Blog Aggregation

The Puma Press blogs aggregation web site sports a new design for displaying the highlights of the weekly blogs posted by the journalism students at Paradise Valley Community College.

More coming, soon, on blog aggregation web sites.

Blog-It-Out, Blog for You

So, you have been given a mandate to write and post a blog once a week. But, you are not blogging.

You are not getting paid to blog. You are not expecting many readers will read your blogs. You are continually asking yourself why should I blog? What useful purpose does blogging serve? Even your friends and family rarely read your blogs. You receive few comments.

But the mandate remains so you must deal with this, one way or another.

Write one last blog and declare that you are not going to continue your blog. Accept the consequences. Take control. Problem solved!

Or, disregard all the reasons not to blog and focus on a few good reasons that support blogging.

Periodic blogging helps a writer develop the writing habit. One periodic writing habit will lay the foundation for writing larger  projects.

Blogging can be the repository for your praises and your rants. Blog-it-out through the process of writing.

Blogging provides writers with a forgiving platform for experimentation.

Blogging provides a opportunity for the mini-reports. Each week you encounter numerous small questions. What is that word? How did that idea originate? What is that thing? Who was that person? How does that process work? Blog-it-out.

Blog for you.

Pick a day and time for writing that weekly blog. Enter it on your schedule and put it on your calendar. Use green ink, not red ink. Your laundry gets done each week and your teeth gets brushed each day. Your blog will get written and posted each week.

You certainly carry a reporter’s note book. In the back where you list your story ideas make a page for blog ideas. All you need is one idea per week, per blog.

Place a green note ‘WATCH FOR BLOG IDEAS’ in your daily schedule . Enter this into your schedule for each day of the coming week after you complete your blog each week.

After posting your weekly blog do something (else) that is fun.

Blog-it-out, blog for you.

Blogging on Amtrak – Photography, Engine of Perspective

When taking photographs it is important for the photographer to establish dimensional perspective of the subject.

Take a look at this model steam engine.

Steam Locomotive

Oh, really?

The humans in the foreground of the photograph accentuates the enormity of the steam locomotive that sits on display at the train station in Havre, Montana.

Steam Locomotive 2584

Locomotive number 2584 was acquired in 1930 by the Great Northern Railroad from the Baldwin Locomotive Works for service on the Empire Builder Line running between Chicago and Seattle.

The president of Baldwin, Samuel Vauclain, claimed this was the most powerful steam locomotive built at the time. It was operated for passenger service up to 1947 then pulled freight until retired in 1955.

See more details.
http://www.gngoat.org/havre2584c.jpg
http://www.steamlocomotive.com/northern

Blogging on Amtrak – Montana

Traveling east on Amtrak from Spokane to Kalamazoo we are rolling through the mountain country of western Montana. I took this picture just west of the small community of East Glacier at about 5,700 feet altitude.

Mountain near East Glacier, Montana

The train has three sleeper cars, five coach cars, cafe car, dining car, baggage car and diesel-electric engine with 8,000 horsepower. The big gripe from most of the passengers is a lack of AC outlets.

My biggest complaints are the continuous waft of one unpleasant odor that smells like soap and the constant sound of blowing air from the air conditioning. The conductors and attendants are friendly, helpful and attentive.

The people using Verizon have connection nearly all the time. My Sprint drops in and out but it provides more coverage than I expected.

Now we are entering the western plains of Montana with brown, low rolling hills. Temperature is in the upper 40s with low overcast.

Rolling plains of western Montana

From time-to-time we stop at a siding to let freight trains roll past. Freight pays more the passengers and the freight trains are too long to fit on a siding.

The pictures are being taken with a Fuji FinePix S700 digital camera.

I upload the photos using a USB cable to my laptop and resize the images for the web from 200 to 300 pixels and output as a .JPG with compression set so file sizes are 30 to 50 KB.

Blogging on Amtrak

I boarded the Amtrak Empire Builder passenger train in Spokane, Washington, 1 a.m. Tuesday morning headed for Kalamazoo, Michigan, arriving 9 p.m. Tuesday evening. The one-way air fare was over $600. The train ticket was $157.

After finding a seat on the upper level of double level coach car, I began looking for AC outlets. I travel with an IBM ThinkPad that rips through a full charged battery in about 20 minutes, helped along by a full sized keyboard, optical mouse, and a Sprint digital cellular USB modem. Sprint provide me unlimited connection to the Internet anywhere in the USA for $59 per month. I am curious how much coverage I will get with my Sprint service as the train crosses Idaho, Montana, and North Dakota.

There are two AC outlets in the coach area of each car on this train. In the dark I can not find them. I certainly would not wake a sleeping person to ask them to move if I found one. The upper level of the observation car has three outlets, none close enough to a seat.

One of the passengers that travels this route once a month tells me there are outlets in the lower level of the lounge car but that has been blocked off with a trash bin. Never deterred by a waste bin, I did find an outlet near enough to a table. So I am now sitting at a well light table zooming through Idaho.

I check my Sprint Internet signal…full strength. I will post this quickly and attempt more posts as we move along.

Changing WordPress Theme and Custom Header

THEME

Choosing the WordPress theme that displays blog content in the best possible design is of primary importance.

To preview and then activate any one of over 77 themes provided by WordPress, log into WordPress, go to “My Dashboard,” then scroll down the left hand panel and open the  “Appearance” menu.

Select and click on “Themes” to preview 77 themes (the number of themes provided by WordPress as of the date of this post).

Blog Garage is now displayed in a theme that presents the posts in serif type for the body and sanserif type style for the heads.

There are thousands of themes that can be downloaded from numerous web sites. Here is a video that describes how to find, download, and install themes other than those provided by WordPress.

CUSTOMER HEADER

A photograph was chosen from the Dill photo archives and uploaded into the blog. This is accomplished using the “Custom Header” tool that appears in the “Appearance” menu.

First make or acquire a .JPG photo with dimensions of 770 wide x 200 high (pixels). Save that photo some place on the computer’s hard drive that can be easily located.

Click open the “Custom Header” tool and follow the WordPress instructions for inserting and cropping the photo.

For details about the photograph that is displayed on the Blog Garage website see the “About” page of the Blog Garage.

Add Twitter Widget to WordPress Blog

Displaying Twitter posts on a WordPress Blog is as easy as adding the Twitter widget to the WordPress blog.

Login to your WordPress blog and click on My Dashboard.

On the left hand panel of My Dashboard click the small triangle down arrow just to the right of “Appearance” to open the Appearance menu.

Find Widgets and open the Widget menu with a click.

Find the Twitter widget on the list of Widgets.

Click and HOLD and drag the Twitter Widget over the the side panel of your My Dashboard and drop the Twitter Widget in the location of the list of other Widgets that appear there. When you drag the Twitter Widget to the right you may not see anything in the right hand column. “Bump” the dragged Widget against the top of the window in order to push (scroll) higher in the window. Keep bumping until you arrive at the place to drop the widget.

Answer the questions that are asked by the window that appears after you release the Widget with your mouse.

See the previous blog for a video of finding and selecting widgets.

Blog Widgets

Becoming familiar with the names and purposes of various blog tools and using these tools effectively will result in blogs that attract and hold readers.

Widgets are the building blocks that bloggers use to build WordPress blogs.

Blog widgets are blog tools that are provided to perform specific programming functions. Widgets are a subset of software plug-ins.

A software plug-in is a computer program that performs a precise function and must be attached to (plugged into) a larger program in order to provide that function.

A widget is a plug-in that provides a specific function that can be selected and added by users of a program. In this case bloggers are the users of WordPress blogs. Bloggers select and add widgets to their blog programs.

When a blogger chooses to launch a WordPress blog they have a selection of 997 widgets.  Here is a link to the directory of WordPress widgets:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tags/widget

There is a widget for every function a blogger may need. Here is a list of often used widgets that can be placed on sidebars (sidebars are the columns of widgets that appear on the left, center, or right of the blog post area):

• Categories
• Calendar
• Links
• Search
• Pages
• Tag Cloud
• Text
• Video posts

If a function is desired that does not appear on the WordPress widget list, use Google and search the Internet. There is a high probability that a programmer has written the widget and may offer it free or for very little money.

Here is a WordPress video demonstrating how widgets are plugged into a WordPress blog:
http://wordpresstraining.com/videos/customize/working-with-wordpress-widgets/

Here is a link to a video that demonstrates how to use a widget to change the image of the banner of a blog:
http://www.kewego.com/video/iLyROoafMiT4.html

Please direct questions and suggestions to the comment section of this blog.

Welcome! Doors and windows now open

The Blog Garage is now open.

The information presented in this blog will explain the complexities of the blog world to bloggers that are not software programmers.

This blog will examine the useful tools and techniques of the blogging world and explain them in ways that will help non-technical bloggers in their quest for readers and revenue.

Bloggers! Bring your questions, problems, and success stories to the Blog Garage.