Peruse Bruce's News and Views and TIPserve.com Upgraded-- Plus New: Whispers and Wonders

This is my first update in several weeks. Sorry-- I've been busy completely overhauling both of my sites with more to come.

 

James (of Jamesjpn.net) spent an entire day helping me-- mostly answering about an hundred questions that I had stored up, enabling me to make some real progress. The biggest job was FINALLY getting TIPserve.com upgraded after a three year delay.

Juz'-Wait'll-Ya-See-It!

Continue reading this post...

Rescued by a Tomato

Not keeping up this blog has frustrated me. Teaching English classes and teaching Andrew at home have almost totally absorbed my attention lately, with the few spare drops of free-time soaked up with reading the news, checking my mail and, recently, Facebook.

The time and energy spent on Facebook has been great for getting better connected with my family. However, I now realize that this motivation to communicate with my loved ones was what kept me blogging faithfully. I really enjoy blogging, so I needed to find a way to do both.

First, I evaluated what has been devouring my hours, munching my minutes and sucking away my seconds. The next big use of my free time was the website 'Lifehacker' and related articles and links-- all in the name of living better and faster and yes, 'saving time'.

'Good, better, best. Never let it rest. 'Til your good is better and your better is best.” St. Jerome

Of course, some of it was work related, but a great deal was just thirsting for knowledge-- information overloading, brain stuffing. As Solomon said, three thousand years ago, “Of the making of many bytes, there is no end; and too much data burns the brain.”-- or something like that. I needed an kind of an informational Noah's ark to save me from the data-flood-- like the round, red one that goes 'brr-ring'... pictured above.

While setting up Andrew's curriculum and schedule, I found and tried a few methods to increase his focus, concentration, self-evaluation and motivation. Simply put, to get more done in less time-- just what I needed too.

One method seemed to be just what we needed, “Pomodoro”, Italian for 'tomato'-- named after the tomato-shaped timer used by the developer of the system. The idea is to set a certain number of set periods of time (25 minutes is suggested and what we use) for uninterrupted work, followed by a short break. There's a lot more to the planning and record-keeping and do's and don't's, but that's basically it.

Forcing myself to schedule all I do will, I hope, limit the attacks of the black hole time gobblers when my will is weak. If I'm at least partially successful, you should see my regular posts come back to life.

Stay tuned. Bruce

If you are interested in how it works, you can find the details here and here -- where you can also get a free PDF of his book.

So Far, So Good

I recently updated my 'gateway' website at www.tipserve.com as it was pointing to an 'experimental' blog at Wordpress, rather than this one-- sorry. It will eventually be a digital hallway with doors to lots of interesting things, but for now, just one door that will take you here...

Websites and blogs have been a learning process-- see my: 'Blogging 101'. Most recently I've been researching which online resources have the most, while requiring the least from me-- Yes, you can read that as, 'finding sites that offer a lot for free.'

Right now my focus is to find a home for my photos. Over the past few months, I've edited and posted hundreds of photos on several sites. I have hundreds more chronicling decades of adventure in China, Japan, India, the U.S., Canada and Mexico. I'll soon be posting the stories to match these photos.

So far: Picasa was the easier to get started; Flickr proved to be the most resource-rich-- including 'tagging' which pushed some of my photos near the top of certain searches. I've also just tried Photobucket, and really like it, but it's too soon to draw a conclusion-- although they have also just added 'tags' for their photos.

If you have any tips for me, please send 'em! Thanks!

Picasa (1) Over 100 of my most current, up-to-date photos in folders by category

Picasa (2) Again, ten categories with about 100 photos of Fukuoka, Japan

Flickr a few folders, I just started here

Photobucket Also just started here.

Blogging 101: Chapter One-- Learning... Where It's 'Not'

I was asked by several people how I made this blog, so we travel back to when the saga began...

I started when I wanted a website to communicate with my family and friends and for our mission project. I'd made a simple website years ago and learned a bit of computer code to do it, but I'd forgotten most of it. So I prepared for what looked like a long arduous journey by amassing a slew of links in my browser on website creation, and a huge folder on my computer of articles, DIY books, and software. I read. I browsed the Web. I downloaded. I asked experts.

A mentor told me that using programs like Microsoft FrontPage would make a 'bloated, useless' site, so I started learning HTML and CSS (if you don't know, don't ask...) and how to use creation and editing and FTP programs (again, please don't ask). I installed software and started to learn to build a site 'from the ground up'-- and created several versions of my envisioned website.

It was all very good and I still want to do all that some day (don't ask when), but after some time (don't ask how long) I decided to just put something up-- anything. That's when I decided to look into those weird sounding 'blog' things.

I'd become a bit tired of slogging through HTMP, CSS and FTP terminology, so learning yet more made me hesitate, but I was surprised at how simple it was.

Next post: I finally try those 'blog' things

Blogging 101: Chapter Two-- Those Weird 'Blog' Thingies

Breakthrough-- After struggling for a long time to learn all the ins and outs of building, securing, uploading and maintaining my own site, I decided to look into blogging. I read a couple reviews and jumped in. I was surprised to have, not just one, but one blog on Blogger and one on Wordpress-- in less than an hour.

And they looked good. I realized-- duh!- blogs are just websites dedicated to automatically doing what I wanted to do-- to write on line.

I was doubtful. How could anything so easy be good?

I dove into Blogger.com first-- mainly because I'd recently begun using Gmail and liked it-- as well as Google's Picasa for editing and posting my photos on line. They are all part of Google, so I didn't even have to register-- just sign in.

I checked the list of templates, found one that I liked, previewed it and pressed 'save'-- simple, automatic. Next, I found that posting (writing an entry) was as easy as writing an email-- including adding photos and links-- it looked good. Finally I explored the tabbed 'dashboard' control center, and found it easy to understand. And for whatever I couldn't understand, I was able to locate plenty of help pages- including step-by-step tutorials.

Besides changing the template, fonts or colors, 'elements' can be added to customize the page. For example, I added a way for folks to get my updates by email (The small text link that I have on the left of my blog) and a link to allow folks to get my newest updates via a 'feed' to their, in my case, Yahoo home page or news reader (icon at left).

At last I had a fully functioning site and shared it with friends-- who promptly asked me to tell them how...

Next blog: Some Tips to get started

Blogging 101: Chapter Three-- Ready, Set, Blog

Before you go to the site you have chosen-- for example, Blogger, which I described in the previous post, I suggest that you decide on your blog's name and a short line or 'blurb', describing your blog's purpose. Perhaps you should decide and even write something for your profile-- should you want to have one-- about yourself, your family or your group.

You should also decide how much personal information you want to post, remembering that what you write could be used to find out more personal information. See blogs and privacy.
Also, when you set it up the site, you can determine who can view it, or even password protect it.

You might want to think what digital photos you may use-- as part of your profile or your first posts-- and put them in a 'for my blog' folder. You can even add links to your online photo albums to any photo or story you post . (Like this)

Now, jump in and your blog should be ready to start filling with your news and links in minutes.

To keep people coming to your online journal-- which is the idea, right?-- post as often as possible, and keep the posts small-- bite sized-- and don't forget to spell-check-- that's built in also.

[note: BTW- Please point out any errors on my blog in 'comments' ; )Thanks!]

Now I want to go back to the Wordpress Blog that I started. I have another project that I think would fit better on Wordpress, as they offer website-like pages in addition to the standard blogging format. I'll tell you how it goes and give you a link when it's ready! Happy blogging!