4 Months of Blogging

Today, I celebrated my blogiversary again. Which is when I allow myself to play with my template until my heart’s content and write about blogging all I want. I did this last month too. I’ve decided to make it a monthly feature for a while, because it gives me a nice way of referencing information and tools for both myself and for other bloggers who may have been wondering just how to do something in particular.

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It also prevents me from changing my template on a daily basis, and from waxing on and on about silly things like how I manage my Bloglines account. I swear, I almost posted on that very subject, but luckily I saw the light before I published it.

To be honest, I broke down about a week ago and did a little premature updating into my sidebar. I added Kel of the X facta, a lovely sheila from Melbourne, who has a wide array of interests. I also added fellow Austinite, Crystal of poco-cocoa, who has a yummy food blog and journal.

This lead me to create a Austin section in my sidebar, which is just a small, but growing, list of my local haunts containing mostly politics and entertainment. Including In the Pink Texas, Burnt Orange Report, Austin Bloggers Meta-Blog, Austinist, and Metroblogging Austin. I also got a pretty new button for my Austin Weblogring, which is some fun blogsurfing, especially for locals.

I should also mention that I put a Firefox button in my side bar. Honestly, I hadn't heard of Firefox until a couple months ago and I love it. People talk about all the security advantages, but I just think it's more user friendly.

Other new additions include:

• Potatoes in the Mist by the lovely Bearette24, a fiction writing, vegetarian, ENFP, yogi living in NYC
• Deep Thoughts of a Country Boy by the one and only Dr. Synonymous, who is an old friend that never fails to put a smile on my face, a mutual friend just recently clued me into his blog.
• And I Did It Anyway by our restless Gypsy, a relatively new blogger who, as her name imlpies, is all over the board.
  
• Sugarfused by deb who seem has similar interests to me, photos and memes. She really captures wonderful photographs.
• what's in rebecca's pocket? by, you guessed it Rebecca, who literally wrote the book on blogging.
• 75 Degrees South where Simon tells us about life in Antarctica.

You may have noticed that I made a few changes in to the look of things too. I know, everybody has a white background, but honestly, I think it’s makes things easier to read. After much fussing I figured out how to get a photo background for my header. That photo is one I took of a flowerbed I saw while walking around Town Lake, edited with a focal black and white filter and some cropping. I got my husband to take some pictures of me this evening, so that everybody could see my face, not fancy, but it’s me. I also changed my profile photo around to something a little less sugary sweet.

I’m very excited to announce that I now have an email link. This is something I’ve wanted for a while and I was planning on searching for information on how to do it today, but yesterday Anvilcloud pointed out how to do it. Talk about timing. Also thanks to Anvilcloud’s invite I’ve set up a gmail account exclusively for my blog, which makes me feel more comfortable. I’m still learning to work with it, but I like it. I’m sure that once I catch on I’ll be promoting that too. So there is an email me link in the side bar and one at the end of each post in case you want to comment privately.

That’s all I had time to do today. As always feedback from the wonderful people who actually visit my blog on things I can do to improve the readability and usability of things is appreciated. If something looks eschew, please tell me. I’m always amazed at how different things can turn out in different browsers. I did also add a more obvious permalink to individual posts and take off the email post icon that Blogger sometimes provides at the bottom of each post, because I have reason to believe that it has been confused as a comment link, plus I must admit that nothing I write really is profound or informational enough that a handy email post option is necessary. I want to make things easy to use for non-Blogger users as it can be a pain for people not familiar with their ways. I still entertain this fantasy that someday one of my family members may actually be interested in reading some of my ramblings.

I really had hoped to write a blogging mission statement today, but I need to go to bed. I guess that will be on the top of the list for next month. Happy Blogging and thanks to all for enduring me.