New Look - Pardon The Dust

If you’re a regular or even occasional visitor to The Chronicles of Nani you may have noticed a tiny little change. And you probably just noticed that my occasional sarcasm is not the change! The biggest update I wanted to do was to give the old blog a new look. I’m not big on doing that often because it messes with “brand recognition.” But every now and then an update is a good idea.

Right now The Chronicles has a new layout and background from the standard Blogger choices. A background needs to fit but not be distracting so I didn’t want to overthink that. I also created a new header, which really is the face of the blog. I’ll be creating a new blog badge soon too for link swapping. I’m going to go with the slightly larger static badge which is more commonly used now. The shorter, animated badge was popular and appropriate for scrapbooking forum signatures, which when the blog started on Blogger in 2008 was appropriate as I was just starting scrapbook designing. But now, I’m only designing things hit and miss for fun and I want to create a badge for The Chronicles of Nani that fits more with current trends in blog-style.

I’ll be tweaking things over the next few days or weeks, depending on what I get obsessed with doing. I have spiffed up the Good Reads badge, the favicon, which I guess some browsers post in the address line or title on the page; Firefox does not, nor does Safari on the iPad, so I’m not sure wat the favicon does, but if you see the favicon on your browser, It’s the MS Awareness mug instead of the baseball now. I updated my profile pic to a more recent photo that represents my current hair and that I’ve almost quit wearing my glasses. (I’ll talk more about the glasses soon) I also updated language from the old “coffee shop on the information superhighway” (Who really calls the web that now?) to “cyber neighborhood coffee shop.” I think it sounds friendlier.

I’ll share one last treat today as I’m debuting the new look. In addition to the time-honored calorie-free cyber black forest cake at The Chronicles of Nani, have some cyber tiramisu!

It’s made with all the wonderful ingredients we're accustomed to in cyber cake with no fat, sugar or gluten to cause any guilt and all the flavor a good photo prompts your imagination to have!

I hope you like the new look … and the tiramisu!

Coming Soon: One Big Happy Blog

Happy Columbus Day, to all those who celebrate it. Which means if you work in a bank, the post office or for the government happy day off. ;-)

So everybody say hello to Puff! No, scratch that. If we all say hello to Puff he’ll type “you will will will you you will.” That’s what Puff types if the microphone is on, David’s home and there’s a ballgame on TV. Too much input makes Puff stutter incoherently. Just know that Puff is here, but don’t talk to him.

The first couple games of the ALCS have been exciting. I think the series being tied 1-1 is a good representation of how the teams match up. Of course I’ll tell you the Tigers are just a little better but David (and Edna & Seamhead Gypsy) will tell you I have no clue what I’m talking about. That's pots calling sweet little truth-speaking kettle black. I’m just looking forward to one more live game before the season is over! SQUEE!!! I’m also in search of Detroit Tigers earmuffs.

I’d kinda like to see a replay of 2006 but this time we win. But if the Red Sox take the series they’ll have my loyalty in the World Series. My Cardinals fan friends know this will happen. They’re even okay with it.


Diversification & Consolidation

I’ve been giving some thought to the blogs I keep up, or haven’t been keeping up. The Chronicles of Nani has two sub-blogs, three if you count Behind Orange Eyes. There is one blog specifically for recipes (Simply Davlicious Recipes) and one that specifically documents my life with MS (It’s About What I CAN Do) and both of those blogs are badly in need of updates. Behind Orange Eyes has been idle for a while too. I think it’s a good time to do some consolidation. I’m going to post my occasional MS entries here with the label Want_I_CAN_Do and link to this blog from the MS blog. I plan to slowly import the recipes back here using the label Davlicious_Recipes that already exists. I’ll be making some other minor changes in the bulletin board at the top of the blog and maybe design a new header by the end of the year. (Don’t hold me to that new header idea; this or something better, remember?)

I’ll be talking to the cats about doing guest posts on The Chronicles rather than us fighting over the computer. That also means Marco will get to do an entry every now and then; Kaline and Carla won’t let him have the password to join the writing team.



Last but not least for now a FREEBIE! While going through my blogger’s block I still created a few freebie things, I just didn’t package or post them. I did this layout in July for the trip we took with Rina in 2008 to Altoona, PA, for Railfest.

Credits: On The Right Track by Keystone Scraps

The free Digitalegacies Designs template is in psd and tif files and offers 16 spaces for photos, paper or elements.

Click preview to go to download

That’s it for now, enjoy the rest of your Monday. GO TIGERS!
(Red Sox fans you know I love you…next week.)

The Chronicles Is Brewing Fresh Coffee Again!

Last week Wayne at Acting Balanced wrote a post pondering some of the things I’ve been thinking about lately. It seems to me that a lot of bloggers take blogging vacation in the summer. This might be because kids are home from school, personal vacations or that it’s just too nice outside to stay inside. Wayne suggested that a lot of formerly personal blogs have “gone pro” and have become more geared toward advertising. In commenting I suggested maybe a lot of personal blogs have jumped ship to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or some simpler less committed form of communication.

I have a Facebook account and I do check it every day because I have friends and relatives who don’t blog and don’t use email anymore. I visit Facebook a couplafew times day to check messages and run through a few the timeline headlines but I still get my occasional “I posted on Facebook, why don’t you know?” I honestly don’t have any problem using whatever means are necessary for communication. I will call if you won’t use any other media but phone calls. I email people who stick to email over social media and I use my Facebook account for people who don’t communicate any other way.

I don’t like to post a lot of things going on in my life on Facebook. To me Facebook “feels” like I’m standing in a warehouse full of people and when I post my status it’s basically yelling information about myself in the hopes that the person across the room will hear it. I’m more comfortable on my blog. That “feels” like I’m sitting in the cushy chair sharing coffee and stories with friends from around the web. Maybe I just have an old-school attitude but I think that’s okay. As long as blogs are still alive I’ll keep blogging.

I think that has a lot to do with my recent bloggers block. I feel like I’ve been going through the motions and not really putting any of me in my blog. There are weeks where the only thing I’ve posted has been memes. That’s taking the easy way out. Maybe I had bloggers block a lot longer than I thought I did. Taking a month off was inevitable.

I’m going to blog more short posts. There will be my formerly usual longer posts too, but I want to recreate my cyber presence. By recreate, I mean redo it like it was when it was more of me. I’m going to limit the number of memes I do and put Nani back into The Chronicles of Nani

I hope my regulars will still stop in for a cup of coffee!

Changes

It’s been suggested to me that there is a difference between the text used and the way it’s used for sponsored links and inline text links referenced in a regular post.  Making names hyperlinks makes them easier for readers who might be interested in more information.  I pretty much agree.  When I read a blog and come across a hyperlinked text, I usually right click and open in a new window, since some blogs that I read don’t automatically open links in a new window.

Part of my concern has been that when text is clicked and a new window opens, readers may not return to finish reading my post.  I do realize that when I offer a scrapbooking freebie many visitors don’t read the post.  That really is okay.  I want to share my templates and kits that I design.  While reading my log or leaving a “thank you” is nice, I don’t consider it a requirement to download the gift and I don’t think any less of someone who only comes for the freebie and snags it and leaves.  The download number going up tells my ego I did well.  Still, I do love and appreciate comments!

The new Blogger posting interface allows for automatically opening text links in a new window instead of having to go back in and add the code for it to do that.  So, if the text that’s linked is a proper name in an unsponsored post, it will take you exactly where you expect it will.  The hyperlinked names in this blog bring you to other blogs or the specific site mentioned.  Sponsored posts that don’t require identification as a sponsored post before the blog post, some require that disclosure be site-wide only and not as part of the post, are labeled “good ideas.”  To further identify UNsposored posts, I’ll still use the Links list at the end of the post.

Okay.  New real blog post will be up in a few hours.  Thanks!