Secondhand Links

So many blogs so little time, but still, I've been hoping for a little more time to peek into a really neat blog called How About Orange.  Jessica Jones is a graphic designer.  And you'll see she has a fabric collection called Modern Flora™ Fabric Collection.  The hobo bag at the left is made out of one of the fabrics.  You'll also find, among many other things, her own tutorials for fun things to make as well as tutorial links she has gathered from other great places.  Lots of colorful inspiration there!

The sewing pattern and instructions for the hobo bag are found at jcarolinecreative.com and look for this cute! little Thumbtack Tutorial at How About Orange. 

I found it rather ironic that right on the heels of posting my happiness over figuring out why I couldn't publish a post with images from Live Writer to Blogger, it happened again two days later.  Same resulting upload failure, but a different error.  This time it was a change Picasa made.  There was a small discussion on the Blogger Help Group, but no info on how to fix the problem.  It was reassuring though to find out that others were experiencing the same problem on the same day which likely meant there would be a fix forthcoming.

When you run into trouble, besides the Blogger Help Group, check Writer Zone, the Writer Team Blog you will find under Help at the top of your Windows Live Writer program.  Writer Zone did not post anything about the file upload error until after things were working again, but it is nice to be able to read the details even after the fact and it will be one of my first recourses another time.  Also check the Windows Live Writer MSN Group which is another wealth of information.  You'll learn things you aren't even trying to figure out.  For instance, the fact that all your drafts and recent posts are backed up in a folder in My Documents called My Weblog Posts.  This is especially helpful if you write a draft post on one computer and want to finish it up on another computer.  The file can be easily transferred instead of having to post the draft online and then calling it up again on the other computer.  I don't think there is currently a way to search this group for whatever you need to find, but one poster offered this link to Search Windows Live Writer Group.

One side note, if you wish to view your unpublished post in "Web Preview" you can update your weblog style by clicking on Weblog —> Edit Weblog Settings —> Editing and then the Update Style button or View and then Update Weblog Style.  Live Writer then downloads all the pretty parts of your blog so that you can view your post in Web Preview as it will look online.  Allow it to post a temporary post which will be deleted automatically, and if you get an error message that states that the style template used for editing your weblog posts could not be downloaded check this help/FAQ page.  One common reason could be that of posting to a private blog.  When using Blogger, if you change permissions for a moment to be viewed by anybody, update your weblog style, and then change the permissions back, that may be all that was stopping the update download.

Sometime back, a sweet friend had displayed her desktop wallpaper on her blog, and I just had to know where she got it from. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was a Debbie Mumm design as I love Debbie Mumm stuff.  I'm very happy to share that you'll find no less than 27! absolutely gorgeous desktop wallpapers.  Their quality is exquisite.  You'll also find Free Projects (don't miss the Project Archives link) and beautiful E-cards, shopping of course for Debbie Mumm products, and for something really fun, Debbie's own very engaging and personal blog.

I got this error when trying to publish to Live Writer. The remote server returned an error: (500) Internal Server Error. I thought at first it was just something in that particular post. Or maybe the server wasn't working, but I tried publishing from different blogs and using different graphics. After a lot of trying to figure it out, it narrowed down to the fact the post would publish but not if it contained a photo or graphic. I couldn't imagine that I'd used up my allotted storage, although I do post a lot of photos/graphics. I found someone else asking the same question in the Blogger Help Group. Isn't the Internet amazing?

If we don't pay a lot of attention sometimes and take notes for later, we miss the details of some of the things we use all the time. Like for instance, where do our photos go when we upload them for Blogger? I used to wonder and wish I had control over that so I could go delete them if I wanted to, and then I found out one day where they do go so I did have that info tucked away (buried) in my bookmarks. If you use Blogger, they go to your Picasa Web Album. If you're logged in to your Google account when you click that link you'll see all your blogs neatly listed and how many pictures are in each album. Well, sure enough my Windows Live Writer album had 500 photos in it and that apparently means full. One thing, as I understand, those 500 photos are 250 photos and their thumbnails. Also, in my case, the album held a lot of duplicates from when I've had to re-post or republish or try something again. So, I think I'm going to make a practice of deleting those duplicates as they happen.

Getting back to the error problem. As the tech recommended,

When posting pictures to Blogger from WLW suddenly stops working, the most common cause is that the Picasa album that Writer uses is full. If you go to http://picasaweb.google.com and rename the "Windows Live Writer" album to something else, then try again, it should work.

simply renaming the Windows Live Writer album to Windows Live Writer1 fixed it. There is now a new Windows Live Writer album in my Picasa Web Album. Happy.

Just in case you have never tried it or heard of it, I wanted to mention Windows Live Writer.  It is a great little program for easily publishing to your blog.  It works with WordPress, Blogger, and most major blogging services.  It makes inserting photos, videos, links and other content quick and easy.  Especially if you have more than one blog.  One of the nicest features is being able to work on a post offline if you'd like and save the draft for later without having to publish anything or be online.  Conversely you can call up a post again which has already been published.  You can also integrate your blog design and graphics so that you can preview your post as it will look online.  Inserting and aligning photos with your text is wonderfully easy, as is the nice feature of adding a drop shadow or photo paper which makes it look like a Polaroid photo.  There are also some very nice image effects.  The nicest feature, for me, is not having to upload photos anymore.  When you insert the photo into your post, you're done.  The photo is uploaded automatically when you publish your post.  Here is a nice review: 12 Reasons Why I Like Windows Live Writer.  Try it if blogging takes you just a little longer than you'd like it to.  I think you'll be pleased!

I really love and prefer to use Mozilla's Firefox web browser.  I know IE supports tabs now, for browsing, but I just find Firefox to be cleaner visually.  I love that when I reopen Firefox I can have it set to reopen my windows and tabs from my last session.  Another thing I really like in Firefox are the Add-Ons.  I use FireFTP for uploading my files.  It is the easiest FTP program I have ever used, and the great thing is that it just opens in a tab in your web browser!  The Download Statusbar is another favorite as is Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer which I use to keep the bookmarks on my tower the same as the bookmarks on my laptop.  This is so helpful! and it works great.  I am able to keep a bookmarks "toolbar" just above my browser tabs, a horizontal string of folders with all my bookmarks organized and easy to click from.  The fabulous part of this is bookmarking-made-easy.  I just drag a tab to a folder and it saves that page bookmark in whichever folder I drag it to.  There are just a great many things I love about Firefox.

Still, I've been having some glitches which made some things a little frustrating.  I had tried uninstalling and reinstalling, but that doesn't remove Firefox from your system so it doesn't really help.  This morning I suddenly had this one inch high solid tan horizontal bar underneath my browser window status bar.  Some other things seemed to be working oddly too, so I tried a system restore.  Everything was back to normal, except the tan bar was still there so I uninstalled and reinstalled Firefox hoping whatever little setting had gone haywire would be righted.  The tan bar was still there. So I decided to find out how to uninstall Firefox completely.  I found this page which was very helpful.  ("This article contains instructions to uninstall Firefox and remove it from your system.") When I reinstalled I could tell that it was a nice new install.  But, the tan bar was still there. Back to the Google drawing board.  So I found this link, Gray bar below the status bar, and now the tan bar is gone.  It took a little bit, but I finally found which extension was causing the tan bar.  So, just in case you ever need to know, this is how to get rid of that tan bar.

Because I had updated to another program, I had occasion to want to remove Windows Messenger but could not for the life of me find a simple way to remove it from my computer.  I feel silly saying that it is one of the joys of my life (because I have only had Broadband Internet for less than half a year) to be able to just sit down at the computer and type a question in search and come up with an answer in less time than it would have taken me to connect with dial-up.  But there you go, what a joy to be able to use my computer like a glorified dictionary/cookbook.  I promptly found this site, PC Hell, which appears to have anything and everything you might need to know to fix what we're capable of fixing without having to take your computer to the computer doctor.  I like that.  You'll find How to Uninstall Internet Explorer 7 in case your automatic updates installed it while you weren't looking or How to Remove Windows Messenger in Windows XP which is what I looked for originally.  How to Fix Problem of No Spell Check in Outlook Express I need to send to Mom who just came up with this problem on a new computer.  Or Save and Restore Desktop Layout of Icons which is a great idea if you've got everything just the way you want it and the computer gremlins come in and change it on you.  There are many "How to Remove" links, everything from Gator to McAfee to computer viruses.  I'll let you explore further on your own.

I had to share my current desktop wallpaper.  It's still extremely winter here, and it just makes me feel better when I see this summer breezy feeling photo on my monitor.  Mostly I wanted to share this because as wallpapers go, Better Homes and Gardens wallpapers are very high-quality, and very pretty and colorful. There are lots to choose from in quite a few different categories, and some of them even come with recipes!  I think you will have to register before you can download them, and it's really super annoying that there are way more pop-ups than is necessary asking if you want to subscribe to their magazine.  But, it doesn't stop me from going back. What I really love about these online magazines is how you can "clip" things from their pages which are then automatically saved for you to come back and view later.  Especially helpful for recipes, tips, decorating & remodeling info.  Martha Stewart.com is another great clip-able site.

This picture couldn't be more me, at least the me I aspire to be.  I love love love color which probably explains why I've been getting Mary Engelbreit's Home Companion magazine for years and years.  Color and Mary Engelbreit just "go" together.  I think, even more than her designs, that's why I love her.  I got the latest issue in the mail the other day and it is certainly full of color.  It also features designer Heather Bailey which I thought was terribly fun since I have so much been enjoying her blog, HELLO my name is Heather.  If you have not been there before, I would very much encourage you to.  Besides the fact that it is a treat, just a feast for the eyes, you'll find fabulous free sewing projects there.  She also designs fabric collections and paper craft & scrapbook supplies which are coming this spring/summer.  She is also developing a line of sewing patterns.  See?  Fun.  And if you ever feel you need a pick-me-up some day.  Click on over to take a tour of her studio.  It is, if you're like me, one of the most amazing things you'll ever see.

Getting back to Mary E. for just a moment.  If you don't already get it and think it would be fun, subscribe to the E-Newsletter.  It is periodic happiness for your eyes and your email inbox.  It offsets the spam.

Whether you like to listen on your iPod or just play the mp3s on the computer or a cd player, LibriVox has all the free audio books you could want.  Volunteers read (record) chapters of books which LibriVox then releases for free.  Their objective is to make all books in the public domain available, for free, in audio format on the Internet.

There is a very large catalog of books.  Choose Pride and Prejudice for instance and you will find several choices to make which may or may not matter to you.  There are three different versions of this book, meaning later or future recordings.  And you'll notice there are different readers as well.  You might want to listen briefly to find which reader voice you prefer.  You can download the entire book in a .zip file or chunks of chapters by mp3.  Or you can subscribe in iTunes which is a very nice way to do it.  The entire book goes automatically into your iTunes, but then you manually download each chapter.  The first one usually downloads for you automatically.  And you can even download CD cover art should you want to burn the files to a CD.  In all a very nice site!

Here are some links for some fun fonts, like SP Love Life at the left, for scrapbooking or otherwise.  Scrapsupply.com has some really great free fonts.  Click on Fonts in Categories and look for the green Free buttons.

There are 24 free fonts at Two Peas in a Bucket.  There's a great dingbat-like font there as well as others which are like little text graphics.  Really fun stuff.

KevinandAmanda.com has a lot of great fonts.  You can even get your handwriting made into a font.  Click on Fonts at their web site.

ScrapNFonts.com has some really nice free fonts.  Look for the Free link way at the bottom right-hand corner.

There are some really great $1.95 fonts from One Swanky Chick.

I ran across a nice looking recipes template for Blogger, but the template download link resulted in a .rar file which is for data compression, like a zip file.  Tech-Pro.net gives a nice explanation of Rar files.  They are not so easy to open though, meaning unless you find a program which will open it, because they cannot be opened using your regular unzipper.  Tech-Pro.net recommends BitZipper, but I found 7-Zip which is a free software which will easily extract a .rar file.

By the way, this is the recipes template by Blogger Templates.

Have you ever seen the amazing Paul Potts (Wikipedia article)or the equally amazing and adorable Connie Talbot, both of Britain's Got Talent fame?  Saved YouTube videos which are in .flv format are fun to have but a little useless unless you have an FLV player.  Martijndevisser.com is one you can try, but it involves opening the .flv file into the program or dragging and dropping the file into the player which is certainly simple enough, but I would rather just have the option to play the file.  You can convert the .flv file online with Youtube Converter, Vixy.net, or Media Convert.  Or download Total Video Converter 3.11 which will do that and more.  One feature of this program is the ability to combine several video and audio files to one video file which could be very useful when you don't want to have to open several videos one after another, for instance when using your iPod on the treadmill.  There are certainly many other methods and programs, but these are a few.

The Google Notebook is a fabulous way of keeping track of things you find while surfing the Internet.  Ideally it keeps all your little "clips" for you, complete with pictures and automatically includes the link you clipped it from which is especially important if you later want to give credit to the person/place where you found something.  There are helpful editing features, like adding categorical tags, or notes to a link you've saved, or just your own notes as you surf.  Notes can be easily dragged and dropped from notebook to notebook, and you can have as many different "notebooks" as you'd like.  There is a search feature, and saving a clip is as easy as right-clicking and adding it to your notebook.  It is a great tool for researching.  The makers have this to say about it:

"That's why we built Google Notebook--to give you an online "notebook" where you can organize all your research, add personal notes to it, and share it with others. Google Notebook surfs along quietly with you as you browse, letting you clip and annotate whatever text, images, and links that help answer your question, all without ever leaving the web page you're on."

The Prepared Pantry is a family-owned business which sells baking mixes, kitchen tools, baking ingredients, and gourmet foods. They even have free baking lessons. The thing I was the most happy to find was eBooks. I don't know why, but a well-put-together recipe eBook just tickles me.  They have a 250-page How to Bake: Your Complete Reference Book (which comes in chapters week by week), free baking guides, articles, and free recipe collections.