Death Wish Pets

This week's Gallery subject 'animals' came at an interesting time, our Hamster lays panting away, it has clearly had a stroke and needs to be put out of it's misery, I'm not taking a rodent to an out of hours vet to fund his second Ferrari but it's so very hard watching the poor wee thing suffer.  I was pipette feeding it water but decided to see it out a better way,  10mls of brandy will at least help it to sleep it out.  One voice on my shoulder yells "it's a rodent" but the the other half is sat with a quiet tear rolling down my cheek wishing it would just give up and let go.

Pets cause worry. Like finding the missing cat in the switched on shredder.

Realising the kitten is in fact chewing, not on a phone sock, but on a power cable.

This is Thomas that wanted to get just that little bit closer to the birds and then my kitten decided to follow him.  I was in too much of a panic and only afterwards thought "dang! missed a photo opportunity"

The hamster that mysteriously went missing. 

So back to the current hamster issues, if you are faint hearted dear reader please imagine a dead hamster looks like this and close the page now.

....because the rodent I had to deal with wasn't half so cute and, even with my hard-heartedness towards all things rodenty, had me in tears.

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Vintage Smurfs and Smurfing (yes I'm swearing) McDonalds

COG and I went to the cinema today to see the Smurfs.

I was, sadly, a big fan of them in my childhood and my Grandad often took me to the petrol station with him to choose a one.  

On the way home we stopped at McDonalds as someone mentioned that Smurfs were the current happy meal toy.

We stood at the Smurf display and commented on how "they're not like they used to be".
We bought a happy meal and opened the box to reveal a black plastic square.  I asked the burger flipper, who is not destined to have his picture in a frame, where my Smurf was. 

"We've run out"
"Okaaaaay, can I have my money back please?"
"Why?"
"Because I came for a Smurf" He fetched the manager!
"What is wrong?"
"My box is smurfless and if I wanted to eat smurfing crap I'd cook"

Outside: "muuuuuuuuuuuuuum, you're so embarrassing"

I'd love to say and chat but I'm off to smurf eBay.

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Go on, Guess!

You know I had to cancel my summer holiday. I cannot travel because of my slipped disk.

But we managed to get away for a few days.

I sipped mojitos at the beach.

Read a book whilst looking at the palms.

Maybe, this one will give you more of a clue where I was!

It's not nearly as exciting as Addy's holiday, but can you guess?

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Bonding

This week's Gallery is 'World Photography day'.  I know the photo used should have been taken last Friday but I spent last Friday in hospital having my back injected and generally passing out.  The theatre staff were surprisingly anti-photography even though I threw Tara's name into the mix a number of times.  So I decided to share the affinity photography creates in our family.

HWMBO and COG (see right) don't often get time to do something together where they get a true connection.

But they share an interest in photography that was wonderful to watch on this day at the Pinnacles.

The light there was so very bright it was hard to take good shots but COG got some interesting Hipstamatic images.

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Eyes Wide Open

Undeterred by people telling me to rest I've managed to get out for a few walks.

It's amazing what you see when you have to take your time.   It takes me about 2 hours to walk one of my old 30 minute runs.  But I see so much more.

And this is my favourite time of year.  Nature's bounty is overflowing.

I followed 2 butterflies up this path, they flitted around always slightly ahead of me.  It was such a privilege to be there soaking it all in.

I came home with a lovely bag bag full of free blackberries but I don't come home from the supermarket after buying them either so sticky or with quite so much blood on me!

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Backing up a Blogger Blog

Why would you want to backup your blog?  Under the normal course of events you probably don't need to. Google will have a level of resilience in their servers that means you aren't likely to lose your blog through any fault of theirs (or if you do so will lots of others!).

But what Google don't protect you against is you. It's really easy to play around with your template and mess it up and it's really quite easy to delete a blog by mistake.  A backup and restore is also a really easy way to create a test blog that you can play around with. If you don't understand why you would want to do that then you are probably blogging because you are a budding writer.  I am a IT person, I have 8 blogs of which 5 are currently test beds for playing.  Mostly I prefer the play to the posting!

There are 2 types of Blogger backup, your template and then your actually content (posts).

TEMPLATE
The template is the html code that controls the look and feel of your blog.  This is what you are changing when you add gadgets or change your background colour.

Design >edit html>download full template

Then click save, save the .xml file into a place where you will remember where it is.  I have a folder called template backups.  I also always change the start of the file name to be something meaningful to me.  Like 'KV_workingsummer2011.xml'.  It's long but I will know what it means if I need to restore later.

There is another way to save your template too.

Design tab>edit html.  Make sure you click the 'expand widget templates' so that it has a tick in it.  Now highlight all that text from start to end. Copy  and paste it into Notepad and save as a .txt file. This is really useful if you want to play around yourself with your code.

CONTENT

To backup your posts go to Settings>Basic>Export Blog

Now 'Download Blog'

Click Save.  Save it to a folder where you will remember where it is.  Mine is called BlogBackups.  

If you use 'jumpbreaks' the export blog function has a bug in it.  It only exports your posts up to the jump break.  The work around for this is to Settings>Site Feed Change allow blog feeds to 'Full'.

Do the export and then change it back again to 'Until Jump Break'

Blogger are aware of this issue but I don't know if they have fixed it yet, if you use jump breaks you might want to test it.  It would be easy to import into a test blog and see if the full post is there.

COMMENTS

If you let Blogger manage your comments then they will be included in the export but my commenting software is IntenseDebate so my comments are not backed up as a part of the Blogger Export.  To backup my comments I have to go to the IntenseDebate site and generate an xml file.  It is easy to do, just follow the links.  Discus will have something similar.

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How to create an 'About Me' page in Blogger

A long time ago I was asked how to create an about me page, I'm sorry it has taken me a long time to get around to posting this.  I hope it helps.

Before ever making changes to your blog CREATE A BACKUP.

From the top Design tab, choose 'edit html', then click download full template

Then click save, save the .xml file into a place where you will remember where it is.  I have a folder called templatebackups.  I also always change the start of the file name to be something meaningful to me.  Like 'KV_workingbeforepages_template-5184955426276325164.xml'.  It's long but I will know what it means if I need to restore later.

Pages are different to blog posts, they don't sit in your time line, they are stand alone.
Create a page from your posting tab, instead of clicking on the New Post tab, go to Edit Pages (even if it is your first)

Once you have clicked on 'New Page', the editing is the same as if you were working on a post.  But  this is going to be static information for someone to come and find out about who you are. 

Once you have clicked publish page, if it is your first, you should get a page like this.  This allows you to add either tabs to your blog, each of which are your pages plus a home, or a side bar list.   

If your blog template already includes a 'Home' tab you may find your new pages are automatically added as new tabs (if you need to manage this further look here)

If you need to create the tabs yourself, because you missed the initial add a gadget option or your template doesn't already have them, then simply add the Blogger Pages gadget.  Go to the top level Design tab, then page elements and click on Add Gadget. 

The pages gadget is one of the basics, see it 4th one down here.

Don't worry about placement, once you've added the gadget, you can drag it around. Towards the top for tabs, or into the sidebar for a side list.

 
 
 
 
 
 
You might not want to include all pages in this gadget.  I use a stand alone page for my Disclaimer.
 

A link to a page is easily placed by using the html/java script gadget. With a link to your page in it. 
 
 
<a href="http://kelloggsville.blogspot.com/p/disclosure-of-material-connection.html">Disclosure Policy</a> 
 

To find the link address just view the page and copy and paste the url from your browser bar.


 
 
 
 
 
I hope you find this useful.

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Pare the Apple

Beyond Wife, Mother and working full-time I do quite a lot of voluntary work.

I am now a Ranger Guider as well as a Brownie Guider.  I regularly help out at the Guide unit where my daughter goes and this is how I have been camping with the Guides across the summer.

In addition to this I am a mentor, I help new adult leaders work through their Adult Leadership Qualification.

I am also the Division Young Leader Advisor, helping the 14-18 year olds through their qualification.

I am a prospective trainer, although I have been dodging this responsibility very successfully.

Not being quite busy enough, I also do a couple of paper rounds, only once a month, delivering the local free community news.

I have decided it's time to pare the apple.

My current mentee would try the patience of an angel, I am not an angel, it is time to cut her loose.

The young leaders of my division tend to be part of the Ranger unit I now help at, so I can support them there.  The rest of them I leave to a person with more time and enthusiasm.  It would take a hurricane to whip up activity from some of those girls.

My back will no longer allow the paper round to happen.

The Guide Guiders will need to ask other mums a little more often.

These leaves me to simply be an Assistant Guider at 2 units and a dodging (not dodgy) trainer.

Well, it's not like I'm going to be busy running anytime soon!

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T-Shirt Tour

This week's Gallery is Black and White

Those of you that know HWMBO know he is ruled by the 2 most important things in his life (no, not me and daughter). Black and White Metal and Collingwood.

He is also not one for dressing up grand unless forced.  I present my case:

Place: Ourgate
T-shirt: Wacken

Cyprus. Collingwood T

Freemantle, Australia. Wacken T



Gaucin, Spain. Collingwood T

 

Loire Valley, France. Wacken T

 

Normandy, France. Collingwood T



Ronda, Spain. Wacken T


 

Rottnest Island, Australia. Collingwood T



Santander, Spain. Collingwood T

Swan River, Perth. Wacken T

Perth, Australia. Wacken T

Problem is he appears to be passing the trend on, 2 wacken Ts

He does have other clothes, honestly! It's just Black and White is him really. And who am I to moan, if I can put my Guiding uniform on I am at my most comfortable too.

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