Saturday 19 February 2011

ebooks

I found ebooks too- can i turn my blog into a book... i think i can... just checking out the best links.

What have i learnt from what in the last two or three posts?

Plan, plan, plan - everytime if find some site i want to make a page on or make some web template or anything at all, i find i'm halfway through and wish i had made a plan.

so the new year's resolution (a bit late) is to plan stuff better... so i have my mindmap software to help... its called free mind (but a piece of paper is quicker - and you can photograph it and send it to the computer via bluetooth!!)

Consistent themes

I want to make a theme that's mostly the same to run as a thread through all these social media sites... maybe if i can take off in my micro biz it will be useful... and to make stuff for other folks who have micro micro businesses... but learning all the animation and draw stuff will take a little while longer... the most amazing thing... new varifocal glasses to help me see the computer and around the room without putting glasses on top of my head... i can actually see to eat my dinner and watch telly at the same time for the first time in my life without changing glasses... and read with a book on my knee!! amazing... oh and i found blighty telly on sky and i know its a bit cheesy but its got all sorts of uk community programmes and i (dilydaydream...) love it.... soz teens ... i can always watch mtv too.

Can you tell its been a long winter

Winter happened in the UK before Christmas with the biggest snowfall for years... so now in Feb we think spring is round the corner... some hope ... lots of cosy days in ... must learn google ads.

I got stung with a get rich quick app-invite on facebook... but survived it almost with checking my payment with clickbank and finding their site and signin... i dont know if anything will come of it ... hope its not a subscription site... will post later ... i did get lots of downloadable ebooks so it's not so bad so far but i dont want to spam or scam folks so i did a quick uturn.

Mobile locate werent so helpful i tried to locate a couple of mobiles, and it was new year and their site wasnt open so there was no help and no password ... 30 days after new year they hit my account for the full years subscription... silly me i thought they would be ethical and refund the lot from 4 jan when their helpdesk was open... i have just over 2/3 of the money back but am still asking for the rest...

we live and learn... why i thought either would be ethical is beyond me... must have been the after effect of santa and christmas.

Waiting for Spring 2011

Have had a really hectic time, made a website on vistaprint www.weave-wyrd.vpweb.co.uk thinking of transporting lots of social media easily together with albums... i made a jalbum with a few photos and put a wordpress together Dilymum. Added a twitter site or two, Dilymum and Dilyfamilystuff - the later as i'm also researching my family tree which is a mammoth task. All these are to keep pace with stuff and know a little about the new world... did i forget my facebook at Dilydaydream and the site to go with my micro micro tutoring biz at www.business-studies-a-level-revision.vpweb.co.uk not to mention nottingham2010.vpweb.co.uk which is now nottingham2011.vpweb.co.uk!!

I couldnt resist a squidoo lens called Ancestry stuff www.squidoo.com/Ancestry-stuff In between all this i found lots of photo sites trying to find one where i could upload and sell my own photos on a site of my own... but its not been such an easy search as i wanted to stick to the UK companies... the copyright laws are really strict on the big sites, and although i found lots of the photo's i've used on my vistaprint brochures and cards and such like (vistaprint is a netherlands company) on getty images their terms are really quite frightening... i know they are a commercial site and as an amateur photographer flickr is better (flicker- Dily) its quite a minefield of legal wotsits...

I also found pictures of england at www.pictures.of.england.com which is awsome and added my page... Bebo also got a look in as Dilymum and i found digital scrapbooking with Digital Scrapbook from serif.com and bought the software some time ago... i opted to buy a software bundle from them which gave me lots of work to do adding fluid mask, and word read to edit photos and have my computer talk to me (but i havnt loaded the dragon naturally speaking i bought yet as it needs upgrading for a commercial licence) along with the bundle i thought i was lucky to obtain all the scrapbook digikits... and paid for a few commercial licences thinking i would go for all of them later as the software is really good for designing stuff offline - till they upgraded to craft artist platignum a few weeks later, offered all the digikits for free and restricted the commercial licences to 200 copies only -

All of this just as i had found zazzle where you can make your own store - Dilytink but just as i had made a site to sell lots of products... i had to go through aeons of emails around how many licences i had bought for my digital scrapbook digikits, revoked licences (for the new angel 200 limit policy - which i have found out from getty images is a form of rights managed copyright) !!

There are at least 250 well known english language social media sites so i cant possibly add them all, but what i did find was that its quite easy to make a round robin for the most well known ones... but not so easy to update them all... its ok to put your own custom buttons on a google toolbar (yes i updated this too and added google preview) so most are now languishing on the net waiting for no-one to read...

I like to think i tutor for a living but its been curtailed somewhat as the uk government of the day are changing the rules for kids in higher education and their weekly allowance... it will all come back i think but before it all went pairshaped i nearly bought an agency for tutors with the homeschooltutoring people and was going to look after some of their wordpress software for them... i am glad i didnt now as it was expensive and the incomings have dropped... however it did prompt me to (can you guess...) make a wordpress as Dilymum and now i thought i could revive my lifestyles on a micro budget world and have joined vie at home as a consultant so i have my own url there.

As a business studies tutor anything that teaches kids about how a company runs is helpful and some of the colleges run enrichment courses and young enterprise challenges and many of the social media sites, own stores, direct selling and product printing can be used for a small student business... I also made lots of resources a while back but my pc went and fell over with the aol to carphone warehouse migration and i havn't been able to put that particular pc back together again...yet.

On top of all this i bought some domains, had a look around search engine optimisation and had a look at how websites look using web tools and development on the tools bar on internet explorer - i found a wonderful site that shows what a web looks like in picture form that i cant find again on my favourites at the moment...

I added my stumbleupon toolbar as QAAwyrd which is awsomely wonderful (stumbleupon not my own page) and jsnature photos (who have this awsome gnu kind of licence that is much more friendly to micro users of the net) and naturesoundsfor.me where you can make allsorts of lovely own nature sounds and download them ...

In the meantime i bought a netbook and set it up (chaos as the programmes wouldnt resize until i found fixit or some such programme which allows you to drag the screen around the display...) and upgraded to home premium and bought an external disc drive... (until then i was copying programmes and photos to a hard drive to load them onto the netbook) and silly me bought the cheapest which didnt have bluetooth so two dongles later i found one that worked to be able to send photos from my phone.

Dont ask me about transporting bookmarks from phone to pc... its the craziest thing and just doesnt work easily anyhow unless you dont use folders for your bookmarks... which i have done... i have looked on google, yahoo, sony ericsson (who do allow me to synchronise but not with bookmarks in folders!!) software that may transport them, offline files in wp - but it makes lots of files and not just one file which is what google bookmarkes import wants... so i'm still researching that one.

I've made animated cartoons, bought corel essentials for making photos into all kinds of artwork and need a portable printer to be able to make the most of it... Not to mention lots of different kinds of software and a new pc so i dont have to use the one with all the software on all the time.

I'm on beanbag learning and local tutor forum and have a few websites on the go for tutoring plus some of my own template designs...

oh and a myspace with a panorama photo that makes a photo across the screen without stitching it together as my sony ericsson w995 takes panorama photos...

I also have some astrology software for my entertainment and because its an interesting kind of thing to be into and i have had a programme since the 1980s - and am making a website with their web assist but its in html so its not so easy...or rather takes longer.

My little mum passed away at 90 last january and i made a website to remember her at
www.evesmydeardarlin1.vpweb.co.uk as she was her Leslie's darling while he was alive... my parents were lovely people and looked like scarlett o'hara and rhett butler when they were going dancing... lovely memories lots of nice holidays around the uk and they deserved a nice place in my memories...

All thats missing on my search around the net is some music sites to make sounds for websites... oh and i downloaded a kindle app and a safari app ... for reading and checking out apple safari - which has a nice search concept... that led me to try and find a carousel image gallery to put into my weave-wyrd site to let me have options that float around in front of me but the one i've found isnt quite as sophisticated as i would like... but money may change that... Adobe CS5 webdesign kit is really expensive though so at the present the only place i can use it is in schools where the kids use it for their examination portfolio's. Whether i will get back into teaching is anyones guess, i'm getting on in years... in education terms and have been in industry before teaching so am too expensive with too little examination proven track record of success for kids, i have however managed to help some kids with bad grades improve ready for their final alevel exams...

It' time consuming keeping up and being confident with all the questions you can be asked about whats on the net as kids are so quick on the uptake but i think i can just about hold my own with the dedicated facebookers... but i dont have an iphone or one that has a facebook application and am thinking about it... but i love my 10mpixel camera so dont want to change.

Thats a long catchup post... oh and i went mad in the sales online and bought lots of reasonably priced clothes (have to look as young as poss on some occassions)....

more soon... i have to make a routine to keep up now maybe half an hour a day on all the sites... but the learning curve has been cool... whether i'll remember 'how to' on all the sites easily is in the future days...

Now i want to laugh more...

Just Breathe

Just Breathe
Green Space