Snoskred - Life in the Country

And even cooler, there is a blog devoted to generators.

I made my Swedish Furniture name - I dare you to do the same thing!

Ladies and Gentlemen. Please listen carefully. What I am about to say is so important I feel that I want to type it in caps. Rather than inflict caps lock on you, I’m going to trust that you are paying attention.

Internet Explorer version 6 and below does not render CSS properly.

Therefore instead of the navigation bar on my blog looking the way it is supposed to look - which is like this -

It looks like this -

I don’t have to tell you that clearly something is very wrong with Internet Explorer 6 and below because the picture clearly tells the story. I could fix it so that it looks ok in Internet Explorer 6, but you know something? Why should we web designers have to do a lot of work to fix something that isn’t our fault, but is the fault of a defective browser?

My website looks exactly how it is supposed to look in every other browser except for Internet Explorer 6 and below. I know this because I have tested it.  You can test yours at Browsershots.

And you know what else? People using Internet Explorer 6 or below?

You should upgrade. NOW.

Drop what you’re doing and click on this link to upgrade your defective web browser!

Alternatively, you should switch to Mozilla Firefox which actually works properly - and always has done. You won’t believe how different the internet looks when you see it the way web designers intended. Firefox even does automatic upgrades these days, so you will never ever have to worry about downloading another upgrade yourself again - it will tell you it needs to upgrade, and you just click yes. It does not get any easier.

This topic annoys me so much it makes me want to swear. You see how I restrained myself from saying lots of rude words? I’m not sure how much longer I can keep doing that, so upgrade today.

Kirsten from All About Me - And Then Some asked many interesting questions yesterday in her post Am I A Good Blogger? and it’s such an important topic that I felt a comment would not do justice to it. So today I am going to take on two of the important questions we bloggers should ask ourselves. Do I buy my own domain? What about social networking?

Do I Buy My Own Domain?

Absofreakinglutely! Kirsten is on Blogger, which makes it easy to use your own domain yet continue to enjoy all the benefits of using Blogger. There are many reasons why you need your own domain and here are some of the important ones -

- Wherever you go, there you are. People will always know exactly where to find you.
- You build links back to your blogspot domain - you could be building them to your domain name.
- You have absolutely no control over what the people at Blogger do.- If Blogger went haywire - would any of the people who read you regularly know how to find you again? If you have your own domain they can easily find you.
- If someone hacked into your blog, you would be able to redirect your domain to the new blog (this happens a lot more than people realise, don’t think it’s impossible) and people could still find you.
- You may decide later to change your blogging platform to Wordpress, or create a portal instead of a blog (tinyportal is my favourite and one I have looked at using in the past) or do one of a million things, and by having links to your domain rather than a blogspot URL, you get a jumpstart on page rank, on links to you, etc..
- It gives you flexibility - you can decide to move, or not
- either way you’re *able* to make these decisions yourself.
- If you decide to take your blog down for whatever reasons you can leave a simple page with instructions on how to contact you.
- You cannot get your own Alexa ranking on a blogspot domain. You automatically get Blogger’s ranking. For the bloggers who do want to earn some money from blogging, an Alexa rank is a bit important. It is one of the things advertisers look at. (Update - check the comments, you can have an alexa ranking on blogspot but you have to have a large-ish amount of traffic to get it, Thanks Meg!)

The only time you should not use your own domain is if you have been blogging for a very long time on the one you have now and have high rankings on that blog. Even then I would STILL consider it.

Now a few quick myths we need to get out of the way re owning your own domain name.

It’s Expensive.

No, it’s not. You can buy a .com domain for as little as $8.95USD a year - and some domains are even cheaper. I do recommend that you also purchase the privacy protection for $6.99USD per year - that means nobody knows your real name, address, phone number, just by looking up your whois information - worth a little extra money! For less than $16 you’re all set. We use Go Daddy for all our domains - all five of them. Meg from Dipping Into The Blogpond also wrote a great post about getting your own domain name and debunking the myths of .au domain names.

You Need Hosting.

No, you don’t. With Blogger all you need is the domain name. Blogger is going to do all the hosting for you. Later down the track, if you wanted to go to Wordpress you may need to consider hosting - but Go Daddy provides hosting for as little as $2.99 a month and there are many excellent hosting packages out there on the internet.

It’s Not Worth Doing Now.

Any blogger who has moved from a blogspot domain to their own domain will tell you - the sooner you do it, the better. Even if you’re just blogging as a hobby you may change your mind about that later - and then have to go to all the effort of re-establishing page rank (which you may well have built to 6 or even higher) and Alexa rankings and backlinks and blogrolls etc.

When I changed from the blogspot domain, Sephy had just done it weeks before me, and he already had a list of the sites I needed to change my URL on. The list was long but it was a fast job and only took me an hour or so. However all the backlinks I lost.. whoa. I had the old domain on a 101 rating with Technorati. My new site was a 0. I had a google page rank of 4. My new site was (and still is) a 0. It was painful. I made the change on the 17th of July and my new domain name is up to a 78 on Technorati - without me having the time to devote to letting people know I’d moved by visiting their blogs personally. It’s still on my to do list. The longer you leave it, the more painful it will be.

Blogging Is Just A Hobby.

Can you name one other hobby of yours that you can do completely for free? All my hobbies cost something. I can’t think of one hobby I do that I haven’t had to put some cash towards.

I’m Not Blogging For Money.

I’m not painting for money. I’m not reading for money. I’m not playing computer games for money. I’m not gardening for money. I’m not watching DVD’s for money. I’ve easily spent 3 times what I’ve spent on buying my own domain on all of the above - sometimes 30 times.

What About Social Networking?

Kirsten said - I don’t have time to dedicate to heavy social networking… If I did I’m sure I’d have more readers than I do now.

The only social networking tool that draws large amounts of traffic is probably StumbleUpon - Digg is not quite the same thing, that’s more a news and article network. The others are nice, and often leave pretty pictures in your sidebar but realistically don’t bring large amounts of traffic in the way StumbleUpon can. So in my opinion, StumbleUpon is an absolute MUST - I’ll talk more about StumbleUpon in a minute. I do still recommend you sign up to a couple of the networks, as follows.

Bumpzee -

Bumpzee is basically a series of blog communities. Each community has an RSS feed. That means whenever you post, your blog post goes out to a lot of people. If you can make your title and first 250 words eyecatching enough, you will get some traffic from it. However even better you will find that some absolutely legendary people within these communities - and you will build excellent relationships.

It does not require a lot of time to join Bumpzee, and once you have joined you can throw the community feeds into your reader. They do generate a fair bit of posting traffic but as time goes by you will figure out which blogs you can live without, and add your favourites into your reader on their own.

MyBlogLog -

One thing I love about MyBlogLog is the fact that it autoadds you to a bloggers community once you have visited their site 10 times. So just by cruising around the blogs you love, you are social networking too. I log in there once a week and add any new friends to my friends list, this takes maybe 5 minutes. They also have some great stats which come for free when you’re a member - outclicks is really useful for me.

BlogCatalog -

Very similar to MyBlogLog. I think if you have one you should have both, but maybe that’s just me. It doesn’t take much effort to sign up at these, and very little effort to maintain them unless you *want* to put more effort in. I wish BlogCatalog did the autoadding thing, too. (Jonathan, BlogCatalog’s new blogger liason team member, are you reading this?)

Make An Impression -

With all three of the above communities, you can put the little widgets in your sidebar and see when people have dropped by on sight. I personally love that. Make sure you get yourself a unique and eyecatching avatar - preferably an image you have taken yourself if possible because then it is less likely it will be copied. Use the same avatar on *all* social networking sites. People will click on your avatar to find out more about you, and they often end up at your blog. It’s not a huge amount of traffic but it is one way to find new readers.

StumbleUpon

The main thing you need to do for StumbleUpon is download a toolbar in order to use it. The toolbar is excellent. It contains everything you need in order to stumble. I’m not going to write a guide on how to stumble here, because Meg already did that much better than I can. Beginners Guide To StumbleUpon - You do not need to absorb all the information in the guide at once. Bookmark the article, and go back to it once a week, learn something new. I still keep going back to it.

I stumble sometimes 5-10 minutes a week. If I find myself at an internet loose end, I tend to stumble rather than do anything else. Sometimes that happens - you’ve read everything in your feed reader, you’ve checked the news sites, youve done everything you wanted to do, and now you’re like.. hmm.. the internet is BORING. Then you see the toolbar, and you remember - no it isn’t! and you hit the stumble button.

The even better thing about stumbling is, you can give a blogger a bit of a traffic burst when they blog something you really enjoy - and you can do this with just ONE click. They deserve that - and they will appreciate it and thank you for it.

You *should* make sure to tag anything you stumble - take a couple of moments to do this and make sure to put it in all appropriate categories. A post like this for example would belong in blogs, internet, blogger. There’s a drop down box, adding tags is simple. Meg had to send me an email to let me know that one. hehe thanks Meg!

So..

You don’t have to want to be an “A list” blogger to make the most of your blogging by having your own domain name. You just have to want to be the best blogger you can be. A lot of people don’t read blogs about blogging and when they *do* read blogs about blogging they feel a bit offended - I haven’t done that, I don’t need to do that, etc. You have to take the best bits of what the blogs about blogging are saying, the bits you can use, the bits that apply to you, the tips you want to try, and let the rest go. I’m not going to just follow one persons advice on something, I want to read a lot of opinions, that’s why those blogs are so popular.

Social networking can seem time consuming but tends to be a lot less time consuming than you’d think. Have I convinced you of the benefits of both, Kirsten? As long as you don’t use Facebook, which I am told is the temporal vortex of the Internet. I don’t know for sure, I haven’t signed up!

When I get time, I’m going to add a “best blogs about blogging” list of blogs to the sidebar. If you’re reading this and you have any suggestions on blogs that should be in that list, leave a comment with a link to the blog please.

Many Australians read this blog and I’d love for them to come over and comment on this post and give me their insights or perhaps make a post of their own. Does anyone else feel like they don’t belong here in this country, or is it just me? The Hump Day Hmmm topic this week is - Race, Society and the Internet. We Aussies have a unique view on this topic, I think.

Australia is a multi cultural land. I have been raised to appreciate and respect other cultures, traditions, beliefs - and I do. We have people from many lands who have come here. The Australian Census in 2006 lists over 30 different countries of birth for the current residents of this country - and one of those categories was “other”, so the real truth is difficult to know.

If you ask an Australian what does multi-cultural mean, they will generally mention food. Yes we have many different foods here in this country but it is about so much more. Language. Religion. Beliefs. Genetics. Art. All of that plus a lot more - right down to how the homes smell and whether you take your shoes off at the door or not.

Where I grew up was a fairly typical Australian neighbourhood. Across the road lived people from Sweden. They spoke Swedish and taught me some Swedish. They had a REAL pine Christmas tree. They had exotic names. Next door to them were people from Poland. They were stand offish. They decorated their Easter Eggs in the traditional Polish Pisanka style. Next door to them were people from Italy. Oh, the food. They took me to Midnight Mass and I adored it.

At primary (grade) school, my first best friend was Ellen. She was Chinese and just as much of an outcast at school as I was, which was why we got along so well. We both had a crush on Iva Davies from Icehouse. In year 7 there was a school camp, and Ellen was the only person whose parents would not allow her to go. In solidarity, I refused to go, and the two of us stayed behind, the only two out of almost 100 students. Her parents had a Chinese restaurant and we would go there after school, folding napkins, eating chicken and sweet corn soup, spring rolls and prawn crackers and drinking Coke. I still find it hard to drink anything else with Chinese food. The two are forever associated for me.

My second best friend was Leila. She was from Iraq. Her home smelt mystical. I cannot describe it other than to say incense sticks and spicy food. She had arrived in Australia very recently and there was a lot of fear and concern for family and friends left behind. She had the most beautiful exotic clothes and gorgeous dark curly hair and this accent which seemed to be to be sent from Heaven. I wanted to talk like her.

My third best friend was Rachel. She lived three doors up. Her parents were second generation Australian, from English stock. Her mother had this major thing about naphthalene flakes and moths. She would sprinkle naphthalene flakes on the floor and vacuum them. The smell was impregnated into Rachel’s clothes and some of the kids teased her about it. Me personally I liked the smell from a distance but going into the house was difficult, you almost needed a gas mask to survive it.

We were the four - inseparable. We came as a package. When primary school ended, none of my three best friends went to my high school. I arrived there and I was the outcast. I was not stick thin. There were 500+ people in my year level. The only people who would accept me into their group were the “nerds”. Mostly I retreated within myself because people were so rude and nasty to me. I began to hate school and look forward to the weekends when I could see my old friends from primary school. By the end of that year the four became people I saw less and less often. They’d got involved with their own school lives - but where did that leave me?

I ended up going to church to seek out people I could be friends with. There I met my new best friend who was my best friend for all of high school and quite a few years after. She was second generation Australian, her parents were from the Isle of Man in the UK. She went to a different school than me, but she was an outcast there - she was also overweight like me and she was a diabetic. She spent a lot of time in the hospital which was near to me, and I spent a lot of time there with her. I’d walk to the hospital after school and stay there until my parents picked me up about 9pm.

Around this time next door to us on the right side a new neighbour moved in from Malaysia. He was a later addition to the neighbourhood, arriving in the late 80’s. He was not too much older than me and his parents had sent him and his brother out here to go to school. I had a major crush on him but I never said a word, feeling he would be terrified by it. Instead we became very close friends. He would go back to Malaysia for several weeks over Christmas and his absence was like a gaping hole. You took your shoes off at the door. Often Leonard would find large huntsmen spiders in his shoes and say maybe this custom was not a good idea in Australia.

The majority of the population here are not “native” Australians. I was born and raised here and no matter how much I might want to be, I will never be considered a “native” Australian, just like many Americans will never be considered “native” Americans - though I don’t think Americans feel it in the same way I do (do ya’all?). I do not have any Aboriginal blood running through my veins. Many Australians would consider that to be a good thing - I personally wish there was, for many reasons. First and foremost is I want to be considered a “native” Australian. I was born here. This is my country. To be told I am not native to my own country is honestly one of the most irritating feelings.. it seems petty and pedantic but it really stings and this annoys me more the older I get.

I don’t actually know very much about my ancestors or how they got here but I do know there’s Scottish blood on my Mother’s side and English blood on my Father’s side. Maybe that’s why I’m so attracted to men in kilts. I have never seen Braveheart and I don’t understand much about Scottish traditions. I am hugely attracted to Aboriginal Art. Something about it speaks loudly to me. When I first started doing art I kept seeing dot paintings in my head.

I’m no master in Australian History or anything, but over 200 years ago the English used to send their convicts here. People who stole a loaf of bread would be shipped out to Australia as a punishment. Whoever thought up that idea had obviously never been here. The place has amazing natural beauty. Aborigines have been treated very badly in this country since about the time the convict settlers arrived. There is a lot of anger on both sides - everyone is angry, actually. It’s not my intention to go back over the history and explain why people are angry and to be honest what is in the past should be able to stay in the past. Let’s live in the now, not the past. Right?

Of course things never work that way. The major issue is, somebody introduced the Aborigines to alcohol, drugs, and petrol sniffing. Some people tried to do good things and built houses for the Aborigines to live in, perhaps they thought it would help to make them “civilised”. They were quite offended when many of the Aborigines pulled out the floor and took off the roof - they need to feel the dirt under their feet and see the stars above their heads. Oh, and some people stole a bunch of their children, claiming those kids weren’t being looked after. In fact an entire generation of Aboriginal children were stolen out of their homes. The Other Half’s own Mother was one of this stolen generation. She wasn’t wearing shoes in her backyard. That is why she and her brother were taken away.

Aha - did you pick up on that? The Other Half has Aboriginal blood in his ancestry. Oh, he’s pretty white. You can’t tell by his skin color. We believe he has two generations of white blood, though nobody can be sure, that whole stolen generation thing gets in the way of the family tree, and his Mother did not truly embrace being Aboriginal because of being stolen. It was something mentioned in a whisper. He does have a lot of the typical Aboriginal genetic traits - a thick skull, a wider, flatter, sort of squished onto his face nose, curly dark hair. To me The Other Half looks a little bit like Guy Sebastian, except without the groomed eyebrows.

Guy is a fairly unusual Australian Idol - he was not born here. Guy Sebastian was born in Klang, Malaysia to a Sri Lankan and Malaysian father, and a mother of Portuguese and English descent who had been raised in India.

If you were to look at The Other Half chances are you would guess he is from the middle east - since September 11, he cannot get through security at the airport without being vacuumed to see if he is carrying explosives. People are always surprised when *I* tell them he is Aboriginal and their initial reaction is “I thought he was from (middle east country). He does not tell people. He doesn’t mind me telling them, but to him it’s not important. It is also not a part of him because he was not raised in that culture.

To me, who values the fact that he can call himself a “native” Australian, this is pure blasphemy. On one hand I can see why - some people have a stereotypical view of Aborigines - that they are drunk homeless people. It’s not true for the majority of Aborigines, but it *is* true for a small group of them. Of course that small group are the more noticeable ones when you’re walking through the park they are drinking in. If I had the smallest amount of Aboriginal blood in me, I would rejoice and embrace the culture with open arms, because at least then I would feel like I belong here.

Because they were treated so badly in the past, like America there is now the politically correct non discrimination thing going on. Some jobs are advertised with “Must be of Aboriginal descent”. The Other Half would never apply for one of those kinds of jobs, because he does not think it is fair to anyone. He does not want to be someone’s “token” Aboriginal. There’s also a large range of free services he would have access to if he chose to identify himself as being of Aboriginal descent. He won’t do it. He says it is because he has no proof that he is Aboriginal other than what his mother has told him, and what are they going to want, DNA samples? I say the same thing about those jobs where people have to be of Aboriginal descent - do you have to take along some proof?

I sit here in a land of many cultures, and I feel completely lost. I don’t have my own culture. I mentioned before when I was growing up in primary school my best friend Ellen was Chinese. That had such enormous meaning to me. She had a language of her own, her parents ran a Chinese restaurant, when you went to her house it was filled with traditional items from her parents homeland. My house seemed empty in comparison - full of love, but no cultural history. If you asked Ellen - what is your culture - I am sure she would have a list of things as long as her arm. If you ask me - what is my culture? I don’t feel like I have one. I don’t belong here. I am here, but I don’t BELONG.

To counteract this feeling of not belonging I have begun to carve out my own culture. I take pieces from other cultures that I like, and I adopt them as my own. I have a real pine Christmas tree. I cook Italian comfort food when I feel unhappy. I eat Chinese once a week and when I feel sick I cook chicken and sweet corn soup. I love Feng Shui, aromatherapy, incense sticks, Geisha dolls, midnight mass, the Norwegian language because it speaks to me on a level I don’t even understand, beaches and Aboriginal art.

None of these small, stolen traditions will ever fill that hole I feel. It will never make me belong the way I see people from minorities belong. I don’t have my own language - and when I do type the language I know, Australian English, I am accused of not knowing how to spell. Not just by people reading my own blog but by my OWN WEB BROWSER!!! Here we use ou - favourite, colour, etc. Words that I was taught to spell in school show up with a red line under them in Firefox.

Australians, I believe our biggest challenge is still to come. We now face a new religion arriving on our shores. It’s been here for a while but now it is beginning to make its presence known. I have never been more uncomfortable. I do not like some aspects of this religion at all, in particular the Hijab and Halal. Cugat once said something very intelligent to me about Halal and I hope he repeats it in the comments - about the origins of it.

I find myself offended by what seems to me to be a religion where women are considered lesser creatures. Of course I could be wrong but that is how it looks on the face of it. I believe I may be beginning to develop a prejudice against this religion and this means I am going to have to learn more about it.

Despite the same Qur’anic obligations being issued for men and women, rules regarding dress developed so that men were to cover from their navels to their knees, whereas a women were to cover all their bodies except what was essential, that is, the hands and face.

What offends me the most is Halal. The one thing I do consider truly Australian is the Aussie Hamburger - we put everything on there we can think of. Beetroot, egg, bacon, lettuce, tomato, onion, pineapple, avocado. Now some places you can no longer get bacon because they are Halal. I wrote this post - Hang on a minute - on that topic back in November and also - Another non-religious post - as yet my views on that have not changed. I need to remember to look deeply to find the similarities between myself and people who follow this religion or else there’s a chance I might not accept them. That’s difficult when you feel offended as a woman by such a religion - how can I reconcile the woman I am to the women who follow something which seems to be oppressive to women?

I leave you with Guy Sebastian. People not from Australia, and people who didn’t watch the first season of Australian Idol might not understand why Australia chose him. I believe watching this clip makes it fairly obvious.

Every Sunday on the blog I do a “weekly wrap up” post. It has become a firm favorite with my readers and people often email or comment letting me know how much they enjoy it. So, would you like to make a weekly wrap up a part of your blog too? Here’s how to go about it. Note, this may get a little basic at times in order to help out the less technical of us.

1. Decide what categories you want.

It’s a good idea to have a weekly wrap up follow a kind of “set format” or order. It makes it easier for the readers - they know what to expect each week. You can choose any kinds of categories you want - be creative. You could choose to wrap up what has been going on in your life, perhaps little things which didn’t rate a blog post of their own. You can break down some of the categories into smaller chunks, for example my Must Reads section has extra categories within it. My weekly wrap up includes -

Funny Search Terms This Week -
Must Reads - Post of the week - Funnies -
Great Stumbles this week -
Here On The Blog -
Blogs Added To The Sidebar -
Coming Up -

2. Never be afraid to add to your categories -

This week I am going to be adding a new section where I highlight an old blog post of mine each week. I’ve written some great blog posts in the past and newer readers to the blog may never have read those. If you think of something new don’t be afraid to try it out - and if it doesn’t work out that’s ok too. Some categories you might want to only use from time to time when something fits in them instead of weekly.

3. Create a weekly wrap up text file - with formatting included.

This is the key secret to writing the weekly wrap ups - the formatting part is a secret I only recently discovered. How do you do it? I do mine in blogger but what I’m about to say can be done with almost any blogging platform.

- create a new post
- put in your category titles
- format each category title as you want them to appear (larger text, bold, color etc) note you have to do each title separately because you’re going to add text in between the titles later.
- copy the HTML (in blogger just click edit html and copy that - wordpress users, how do you do this in wordpress?)
- paste the HTML into a text file

So now, you’ll have a text file which will look very strange to you because it has odd code in it, eg - (span style=”color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;”) - here’s a link to my actual text file blogwrapbase which I put up on my webspace so you can see it. You can use it if you like.

Save this text file as the BASE file. Then save it a second time as blogwrap(date) and use blogwrap(date) as the file you put your links in as the week goes by - this way once you’ve done a wrap up you can open the base file and then save it as blogwrap(next week’s date) and start putting links etc aside again without having to delete last week’s work. This saves you time and effort!

If you looked at the file, you’ll note I have html in there for the links to posts etc. That’s important when you get to number 4.

4. Have your weekly wrap up text file open when you’re online.

I’ve mentioned Editpad Lite here on the blog before as one of the best free things available on the net - a great little program that allows you to have text files in tabs so you can flick between them.

I always have Editpad running on my computer and I now always have blogwrap(date) open so when I find a great blog post or an article or anything I want to mention in the wrap up, I can add it - this is where the HTML comes in - (a href=”link”)text(/a)

- copy the link and paste that where it says link
- copy the title of the post as written by the author to where it says text.

Once you’ve done that, you have a link ready for posting in a weekly wrap up. Don’t forget to click save whenever you add in a new link - I lost a bunch of links one time when the power went out.

5. Write your thoughts as you go.

When you copy a link, make sure to put a little bit of text next to it on the spot, so you don’t have to spend time re-visiting the links when you’re writing the blogwrap post. An example from tomorrow’s upcoming blogwrap - with the html brackets changed to ( ) so you can see how it looks in the file -

(a href=”http://heritage.stsci.edu/gallery/gallery.html”)Hubble Heritage Gallery Of Images(/a) Sites like this are why I love Stumbleupon.

6. Comment before you leave the link.

I usually like to let bloggers know I’m going to be linking to their post in my next weekly wrap up, sort of as a heads up. This is a polite, considerate and friendly thing to do and a very good habit to get into. Sometimes I forget due to lack of talent, organization or skill. Apologies in advance, I never claimed to be a perfect blogger!

7. Communicate updates to your blog.

The weekly wrap up is a great time to mention new widgets and gadgets you’ve added to the sidebar, as well as any changes you’ve made to the “face” of your blog and any new blogs you’ve added to your sidebar links. When you make a change, note it in your wrap up text file on the spot, so you don’t forget about it.

8. What’s on the horizon?

The weekly wrap up is a good time to let your readers know what may come their way over the next week - however be careful. Blogging happens all on its own sometimes, and sometimes I’ve said things were coming up but those things still have not arrived. I’d generally advise not to say too much, just a brief overview of potential possibilities and topics. However do make sure to let them know if you’re going to be participating in things like the Hump Day Hmmm or various other weekly type things.

9. Consider shining the spotlight.

Vegan Momma recently added a weekly spotlight post - a great idea. You could also do this as a part of your blog wrap up, as Meg from Dipping Into The Blogpond does, spotlighting one Aussie Community Blog as a part of the weekly update. It is a great way of showing your blog readers blogs that you enjoy - and a great way of showing bloggers you love their work which is something bloggers enjoy and like.

10. Click on the links.

Once you have published your weekly update, my advice is to click on all the links in your post. This gets the words out to bloggers that they have been linked to because all bloggers tend to check where incoming links are coming from, and generally they will drop over to your blog and check it out, sometimes leaving a comment, sometimes adding *your* blog to their list of blogs to read.

Pick a day! Let people know.

You should choose a day of the week that you’re comfortable with. I chose Sunday because it was a slow day here at the blog - it’s not anymore. People drop by just to read the wrap up. It’s also made Mondays busier, too.

So there you have it -

How to create the blog wrap up and make it easy. Are you inspired? If you’re going to add one to your blog, make sure to comment and let me know, and send me a link when you write your first one, I’ll drop over to check it out.

Work Smarter -

Until recently my weekly blog wrap up was taking up a fair bit of time at the end of the week to put it together. While I was putting links and search terms aside during the week, it was more of a mish mash of stuff I’d put aside rather than anything organised. I would leave it till Sunday to format the post and lay out the links in some kind of order and in general it would take over an hour to finish writing it.

Now that I’ve decided to work smarter instead of harder, the blog wrap post comes together over the course of a week, and is ready to post on Sunday with only five minutes of checking and editing.

A little link love is a good thing -

Blog wrap ups are good for many reasons but the most important could be helping you to build relationships with other bloggers by showing them you like their work enough to link to it - and generally you will find the link love comes back to you over time.

We all find ourselves amazed, happy, excited, possibly a little scared when we start blogging and get our first comment, and we begin to connect with people. It’s a great feeling. How many of us take the time to encourage other bloggers on a regular basis, and let people know we enjoy their blogs and enjoy their work? A weekly wrap up gives you the chance to do that - if you don’t want to do it weekly, you might consider once every two weeks, or even once a month.

Emoticons. We all use them on the internet from time to time, but there is one emoticon that should never be used, in my opinion. Unless you want to offend someone.

Imagine I am sitting across from you, and I said “I really like your shoes”.

Now imagine I am sitting across from you, and I said “I really like your shoes” and as I said it, I rolled my eyes like this.

Doesn’t that give an entirely new meaning to what I said? As in, I’m being sarcastic here, I don’t mean what I am saying, I am making fun of you or I really *don’t* like your shoes.

Now imagine there are three of us. I say to you “I really like your shoes” and when you look down to remember which ones you are wearing, I look at the third person and roll my eyes. You don’t see me do it.

Now imagine that same situation, except this time you DO look up in time to see me do it. Have I just offended you? Have I just turned something that seemed to be a compliment into a slap in the face and an insult? I think so..

I can’t think of a situation in real life where it could be taken as a *nice* thing to do. Unless you’re a stand up comedian, perhaps.

I’ve known people who use the eye roll on various forums on the internet, in fact one forum where one user made it their trademark to always be using it in every post - needless to say, that person and I did not get along. I find it puts me off balance a little - as if I’m not really sure if this person is being sincere. It disturbs me, makes me wonder about that person. It often reminds me of bitchy girls in school who would use the eye roll constantly as a put down.

When you use the rolly eyes on the internet, I see it as you actually rolling your eyes like you were talking to me and you did it - and if you’ve just said something you intended as a compliment, I’m seeing it as an insult. I try really hard not to take it that way, but I wonder, how do people actually mean it? Am I supposed to interpret it otherwise?

I know not everyone interprets this the same way, but emoticons on the internet are really all we have to add tone to our writing. My advice is to think carefully before you choose the rolly eyes, and use it sparingly, if at all. There are better emoticons available out there.

I’ll be back soon with a photo blog.

Sephy wrote a great how to guide with screenshots on how to integrate your Blogger RSS feed with Feedburner so that you can get detailed stats about your blog’s feed. Right now most blogger people probably don’t know how many people are reading their feed and this is a really good way to find out.

It’s also great because I really struggled with the layout of feedburner and kept having to ask him “what do I do now?” and I bet it got a little trying for him because every time I went there I seemed to have forgotten how to navigate around. Now I can just refer to this guide, which I have bookmarked YAY!

I find that some websites on the net are intuitive - as in, very easy for people to use. Some just don’t click for me. I’m lucky Sephy is my technical guru and always willing to help me even when I keep asking the same questions over and over. I can be a technical low wattage light bulb even at the best of times. This will probably come to people as a surprise - I seem like I am a technical master of things but what I am is more of an idiot savant - if you show me how to do something a couple of times I can remember it and even tell other people how to do it.

If there’s anything computer or blogging related that you want to know how to do, Sephy is offering to make a guide on that especially for you - and others. All you have to do is ask him - either in the comments section of his blog, or shoot him an email via the link on his blog. If you want him to keep it quiet that you were the one asking, he will happily do that and just pretend like I asked him. Its likely I did at some point anyway.

Do you have a technical guru? Are you good with technical things, or do you struggle like me? Leave a comment and let me know..

Recently I merged all my RSS feeds into one feed and discovered that there’s a LOT of people lurking out there reading my blog via RSS. I’d like to take a moment to thank you for reading, and to ask you a few questions - if you could answer them in the comments or send me an email I’d be very grateful. I’d like to know a bit more about you.

Where are you from - you don’t have to give specifics, just which country is ok.

Do you have a blog of your own - if yes, do I link to it and if I don’t link to it would you allow me to link to it in the sidebar? If no, what would it take for you to get a blog of your own?

Is there anything I could do here on the blog to encourage you to comment more often?

Is there any particular topic you would like to see me blog about more often?

Could a how to post (with screenshots) on any particular topic help you? Is there something either blogging or computer related that you’d like to know how to do but have no idea how to go about it? If yes, which topic(s)?

I could ask a lot more questions but I don’t want to scare you off.

This post was also partly inspired by slouchingmom who mentioned on Blogrhet that she had asked lurkers to delurk. I thought that was such a great idea..

Yesterday I got word that Alexa had finally released an official toolbar “Sparky” for Firefox users. I installed it right away but then two hours later Firefox told me it had an update - and the only extension that would not work with the update would be Sparky!

Just now Firefox popped up a box and told me that there was a new version of Sparky available that works with this version of Firefox, so I now have it back. Yay!

So if you want it, go and get Sparky. Finally Firefox users can have their voices (and their traffic) heard! Given that over 50% of the readers here use Firefox I’m hoping many of you will install it so a truer reflection of your visits here can be seen by the world.

If you are viewing this with Firefox, it will all look fine. That’s because Firefox rocks. If you are viewing this with Internet explorer, you will see one entire sidebar missing which is now at the bottom of the site somewhere. That’s because Internet Explorer is pure evil.

Let me not get into my.. hmm, how can I word this.. prejudiced view of people who use Internet Explorer. I’m not racist or sexist or any other ist, except for *browserist*. It’s wrong of me to think like that, it is unfair and I know I’m a browser snob but I can’t help it! I just don’t know how anyone could use Internet Explorer when Firefox exists. I know a lot of people end up using it by default and switch over when they know more about the interwebs.

I know a lot of workplaces make people use Internet Explorer but damnit, people, RISE UP and fight such stupidities! It’s pure discrimination in the work place, forcing you to use one kind of browser. In my opinion, this is just as bad as saying “you have to be heterosexual to work here”. But they’re saying “you have to use an evil piece of software to work here, and compromise everything you know to be right and good in the world”.

And no offence intended to you if you’re using it by choice. But if you are, this site will look pretty bad until Sephy and I figure out how to fix this. May I recommend..

Mozilla Firefox - get it here.

This post is must read, even if I do say so myself. Why is that? Because there are some things out there on the internet which are generally secrets unless someone tells you about them. I’m about to spill the beans on 5 things I use every day, things I cannot live without, things that make my life easier and they might make yours easier too. Let’s get started. I’m saving the best till last though, so read the whole thing..

Open Office

What is it?

They say - “OpenOffice.org is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute.”

I say - a god send, manna from heaven, much better and easier to use than Microsoft Office but documents and things you create using it are compatible with it and similar programs and 100% free. Legendary. Download it, you will NOT regret it.

NVU (pronounced n-view)

What is it?

They say - “Finally! A complete Web Authoring System for Linux desktop users as well as Microsoft Windows and Macintosh users to rival programs like FrontPage and Dreamweaver. Nvu (which stands for “new view”) makes managing a web site a snap. Now anyone can create web pages and manage a website with no technical expertise or knowledge of HTML.”

I say - The above is ABSOLUTELY TRUE! It is the easiest program I have ever used for designing a website and unlike other free web editing software, the code it produces does not make The Other Half break into a sweat to look at it - clean and good html. Sephy found this one for me when I wanted to design my new website Snoskred’s Fraudstars, and I am crazy about it.

Skype

What is it?

They say - “Skype is a little piece of software that lets you make free calls to anyone else on Skype, anywhere in the world. And even though the calls are free, they are really excellent quality. If you and your friends, family or business contacts are using webcams, you can also make free video calls. You can even call landlines and mobile phones at really cheap rates.”

I say - the best of the instant messaging programs out there, with the added benefit of being a telephone and Skype In - phone numbers you can get in different countries that people can call you on. Say for example you had relatives in the US who didn’t have a computer. You could get a Skype In number in the USA and they can call you on it - saving much money in long distance phone calls.

Skype In is not free -it’s about 30 euros last I checked - but for me as a scambaiter it is worthwhile. I have two Skype In numbers (one in Australia and one in the UK) which I give out to the scammers and they can call me, I take the calls right here on my computer. Skype call credits are reasonably priced and I use it to call the scammers from time to time - usually just to say “It’s (character name) call me back RIGHT NOW” and then hang up on them.

Gimp for Windows

What is it?

They say - “GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. ”

I say - looking for free photo editing software that is easy to use? This is it. Like any photo editing software it does take some learning to know how to use it but if you put in a little bit of learning time and effort you’ll be a master of photo editing in no time. And the good thing is, people love it so much they write excellent articles on how to use it, a good example is this article by Martijn Weisbeek.

EditPad Lite

What is it?

They say - “EditPad Lite is a general-purpose text editor, designed to be small and compact, yet offer all the functionality you expect from a basic text editor.”

I say - If it were possible to marry a computer program, this would be the one I would choose. Being the queen of disorganization I NEED this program to survive. It is as vital to me as breathing. Without it, I would be sitting in a corner somewhere rocking back and forth sucking my thumb. It is that essential to me. Some of the best things about this program include -

- you can use tabs, so you can have several text files open at once and flick back and forth between them. LEGENDARY!
- there is a reopen feature which I use, it tells you the last 16 files you had open. For someone whose text files folder contains over 500 text files and for someone who never names them in a way that makes any sense this is like oxygen. You won’t know how you lived without it once you have it.
- best of all, when you minimise it, the program goes to the system tray instead of being a little window at the bottom of your screen. I wish all programs did this.

What I have written here makes no mention of Firefox or Thunderbird, two other programs I use daily. I think that’s because they deserve posts of their own, it is just finding the time to write them. But just in case you are reading this and using Microsoft Internet Explorer and Microsoft Outlook because you did not know you had other options, you want to take a look at Firefox and Thunderbird ASAP. You can do that at Mozilla.com - if you are anything like me, it will change the internet as you know it. There’s a lot of people who fight over which of these programs is better. I don’t get into arguments over it, I’ve used them both and I know which is better for me. To each their own but if you aren’t aware these programs exist it is worth checking them out.

I’m hopeful this was a useful post and if you have downloaded any of these and use them let me know what you think.

What free things on the internet do you use all the time?

I might like to use them too..