An Eclectic Mind

Site redesign is just about complete.

As I blogged last week, I was on the verge of updating my blog to WordPress 2.7 and a new theme. Less than 24 hours passed before I did both. I really couldn’t wait.

The new theme is called iNove. (I’m not sure whether I should pronounce that eye-nove or in-nove. If anyone has a clue about that, please do let me know.) I found it while putting together the exercises for my upcoming Self-Hosting a WordPress 2.7 Blog Essential Training course for Lynda.com and I pretty much fell in love with its simplicity. But what I really liked was the inclusion of an “east” and “west” sidebar, which makes it possible to put categories and tags in two narrow columns, side by side. A tiny bit of CSS tweaking to widen one column while narrowing the other and a bit of WordPress hacking to change the maximum tag cloud font size, and it looked just the way I wanted it to.

For the first time as a WordPress user, I’m making a special effort to utilize widgets for most of my sidebar content. This is a huge change for me, since I normally hand-code all of my sidebars. The good thing about this is that it limits what I can put in a sidebar without installing more plugins. And let’s face it: my old design was simply too busy.

Comments? Observations? Use the comments link or form for this post to share your thoughts and suggestions.

BLog Technicalities, Call Me a Geek blogging, design, web design, WordPress

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For those who might be interested.

I’ve made a few minor tweaks to this blog recently. Thought I’d take a moment to point them all out.

Tag Implementation

I’ve begun assigning tags to posts on the site. In WordPress, tags are similar to categories in that they enable a blogger to categorize the content of a post. I never used them before because I thought having categories was enough. But I’ve recently discovered two things:

• Tagging posts helps make them rank better in Google. (Please don’t ask for a link to the article where I read that; I don’t have it.)
• Tagging posts offers additional ways to organize them without having dozens of categories.

Implementing the tag feature isn’t an easy task for me. Sure, it’s easy enough on a go-forward basis. But this blog has over 1,500 posts. To truly implement tags, I need to go back and add tags to all the previous posts. I’ve been doing that, little by little, and hope to be finished by the end of the week.

The main benefit of my tagging efforts to blog readers is that they can more easily find posts that cover topics of interest to them. This is implemented two ways:

• In each post’s header, you’ll find a “Tagged:” heading, followed by a list of tags applied to that post. Each tag is a link; click the link to display a posts with that tag applied. Here’s an example of a post heading:
  
• In the sidebar, you’ll find a tag cloud. This is a really cool feature of WordPress that displays tags in an alphabetical list, with each tag’s font size corresponding to how often it’s used in this blog. Here’s a screen shot of the tag cloud as it exists right now. (Remember, only about 200 posts have been tagged so far.)

Category Name Changes

I’m always tweaking the names of categories, although I haven’t done it for a while. This week, I made three category name changes:

• Recipes has become I Cook, Too. I made this change so I could add a recipes tag.
• Writing has become The Writing Life. This change was completed primarily so I could have a separate writing tag.
• Twitter has become Social Networking. I made this change so the category could cover all posts about all kinds of social networking. Twitter has become a tag.

I’ll probably make a few more category name changes in the coming months for pretty much the same reasons. I just need to come up with catchy category names, which is often a challenge for me.

Interesting Links

Those of you who have been visiting this site regularly for some time may remember my link posts. They were automated through a feature on the del.icio.us Web site. I’d bookmark interesting pages on my Delicious account and the links would be automatically accumulated and posted nightly. I set this up in 2006 and it ran pretty well until recently, when changes to either Delicious or WordPress broke it.

I recently discovered a WordPress plugin called Postalicious. This plugin replicates the functionality of the Delicious feature that broke. The result is the daily (or almost daily) Interesting Links posts you find on the site. They’re all posted to the This Just In… category and are tagged links. You can browse all of my Delicious bookmarks at http://delicious.com/mlanger.

If you’re a Delicious user, I urge you to bookmark the blog posts on this site that you like. Not only does this help spread the word about the content here, but it helps me identify the content that readers enjoy reading most. You’ll find an Add to delicious link at the bottom of each post.

Polls

The Polls feature stopped working. I don’t know why. I’ve removed the poll from the sidebar and may remove the remaining polls if I can’t figure out how to resolve the problem.

New Link Categories

I added a few new link categories and placed them on the right sidebar. One of them is called On Politics and includes links of interest to U.S. voters this election year.

I urge all Americans who are eligible to vote to do so.

BLog Technicalities design, WordPress

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Copy editing — an important part of the publishing process.

Prepare yourself for the usual author rant — but with a difference. This one is coming from an author who just completed her 69th book. An author who has worked with about eight different publishers and dozens of copy editors over the course of 15 years.

So no, this isn’t a newbie writer griping about a heavy-handed editor on her first or second book. It’s coming from someone who has been doing this for a long time and feels as if she’s “seen it all.”

I’ve taken this topic and split it into three parts. In this part, I’ll start off with an introduction to the topic of copy editing and tell you what I believe it should be.

What is Copy Editing?

The purpose of copy editing should be to ensure that the original text is:

• Free of spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. Note the use of the word “error” here; that’ll be important later in this discussion.
• Consistent with a publisher style guide. A style guide, in the world of publishing, is a document that sets forth usage in those gray areas. I’m talking about capitalization issues such as web vs. Web, hyphenation issues such as email vs. e-mail, and design issues such as boldfacing figure references.
• Clear and easy to understand. This usually involves breaking up long or complex sentences or possibly rearranging sentence components.
• Unlikely to be misinterpreted. For example, when you say the “Color in pop-up menu,” do you mean a pop-up menu named “Color in” or are you talking about color in a pop-up menu?
• Consistent with the writing style of the established book or series. This only comes into play when you’re writing for a series that has a predefined format and style. For example, Visual QuickStart Guides (VQSes) tend to be short and to the point, so I don’t have room for personal stories, as I do in other books. VQSes also have level 2 headings that begin with the word “To” and are followed by numbered steps, each of which presents a single task. (I could list about a dozen style issues specific to a VQS, but you get the idea.)

Of course, what you’re writing should determine how much of the above is required. If you’re writing a novel much of this may not apply at all. Consider the book, Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. The book’s first person narrator is a retarded man. The book is in journal format and the first few chapters are so full of spelling and punctuation errors (or omissions) that the book is difficult to read. But that’s because of the author’s choices and the method he uses to communicate. Would you expect a retarded man to have perfect spelling, grammar, and punctuation? Of course not. The author is using the character’s shortcomings as a writer to make his character more real — as well a to drive home the changes in the character as the story progresses. This technique was used again more recently in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which featured an autistic first-person narrator. If a copy editor had done a thorough job on the grammar or punctuation in either of these two books, he would have altered the characters. The same can be said for dialog in most novels, since few people speak using perfect grammar.

So copy editing of fiction is a different subject — one I’m not addressing here. I’m discussing copy editing of non-fiction, primarily technical or how-to books, since that’s where my experience is.

More to Come…

This is the first part of my discussion of copy editing. There are at least two more parts to go. In the next part, I’ll rant a bit about my experiences with one particular book over the ten-year course of its life (so far). You’d think that after 10 years, the process would be trouble-free…

Why not take a moment to tell us what you think copy editing should be. How do you expect it to change or improve your writing? Use the comments link or form to share your thoughts.

The Writing Life books, careers, comments, design, e-mail, fiction, flowers, free, grammar, home, night, novels, publishing, time, writing

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Another online community.

I recently discovered RedBubble, an online community for creative people. RedBubble offers members and visitors three things:

• A community of photographers, artists, and writers. This is a place where you can meet other creative people, view and comment on their work, and get feedback on your own work. For me, seeing the work done by other members has re-energized me, giving me a real desire to get back into photography, which has been one of my hobbies since my college days.
• A place to sell your artwork. One of RedBubble’s draws is that once you have uploaded artwork to their server, you can make that artwork available for sale in a number of formats, including cards, laminated prints, canvas prints, and framed prints. You can take that idea a step farther (as I did) and use it as a place to get quality prints of your own photos for your own use.
• A place to buy quality artwork by amateur and professional photographers and artists. Just about all the images online are available for sale as cards and prints. On my first visit, I found about a dozen photos I liked enough to order as cards. But not all artwork online is photos. There are also drawings/paintings and t-shirt designs. So if you’re looking for interesting artwork, I recommend giving RedBubble a try.

The community is small and its members are mature and relatively friendly. (Or the ones that aren’t are keeping to themselves.) That alone is a good reason to get onboard.

Selling Your Own Artwork

Here’s how artwork sales works:

You start by uploading your artwork and providing information about it, including a name, description, and keywords. You want to upload the highest resolution images you have; the higher the resolution, the more formats it can be made available in. For example, if you upload a 5 megapixel photo, it’ll only be available as a card or as a small (approximately 8 x 12) print. There just isn’t enough data for the larger sized formats.

As part of the upload process, you specify a markup percentage. All products have a minimum price, which is how RedBubble covers its costs and makes money. The base prices are reasonable (in my opinion, anyway) with cards starting at $2.50 each and small laminated prints starting at $15 each. The markup percentage is the profit you can make on the sale of one of your images. For example, the default 20% markup will earn you 50¢ on a card and $3 on a small print. If you want to make more money, just up the percentage. But keep in mind that if you make your products too costly, you could price yourself out of the market.

Once you’ve saved all this information, the artwork appears in your portfolio. If you’re lucky, it might also appear in the Gallery of featured work, which is how many people find work to comment on or buy. Members and site visitors can look at your work and buy it. Members can also comment on it. In general, members are very polite and complementary. I think that if they see something they don’t like, they just don’t comment. (Isn’t that refreshing in an online community!)

RedBubble’s shipping rates are incredibly reasonable. For example, I ordered 10 cards last week and the total shipping was only $2.73. Shipping is also reasonable on framed prints, which are notoriously expensive to ship. So the cost of buying artwork can be very reasonable.

As for quality, most users seem happy with what they’ve been ordering. I’m waiting for my cards to arrive. If the quality is good, I’ll take the next step and order a print or two. Since I’m extremely quality conscious, I won’t hesitate to let you know if I think RedBubble doesn’t make the grade.

For Writers

As for the writing side of RedBubble, it’s not as obvious, but it’s there. You can find writing exercises and challenges in the public forums. Each member also has a journal — like a personal, RedBubble blog — to share thoughts and ideas. Some folks are using both features to share poetry and very short stories. I wrote my first haiku in years based on a challenge in the forums. (That’s about the limit of my poetry capabilities these days.)

Give it a Try!

If you’d like to check out my RedBubble portfolio, you can find it at http://www.redbubble.com/people/mlanger. You’ll see some of the photos I’ve shown off here on my site, as well as a few that haven’t found their way online yet. I’d be tickled pink (yes, I did say that) if I got some comments or sold a card or two.

Are you an artist, photographer, or writer? If so, I highly recommend checking out RedBubble. I don’t think it’ll disappoint you.

About the Photos, Call Me a Geek, The Writing Life comments, design, for sale, online, opinion, photography, professional, writing

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The 20-foot saguaro in my front yard is finally becoming more than just a “big pole.”

When we moved into our home a little more than 10 years ago, it had absolutely no vegetation in the yard around the house. Due to some problems with septic system paperwork — not the septic system itself, mind you — it was two years before we were able to plant anything.

We had a landscape designer come over. He had a grand plan for our empty canvas of a yard. It included waterfalls and all kinds of non-native vegetation. When we told him we wanted a saguaro, he said, “What for? It just looks like a big pole in your yard.”

Needless to say, he didn’t get a contract with us.

Instead, we decided to do it ourself. Although it may not have been the best decision, it certainly wasn’t a bad one. We were able to plant whatever we liked wherever we liked it. And since we wanted a saguaro, we bought…well, two of them.

If you’re not familiar with the saguaro cactus, it’s a very tall, very slow-growing plant that grows in Arizona and northern Mexico. Propagated by seed, it takes at least 5 years for the plant to reach a size that can even be seen on the desert floor. When the cactus reaches 50-75 years old, it may begin to sprout “arms” that give it its characteristic look. Indeed, the saguaro cactus is an icon for the American Southwest.

When you buy a saguaro, it is always a transplant from somewhere else — often from vacant land being developed for homes or mining. It’s illegal in Arizona to dig up or cut down a saguaro without a permit. Indeed, if you hit one of these with your car and it falls down (hopefully not on you), you’ll be fined. So you must buy from a reliable source and you must ensure that it has been properly tagged by the folks responsible for monitoring this kind of stuff.

Saguaro prices are determined by size. When we bought ours, the going rate was $35 per foot. One of ours was only 5 feet tall; the other was about 16. Neither one had arms. If a saguaro does have arms, the arms are measured, too. So if you have a 10-foot cactus with 2 3-foot arms, you’ve got a total of 16 feet of cactus. Obviously, the ones with arms are more costly, which is why ours didn’t have any.

How do you plant a 16-foot cactus? Fortunately, we didn’t have to do it. The guy we bought it from did it for us. He had a special truck that cradled the cactus almost horizontally for transportation. When he got to our yard, he backed the truck up to the hole he’d dug for it. He then raised the top end of the cactus with a lift on the truck. There was a lot of rope holding and pulling and the constant fear that the thing would topple over. But he managed nicely and the cactus stands upright to this day, 8 years later, now close to 20 feet tall.

We always worried about this investment in cactus. After all, when a saguaro dies, it doesn’t do it immediately. It takes years. He guaranteed it for 5 years. In reality, it would take at least that long to die. Although the one in the back yard seems very happy and looks healthy, the one out front has become home to birds, which have burrowed nests in the side of it. And it doesn’t always look as healthy as it should.

But it must be healthy because it is now growing an arm. I first noticed it about a month ago when I photographed the snake on top of it. Now it appears to be growing remarkably quickly (for a saguaro) and, if I’m not mistaken, there’s a new arm bud for a second arm growing nearby!

You can see the new arm clearly in the WebCam image for this site, in case you want to monitor it. I’ll try to take another photo in six months or a year to bring readers up to date.

Days in My Life Arizona, birds, desert, design, hate, health, home, media, Mexico

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