Twitter History

I've just downloaded my twitter history!  I wouldn't have guessed it has been over 4 years since I signed up to the then relatively new social media service!

What was my very first tweet?..."Just signed up to twitter".
Almost three months later I tweeted "Why should I bother with Twitter?"

Well I'm glad I stuck with it... you can follow me @simonyeo

Perils of free web sites

I've been thinking about adding a page to this blog to show case my favourite photos that I've taken since getting my DSLR camera.  Simply adding a page in Blogger maintains the same layout as the rest of the blog, complete with the search, archive, labels and adds that appear in the right column, but I'd like my best photos to be shown using the full available width of the blog.  
I could pay to make some really nice pages using SmugMug or SquareSpace, but so far my hobby of an online presence only costs me a nominal amount for domain names and a Pro Flickr subscription, so I'd rather not throw money into the cloud when there are free options available.
Free options?  Yes, there are still plenty of ways to maintain an online presence without costing a cent (and I'm not thinking about social media at all);

• As my photos are already on Flickr, the easiest for me would be to simply add a link to a Flickr set or slideshow.  However this is hard to incorporate into my blog, as I cant link back to my homepage.
• I tried starting another blog using Blogger, but a blog format would make a new dated post whenever I wanted to add more photos.  So I added a page to that blog (formatted without the extra column) for my best photos, but that gets awkward because even though I can link back to my homepage, I cant remove the link to the homepage of that blog.
• I thought I'd give WordPress a try, this is a very popular platform, but ran into similar problems of dated posts in a blog format or a page with links to it's own homepage that I couldn't remove.
• The next option to try was Google Sites.  I originally tried Google’s free web site building service a few years ago to a make a family page, but found it very hard to work out and far from user friendly. I ended up going to Blogger for our family site.  (I now use Blogger for the site you’re reading now and my Web Links site.)  Having another look at Google Sites recently I still found it difficult to work out, but they have made some improvements from a few years back.  The advantage this time for me was that it doesn’t have to be a blog format, so I was able to create a photo page that linked back to my homepage.

Sure it took some trial and error with cursing and head scratching, and it’s not as pretty as a paid site, but I got there in the end.  That’s why I enjoy my online hobby.

 https://sites.google.com/site/simonyeophotos/

Windows Live Writer

As I’ve previously mentioned, my blogs are hosted and written on Google’s Blogger platform.

This post is something different; I’m writing this using Windows Live Writer to see if it’s any easier, if it has any advantages over using the Blogger web site. 

Sure I can insert a smiley face but when would I need that in regular blog posts?

I can insert a table / grid	like this…
	but I don’t think I’d use it much

There are lots of plug-ins available for Live Writer too, but most don’t seem to add much more than you can do on the blogger web site.

There are more font options available… Comic Sans, Calibri, Jokerman and many more options you don't get on the web site.

I can even insert a map…

Maybe I will just keep Windows Live Writer as an option, depending on what I want in a particular blog post.

Change the blog look

I've had this blog for a few years now, so I thought it might be time for a change.  I'm using the free Blogger platform from Google, so there isn't as many options as some of the paid blogging hosts, but they still have several templates to play around with.

So, as I fine tune the look of "Simon Says Blog", here's one last look at the original layout... 

Swim Club Web Site

My boys, Josh and Brad, are in the local swimming club and both swim in the squad.  For the next 12 months I've been elected to be Club Secretary. The first job for me in this role was to re-register the club's expired web domain and set up the web site.  Being a small community based club, there's not much funds for a professional site, so I've used Google's blogger service to set up a free blog style web page.  All we've had to pay is $25 for two years registration of the domain name.


So here it is... www.cardiniapiranhas.com.au 

Blog Imports

I've been able to import entries from my earlier Blogger site to this one, so any entries prior to August 2009 originally appeared on simonyeo70.blogspot.com

At this stage I haven't been able to import my much older posts at Wordpress.

Below are some of my favourite blog entries from my old Wordpress blog, hopefull I'll be able to import them here at a later date.

Baby Karla,  Ultrasound,  Josh the photographer 

My new blog

Ok, I've been blogging (on and off) for a few months now on my Wordpress site, and I'm wondering about my next step in the blog universe so I thought I'd check out the competition here at Blogger to see if this might be a better option for me. I will make a few general blog posts and then decide where to go and what to do after that.