I’m Beautiful Like Me.

I have made some changes around the blog site. If you hadn’t already noticed or read about it, I bought a domain! With that, I felt it was time for some changes and upgrades.

Firstly, I have changed the appearance ever so slightly. I gave up on the three column format because it felt too crowded to me. I have added some new widgets - curse those widgets! I love ‘em and want to use every widget I come across, but they really bog down page loading time and well, everyone hates that! So, I’m trying to keep the widgets simple and relevant to the blog. And I have managed to hide about half of them on post pages, which is not as simple as it sounds! Please note there are two new ones that I’m quite pleased with: Buzzworthy Posts and Top Commenters. Buzzworthy Posts are posts that received a lot of attention, either via comments or tags, diggs, etc. on social networks. Top Commenters is a widget that lets me spread the love of my most dedicated commenters! Thanks, BHF. You my girl!

I have two polls going on in the sidebar (so posted in the event that you are a feed reader) that I’m sincerely hoping will get some votes. Basically, I want to know how you read the content of my site and how you feel about the site’s appearance. I’m concerned that some people might have trouble reading the layout as I use a black background and it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve heard complaints about it being difficult to read. Also, I have very recently subscribed to a large number (think: 80+) of blogs. With that, I have been exposed to all sorts of inspiration on blog appearances and think I would be up to the challenge of more format changes if the masses so demand. On that note, if you are a plurker and blog author, please add your URL to my plurk blogroll page.

Finally, I have discovered the I Follow Movement - manually removing the ‘nofollow’ code from blogger’s template so that links posted in comments work. I urge you to leave your links in all comments henceforth and I will spread the link love! Please see the image on the top right of your screen. You can get your own and learn how to remove that code properly from your template (regardless of what blogging platform you use) at Randa Clay Design.

I do expect a couple of additional changes in the coming weeks. When the polls close here, I will make a decision about the format on the web and I also have some other things in the works that are temporarily stalled. I’ll be sure to update you when I know more.

In the meantime, thanks for reading and voting!

In an act of sheer self-importance, I purchased a domain for this blog late last night/early this morning.

While I write this blog primarily for journaling purposes and sharing photos, videos and updates for family and friends, I am making discoveries: that I really enjoy posting about crocheting and knitting, that I am enjoying practicing my writing skills again, that reading other blogs (I am subscribed to 80+ and I still have a list to pour through!) is inspiring me to write about more than just the family.

It gives me something to do with my time and - as Mike C. (pictured left with Buddha) says - my talent, which he believes I am otherwise wasting.

I’m not entirely certain what the long-term goal here is, but I am hopeful. I’m a bit surprised at how simple and inexpensive it is, too! The only difference in what you used to see and what you see now is the name in the address bar. Whadda name! I’m most giddy about the name, I think.

You mean you still aren’t on Plurk? What the hell, go sign up now! I want to hang out with you, so join me.

Plurk has a very simple user-interface. It may seem confusing at first because it is so different from other social networking sites (especially Twitter, to which it is frequently compared). The first two images below are screenshots of my profile. Yours will look similar, although much simpler at first.

At the top of your screen from your profile there is the timeline. In that timeline are plurks (yours and your friends’) - messages you share with others. Inside a plurk, others can respond and have conversations and each plurk receives its own plurk page (see the third image for a screenshot of a plurk page or click the link to see the page for yourself).

I liken Plurk to a combo of instant messaging, a forum and a mini-blog. Some people on my friends list treat plurk the way they likely treat(ed) Twitter and post what appears to be broadcasts. Some people post plurks about what they are doing, where they are going, what they are eating and so on. A few of my friends post interesting articles and intelligent, civil debate follows. I’m really enjoying it (if you couldn’t already tell!). But it would be more fun if more people I know joined in. HINTHINT. It’s a great way to stay in touch and meet new people.

It is still a relatively new social network site (having just launched in May 2008) and new sites are popping up everyday talking about Plurk. There are a few blogs I’ve discovered (and subscribed to) about it and a few of the people on my friends list are developing new plug-ins and add-ons for Plurk. Plurkpix is designed for ease in posting pics in plurks. Plurk desktop is coming. Lots of people have figured out how to use Plurk with their cell phones. It’s quite exciting.

The karma feature is a fun little feature to help you get started and keep you coming back. When you reach certain karma milestones, new features become available to you. The recent big one is the ability to modify your own profile page (from where you do 98% of your plurking) using CSS once you reach 25 karma. As you can see above, I’ve designed mine to look like my blog.

A couple of hints for newbies and would-be joiners: magik linking is enabled in plurk.

-To link to a fellow plurker, simply type the @ symbol before a user or display name with no space. For example, if you wanted to link to my profile in a plurk, type @tata in the plurk.

-To link to an outside website, type the URL of the site followed by the text you want to show in parantheses. For example, if you wanted to link to my blog in a plurk type http://tatasmagik.blogspot.com (tata’s blog). You need a space between the URL and the URL text here.

-To post thumbnails of images, copy and paste the URL of the image ending with .jpg or .gif inside a plurk. However, if the image is hosted a Flickr, copy the URL from the address bar. This is also true of emoticons! No need to wait for higher karma.

-I am adding smilies to a Photobucket account for my fellow plurkers to use.

I hope to see you on Plurk soon!