Tag Archives: computers

New featured images – Headers, website posts, and computers

The PolyBlog
April 18 2020

In a previous post (New featured images – Astronomy), I mentioned that I’m updating all of my featured images on my website by category. For “computers”, I have just over 100 posts in that category, although that is a bit misleading. I have tended to use it as a bit of a catch-all category.

For example, the main topic in computers is not really about computers at all — it’s about my website. But to be honest, having separate categories about my website (content and mechanics), how I do things and the tools I use (WordPress, plugins, themes), the tools I use at home (desktop apps, graphic editors), and even how I organize myself (photo backups, etc.), didn’t really seem to make a lot of sense to me. It is a VERY wide category, admittedly, but they do seem to lump together. And until recently, I was “forcing” myself to have “one category, one image” for my theming. With this update, I’m giving myself more flexibility.

Yet even though they are lumped, I feel the same as I do with astronomy. I would like to “nuance” the images I use a bit. Plus, I have a MUCH bigger problem. The main graphic I use now for the category is one of a frog typing. It looks like this:

And since my site is PolyWogg.ca, and my nickname is PolyWogg, and polliwogs are baby frogs, I love the idea of a frog using a computer. It is a perfect graphic for me. Except I want to use it for my writing category, not my “computer” category. I have to confess, I like it so much, I have occasionally used it for both. Like THAT’S not confusing to anyone, including me. If it was slightly better resolution and quality, I’d be tempted to make it my overall logo.

Speaking of which, some people suggest that if you are writing about your “website”, you should use your logo or a modified version of your header as your featured image (a bit of a meta thing, intellectually — a blog on your blog about your blog). That would give me a bunch of choices, including my original frog image that is as close as I come to having a real logo, but I view that more as my personal branding logo, not just a website logo.

It isn’t about computers, it’s about me. And so I’m saving that for my truly “personal” posts. Therefore, by process of elimination, I should use a smaller version of my header. If only I could decide on WHICH header I was using!

Possible headers

Over the past 15+ years, I have had approximately ten headers. The first was a modified form of the big frog logo. My friend Liam designed my first website, and he integrated the image into my core splash page and again into my combination header/menu options across the top.

My second and third options were provided by the Weaver theme and sub-themes that I was using. I liked the idea of having a nicely tied-in image (colour-wise) across the top of my site. But neither lasted long. They looked nice, sure, but there was nothing about those images that resonated with me. I played with having my frog again (option 4), except using it as a logo to the left rather than a banner, and it worked for a while.

My fifth option was a picture I took in Gaspesie of a waterfall. I loved the way the water was hitting the ground, and so I went with this image for a short while. I’m proud of the photo, it resonates with me because I took the picture, but it doesn’t really “say” anything. It’s just a cool photo.

My sixth option was a counter-punch to that one. It was taken in southern Nova Scotia, at a B&B we stayed in for a night. I love the reds in the trees, it has water which resonates with me from my youth, and it has bullrushes (oddly, while “bull rushes” is the official name, the Kawartha region seems to have used the term “bowrushes”, which is what I heard growing up), perfectly suitable for me as a frog. What’s not to love? The colours are a bit strong. And again, I was there only once. Does it look okay? Sure. But it’s not like the location means anything to me. We were just passing through. More resonance than the waterfall image, sure, but not enough to make it my header image long-term.

Partly in response to the previous image (notice a trend?), I wanted something that would have more links to me, my site, my “theme”, etc. Most people would just go to Shutterstock, find a suitable photo, or the best photo even, fit it within the site, tweak colours, etc., and BAM! One header image. And I suppose if I was running a commercial site, I’d probably do the same thing. Except it’s not a commercial site. It’s MY site. Everything that goes on the site comes from me. Every post, every page. With the recent exception of two guest blogs from my wife, I have created all 1400 posts. So I want the site to reflect that “personal” touch, and it starts with the header.

So after the previous images using my own photos, I realized I really liked that aspect. A photo that I would take, unique to me, would head the site. I wanted to maintain the PolyWogg motif, something not so dark as the reds in the Nova Scotia picture, maybe more swamplike for the tadpole idea. And suddenly I knew where that existed. Some place with some personal resonance. The Bruce Pit. My family and I go walking there every spring and fall, and I frequently take photos near the pond. I confess that while my main interest in those walks is getting a good photo of a red-winged blackbird (more on that later), I like the pond.

So early one spring, we went for a quick hike. I tried some shots like the Nova Scotia one — farther back, vista / landscape colours — but I wasn’t feeling it. I headed closer to the water. I got up close and personal with some lilypads, and I found some pink water lilies to go with them. I thought about trying to get a shot of an actual frog in the water, but that seemed a step too far in the motif to me. I tried a bunch of shots, different angles, different PoV, different depths, chose a few when I got home, and played a bit with cropping. I’d love to say I hit it fast, and fell in love with a single photo. I didn’t. I found one that worked well, with some cropping, and so I used that for quite a while too. My seventh header.

I had upgraded my camera to a DSLR and was getting better results with my photos, and I took one of a sunset at my inlaws’ cottage on Balsam Lake. Nice, good lake photo, has some merit. A little less “froggy” but I liked it enough to add it to the rotation as my eight header. I tried it for a couple of months, but it didn’t stick.

Then my mother died. That doesn’t sound like something that would trigger a change in my website’s header, but it did, incidentally at least. After her funeral, I went for a drive. Just wanted to be alone. And I drove out to the lake where I grew up. Sure, we lived in Peterborough, but from 24th of May to Thanksgiving, we were always out at Chemong Lake. We had a sweet deal on a low-cost campground site, great location, on the water. It was awesome. And of course, right in front of the trailer was a quiet secluded bay with a swamp at one end. A lot like the Nova Scotia pond pic. With bullfrogs, red-winged blackbirds, bullrushes, water. Yeah, that’s why I like all that stuff. It defined much of who I am as a person. It’s also part of my nickname — I got it from my family (mostly my sister Sharon). Paul – Paulie – PolyWogg, not a stretch.

And so it wasn’t surprising to anyone that I went for a drive and that’s where I ended up. Yet I wasn’t quite ready to go directly there. Instead, I drove over near the Curve Lake reserve. I have never ever driven over there before, but I guess I wanted to see how much of the area I could see from that shore (it’s across the lake from our campground area). And the lake was weirdly calm. Not a ripple. Something you NEVER see during a late afternoon. In 20 years out at the lake, I never saw it that calm except first thing in the morning, or perhaps late at night. But late afternoon? Never. I snapped a photo.

And while I like the photo, and it does mean something to me, let’s be honest. It was never a serious contender for a long-term header. It lasted about a week as my ninth header.

I drove over to the campground area, but of course, I should have mentioned that it is long-gone, replaced by a small sub-division of expensive lake homes. But the coastline doesn’t change. The bay is still there. The swamp is gone, the bay’s been dredged out, but oddly enough, some of the trees are still there. Even a hill that was behind our campsite is still mostly there, I thought they would have flattened that considerably. But near the site is a road’s end boat launch that used to double as our swimming hole. The county used to drop sand there every spring, so you had sand out about 30 feet or so, about 20 feet wide. I spent a significant part of my childhood at that exact spot.

You can’t see the campsite area until you’re in the water, mostly because there is a huge tree on the edge of the property that hangs over the water. It’s still there, getting bigger every year, and it was like seeing an old neighbour to wave “hello” to in the old ‘hood. You can see it over at https://PolyWogg.ca.

Sunset, lake, emotional resonance out the wazoo. Yeah, it was my tenth choice as a header and it lasted for quite some time. I even thought that it might become my “forever” header. But over time, the grief faded, and the resonance lessened a tad. And while I love the image, I feel it is too dark for the site. Not dark emotionally, not sombre, just visually. And so, I have reverted. Back to my seventh header with the lily pads.

Feature image for “the website”

So, after all those discussions of header choices, it is really just context to say, which of those do I use on a smaller scale to represent my “website”. If I whittle them down, there are really only four choices, and the first three fall by the wayside pretty fast:

  1. The tree frog — nope, using that for my “personal” image;
  2. Quiet Chemong Lake (Header 10) — nope, I’ve moved on from that, and it isn’t a great photo for cropping to 150x150px anyway;
  3. My website icon — while this shows in the tab above as the small symbol for a URL page, it doesn’t look that great when you increase the size to 150×150, unless I was going more for Ninja Turtle with someone stepping on their stomach.

No, none of those really work. Which means I’m left with a cropped version of the current header of lily pads and water lilies, with two sub-versions … one is pulled back a bit, one is cropped to the pink water lilies.

While I like the content of the first one with the pads, the pink in the second one is more visually impactful. The second one it is!

Other “computer” images

After that, the rest is relatively straight-forward. Most of the images are new additions, rather than grouping everything under the “frog typing” image… I have added ones for hardware (simple PC), problems (man sad at computer), testing and learning (boy concentrating), smooth sailing (man at ergo desk and computer), and video games (one of the PacMan ghosts, multi-coloured).

And that’s a wrap! I have my new images figured out for the “computers” category. Two categories down, twenty-four more to go. At least a bunch of the other ones are relatively easy.

Finding free images from the internet for my blog

The PolyBlog
April 16 2020

Many people search on Google and steal any images they find willy-nilly without ever considering the copyright on the original photos. Mostly people who think everything on the net is public domain. But if you’re running a proper blog, and creating your own content, you know that’s not true. But that leaves you with three choices for photos and graphics:

  • Make your own (on your own desktop or using apps and websites);
  • Buy it from some pay-per-photo sites; or,
  • Find free sites.

Lots of sites advertise “free” photos but many are the internet’s version of a drug dealer…they’ll offer you a free sample of a couple of photos or graphics to give you a taste, and once you’re hooked, charge you through the nose for the next batch. And the one after that. And suggest you upgrade to a subscription model which seems incredibly cheap when you’re first setting up your blog when you need dozens of photos, but if you don’t use tons of photos in your site later, it’s a bit of a cash cow for them.

However, earlier this week, someone posted the question on the WP Beginner group on FaceBook, asking where to find images. And the responses poured in rapidly. Some are good, some were silly. Here are the ones I found worthwhile.

I should flag that while many of the other suggested sites had decent photos, many had licenses that were restrictive. For example, many require attribution to say “Image by Jane Photographer”. Which is fair. But if I’m using it for a featured image on my blog, which might be attached to multiple pages or posts, how do you include that? Some people put it in the ALT TEXT, but that isn’t visible and doesn’t meet the requirements of the license. Others just add it to the footer, or create a credits page. All of which are doable, but not something I am ready to add to my updating regime. No, I want free for personal or commercial use (my site isn’t commercial, but some jurisdictions might treat it as such), no attribution required. Often you can find sites that require either attribution or a paid membership, but for a random photo here and there? Not really worth it to me. I already have my own photos as well as extensive clipart collections I’ve bought over the years. If I have to pay again, I can probably find an alternate image.

Photo sites

The most popular one for photos is called Unsplash. I’ve blogged about it before, and at the time, my reaction was:

A site called Unsplash has free images for use, and many of them are even available for commercial use if need be. People, landscape, buildings…lots of choices. One of the things I often “test” when I’m looking at a site is whether or not they have photos of frogs and what kinds. Simple or full-on tree frogs. It’s what I want for PolyWogg from time to time, so it’s a “real” test. Unsplash has a bunch […] which isn’t bad, and while none of them are OMG AWESOME, they’re certainly usable for a blog post if I want something. For those doing an article about a city, you’re likely to find well-known landmarks easily.

That was written a little over a year ago, and so I played with it a bit more today. I’m quite impressed with the sheer volume. And the updated license is pretty unequivocal:

All photos published on Unsplash can be used for free. You can use them for commercial and noncommercial purposes. You do not need to ask permission from or provide credit to the photographer or Unsplash, although it is appreciated when possible.

https://unsplash.com/license | Unsplash

Another popular suggestion is Pexels.com. It too has an open license, although if you want to use the images on commercial products, you have to modify it somehow (no straight inclusion). However, they also have video options to include, not that I can think of when I would ever want that function. Stock footage, I guess. Pixabay is also popular, and includes a few graphics here and there (* note my revision below). Not many, and the randomness seems almost accidental. Their license is similar to Pexels…if you want to print it on something commercial, you have to adapt it first. Another backup option suggested was Foter. Decent, not inspiring.

Graphics, vectors and clipart

But honestly, outside of some meme creation where I might use photos in the background, my main need for my site is not photos but graphics or clipart (the latest “phrasing” is to call them all “vectors”). For featured images in my blog, I usually prefer graphics, even whimsical ones, to actual photos, so I went looking for good sites.

So I too asked on WP Beginner. Oddly enough, Pixabay came up again as a suggestion. I had noted above that when I searched, there were some graphics with it, but it seemed random/accidental. I really only saw photos. However, when I saw Pixabay come up again as a suggestion but for graphics, I went looking again. Sure enough, there is a “vectors” area. The default search says it will search all of the areas at once, but I didn’t find those options earlier, so I must have somehow had a filter on. I found a really great graphic that might be a better option than another 5 or 6 that I already had as options. Nice!

I also found Public Domain Vectors which has a great collection. Lots of choice, lots of options. Most likely my goto option with Pixabay.

Now I’m ready to rock.

A few of my favorite WordPress Blocks…default, JetPack, Classic Editor

The PolyBlog
April 15 2020

I know, I know, you’re picturing me wandering through the Austrian hills singing about WordPress right now, aren’t you? No worries, I’ll wait over here at my computer keyboard while you think of raindrops on roses.

Oh, you’re done? Okay, good. In my last post (Deciding to play with Blocks as an adult), I gave a bit of intro to my decision to finally use the Block Editor on my website. Consistent design for a series of posts, a little bit of improved styling on my overall blog, and some improved efficiencies in workflow got me over the early molehills and ready to conquer the mountain.

Default blocks

The Block Editor comes with a healthy series of default built-in blocks, ready for anyone with WordPress installed to start using. The overarching “base block” is the PARAGRAPH block. In effect, this is like your “NORMAL” paragraph style in Word. If you start typing, this is the block it uses. It is designed for text, and there is some basic formatting available. Mostly things like BOLD, UNDERLINE, colour, etc. Some are at the top of the page, some are in the admin sidebar. ** Note, you only see these if you are in the BLOCK EDITOR mode; if you are in CLASSIC EDITOR mode, it looks like it always did…white text with a style ribbon at the top (like Word).

The second one is Heading block, and it is really nothing more than applying the HEADING style to a bit of text. Pretty basic.

Once you add an IMAGE BLOCK, things get more interesting. For example, it gives you the option to turn your image into a circle layout, something Classic Editor didn’t ever do easily. Not much more in the way of formatting, but decent improvement. An option to create a GALLERY is there, with pagination, but nothing amazing about it. Any decent gallery plugin will do the same, including JetPack.

Further options include a stylized LIST with a few more styling options than normal, a sample AUDIO block that I doubt I will ever use, another image block option that looks a lot like a header called COVER (large images, ability to put text over top of it, like a banner), a FILE block that allows you to click for downloadable content (for which I already have a better plugin), a decent VIDEO block, some basic TABLE options, SEPARATORS / DIVIDERS dividers for content, some CUSTOM HTML text, a strange VERSE block (to publish poetry and control ASCII layout), a couple of decent CITATION and PULLQUOTE layouts that improve considerably on the old QUOTE options, a BUTTON (nowhere near as good as most plugins or shortcodes), some options to have multiple COLUMNS of varying widths (including styling for background colour), options to add a group / “more” or “page break” / spacing options or insert various WIDGETS, and natural embeds from a long list of popular websites.

Out of all of them? I would use the base paragraph block, heading, image block (although rarely), the video block, and one more…there is a MEDIA AND TEXT block that lets you insert an image and put text beside it, as well as some basic formatting of the overall block. That isn’t completely easy to do in CLASSIC EDITOR. I don’t think it gives me enough styling options, but it lays out simply and nicely:

Media to the left, text to the right, un resized. Colour settings allowed.

JetPack

The JetPack plugin adds some extra functionality too. Much of the added functionality is around the ability to embed material from Google Calendar, Calendly, Eventbrite, Map, Markdown, OpenTable, Pinterest, Recurring Payments, Repeat Visitor, and Revue. I could, in theory, see a benefit to embedding a calendar entry or a map int eh future, but the rest are worthless to me.

It also adds options for some extra tools tools like a subscription form (already covered by a better plugin) or slideshows and tiled galleries (already covered). That really only left me two I could, in theory, use. One is another embed option, but this one is from a huge library of GIFs available online. Normally people have these GIFs in their social media accounts or chat messages. This plugin adds it for your website.

Of course one would have to use it sparingly for it to be useful. Another plugin I liked was called Star Rating, and I would consider it for my Book Reviews and other things, if I didn’t already have a better way to show that.

Classic Paragraph

Last, but not least, I’m including a block that is added by CLASSIC EDITOR. You get one called CLASSIC PARAGRAPH, which is a simple paragraph option but it gives you your full formatting style bar back. Also, while a single default PARAGRAPH is one paragraph per block, CLASSIC PARAGRAPH can have entire posts or pages within them, if you want. It’s better to separate the paragraphs though as you can then move any paragraph around with a click of a button.

Overall? I can get it to do what I want, but I feel constrained still, even with Classic Editor that lets me do anything, without giving me a ton of extra functionality that I’ll use right away.

But I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a really scary button. There are some built-in layout options that come with the defaults, and it is like having templates in Word that you DL from the ‘net. Or buying a theme for your overall site. It is a collection of “sets of nicely formatted and grouped blocks” that with a click of a button will give you an advanced layout.

For me, it is scary because it is not something small like tweaking a block or a paragraph here or there. This embeds huge swaths of design elements all at once — with no real regard for whether any of it fits within your default theme’s settings. It’s powerful, sure, but it seems like an overly blunt tool to me. Some would give you a good starting point though. In the meantime, let’s try some other BLOCK PLUGINS.

Update: To see my current collection of blocks, check out the blocks I use.

Deciding to play with Blocks as an adult

The PolyBlog
April 14 2020

My wife’s friend’s husband, James, has started a blog and will be blogging about his experiences growing up in Ontario with some expected emphasis on simpler pleasures of childhood like toys, comic books, and TV shows (you can check out his blog here –> https://70scanadianmanboy.com/). The premise got me thinking about some topics I have had in mind for a while, as well as “toys” I have now, and it led me down a rabbit hole thinking about my current website.

I do have the tendency from time to time to “just play”. And I recently decided to revert to my own childhood and play with Blocks.

When WordPress went to version 5, they switched from a classic editor interface to a more graphical one called Blocks. The basic premise was that they were upgrading from a word processing program (like Word) to a graphical layout program (like Publisher). And like Publisher, it focuses less on the words and content and more on how all the elements fit together — page layout and design.

But outside of the virtual world, I have Word and Publisher at home. And I never use Publisher. I have no need for it, as I can do everything I want to do in a program like Word. Truth be told, I suspect about 80% of the people using Word don’t know how to use more than about 10% of its power. And that was the rub for me with Blocks.

Entry into the World of Blocks

I did not transition gracefully to the block editor when WordPress v. 5 released and they dropped the classic editor as the default. I immediately did what most people did, which is add Classic Editor as a plugin. And promptly went right back to using my admin site exactly as I had before. That was 2 years ago.

Since then, I’ve seen lots of stuff on Blocks, but most of it is irrelevant to what I do, which is regular blog entries. Not a lot of formatting involved, nor page layout, and to the extent that there is, I tend to fix it by designing one page/post I like and then just duplicating a template version of it whenever I need a similar layout.

If you’re an experienced Block user, and a convert to the Cult of Blocks (trademark pending), you’re likely sputtering, “But, but, but…”. Yes, of course, I *could* do all those things with a Block editor. But like using Word for my documents instead of a desktop publishing program, I didn’t need to, my trusty Classic Editor worked just fine.

About two months ago, my resolve to stick with the CE started to weaken. It’s a slippery slope to want something to look just a little bit better, for the design to be a bit more consistent in look and feel, or for a workflow to be just a little more efficient. And I slid all the way to the bottom.

In terms of looking a little better, I saw a design about 5 years ago where a website put the date out to the left of the content, stylized it to look like a Google Calendar button, and coloured it in red and white so it would “pop”. I’ve seen other themes do the same, but almost always with some fatal flaws. Not the least of which is that it often had just the month and day, no year. That goes against every grain in my design fibre, having a date like “March 15th” and not knowing which year it was. Many do it deliberately to fake something looking more modern/up-to-date — the post could be 10 years old, but the date makes you think it was more recent. But I thought it was still cool, and I wanted it on my site if I could. With Blocks allowing you to control and format layouts, could I do that with my site? It had made me curious for awhile. Sure, 200 BRs provide a lot of friction to sliding, but if the slope is steep enough, any friction can be overcome by momentum.

In terms of consistency in design, I have Book Reviews on my site, and I’ve either chosen or been forced to change the layout and content of my BRs for varying purposes 3 previous times. When there were only 20 reviews and again when there were about 50 reviews, I changed my approach and content for my reviews, and it wasn’t a big deal to quickly go through them, open them up, tweak the layout, close them down, and be done. I did the same when there was around 100 because of something dramatic that Amazon changed in the way I could link to images of book covers. When I finished, I ticked a box to say “done” and fully expected to continue on my merry little way with that template / layout until I die. I know consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, but I like the idea of a consistent look. So I was determined not to change it again unless something dramatic happened or I was forced to change it. And even then, I thought, “No going back. Old ones stay as they are.”

Yet, over the last few weeks, I’ve been playing with the back-end of my site for TV Reviews and Movie Reviews. And that process has given me insights into how I layout my Book Reviews, with some alternatives that I didn’t do before. But the TV Reviews and Movie Reviews have different elements, and as I figured out how to do those, I realized that I had some inconsistent layout in my BRs too. Plus I could upgrade an element of design.

Finally, the inefficiencies in workflow were brought home when I attended a virtual WordPress camp from San Antonio a couple of weeks back. I joined the web conference specifically to get a better feel for Blocks, and while I misjudged a few sessions and their likely relevance, one that was more about workflow showed incidental uses of Blocks that were quite useful. Ways, for example, to create and save a “reusable” block in my template for use in all my Book Reviews — and if I later want to edit and tweak it? It will make the change across ALL of the BRs. Plus I found a way to collapse my BR index from six separate pages to a single sortable one, complete with filters too, and that requires a change to all 200 BRs to make them consistent. I could “cheat” and create a redirect, but it wouldn’t look right. At least not to me.

So I put on my deep water waders and headed away from my safe shores into Lake Block. In my next post, I’ll talk about learning to swim again, but I’m still alive, and switching from one editor to another quite frequently. Later I’ll even talk about the calendar “block”.

Update: To see my current collection of blocks, check out the blocks I use.

Oh, well, I was doing well on online guides until this one.

The PolyBlog
May 12 2018

I’ve had some decent success in recent days with reading online ebook guides from websites, and Vanilla Forums has one called Gamification for Online Communities. I’m not even going to bother linking to it as it doesn’t deserve the promotion.

I confess I have a small hidden agenda in reading it — I’m curious if they know what gaming is to start with or if they just decide it’s too obvious to define. The MOOC course studying games showed that isn’t an irrelevant question (Understanding Video Games – Week 7 – The culture of video games).

It starts off strong — a definition rooted in the academic study and scientific classification, namely that gamification is the “use of game thinking and game design elements in non-game contexts. These game mechanics are designed to shape a game’s dynamics (e.g., competitive behaviour) and emotions (e.g., anticipation) in order to engage players (e.g. users, customers, employees, voters).” It focuses on the application aspects to other areas and even goes further with a larger formal definition that recognizes point-scoring and rules as key elements. For the onboarding process, it uses examples about tracking completion progress and achievements, but doesn’t initially mention the need for “rewards” for those behaviours — without the reward, it’s just a to-do list.

After that, it moves into the aspects but I found the motivation elements less revealing. They talk about player types, and only identify 3, and then moves on to benefits of gamification. Except it doesn’t identify any. It says “let’s talk about what it can’t do”, and then doesn’t. It is completely empty fluff statements. It shifts gears into “how to implement gamification”, but really only jumps to some key performance indicators (KPIs) to know if people are using the site before and after you implement it.

At this point, I would be willing to toss the entire thing, but it’s only 33 pages so I kept going. The section on onboarding isn’t bad, pretty simplistic view, but okay. Another section talks about engagement, hopefully leading to entrenchment, before moving on to potential pitfalls.

Overall, I’d probably rate it about a 3/10 for content. But if you take into account typos, grammatical mistakes, and just plain spelling errors, I’ll downgrade to a 1/10.

Too bad, it started so strongly on the definition.