who is giving that lecture at this time of night?"
The man replies, "That would be my wife."

NEW FACEBOOK CHANGES

Well I know that everyone is talking about it but todays blog has got to be about the new Facebook changes.  It is all very new and 99% of people are complaining about the changes but then 99% of people also hate any form of change so it is not necessarily what people really think about the new version.  There will probably be more changes after the big Facebook meeting tomorrow as well.  It seems they rushed these latest changes through because of Google+ opening their doors to everyone yesterday.  I think we all need to sweat it out a bit and see how we get used to it before we really say that we hate all of it or certain bits of it.  The most complained about bit so far is the scrolling feed on the right.  I guess that will definitely annoy people, especially those with lots of friends, as it will be scrolling a lot more than if you only have a few friends on there. 

I must have been on at an experimental stage late at night a couple of weeks ago as I had that scrolling down the side of my screen and wondered what on earth it was.  The next day it wasn’t there any more.  I did mention it on my wall the next day but no-one said anything and I almost thought I had been dreaming.  But today there it is again, just like the other night.  I have a lot of US friends and that night when the US were busy posting the annoying thing was scrolling all the time and you could hardly even read it as it was moving so much – not that I was really reading it because I had no idea what it was at the time.

As I quite a newbie and haven’t been on any of the media / social networking / bookmarking sites before June this year I haven’t got so used to things being a certain way as most people, so can probably adapt to the new Facebook look easier than most.  I only realised this week that I had been on Google+ so early in the game.  I was invited to join some time in July and had no idea it had only been going for about a month.  I have gradually joined different sites as I have found out about them so all in all the whole thing is new to me including blogging.  I still haven’t got used to the way people Tweet – all RT’s and #, sales and quotations but not much “normal” talk – not that you can say much in 140 keystrokes anyway.  But is seems to be so busy saying nothing much at all in my stream.  I have so many Tweets going through that I just have to hope that if someone actually tries to contact me on it they will mention me in it or send me a direct message so that I actually definitely receive it.

Anyway, back to my original topic today.  I have already changed my view on the new Facebook after only half a day so I think I may well have settled into the new version by the end of the week.  We’ll see.  At the moment people in the UK can still revert back to the old version but as that will change at some point we may as well get used to it sooner rather than later.  We are probably lucky in that we can flick back and forth to test if we are actually missing what we would normally see.  But the way I see it is that we can basically see what we want in our Feed once we have synchronised it by changing what we want to see in our Top Stories etc.  It will take quite a few clicks to get things how we want but once done it will be fine.  The only risk we have is of not changing some details on someone who we like to see the posts from but who doesn’t post very often, so we will have to “catch” a post from them to be able to change their posts to Top Stories.  The other thing I can possibly see will be a bit of a problem is when we like to read a friends post but not necessarily comment on it which means  it then doesn’t rate very high to be shown, whereas a post from someone we don’t know so well that gets a lot of comments shoots to the top of our page.

I think it will cause a lot more of a problem to business users who rely on Facebook for selling as their posts wont really be seen, as few will comment on them so a lot less people will see them.  Time will tell on that one or if Facebook will come up with anything else for that – or will everyone move over to Google+ once they bring out business pages.

Todays trivia snippet:

Do you know that the words " race car " spelled backwards still spells "race car"?

Todays chuckle:

MIDDLE AGE TEXTING CODES:
ATD -at the doctor.

BFF -best friend fell.

BTW -bring the wheelchair.

BYOT -bring your own teeth.

FWIW -forgot where I was.

GGPBL -gotta go, pacemaker battery low.

GHA -got heartburn again.

IMHO -is my hearing aid on?

LMDO -laughing my dentures out.

OMMR -on my massage recliner.

ROFLACGU -rolling on floor laughing and can't get up.

TTYL -talk to you louder!