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/

Twitter

Today has been my biggest day on Twitter since I joined several years ago.  Including re-tweets, I tweeted 43 times today.  My topics varied from the passing of cricket legend Tony Greig, interacting with a guest on ABC News24, a very healthy "discussion" on the safety of B-Triple trucks, photography re-tweets and linking to a YouTube video of my kids.

All these tweets today took my total number over 1000, but I still call myself only a casual user of Social Media.

Twitter are slowly rolling out the ability to view all of your twitter history.  When it's available to me, I'll be really interested to look back at what I posted in my early days.

@simonyeo

"Web Links" blog

I've just started a "Web Links" blog, with the intention of posting regular links to interesting stuff on the World Wide Web.

Check it out... www.simonsweblinks.com