Learning as we go...

Looky, looky... I figured out how to change the background of my Blog! Now I can decorate for different seasons... or moods ;)

I've also figured out how to change the width of my columns,
and the overall width of my journal. I didn't like how narrow it
was before. This seems more balanced.

Update: Notice the change of colors? Looks much nicer with my background, don't you think? Once you know what you are looking for, the templates aren't that bad to revamp... Maybe I'll try one from scratch eventually ;p

Monkeying Around

I've been meaning to post some of my more recent zoo pictures, but just haven't had the time to do the little bit of photoshopping (is that a word?) needed to get them into an entry. Not that I do all that much to them. Basically I do a crop, some kind of framing/feathering, pop on a drop shadow and I'm done. Still it takes time... time I haven't had this week. These pictures are not from my most recent trip (those haven't even made it to the hard drive yet), but from a visit I made a few weeks ago. I hope you enjoy them.

So what have I been doing with my time? Basically trying to reorganize my life. At least it feels that way. So many of my AOL friends have moved their blogs, or gone private, left, come back....It just makes my head spin thinking about it! To keep up I've had to figure out Bloglines,which turned out to be one of the bright spots in all of this mess... Lovin' Bloglines. If any of you aren't using it, I recommend it. If you are having problems. Drop me a line. I wrote 2 tutorials to help out a couple of friends and I saved them so they are easy to pass on. One is on setting up your feeds originally, the other is reading your feed once they are up and running.

The other time suckers have been the AOL Journal message board and let's not forget taking a couple of minutes each day to drop the 'protest' e-mail to the address we have been given. I'm ready for life to settle back down, but I don't see that happening in the near future

O.K. let's get back to the pics. The little guy you see here is a young Colobus. He is one of the Black and White variety and cute as a button. They are born white. After about a month they start to change colors. I actually have a picture of him from my old camera when he was white. But he was being held by mom, and by the time I cropped and blew it up the quality just wasn't so acceptable. Next time there's a baby, I'll be ready!

I love that my new camera does 'burst mode'. This means I set up a shot and can take several frames very quickly. This gives me the capability of catching this little guy 'flying' thru the air! The picture at the top of the page is one that took me a couple of times to catch just right. He would run up thru the grass jump on that log/support and then push himself off backwards and into the air to again land in the grass. Too Cute!

The picture to the left is of the little guy 'play attacking' one of the older Colobus'. I believe that is his mother, but I'm not sure because ALL of the adults allow him to pretty much get away with murder. He appears to be VERY spoiled!

The picture to the right here is a prime example of how spoiled he is. If you look the 'rope' he is swinging on it is an adult Colobus' tail!!

Want to know a little bit more about Colobus'? Click on this link and go to the African Wildlife Foundation. They have a very nice page about them.

Making Myself at Home

Well, I am starting to make myself at home here. It is kind of nice to be able to edit the template of my blog to have what I want there. Hmmmm.... maybe this will be the push I needed to relearn HTML and to learn CSS. I used to play with HTML back in the early days, but I'm sure I have both forgotten a lot and there has been a lot of new options/codes added.

If you look to the right hand column of this blog you will see I haven't completely forgotten how to write simple code as I have added a Copyright notice and a blog listing to my sidebar. Actually the blog listing was supposed to be web links. I copied the code into my template, then changed the title and disabled the links that came with it till I have a chance to replace them with links to other blogs. Trying to do something like this? E-mail me and we'll try to work it out for you!

Well, now that I have that link for blogs in my sidebar I suppose I'm going to have to go out and collect all of my friends new blog addresses and sort out who has a new place and who can still be found at their old AOL journals. Well, I guess that is what weekends are for. One of the hardest things is to remember to call this a blog now and not a Journal .

I guess the next thing to try is putting a picture in here... here goes... A little dose of cuteness for you... if it works!

Well, That seemed to work just fine . O.K.... we are getting the hang of things over here now!

Things are starting to look up now that I am getting things figured out and set up the way I want. I'm still having issues commenting on some of the blogger blogs, so if you haven't heard from me, that doesn't mean I haven't found you... I just am having issues!

Another AOL Refugee

One day I came home from work and sat down at my computer. I turned it on an clicked on the message boards and found...... CHAOS!

Ads? What Ads? What is everyone talking about??? Quickly I clicked on the icon to bring up my journal and an Advertising Banner was plastered across the top of my journal! Now, if this was a free service, I would have said, "Hmmmm.... well, we all have to support ourselves and I am getting this service for free...." But, that wasn't the way of it. I was Paying these people to allow me the privilege of posting a journal. Paying! Was I receiving revenue from these ads? NO! Was I allowed to pick who I would promote with my pictures and words? NO!

So, feeling that I had to make some kind of stand, I refused to post any entries to my journal while it was being defaced in such a way. But, how was I to stay in contact with all of my friends??? Well, it seems that many of them have jumped ship and landed over here... so, I thought I would join them. At least for a while. If I like it here, I'll stay. If not, I'll find something else... but, bottom line... I WILL still have a journal. So there AOL :P