Category Archives: Computers

Deciding if I can use blocks for WordPress editing

The Writing Life of a Tadpole Posted on by  

I participated in the overview of WordPress (WP 101 in the WordCamp for San Antonio, TX) that was done virtually this weekend, with two goals in mind…learn more about custom post types and figure out how to transition from classic editor to block editor.

I’ve literally had a mental “block” about switching to the block editor. I played with it initially just long enough to get confused, I wasn’t sure about how to align things, all my settings to tweak seemed to disappear, etc. I felt like it was giving me a lot of power over page layout like a graphics layout program used to do for printing paper when all I really wanted/needed was the digital equivalent of a typewriter. Maybe a few graphics to stick in here and there. Certainly things that I could easily do in something like Word without going for the full layout manager of another program.  » Read the rest

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Free online resources for making graphics

The Writing Life of a Tadpole Posted on by  

I culled a bunch of different sites, but here are the main ones. For most of them, they allow you to upload your own photos or use stock ones, let you add text, some have video options, etc.

To get a feel for them, one of the best ways is to assign yourself a specific sample project. For myself, I have a book challenge that I do every month, and the members want book badges. I have no real skill in doing this. I did my first two months in Powerpoint using existing clipart and the covers of the books we were reading. Kind of cheesy, but hey, they got book badges.

  • spark.adobe.com — Adobe’s free tool, although of course they also try to upsell you on Premium templates. Didn’t thrill me.

202003223-01-adobe-spark

  • https://www.canva.com — There’s a pro version, but not needed. This was more of a business card design, but it had potential.
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Upgrading some features on my website…

The Writing Life of a Tadpole Posted on by  

I’m sure my wife saw the post title and started social distancing just for that. “Not again!” was likely her thought. It’s true, I do play with some stuff on the site, often figuring out new ways to do something, and since I’m anal-retentive, I hate the thought of something that leaving previous versions if, say, I find a better way to do book reviews that I would implement starting now.

Simple content areas

Most of my content is relatively straightforward — a blog post here, a blog post there. For each, they are pretty text-heavy even if the popular website wisdom is more graphics and video. That’s not me, I’m a writer, I write words. But there are a few areas where I feel the choices for how to display the text are not quite so clear; for the simple areas, it is relatively, umm, simple.

For astronomy, I share my own pics of course, but I’m also writing an astronomy guide.  » Read the rest

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Safety in a box

The Writing Life of a Tadpole Posted on by  

I have a decent physical backup plan for my existing desktop and files, although primarily I’m interested in the safety of our family photos in digital format, the best of which are also shared to my website in full original size. So I haven’t felt the need for a separate cloud-storage option for those. Other files are either backed up through email or on other backup drives.

But one downside to backup drives is where do you keep them. Some people take them to their office. Some people have “backup buddies” the same way they exchange house keys with neighbours. Or they store them with family. And still there are those few souls who follow some good online advice and keep them with their important documents and jewelry in a safe-deposit box.

There are some unfortunate souls who say, “No problem, I keep my backup drives in a fire-proof safe” and think that actually keeps them safe.  » Read the rest

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Revisiting my digital photo gallery

The Writing Life of a Tadpole Posted on by  

As part of my #50by50 posts, I repatriated all my videos and pictures from SmugMug, threw them into Piwigo, and (mostly) completed a good layout and design for my online photo gallery. I had tried integrating directly into WordPress, but the biggest and best (relatively speaking) gallery called Next Gen Gallery just didn’t play well with some of my other plugins, and I couldn’t get it to work right. I tried various other WP tools, but nothing was jiving for me. Piwigo worked, I found some themes I liked, I tweaked some stuff, called it a day. Then proceeded to put a LOT of time and effort into uploading 12755 photos and videos of various types and sizes.

I made it as good as I could, but it was far from “perfect”, if there is any such thing. For example, Piwigo likes to play with different size images. So it would take the original ~13K photos and make a thumbnail for each one.  » Read the rest

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