There are a few reasons for my disappearance that's I'd like to explain.
1. As the next pictures will show, the Achiever Card Blog is not the only thing in the Kramer household (Yes, my name is actually Kramer) that is under construction. My wife is doing a little constructing of her own. In her crazy world what she's working on is more important than baseball cards and baseball card blogs. Yeah, I know, it's crazy. But, what am I going to do. There is just no reasoning with the woman. And, seeing as how she is way out of my league, I go out of my way to keep her happy.
This means a lot of time at doctors appointments and the store for me and more computer time for her. "Little Larry" and anything having to do with him takes precedence over pretty much everything else right now, as he should. The silver lining is that every trip to the store is another potential pack of baseball cards for me. This does leave less time for me to blog. I've been busier at work so I usually have time to occasionally check the internet but not really make a post. I guess I have to teach myself that every post need not be a book. In fact, the shorter the post the better, in most cases.
2. My wife, in addition to the kid, has started teaching part time at Case Western Reserve. Because of this she has needed the computer more to throw together lectures and power point type stuff. Hopefully we'll have another computer soon, but right now there is only one. It's just hard to convince her that she needs to get off the computer so I can check ebay or see what Gellman and Mario have to say.3. The Access project. I recently acquired microsoft excel and access. I decided to use access to catalog my cards and have spent hours fiddling with it. I finally have what I hope is a working database and have been diligently entering my cards. I still have a long way to go. My estimate is that it will take months. My fear is that when I'm finished, it won't work the way I envisioned or I will realize that I should have done something different. Only time will tell.
4. Most importantly, I just don't really like my blog. I do have fun doing it, but I know it isn't very good. I need a direction for it. I figure that will come with time. I have a few ideas and I hope they pan out.
My immediate problem with it is that I really don't know what I'm doing on computers. I'm extremely lacking in basics of computers and blogging. I hesitate to ask questions because, even if I knew what to ask, I probably wouldn't understand the answer and get discouraged. The truth is I've never had any reason to learn about computers. The only thing I've ever needed one for is to write an occasional paper, check email, and look at news on ESPN. It never really mattered how things worked.
I'll give you an example of my ineptitude. Whenever I make a post I have to work out everything from the start. If I add a picture it goes straight to the top of the post. So, I can't start typing and then decide to add a picture. I have to upload every picture I want in reverse order and then type around it. I can't imagine that this is the only way to do it, as it is an incredible pain in the ass. And that's just one thing. Another thing is people talk about how many hits they get. For the life of me I can't figure out how they know. If anyone can give me some advice on where to go and what to do to get myself up to speed on maintaining a blog page and adding features it would be greatly appreciated. I know this exposes me for a fool, but I need more help with thing than just asking a few random questions and hoping I understand the replies.
Hopefully soon I'll be able to overhaul the and start posting things worth reading. I don't know it the name will be the same, or not. I just know I don't like it how it is and how it looks right now. I'm hoping that the few blog rolls that I'm on will give me some time to get my shit together before they boot me. Although, I'd understand if they did and would just hope that I'd get this thing to the point where I'd be worthy of getting back on them.
See what I mean? I'm just so damn long winded. Really, who the heck do I really expect to read this whole thing?
4 comments:
Hey, welcome back. Congrats on the coming baby. They do take up a lot of time. When mine were born there wasn't an internet to fool around with. Thank God for that.
As to your problem loading pictures. If there's a better way to do it then you described, I haven't figured it out and I've been doing this since February.
You can add a counter to your blog. They are free and easy to add. I think a search on Google for free counter would probably bring up a bunce. It's as simple as copying some code and pasting it on the side panel of your blog (yea, over there on the left).
Blogger may not be the easiest to use. It was the 2nd I tried and a lot better than the first one.
Congrats on the kid! Good luck with that and get some sleep while you can...
What capewood said on the counter. it's pretty easy. just sign up, and cut and paste some code into your blog template. I put mine on the bottom.
Pictures: Blogger's picture uploading is not very user friendly. What I do is put all my scans in a folder and upload them from there. I also upload them last, after I've written the post. They will all pop up on top, then I click on the photo, right click - CUT and then right click - PASTE where I want it to go.
If the formatting doesn't look right, click on the HTML tab when you're writing the post. That will show all the HTML markup codes on it and you can see if there is strange formatting going on. If that's too confusing, bo back into the compose tab, select all the text and copy it to a notepad window. Then you can get it looking right and copy it right back into a fresh new post. This will make sure that there aren't any html codes lurking that's screwing up the format.
As for the content, as long as you're having fun with it who cares if it's good or not. There's been a lot of blogs out there posting about the 'right way' to blog and it's all a load of crap. If you are having fun with it, who cares. Look at the first few months of my archives, I didn't know what the hell I was doing either. I just kept writing and now I still don't know what the hell I'm doing but it's interesting at least. Unless you become a professional blogger and are living off each ad click it doesn't matter. It's just a hobby, have fun.
If you have any questions about html and all that crap, just shoot me an e-mail, I'll try to help you out.
Heya! Have no fear about the content of your blog! As dayf said, a lot of folks out there try to 'tell' you how to blog. Baloney. Write what you want. Ultimatelt, blogging is about what YOU want to write, not what you might think people want to see. But, I think most newcomers to the blogging world go through the same worries and unsurity. I know I did, and still do sometimes...
I use the free counters offered by sitemeter.com. You sign up, pick a style, and then it will show you the code. Highight the code, then right-click and copy it. On your blog, go to layout and add a new section using the HTML element. After you add it, click EDIT and then when the section opens up, right-click in the 'white space' and PASTE in your code. Once that's done, save the section and then you can drag that element to the bottom of the list (assuming you added the section to the right side of your blog).
Pictures are a pain in the butt on blogger. dayf's method works well. I happen to write in the HTML view, so when I upload my pictures, I highlight the code for the picture, cut the text, and then find the place I want the picture and paste it in. Like I said, pictures are a pain on here. Some folks get fancy with picture placement, but for me, that's too much work.. LOL!
I've enjoyed your posts, so I hope you are able to continue. :-)
Thanks for the encouragement guys. I really appreciate it. More than you know.
I have a few things to do and then I can devote the rest of the day to this blog. Let's see if I can enact some of your suggestions and get this thing headed in the right direction. Or, at leasted headed in the direction that I want it to.
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