Adventures with Dr. Lady Cutie Troublemaker

Life went on during all of the birdy drama. On Saturday night, after the final home bout of the Carolina Rollergirls (go Tai Chi-tahs!), I went out on a night shoot with the Raleigh Flickr Group organized by Daniel. Despite a downpour in the middle of it, some great shots were taken by all. I will share a particularly great one of yours truly taken by Engelfish, who I repeatedly say is that only person who gets to take my picture. I’m, of course, kidding. I have a number of friends who have taken WONDERFUL pictures of me, despite my camera anxiety and tendency to mug anxiety whenever a camera is aimed my way. I’ve learned that I’m best off while on these shoots just trying to relax and continue what I’m doing when I detect a camera trained on me. Chris’s directive style actually gives me something to focus on instead of my anxiety. You’d think this would have gone away after all the time I spend with these people… but I digress.

View all the pictures that have been uploaded so far from the shoot. Over time, the total number of images will grow as more people get around to uploading and tagging. This was created using a neat little site I’ve just found (thanks, Sooz) called Splashr. I recommend it highly!

You may notice that all the archives and category links are gone. I’m trying to decide if I want those back or not. I like that idea that anyone who wants to dig into my archives has to work a little. I’m working to make this blog a very current one, rather than open for anyone to search into my last three years at will. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been making old posts private. I have to do it for every individual post, since there is no easy batch operation that does that for me. Some days I hide items in a certain category (“Work Life” was of course first, since that’s the topic I think it most important to keep private, even though my posts in that category are usually heavily veiled in tone and information), on other days I go for time periods. Slowly, I’m going underground, but only for old posts. I have no intentions of hiding recent posts. Anything that is only a few months old will remain visible unless there’s a really good reason for it to be hidden.

I had imagined that since I have been blogging less with words and posting more pictures, my readership would have dropped, but nope. I’m still getting about 500 hits a day, and these aren’t bots! So thanks, loyal readers. That makes me feel real special! Even you quiet, lurky types!

I’m still trying to clean things up on the new template. I’ve moved a lot of what was in the sidebar to the About Me page for now. I’ve gotten some of that pale print darkened up a bit, but I’m really no CSS expert, so I’m really using a trial and error approach. The whole grey people head thing is bugging me, and Gravatar has been down. Not yet sure how to fix that. I’m also annoyed that the “Pages” aren’t showing old user comments. This is particularly a problem on the Haiku page. I mean, without the comments, there are no haikus!! And the page is set to allow comments, so I’m at a bit of a loss as to what to try next.

If you have any knowledge that can help me, suggestions, etc, please share them. I like feedback.

In unrelated news, here’s me blowing a bubble for International Bubble Gum Week:

I joined Twitter ages ago, but it seemed like yet another silly distraction. Well, it IS another silly distraction, but until recently, I couldn’t see the use in actively participating. That is, until my trip to NYC last month. I found out that my friend Sooz and I had both been in NYC at the same time. She said, "I twittered it!" The part that turned me off was having my phone beep all the time. Turns out you can receive twitters any way you want them: online, on IM, in email, or on your cell phone. It was just catching on while I was in Boston, but only my techiest friends were signing up (me included, of course). Those who headed out to SXSW of course got hooked. Given my daily life, I never did. Lately, my techier friends in Raleigh have been signing up, and since I’d had that missed connection with Sooz, I’ve jumped on board. You’ll see my twitters in the right sidebar here and on my Twitter page. I’ll stay public as long as I can’t see any good reason not to.

I’ve always set my feeds in Google Reader to only show updated ones. The other day, I accidentally switched it to show all feeds, and I can’t get it back to normal. There used to be a “show” button (as seen here) that made switching really easy, but it seems to be gone. I’ve turned off all extensions and Greasemonkey scripts, and I still can’t find the button that makes it only show updated feeds. Help!