Do we pay attention?

This was forwarded to me in an email so I have no idea of its origin and is probably old, but it amused me so I just couldn’t resist using it in my blog as I couldn’t condense it enough for my Facebook wall:

This is the best example for paying attention that I have ever  heard.

First-year students at the Vet School were attending their first anatomy class with a real dead cow. They all gathered around the surgery table with the body covered with a white sheet.

The professor started the class by telling them, "In Veterinary medicine it is necessary to have  two important qualities as a doctor. The first is that you not be disgusted by anything involving the animal's body." For an example, the professor pulled back the sheet, stuck his finger in the butt
of the cow, withdrew it, and stuck his finger in his mouth. "Go ahead and do the same thing," he told his students.

The students freaked out, hesitated for several minutes, but eventually took turns sticking a finger in the butt of the dead cow and sucking on it.

When everyone finished, the Professor looked at them and said, "The second most important quality is observation. I stuck in my middle finger and sucked on my index finger.

Now learn to pay attention.

It is so very true – we think we are paying attention but are we?  We are not really watching or listening that closely all the time so very often and miss important things.  LOL - and I am not just talking about our men here – although that is a very good point as they have it down to a fine art.  They have even learnt to mutter or grunt in the right places without listening to a word you have said – do we have a slight pause or an intonation in our voice that their subconscious knows is the point to produce an “mmm” as is they are really listening?  And do we know if they have heard us or not – no chance. 

Back to people in general paying attention – I know I for one would make a terrible witness.  I never notice anything, probably due to being shy, but I don’t actually “see” people when I am out shopping or whatever, as I have my mind on what I am doing.  If something happened very fast and the police asked me to describe the person afterwards I am pretty certain I wouldn’t be able to give them much information.

It gets worse as people get older – how many times do your hear the same stories from your older friends?  How many times do they watch the same television programme and not realise they have seen it before?  So would you say they are paying attention?  The good thing about it for them is the fact that there are new television programmes all the time so they don’t get fed up with there being nothing to watch like the rest of us.

But I wonder how many of us would actually get caught out in the same way as the students in the vets story?

Banana Cake - very easy but my own recipe so don't get too excited!

I mentioned to some friends the other day about how I made 2 cakes recently without recipes and just added ingredients as I went along and they turned out great.  I just went along with the supposition that if they didn’t turn out well and look like cakes, then we could just put custard on them and eat them for deserts.  I have had so many people asking for the recipes that I thought I may as well put them on my blog.  The first one was a Banana Cake to use up some past-their-prime bananas (soft but still white inside but had dark spotty skins outside – just a bit too squidgy to want to eat normally) and the 2^nd one was Blackberry and Apple Cake to use some stewed apples and blackberries as we had loads.  The cakes turned out great and so I wrote down as near as I could the recipes for both of them.  It is a bit of a problem though in working out what a “splodge” of butter and a sprinkle of spices were so I made the Banana Cake again to check the ingredients.  But I will have to work out how much 1/3 of a carton of Chinese Chow Mein is because that was how much stewed blackberry and apple I used, as it was stored in one of those at the time – although I don’t think it will matter too much as to how much a 1/3 is for the recipe.  So I will add that one on another blog.  These cakes are very very simple and easy to make.  I don’t believe in complicated recipes.  Apologies in advance that the ingredients are in ounces for those who only use grams now.  I think 250grams is about the same as 8oz.

SUZY’S  BANANA  CAKE

Turn oven on to 150 degrees (electric fan oven) – low/medium heat.

Put all ingredients in a large mixing bowl - put bananas in first and mash.

6 overipe bananas – mashed

1 tablespoon runny honey

12 oz self raising flour

2-3 teaspoons baking powder

8 oz castor sugar

4 oz soft spreadable butter

4 XL eggs    (probably 5 medium sized, if that is what you use)

2 teaspoons mixed spices

2 teaspoons cinnamon

Mix well and put into a greased cake tin – I used a circle one for this (with a hole in the middle) but I don’t suppose it matters what tin you use.  Or you could put it in 2 sponge tins and cook a bit hotter but for half the time (I make sponges on 160 degrees).

Cook for approx. 1 hour until a knife comes out clean.

Check after 45-50 minutes and if the top is browning too fast, loosely cover the top with foil.

You can at this point sprinkle some castor sugar over the top as well.

I expect you know this already but don’t take the cake out until it looks ready on the top (at least ¾ of the way through the cooking time) or it will sink.  Just like Yorkshire Puddings do.

Facebook Personal Page and Business Page - My Basic Beginners Guide…..for new users with a business page

OK now this is my interpretation of what I have learnt – and anyone is welcome to tell me if I have got it wrong.  But since I first started on Facebook a whole 2 months ago (which now makes me an expert – LOL – I don’t think!!!) I have been really struggling with getting to grips with understanding how it all works.  I still have some (many probably) unanswered questions but as it has taken me 2 months to get this far I thought this may help some of the brand new people because I would have loved to have found something readable and understandable when I first started – which I hope this will be – well, it may not be understandable but at least it will be basic.  I found a lot of things were very confusing but my biggest problem was in understanding the subject I am going to discuss today – the different pages on Facebook.  So if you are brand new and have been clever enough to have found my blog then I hope this may help to clear the muddy waters in front of you and I will try to put it in a way that is understandable (LOL- maybe!).

The whole Personal Page/ News Feed & Wall Page / Business Page thing is really confusing but I have sussed it out to be like this – think of it as 2 bedrooms with a Jack n Jill bathroom – you know the ones – 3 rooms in a row – a bathroom in the middle and a bedroom each side.  Now this bathroom can only be used by EITHER Jack OR Jill and not both at once.  You are of course both Jack & Jill but Jack is your Personal Page and Jill is your Business Page.  Are you keeping up with all this???  Right so to confirm, bedroom 1 (Jacks) is your Personal Page, the bathroom is your News Feed & Wall and bedroom 2 (Jills) is your Business Page.  Which means when you are on your Personal Page and want to go to your Business Page you have to SWAP pages to use the Wall (bathroom).  So go to Accounts (top right) and in the drop down box click USE FACEBOOK AS PAGE, then a big box comes up that says

 New! Select Switch to get a newsfeed and notifications for that page. You'll also be able to interact with other pages as your page. Learn more

with a button that says SWITCH - click the button.  You should now be in the bathroom again but from the Business side so you can use News Feed and the Wall as your Business Page.  When using your Business Page, the Wall is for things you post (message) - unless anyone sends a link from their page to yours which then shows on your Wall as well.  The News Feed is all the incoming stuff or things you have either started or joined in with on the New Feed wall.  It’s pretty much like News Feed is your chat room for everyone with back and forth messages and your Wall is like the school blackboard that only you as the teacher can write on.  You only have one Wall so you can only use it EITHER with your Personal Page OR with your Business Page.

When on your Business Page you want to go back to your Personal Page then go to Accounts in the top right again and in the drop down box click the middle one with your photo that says your Personal Page name (it also says “switch bank to (your name)” under it as well.  And voila, you are back on your Personal Page and can use the Wall as your Personal Page.

If you LIKE other peoples pages then anything they write or put on their Business Wall will show in your News Feed.  Equally if anyone LIKES your business page then they will see the stuff you add to your Business Wall in their News Feed.  Right, now I had better just mention this so as to clarify it, Like is another name for Fan on business pages.   If you don’t want a particular advert (well that tends to be what they are – messages showing what they have for sale) on your News Feed then you can hover your cursor over the “advert” and a little sun/star thing comes up in the top corner of the advert which you can click and it gives you the option to hide that particular “Post” (this is what they actually call them) or to hide all posts from that person /company or you can report it as spam if you feel it shouldn’t be there at all.  This will then go into your “Hidden Posts” on the left of your page.  You can always go into the Hidden Posts to reinstate it if you wish.  You may also find some posts arrive straight into the Hidden Posts as well – some of these are purely because the sender has sent a lot that day or for any other strange reason that Facebook has thought of them as spam and so hidden them from you – but they may be posts you actually would like in your News Feed so if you want to see them, hover your mouse over the little sun/star thing on the top right of the advert or comment and it will give you options to reinstate it to your page again.

I am sure I have made this sound as clear as mud and just as complicated as any other instructions you find but I just hope I have put it in a slightly more understandable fashion???  It is easier to refer back to it as you get used to things on Facebook as it then becomes clearer.

If you have any questions then please send me a comment or message.

Right so as not to make this too long, I think I had better split these so-called lessons into basic sections too so this is the end (unless I think of any more) on the whole Personal Page / News Feed & Wall / Business Page bit but I will explain what I have learnt about the actual Walls & News Feed themselves in another blog in a couple of days time as it save boring my followers (few that they are so far) but thanks to those who are following – I can only get better J

Why NOT to add too many friends or Like too many pages too quickly on Facebook…

I said yesterday about my ban from adding too many friends.  One of my recent blunders! Well apparently even though I thought Facebook was originally started as a friendship site to connect with all your long-lost friends, you obviously have to find them very slowly or you get into trouble.  So although though they put all these possible friends names in front of you who you may know, apparently you are only meant to click on a few at a time – as I found out to my cost.  When I joined Facebook I obviously added all my family and close friends and then being a bear collector, as I have said, I joined a couple of very active bear collecting groups that I had already known about and so when all these familiar names came up from the groups I was clicking into them willy nilly to add as friends.  Well, the next thing I knew there was a Facebook message come up that said I was asking too many friends and they had banned me from asking any more as they treated it as spam.  Why do they not give you instructions when you join that you can only invite X amount of friends each day or something similar. 

The same thing happens for Liking peoples business pages – I have also had a ban for that.  I did see a warning come up about that but it came up just as I had already Liked their page and I had left the message so was about to click Return.  So I thought I had better not Like any more that day and just clicked Return to finish what I had done.  WRONG THING TO DO.  I was banned from Liking people, from sending messages and from my wall (or anyone else’s wall) for a day or so.  I could add to wall posts already started but not leave my @pendant-heaven bit.  It didn’t affect my business page but not being able to write on my wall or to be able to message anyone was quite annoying as some people thought I was ignoring them when I wasn’t really.  But once again, why do they not tell you the criteria for the maximum you can Like in one day either (or in one week – whatever their criteria is before they cut you off). 

They tell you on the ban notice that if you continue this behaviour your account will be closed – but what does that mean – that you can’t add any more friends or Like anyone else’s page at all as it will be classed as continuing the behaviour - or do they mean you can’t carry on adding people or Liking people at the rate you have been doing???  It is one of those things you tend to do in batches as well.  You see someone’s page and Like it but see other pages on their wall that are of interest and you go off to see and then end up Liking them as well - because you were interested enough in the first place to go and see their page so nine times out of ten you may Like that one as well – and then you see another interesting message on their wall as well etc. etc.  The same with friend invites, you tend to do them in batches as well because you see others come up with lots of mutual friends because they are in the same group so you add them as well.  But other times you don’t Like pages or add friends for days (probably weeks when you have been on Facebook for a while). 

Does anyone know the standard criteria for how many in what space of time is acceptable because no-one I have ever asked knows the answer.  I have even asked the question on Send In The Troops – which is a great page that runs “Marches” so that everyone who wants to be marched upon (Liked) can add their name and join in the march to Like others.  So everyone who is doing it is happy to Like others and have others Like them – but there is no separate criteria for that to be allowed on Facebook.  So everyone runs the risk of a warning about Liking too many pages.  But no-one seems to know where the stop line is which is silly really as Facebook makes us all walk on a tightrope as to how many we should Like at once.  A lot of the LinkedIn groups have started asking people to add their Facebook name to a list so that we can all Like each others pages but no-one realises that by Liking too many in one go can seriously affect their account on Facebook. 

It was recommended that I join Google+ so I have just joined and having no idea it was even similar to Facebook, it showed all these names that are also on there who they picked up from my Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts and it seemed like they were asking me to put them into the Circles on the page – well I started sliding everyone into the Circles and then it froze on me so I though “Ooh Ooh Déjà Vu here”, so I will need to be careful on there too.  I was surprised when I got in as well that it is just like another Facebook but with a difference.  It seems I will have to spend some time on there as well now.  It is never ending, this media stuff once you start.  Every time I write another Blog or add another pendant to my Artfire shop I now have to put it on Facebook (personal and business pages), Twitter, Google+, StumbleUpon, Digg, Pinterest, +1, Kaboodle, and I am just about to join Delicious to be able to add items on there too.  It would be so much easier if I could just click one button and it would get sent to all of them.  As all potential customers use different bookmarking sites though it pays for me to use all of them.  

How NOT to organise friends into sections on Facebook…..

Make sure you put your friends into LISTS via Edit Friends – being totally new I had absolutely no idea how to do it and being a total plonker I put some of my friends into groups without even realising I was starting a “Group” instead of putting my friends into categories.  I know most of you are thinking “what a wally” as you worked out how to do it straight away but as I was totally new to both personal and business pages in one go (and social media in general) I had to learn a lot of things the hard way in a very short time and some of them got me into trouble!  Finding any understandable help that wasn’t written in “computer nerd language” seemed impossible and I couldn’t find any basic instructions for the average person who needed it in layman’s terms.  So I did what I could and learned by my mistakes….the trouble is I am still learning by my mistakes!  I keep saying I am going to write a bog-standard start instructions for new facebook people while I remember my basic questions and answers, so I promise to try by the end of the week.

Back to adding friends - as I tried to add so many friends when I first started (the reason I first received a ban! … more on that tomorrow), I had lots of friends acceptances coming in about the same time so my list built quickly and I thought I had better group them before they got out of hand, so I went for the Group option thinking that was the way – oops!  I should have tumbled that I had done it wrong as a few people had said “Thank you for inviting me into the Group” but I just thought that fb lets them know when I had regrouped them and so I had no idea that I had managed to start three groups.  I had sort of forgotten all about it and thought I would get round to it one day when I had got on top of this social media thing with all the other bookmarking sites as well.  But yesterday I had a sudden reminder as someone asked to join one of my so-called groups – my Bear Lovers Group.  Oooh what to do now???  As I had spoken to her about bears before I put her in the picture but still haven’t decided what I should do about my Groups!

Being a total maniac bear collector I had put other bear collectors in one group and my relatives and close friends in another.  As other friends requests and my friends acceptances came in, as well as contacts from Facebook, LinkedIn etc. I just got bogged down and didn’t do anything with them and thought I would deal with them later, especially as some people I only “knew” by their business name rather than their personal name so I needed to go through them properly when I had time.  Well a couple of  hundred friends later I still haven’t done anything about it so now it is such a mammoth task I never seem to have the time to do it at all. Unless you know something different than I have found, it is not that it is that easy to do either, as when I looked at separating them into lists (not to self - must think lists now and not groups!!!) I have to think of the persons name to start with before I can even put the first letters in to bring up the person to add to the list.  Well I must say my memory is not as good as it was and trying to think this way is just plain awkward.  Why can’t I just click each name going through the list and add them to my own lists???  Considering I knew I should be sorting them into lists as they came in – why haven’t I started doing it yet?!!!  Well, because people aren’t always on facebook all the time and don’t always accept your invite straight away.  So by the time their acceptance comes in I am often too busy at the time to deal with it or I have forgotten who they are to even know which list to put them into!  I don’t suppose this happens at all to people who have a personal page first and then add a business page, because their closer contacts are already in groups (no – note to self again – think lists, lists, lists – must remember to not think of them as groups!!!!) so they know that new ones coming in are inevitably business contacts so all go into one list.

I have a few friends who go to a psychic development circle so when I used the group name Circle for all my close circle of relatives and friends they had thought it was great that I had added them to the Circle Group.  I suppose the others friends and relatives in my Circle Group had no idea what it meant in the spiritual context, so never queried why I had added them to a new group called Circle.  I find a lot of people who only use Facebook for socialising with their friends only know the bare basics and work on a need-to-know basis, so they didn’t even query the fact that they now seemed to be in a Group.

I couldn’t decide on the names of other groups I wanted to put other people in – I did start one called Contacts and fully intended to put people in there who were purely contacts and not necessarily people I chatted with at all, but the dividing line seemed blurred as to who should go into that group or an inbetween group, so I had only ever put the one poor person in there until I worked out what other names I should give my groups.  That person has never asked why they are the only member – they probably just think I have outcast them!!  It is probably a good job in a way that I didn’t have time to set up all the other groups to put people in as I would have a number of groups running instead of just the three.  Hmm, but what do I do with those three???  Now, telling the single person in the Contacts Group is reasonably easy and the Circle group wont be too bad as I know them all well obviously, but the Bear Lovers Group - hmm well I need to explain and somehow disband this other Group that I have stupidly started or do I just let it run???  I don’t even know what is involved in running a Group.  I have to decide what to do now since someone has asked to join it, so I might get more people asking – ooh dear!  Do Groups run themselves – are they just a group of like minded people who speak to each other – or do I have to do anything with it?  What a silly predicament to get myself into as soon as I join Facebook!

Pendant Necklace Photos - on a background or not?

I have just been playing around with my new themer colours in my studio and changing to my new banner.  So many choices and so hard to choose!  Hopefully my final choices make the studio look good and work well.  Obviously everyone likes different colours so what appeals to some wont appeal to others but considering everyone who comes to the studio is looking at the pendants rather than the studio colours the only importance is that the colours go well together and look pleasing to the eye.

What I did notice while checking out the new themer colours though were the differences in the photos I have used in the short time I have had my studio open.  I started off with taking the photos using a light tent to avoid reflection but I think it just muted the colours of the pendants in the photos (you can see if you open the oldest ones as I have changed the main photo of each), so then I just took photos normally which was a lot better.  But they were a bit dark so I eventually started playing around with a photo editor and lightened them - looking back now I lightened them too much at first but I am hopefully getting it better now.  What I noticed most though when I was fiddling around clicking from Default Order to Newest Order was that whereas I thought the photos looked a bit "busy" with the background so stopped using it, I now think maybe the pendants on their own in the photo look a bit stark and they looked warmer in the background photos.  I started using the background (artificial flowers worked best) because I found that the camera changed its focus that way and the real colour of the pendants then showed - their colour seemed to change by just photographing them on the windowsill (the best and brightest place in my house).  I guess both ways will appeal to different people but I would be really interested if anyone could let me know their thoughts on this - do the ones with a background detract from the pendants or do they complement them???  

www.pendant-heaven.artfire.com

Please do let me know your thoughts and which you prefer as I would love to know.

New ArtFire Studio Layout - just a quick mention

Well I wasn't sure if I would, but I do like the new ArtFire studio layout.  As I have only had my studio open for 2 months I had only just got used to the old layout though.  Although I must admit I am a little annoyed that having just paid for a banner and avatar to be made, I now find that my banner is redundant as it is too small for the new layout.  I have now added my avatar as my photo on so many other things - my blog, facebook, twitter etc. plus all the bookmarking sites I started using in the hope of getting sales so I am in the awkward position of not wanting to change it.  I can't make the banner bigger to fit the new size as it will lose definition if it is stretched so I have to either get a new one made or get my original banner set in a matching background to fill the space!  I am hoping to do the latter.  I need to get it sorted quickly as I hadn't realised that it would not automatically be included in the new layout and at the moment there is no banner and just this revolting green colour that personally I hate - probably because I managed to be unlucky enough to go through my whole schooling having to wear bottle green uniforms so I now hate most green colours.  My infant, junior and senior school were all bottle green - if I had not gone to the Grammar School but ended up at the Comprehensive schools (any of them in our town) then I could have had a change of colour when I got to senior school - but no, I had the privilege of going to Grammar School and ending up in bottle green again - we even had to wear bottle green knickers!  

I should be pleased I suppose in that I have made a few sales in my new studio even if they have come via Facebook members rather than from people just spotting them on ArtFire.   But it is early days really and if I spend the time pushing the social media side and getting my name out there, hopefully sales will pick up.  I sell loads on ebay but any profit is spent on relisting fees so I wanted to find a different way of selling my pendants.

Check out my new studio layout (complete with the offending green at the moment) and let me know what you think - www.pendant-heaven.artfire.com