Internet

Did curiosity really kill the cat?

Every once in awhile, prior to hitting the “delete all” button on my spam, those evil comments filled with mostly Viagra ads that the nifty Akismet plugin vigilantly protects me from, I scroll through it searching for legitimate comments that might have somehow gotten pinched in the roundup.  Today was one of those days.  I have been ill in one way or another for the past several weeks, topping the mix with a nasty case of the flu that today finally seems to be subsiding, and have not had the energy or the desire to post.  Needless to say, visitors and comments have been less than few and stats we won’t discuss.

And so this afternoon, out of loneliness and desperation, I plucked a single comment out of the trash bin (one that appeared to be legitimate).  Not only that, but I e-mailed a response to the question of whether or not the commenter might tear a quote from my bloggy and return a link.  Will this cat’s curiosity and kindness net her a bunch more spam as a lesson to be learned or will she be glad she took a few moments out of her afternoon to challenge Akismet?  I’ll let you know.

Has anyone else ever gone dumpster diving for comments?

I think I’m in love with the SiteWizard

Okay, okay, it’s probably more of a lust for his knowledge than a love for his person, nonetheless, I have very strong feelings for the man (I think it’s just one man, the one listed in the copyright notice at the bottom of the pages.  I dunno, the contact button says contact “us”.  Hmmmm.) and his website(s)–TheSiteWizard.com, TheFreeCountry.com, and HowtoHaven.com. I found his sites several years ago while searching for help with creating my previous (now defunct) very rough attempt at a website, and have never been able to let go even during my darkest days when I had no website.  I knew I would someday need him again, and he would be there for me.

And so, Mr. SiteWizard, I would like to thank you for the hours, months and years you have invested into building your websites so that you could impart your wealth of knowledge to me (I’m sure it was written just for me.) and I could in turn build a website of my own.  I have followed your instructions carefully and unquestioningly  (Yes, yes, I read all the disclaimers on your site) and you have never let me down.  I’m only sorry to admit that I let you down–I was not savvy enough to use the various free PHP or Perl search engine scripts you recommended in order to build a search engine of my own on my site.  I tried, but I was not equal to the challenge. Still, although crystal-miller.net is not nearly complete and will probably be a work in progress for years, I think you would be proud of me.

I cannot begin to list here everything Mr. SiteWizard and his websites have taught me (I’ll go into that a bit more on my website when I get the time).  Let me just say that I would not even have a domain name or a web host were it not for his tutorials.  He has walked me step by step through the entire  process, gotten me where I am today, from A-Z, and I am most grateful.  And, best of all, he did it for FREE.

One thing to note:  Mr. SiteWizard provides all of his insight, information, tutorials, scripts, etc. for free, but he does accept donations and his stuff is definitely worth it.  I, for one, am going to start feeling guilty if I don’t donate soon as much as I have benefitted and continue to benefit from all three sites.

Get A Life

You know you don’t have a life when you find yourself spending your vacation sitting in front of the computer plugging away relentlessly at creating a website and listening for your mother to sign in and out of Windows Live Messenger so you know whether or not her network connection is working or failing.  Three days into my vacation and that is ALL I have done.  No, I take that back, I have visited my parents’ home for dinner twice and worked on their network connection only to come home and find Mom’s computer is still signing in and out and in and out.  I don’t know if I am more concerned about my mother’s Internet connection or about my irritation at having to listen to her sign in and out of WLM every five minutes.  Also, I have stopped for a few brief moments here and there to eat or get a cup of coffee and have slept some, more day than night.

One exciting, ugh, I mean disgusting thing happened to me today.  A close friend always teases me about roots growing from my tush to the computer chair because I sit on it too much for too long.  So, earlier today, laughing to myself as I felt the roots sprouting from my rear I decided to put out a tweet.  Yes, I guess another of my vacation activities has been tweeting on occasion.  I tweeted, “My tush truly has grown roots.  Hee hee,” never expecting that some twisted soul with a user name that includes the word “tush” would, out of the gazillions of people on Twitter, run across my tweet and send back an “invitation.”  Ewwwwwwwwwwe!  So, if you are twisted on Twitter, here is my announcement that Crysta79 is NOT interested.

And speaking of close friends, I prefer that mine always tell the truth even if it stings a bit, and the above mentioned friend recently put forth more than a hint that crystal.miller.net, my website, my baby, my pet project, my work in progress might be a bit, um, well….   I think he said something to the effect that it looks like a small child created it, .  No, I do him an injustice.  He did not put it that way.  His opinion was that it does not look polished and professional, that maybe I should try a ready-made template like I did with my blog, and he is right.  The problem with his rightness, however, is that it landed on the ears of a stubborn and determined woman with an I’ll-do-it-myself-or-die-trying mindset.  I hope that someday the site looks more polished than it does now–I’ll learn more tricks as I go along–but it will never look sleek and professional because it is being created by an amateur, a crazy lady who stayed up late one night and decided to buy a web domain.  And guess what?  She’s having fun!

Free Weather Widgets

Visit my website, check out the weather in your neck of the woods, and then add a weather widget to your blog or website. Yesterday I located five websites that offer free, unique weather widgets that come in many shapes, sizes and styles. 

AccuWeather.com – In addition to the embedable weather widgets, Accuweather offers the weather via e-mail alerts, twitter, tumblr, web browser extensions and desktop widgets.  The widgets are available in multiple themes and nine different sizes for more than 3 million locations around the world and come in both English and Spanish.

Weather.com — The Weather Channel’s website has three different free widgets available for blogs, websites and social networking sites–two basic, smallish widgets that show local weather conditions and alerts, and a larger, more complex News/Breaking Weather Widget which I have presented on my website.  In addition, there is an iGoogle gadget, a Vista sidebar gadget and an Apple dashboard widget.

WeatherBug — On WeatherBug.com you can find several styles, shapes and sizes of web widgets that display live local weather conditions as well as severe weather alerts. All have that cute little weather bug on them . WeatherBug also has desktop widgets.

Show My Weather — Show My Weather’s free weather widget comes in one very simple style that can be customized to a limited extent. This widget works only for the USA and Canada. One tiny glitch in the system, the widget did not recognize my location by zip code as all the others had done so I had to use the “city/state” option.

WeatherforBlog.com — WeatherforBlog.com offers one weather widget that is simple but customizable with cute background pictures such as puppies, kittens, snowmen and sports scenes.  This one comes in two sizes:  300×250 or 160×600.

A word of caution to save you the frustration that I experienced.  Unless you know a trick that I am missing, do not try to put more than one weather widget from each company on  a single web or blog page.  The poor things become confused, scatter themselves all over the page and refuse to work properly.  I guess they don’t like sharing the limelight.  Weather is so fickle and unpredictable.

LinkWithin Plugin

To me, one of the most exciting aspects of searching the Internet is finding the stuff I wasn’t looking for at the time but have always wanted to find.  For instance, last night during a search for weather and recipe widgets for my website, I accidentally stumbled upon a food blog (of all things) that led me to the LinkWithin page.  Although I was exhausted and should have gone to bed hours earlier, curiosity got the best of me and I had to investigate.

I have often seen on other blogs a set of three or four links to related posts within the blog listed at the end of the post to hopefully attract readers to stay longer and read more and been green with envy.  Since my first sight of this feature, I have searched and searched to no avail.  Finally, when I had just about given up hope, I found this little gem during a totally unrelated search. 

LinkWithin is a blog widget that appears under each post, providing links to related stories from your blog archive.  Do you have photos in your posts?  LinkWithin will even add thumbnails to your links.  LinkWithinis free, has no adds, is quick and easy to install, does not require registration or sign-up, and is customizable to fit in with blogs that have light text on a dark background.  The widget defaults to three story links per post, but you can choose to feature up to five.

Check it out — http://www.linkwithin.com/learn

Google This!

I am a Christian–I bow to none other than the One true God–but if i were not a Christian, I would definitely worship the god of Google.  Google is everywhere and has it’s spiny fingers into everything I do.  If I go to YouTube, Google art there.  If I go to FeedBurner, Google art there.  If I sign up for Blogger, Google art there.  Google holdeth some of my treasured photographs at Picasa.  If I look for a new web browser, Google doth provide Chrome.  If I need to see a photo of my own house on my own street or someone else’s house halfway across the world, Google giveth me the power to do so with Google Earth or Google Street View.  All I need is one Google ID to take care of much of my business on the Internet:  AdSense, analytics, bookmarks, e-mail, search, feed reading, feed sharing, blogging, connecting with friends, watching videos, storing photos and more.  If Google can’t provide it, I probably don’t need it.

The problem?  All I need is one Google ID, but I have many and Google remembers me everywhere I go.  I am constantly signing out of one Google account and into another.  Currently I have bookmarks under three Google ID’s and they are all different depending on which identity I was claiming at the time I hit the bookmark button.  Trying to keep them all the same is a never ending challenge of importing and exporting and adding and deleting.  Google should figure a way for a person to remain signed in for the toolbar with one account while signing in and out of other accounts for AdSense, Analytics, e-mail, and etc.  God forbid that Google should allow me to have several different e-mail addresses without each being an account that it wants me to use to access everything Google.  And, what if I want to delete the e-mail address that my AdSense account is associated with (and I do)?  What if I want to use the same identity for AdSense that I now use for Analytics and FeedBurner? Take pity on me Google, I didn’t know that you were going to own everything when I signed up for all this stuff and I didn’t know it would be written in stone for the rest of my Internet life.  I change e-mail addresses and account names like I change domiciles, every couple of years or so.  I like change.  Change is good.  Help me!

My bestest friend, Philip Yeoh, on YouTube

This is my friend, Philip, playing with his new birthday present, a Canon Powershot SX120IS, that he opened before his birthday, naughty boy.  Enjoy the music . . . and please visit Philip at his bloggy, http://philipyeoh.com/blog.

Another long night ahead

I’m still feeling a bit manic.  I have rested some but not slept much and have consumed much java.  As a result, my website is progressing quite nicely. Last night, I added a cool feedback form that I got from thesitewizard.com, an awesome website that I cannot say enough about, and today I added the about me section and fleshed out the home page.

When I first purchased my domain name, crystal-miller.net, three days ago in the middle of the night, I had no idea what I was going to do with it.  It was a whim.  Originally, I had intended just to buy the name and hold onto it for awhile.  No rush.  I could always do something with it later, much later, maybe years later.  But I allowed the website bug to bite me in the tush and now I’m on a roll.  This afternoon, following a short nap, I decided to make crystal-miller.net a resource website with links to all kinds of cool free stuff on the Internet — information, widgets, gadgets, templates, software, instructions, tutorials, etc.  Eventually, I would like to offer some items for purchase as well, but I have much work to do before that time comes.

Tonight, after I take a much needed short nap, I am going to add a guestbook to this blog.  If ya drop by, please sign it.  Hmmm.  I wonder who will be the first to sign?