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AdobeGenPro Digital Creativity Workshop: Blogging

November 15, 2013 by kathi

This week, our challenge was to share our work online via a blog.

The blogging assignment

Creative Challenge – Blogging: Create a blog if you don’t have one, add a couple of posts reflecting on your experiences of this course.Then post the URL link to complete the assignment. If you already have a blog create a post about your experience in this course following the guidelines introduced this week. Then post the URL link to complete the assignment. Use your digital skills developed so far in the course and try to be economical and efficient with your time.

I’ve failed miserably at being economical and efficient with my time, as I’ve decided to repost and elaborate upon each one of the course assignments here in this blog. This is as much for myself as for the assignment; the review and reflection has been a valuable part of the whole experience.

I haven’t been a consistent blogger, but I’ve had a blog since 2002. When I started blogging, the software of choice for self-hosted bloggers was still Greymatter, with Movable Type also gaining popularity. My first self-hosted blog ran on Movable Type and was primarily about pet health. It is still online but has been dormant for many years. This blog is also self-hosted and runs on WordPress. It is primarily a personal blog created for NaBloPoMo in November 2008, and my main topics have been my dogs and other pets and technology. I’m fairly active on my Tumblr blog (and what I post there often contains profanity or is otherwise not suitable for work or my main blog), and less so on my LiveJournal, which in recent years has just served as a place to crosspost from this blog.

I don’t struggle with combining the personal and professional—I’ve rarely ever blogged about work. At my last job, we briefly discussed whether we should have a company blog and decided against it. At my current job, the discussion has never taken place, and it probably won’t for some time. Or at least not until I think of a strong reason as to why we should start blogging, and I’m not sure there is one right now. I don’t believe that every business niche benefits from blogging.

rottweilersatemylaptop_ss — The old version of the blog

So enough about the past, and on to the technical notes. Although the assignment allowed the use of an existing blog, I felt just a little bit bad about not having to actually create a new blog. So I took the opportunity to do a long overdue upgrade to the latest version of WordPress, installed the latest version of StudioPress’s Genesis framework, and changed to a new minimalist theme, Wintersong Pro. I did some minimal customizing of graphics and type size, and plan to change the fonts as soon as I pick some new favorites from Typekit.

I’m still unsure as to whether I’ll continue blogging regularly on this go-around. We’ll see what happens and if I still have more of interest to contribute to the glut of information on the ‘net.

Website or CMS? WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal?

August 6, 2010 by kathi

In addition to my own blogs and websites, I host and maintain a few websites for friends, family, or organizations that I belong to. I’m thinking about switching some of those websites from conventional hand-coded sites to CMS.

I’ve played with test installations of both Joomla and Drupal on my own server. I found Joomla slightly easier to wrap my mind around. Joomla has a wider variety of free and paid themes available; Drupal is more secure. The sites I want to switch are quite simple so both Joomla and Drupal seem like overkill. They may be a good choice for the sites that belong to organizations since it would be easy to integrate a members-only area, discussion forum, or other interactive features down the road.

My first self-hosted blog used Movable Type and of course you know my current blog uses WordPress. In the past, I never really considered using blogging software as a base for a website, but some of the WordPress frameworks have made me think I should reconsider. Tonight I took a little time to read up on StudioPress’s Genesis theme framework and Crowd Favorite’s Carrington framework. My brain hurts. I’ll let you soon know what I end up doing!

(NaBloPoMo | August ’10: 6 of 31)

Turn on the lights, brush away the cobwebs…

June 23, 2010 by kathi

Sorry I haven’t been around as much as I should be. I seem to have lost my way this month, with a NaBloPoMo fail and a definite shortfall of Mingling and Blog Hopping. I’ll play catch-up as best as I can, but I think I’ll forego any more attempts at NaBloPoMo until fall!

As you may already know, Freya’s training and trialing has not been a source of joy and wonder lately. A vet visit didn’t turn up any physical causes for our training and performance issues, but I didn’t have any lab work done at that time. I’ve been debating with myself about having a thyroid panel done. Her last one came back normal not quite two years ago. But she will be seven years old in November, so is now edging up to senior status (noooooooooo, she’s still my puppy girl), so at this point, maybe it is money well spent rather than a long shot. Hypothyroidism is also one of the only non-fatal things I can think of that could cause mood swings, hyper-reactivity, and weight gain (in her case a more subtle inability to get back to her ideal weight… hmmm… a problem for me, as well). Anything else I can think of is either much scarier, or else points back to me sucking big time as a dog trainer (this is actually the most likely possibility).

Speaking of health tests, I still need to get Axel in for his OFA cardiac clearance. I have been holding off in hopes of a cardiac clinic being offered at a nearby show, as the cost savings would be very significant (try at least 50%), especially if the clinic is also doing Dopplers. Since there have been no known heart issues with his parents or siblings, and I don’t have any immediate breeding plans for him, I guess it won’t hurt to hold off just a bit longer.

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m going to mention it again anyway since it’s one of the things that has been eating up my time this month. Please think about subscribing to The Total Rottweiler Magazine. I am currently a volunteer (unpaid) proofreader and copyeditor for TTRM so I do admit some bias as I tell you it’s well worth checking into if you have any interest in Rottweilers and dog sports.

So that’s the short version of what’s been going on. I have a backlog of Freya training videos to analyze and comment on, as well as a couple of hopefully more informative short rally obedience-related videos that I’m editing in iMovie as time permits. I hope to also have some Axel frisbee video soon. On the technology side, I have some MacBook and Sony Reader thoughts to post. Oh, and I did manage to fit in the upgrade to WordPress 3.0 as well.

I know it isn’t supposed to be a main focus for this blog, but I still have some TV breaks that I never posted. Lucky for you all, some are no longer timely so you won’t have to read them, but at some point I still plan to tell you why Glee is the devil. I’m sure I’ll have at least a few new TV breaks once Rescue Me and Mad Men start up again on June 29 and July 25, respectively.