Annotation for Blog Excercise

After being a pretty frequent reader of blogs in the past few years, I decided that I would use this exercise to make my own blog. Blogging is something that is done frequently at the library where I work, but I had never tried it for myself. It seemed like it would be very complicated, but I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t.
I decided to use Blogger to create my blog because I have seen this website used by other people and it looked fairly user friendly and produces good, easy to read results. The fist part of the blog-making process was simple enough. Blogger asked me to sign up and create an account. They asked questions about how I wanted the blog to read, such as what name I wanted to appear, what did I want the title to be, and what html name I wanted to use. (If anyone is wondering about my html name, it represents places that are important to me: bulls from Spain, buffaloes from Colorado, and lobsters from Maine.) I was then asked to pick out a template, and was ready to start blogging.
Before starting my blog, I wanted to personalize it a little bit. I liked how you could add features to the side bar. I filled in some “about me” information, put up a picture, and some links. I wanted to put a link to an RSS feed for my blog in this section, which I didn’t really know how to do. I remember Professor Ballard mentioning Feedburner as a way to create an RSS feed. Once I went to the Feedburner website, all I had to do was follow the steps laid out and it gave me the link, which I then put in my blog. Not so hard after all. I then wanted to add the slideshow feature, but sort of had a hard time with it. I wanted to put in my own photos, but none of the photo hosting sites that I use work. I think that if I made a flickr or picassa account it would work, so maybe I’ll try that later. I settled on pictures (it seems like mostly paintings) from Photobucket of where I lived in Maine. I also wanted to put some more info in my profile including an audio clip.
For my first big post I wanted to do something about me with photos. I wrote about the places that I’ve lived and included photos of each. This was the most time consuming part, formatting where I wanted the pictures to go. While it was a little slow-going and sort of tedious, it wasn’t really that hard, and I was pleased with the results. I also played around with font and made a different color for each section. In addition I wanted to include some more links, so I added a link to the Wikipedia article for each place that I mentioned. I was hoping to make the link titles better, but kept losing the link when I tried typing more.
The final thing that I did, and probably the most frustrating, was adding video. I had a great movie that I made of pictures and video clips from my time in Maine that I had already made, and I wanted to put that up. When I tried to upload it, however, the file was way too big and it didn’t work. So I made a smaller version, but still struggled to get it up on the blog. It took a lot longer than I expected to upload and process and I wasn’t sure it was going to work, but it did!I am really excited that I have gotten this far in making a blog. Hopefully, I can continue to figure out some more cool stuff and make it even better.

Video....maybe

Imbedding a video into my blog was something I wanted to try. I had a video of pictures and video clips from when I was living in Maine that I wanted to use, but ran into trouble because the file was too big. So, I made a smaller version using Windows Movie Maker, which seems like it might work. It uploaded okay, but is now taking a while to process. Hopefully it will work soon.

Success!!!!! Now presenting.... my Monhegan movie!

More About Me

I thought I'd write a little about myself as a chance to put in some pictures.

When telling people about my life, it's easiest to break it down into four parts: the four places that I consider myself to have lived.

Darien, Connectict

I was born and raised in Darien, Connecticut, and lived there until I left for college. My entire family including my parents and 2 brothers grew up in Darien and graduated from Darien High School.

Darien

Boulder, Colorado

After high school, I attended college at The Univsersity of Colorado at Boulder. I lived there for the next four years.

Boulder

Sevilla, Spain

During my junior year at CU, I studied abroad in Sevilla, Spain. I lived there for 6 months with a Spanish woman, attended a Spanish univsersity, travelled a lot, and got a little better at speaking Spanish.

Sevilla

Monhegan, Maine

After I graduated from college, I decided to go live and work for a few months an island off the coast of Maine where my maternal grandmother grew up. It is a tiny island, one mile long by half a mile wide, with dirt roads, no cars, a handful of businesses, and a year round population of around 50 people. It is also gorgeous, and is known for being painted by artists including Jamie Wyeth, Rockwell Kent, and Edward Hopper. I worked as a cook in an inn and lived on the island for 6 months.

Monhegan

First Blog Post

Well, this is my first blog post! I'm just getting my blog set up and looking the way that I want it. This is exciting because I read other people's blogs all the time, for work and just for keeping up with friends, but I've never known how to make one for myself!
I've got a pic and some links including an RSS feed going so far, now to add some more bells and whistles and then get down to some real posting.
More later.