Blog Template

After spending years making my blog template more and more busy - adding columns filled with links, widgets, and goo-gaws, I've decided it's time for a simple template.

I enjoyed learning the HTML and CSS I used to set up my custom template of about a year ago, but now I'm in a mood for simplicity.

Cookie crumbs everywhere

It might just be my cookie settings or some such simple thing, but this is weird and annoying - for the past few weeks, logging in to Gmail will not log me in to Blogger, but logging in to Blogger will log me in to Gmail.

Ugh. Now I have to do things like think and remember which order to open tabs, damn it.

(See, I don't store any passwords on my PC or in my browser, so I log in to everything each time I use the PC.)

Thanks Paulius!

On Wednesday I posted something I thought no one would respond to, which quickly became the hot new online phenomenon known as 'Michelle's Chuckle Button'.

Ok, so I exaggerate a bit. It might not be a full-blown phenomenon.

Thanks to Paulius, who investigated, discovered and reported about the 'Reactions' feature already built into Blogger. Very cool!

So now my blog has a 'chuckle' button and a 'meh' button at the bottom of each post, terms which I think fully capture the broad emotional spectrum of online opinion.

It's taken a long long time, but Blogger has finally started delivering some very neat tools. I would have been willing to pay for all these extras, but hey - they're free!

New Design

Yeah, I'm in the middle of loving and hating the new Blogger template design tools. At first review, the new template code looks a lot more difficult to tweak than the old code.

Not a bad way to spend a Saturday evening, right? For us this is a busy night!

Twitter Element Removed

I took the Twitter feature off the top of the blog. It was sloppy, and I couldn't come up with a good way to make it less sloppy. Until I get better at code-wrangling, I'm gonna just take it down.

How weird is this?

Somehow, all of the text except for the newest post is all lower-case. Weird.

Must be something I did in the new template.

New Template!

For a few years, I was very good about blogging 5 times a week, even if the day to day stuff was short, I wanted to post something. It helped that I was allowed to blog at work, I have to admit. And by 'allowed' I mean, no one was paying attention to anything I did as long as my work was done. These carefree days are over, unfortunately.

As is likely obvious from the clunky, amateur design, I made this new template from scratch - using the book "HTML, XHTML, and CSS for Dummies". It was a fun and frustrating process that took months of work, with moments stolen here and there. I just now pasted the template code into the 'W3C Markup Validation Service' and it spit out 292 errors and 46 warnings, so apparently I still have some work to do cleaning up the code.

For the most part, it seems to work correctly - for Internet Explorer. My PC had three different browsers installed and a variety of screen resolutions to choose from - but my PC died recently.

I've been using Cindy's PC for a few months now, and all I have to work with is IE in 1024 x 768 -- and Safari on my iPhone. It looks decent on both of these, though I'm sure I'll be doing some tweaking for the next few weeks. Let me know if there's anything especially wacky happening with the blog from your point of view.

Looking at the 'Etcher Approves' links at the left, it looks as if all I do is watch TV... I need to add music and books as well.

I'm hoping the new template will get me back into blogging more often. We'll see.

Libbys Libbys Libbys on the Label Label Label

Blogger labels...

I have a number of post series, such as the Real Life Conversations (check your local listings).

I'm up to 39 real life conversations, and if you click on the label link for RLC, you get the 20 most recent posts with that label (because in my dashboard, I have 'show last 20 posts' selected).

I wonder if there's a way to create an exception when it comes to viewing a labels result, since the frustrating thing is, once you've read the first 20, there's no way for the reader to go on to the next 20.

I could create a link within each RLC to an RLC master list page, where all the RLCs were listed one after the other in one post, or a post with links to each individual post, but I'm more interested in finding a fix for the labels.

Yay! Go Me!

Mike, as you know - I accidentally overwrote your blog template last night with a harshly edited version without archives, comments, or links.

I'm sorry. I know, I know, it sucks!

However, thanks to your foresight two weeks ago when you inexplicably backed up the template for no good reason, it has been restored!

Go May 11th Mike!
May 28th Mike thinks you rock the casbah! Woo!

Thanks,
Mike

Labels Tabulation Extravaganza

Do you guys ever look at the labels list that's compiled for your blogs?
It's interesting to see which things I talk most about...

Real Life Conversations (37)

EtchCo Inventions (19)

Cats (17)

Cindy (10)

Credi-Bull (9)

Florida (7)

Music (6)

Potty (5)

Actual Job Postings (4)

How odd that I talk about the cat more than my good lady wife...

How to create mouseover text for a link

SquirrleyMojo recently asked how to create a link with text that pops up when you're mousing over it. Luckily, this is easy, or I wouldn't be able to do it.

Let's say you want to put a link in one of your blog posts.

1) Find your URL and copy it
2) Highlight the text within the post you want to make into a link
3) Click the Link button
4) Paste in the URL and click OK

(Your link is done, you've done that part before - now the new stuff)

5) Click the 'Edit Html' link at the top right of the compose field
6) Find your link within the HTML - it will look like this:
7) You add in a little string of text that reads:
.....title="it's easy!" or whatever you want. Long sentences will be cut off, btw.

(I usually put this right after the 'a' and before the 'href' - be sure to space it out so no words run together - like so:

Example

Long Example

8) Publish the post! You're all done.

Probably too many steps for an average blogger - someday there'll be button for 'add mouseover text' but for now, there's this method.
.

I've like, Totally Arrived

Used to be, if you googled MC Etcher, it would come right up with "Did you mean MC Escher?" which it still does... But now it sez "Etch A Sketch Attention Span" right after that. I guess a 1000 or so posts is all it takes to be #2 on a semi-witty typo.

Woot!

UBNUH!

Am I the only one getting tired of this:
How about we get to create our own lists of words? It's the 21st Century, dammit!

It would be cool to create specific word lists for specific pals - like if your Star Trek geek pals visit your blog, they could enjoy Star Trek related word verification.

Or maybe the word verification could be a clue, rather than something you just read and retype - like "What was Scotty's shoe size?"

~~~~~

Hmn, I wonder if Blogger could make money by using corporate ads as the word verification...? Bet they could.

New Template!

I had to upgrade to the new Blogger, and in the process I was taking a look at the other options for templates - nothing good.

I was really looking forward to an improved template - I'd had the last one for a good two years I think, but sadly the options weren't any better with the new Blogger than the old.

I ended up searching around online until I found the template you see now. It still needs work, but it's a start.

Stamping of Foot!

So I just logged in to Blogger, and I get this message that they're gonna be pals just this one last time, (cause we go way back and all, with the thing with that guy that one day) but next time I want to blog, I gotta gotta haveta upgrade to New Blogger.

Can you believe this shit? A service I voluntarily use every day is improving against my will, and I have to upgrade!

When I think of how much quality time I've gotten out of Blogger these past few years, all the great people I've met, and all the money I haven't spent on Blogger, I just get so not angry!

Side By Side

I was clicking the Next Blog button to see what would come up, and the first page I ended up on was a memorial blog for someone's deceased mother.

The next one - and I kid you not - the next blog was a birth announcement for the cutest little baby girl ever.

Word Verification? ? ?

The word verification functionality for posting comments doesn't seem to be going anywhere... When it was first introduced, I'd hoped that it would soon be upgraded - but no sign of that yet.

Such as:

a) When I'm logged in to Blogger, why do I have to perform a word verification check to comment ON MY OWN BLOG? I think I can trust me not to post spam. Probably.

b) I have a certain group who regularly comment on my blog, and most other blogs are the same. Why isn't there a way to add "Trusted Pals" to your blog settings, so those follks who comment all the time don't have to bother with word verification?

Maybe this is solved in the Beta? If so, I haven't seen any sign of it.