Sam Woodfin's Micro

All Hallow's Odd #6

What Twitter Cares About: Failure, Misery, Food and Porn

Firefox add-ons? Pffft. That stuff can't compete!

Best Black Cat and Jack O'Lantern Bowl, Ever

Witness my good taste!

I bought -- as in, actually paid money for -- this bowl at Dollar General several years ago, because looking at it made me giddy. It still makes me giddy. And it's out year-round, not just when Halloween's approaching.

Sometimes, I pick it up and shake it, just to hear the little pumpkin "bells" clang agaist the bowl, proper.

As an added bonus, I've also "enhanced" the bowl by dumping the contents of used, herbal tea bags into it, in an attempt to make my own upcycled potpourri.

What's weird is that my mom actually loves this bowl, too.

If we ever come into lots of money, Internet or no Internet, the tacky will be visible from miles and miles away.

Futurity.org: Alzheimer's marker rises, falls with sleep

A friend and I had a discussion, yesterday, which started off about how Mom's dementia recently improved, then unimproved, and about how I couldn't figure out why. Then the conversation became a bit more philosophical. My friend says it's random. I can't accept that, in terms of biological processes. Cannot. I can accept that medical science doesn't know the cause for every effect in the human body, but I can't accept that the cause doesn't exist.

And, friend, if you're reading this, I'm right, too. Because biology and physiology are all about cause and effect.

And this new article from Futurity.org may help to shine a little more light on the "cause" end of that truthy tandem. The article (and the study the article is written about) suggests that some of the "randomness" may have to do with sleep patterns, and the ability of the body to clear amyloid beta from the brain during sleep:

“In healthy people, levels of amyloid beta drop to their lowest point about six hours after sleep, and return to their highest point six hours after maximum wakefulness,” says Randall Bateman, associate professor of neurology at Washington University in St. Louis.

Six hours? So, if Mom gets up at 8AM, that would put her highest level of amyloid beta at right around 2PM, also known as Spoiling for a Fight Hour in her post-diagnosis, but pre-MCT oil days? Correlation may not equal causation, but correlation between behavior and a related biological process? That's at least worth considering.

But then there's this:

In the new study, published online in Archives of Neurology, scientists report that the normal highs and lows of amyloid beta levels in the fluid that surrounds the brain and spinal cord begin to flatten in older adults when sleep periods are often shorter and more prone to disruption.

While Mom's sleep may be interrupted, she still sleeps a lot. 12 or 13 hours? Yep. That's doable. Unlike the expected pattern, Mom actually sleeps more, now, than she did when she was younger. I can't say for certain whether or not she gets six uninterrupted hours of sleep -- hello, aging bladder -- per night, and I don't know if those six hours have to be uninterrupted in order to reach a healthy level of amyloid beta clearance, either. But from a completely unqualified, total n00b persepctive, I'm wondering if the actual mechanism for clearing amyloid beta is diminished in some capacity, beyond disrupted sleep patterns, in people with dementia.

Wouldn't it have to be, in order for demenita to develop, anyway? At least if we're accepting for the moment that amyloid beta is the cause?

Pushing my doubts and questions aside for the moment, I still won't be rushing out to get Mom a script for Ambien any time soon. But I may start offering her some warm milk spiked with chamomile just before bedtime every night.

In Which I Fail Miserably

Right after I quote myself:

I don't make money (directly, anyway) by blogging, and I would fail miserably if I tried, because I don't have the traffic to back up that sort of business plan.

via sharonda.typepad.com

That was from a post I wrote earlier today. Never mind that I misspelled "successful" twice in that post (including in the title, where, unfortunately, I make most of my mistakes) and didn't notice until hours later. The point is that I know I don't have the chops to generate income by driving traffic, and now, I'm going to try to do it, anyway.

For those of you who actually see the Zazzle blog panel in my sidebar, it should be noted that hawking my Zazzle stuff is different, because it's mine. Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine. But now, I'm going to try to sell you someone else's stuff (as soon as I get through rambling for a bit), and, to my mind, that's a totally different thing. When I try to sell my Zazzle stuff, I still feel like an artist, or at least a "drawer of things". Trying to sell someone else's stuff makes me feel like a marketer, which is a) something I don't really want to be, and b) something I'm pretty sure I'd suck at.

But I digress.

I used to love making icons. Back when I was playing in Mac OS 9, there was a program I loved called "Iconographer". Iconographer is one of very few pieces of software that I've ever purchased. It allowed me to draw my own desktop icons, pixel by pixel, and I adored it!

When my Mac died, and I moved to Windows XP, I found another icon-making program that I used for turning my pen-and-paper cartoons into cute little desktop icons. They looked like this:

It was a quick, efficient app for turning drawings into icons, but I missed the fun and simplicity of building icons in Iconographer.

And, now, I don't have time for drawing icons.

So, today, when I wanted to pretty-up this blog a bit, I grabbed some free social media icons from WeGraphics. It was only then that I remembered that WeGraphics has an affiliate program!

Hell, I've even blogged about WeGraphics, before, on a different blog, and used an affiliate link to do so!

But, sometimes, kids, when we get old, and life gets complicated, we forget some of the crap that we've done.

What I didn't forget, however, is that I've used free textures from WeGraphics for backgrounds on some of my Zazzle products. (Don't hate. Not me, anyway. You can go ahead and hate making textures, if you want, 'cause I damned sure hate that, too.) So I know that the company offers quality images, at least in terms of the stuff they give away.

I'll assume that the members-only stuff is better. But I don't know that, since I'm not a member.

If you want, though, dear reader, I wouldn't be offended if -- after joining WeGraphics through the banner I've posted above (or the one in my sidebar, assuming it's still there when you read this, given that I'm as flighty as I am forgetful) -- you left a comment on this post, letting me know what you think of their stuff.

:D <--This is my sneakily-selling-you-stuff smiley.

The First Rule of Successful Blogging: Don't Take Canned Advice

Am I a successful blogger? No. Not by the accepted standard. I don't make money (directly, anyway) by blogging, and I would fail miserably if I tried, because I don't have the traffic to back up that sort of business plan. Am I still qualified to give good advice on this subject? You betcha!

You know why? Because I know when I'm reading an article designed specifically to drive traffic. There are plenty of those in the "How to Blog" genre. They're easy to spot because they either:

1. Tell you absolutely nothing of any value. ("How do you make money blogging? By driving traffic!")

   OR

2. Give you advice with no real thought behind it. ("You must use this platform! Why? Because everyone else is using it!")

Sometimes, both.

There's not much I can say about driving traffic ('though I will mention that Outbrain works wonderfully, at least in terms of increasing pageviews). But what I can tell you is that anyone who says that you must use one specific platform in order to succeed as a blogger is flat-out wrong. Choosing a blogging platform is like choosing a place to work. Some places/platforms will be a better fit for some workers/bloggers than others. Saying that every blogger should use a particular platform is like saying that every worker should work at a specific company.  In that context, it sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?

Most how-to-blog bloggers will tell you that you need to use self-hosted WordPress in order to be successful. There's no shortage of bloggers who use and love that platform. A self-hosted WordPress installation offers a lot of flexibility in terms of both appearance and function. And that's great. But every time I've used self-hosted WordPress, I've spent more time fiddling with WordPress, itself, than actually creating content. For me, it was not a good fit. I'm my most productive using TypePad, so that's the right fit, for me.

That doesn't mean that TypePad is the right fit for you, and I'd have to give up a big ol' chunk of integrity in order to tell you that it is.

So, how do you determine the right platform for your own blogging endeavor?

Trial and error is a good place to start. Luckily, some of the more popular hosted platforms make the trial-and-error approach easy. You can blog for free at TypePad, Blogger or WordPress.com. Squarespace offers a free trail, as TypePad does for it's more advanced accounts. (TypePad really is a get-what-you-pay for kinda deal.) A "free trial" of WordPress.org is a bit more complicated. The software, itself, is free (as in open source), but it order to try it for free, you'll either have to find free hosting--good luck with that--or install Apache, MySQL, and PHP on your computer, then run it locally. (That last bit is a tad more complicated than I intend for for this blog post to be. If you're running Windows, and want to know more, Google "WAMP" or "XAMPP".)

A couple of other things to consider are how much you're willing to invest in blogging, in terms of

1. money,
2. time, and
3. technical expertise.

As flexible as self-hosted WordPress is, it's going to cost you in all three of those areas. Quality hosting is generally going to cost you something. You're going to be responsible for keeping both WordPress, itself, and whatever plugins you use, updated. You'll be responsible for your own security, and when something breaks, it's your baby. If you're reading this, and have no idea what I'm talking about, I'll posit that starting off with a hosted platform (Blogger, TypePad, Squarespace, WordPress.com, etc.) might be a really good idea.

If you insist on making absolutely no financial investment in your blogging, then both Squarespace and self-hosted Wordpress will be non-starters. If you want to blog for commercial purposes, or stick every widget you come across in your blog's sidebar, WordPress.com won't be a good fit for you.

This wasn't meant to be a long ramble, just a response to a post I read that ticked me off a bit. So, in closing, I'll leave you with this last bit of advice:

1. There are far too many platforms available for anyone--myself included--to cover in one reasonably-sized blog post, and they all have both positives and negatives. Do some looking around. Determine for yourself what may or may not fit your needs.
2. In some cases, what is a positive or a negative will depend upon the individual blogger.
3. Most importantly: The people who tell you what platform to use won't be the people creating your content. (Unless you're a damned scraper, in which case, frell off). You should use what works for you.

Another Klout Perk Perks Me Up!

Last time, it was a free Stephen King short story in e-book format. Tonight, I got a $25 discount code to use at ecomom.

As it happens, ecomom is currently offering free shipping on all US orders, so this was a huge "Hello, free stuff!" moment, for me. It also turned out to be a free-stuff-I-can-use moment.

First, I ordered a bar of rosemary and lavendar shampoo for Mom. Credible or not, if someone says that rosemary shampoo can help with dementia, I'm damned sure going ot try it. And guess what! Someone said just that. I wanted to order more than one, but, apparently, these things sell out quickly. One was all I could get.

I also ordered two large and one small stainless food storage containers. Mom rarely cleans her plate, so I need containers for the leftovers. Preferably easy-to-clean containers with no leechy chemical stuff in them, because she's got enough going on, already, kthanx. These seem to fit the bill. (Plus, I like them. Just plain old like them. I like durable things.)

I had a tiny bit of that $25 dollars left, and nothing else that I needed, so I ordered one heart-shaped lavender soap because some portion of the proceeds goes to an emergency fund for women with cancer.

And I am excited for all of these things. Thanks to Klout, I gained a bit of hope to top off an emotionally-exhausting day. And, if that rosemary shampoo seems to benefit Mom, at all (beyond, you know, cleaning her hair), ecomom will have gained an actual paying customer!

Hey! I'm in The Food Journal!

See!

The Food Journal is an "online newspaper" from paper.li, maintained by MyBlogWorld. I have no idea if stories are picked for inclusion by a human, or some sort of automated feed filter, or something in-between. But, right now, I like links well enough that I really don't care!

I also noticed that all of the stories linked in today's edition come from TypePad blogs, using TypePad addresses.

I like links. I like TypePad.

This is just a big ol' bundle o' like, for me!

Missing Some Firefox Add-Ons? Lifehacker Says "Don't Panic!"

If you've noticed some Firefox Add-ons missing all of the sudden, this is because there's a bug in the latest Firefox update. Your add-ons aren't gone, though, so don't worry. They're still operating but you just can't see them.

via lifehacker.com

Granted, panic would be a bit of an overreaction. But, yesterday, when I updated to Firefox 7, NoScript disappeared. For those of you unfamiliar with NoScript, it's a security extension. It blocks non-whitelisted JavaScripts by default, and allows other scripts to be toggled to allowed or blocked, per domain of origin, permanently or temporarily, on the fly.

In other words, it works via user interaction. So, while NoScript may still have been invisibly "operating" after I updated Firefox, it sure as hell wasn't working.

I'll admit to being pissed when I couldn't find the NoScript icon in my navigation toolbar, or in the Customize dialogue, and even moreso when I couldn't find NoScript in my list of extensions. Instead of panicking, though, I reinstalled the extension. That seems to work better than either panicking or waiting for Mozilla to fix the bug.

And, for the record, kids, the phrase is "all of a sudden". I don't care what the Internet's taught you. It's "a". Not "the".

UPDATE:

Ghacks has an article up about Mozilla's fix for the disappearing add-on problem:

Mozilla furthermore notes that the company is working on an update that will fix the issue and restore all hidden add-ons so that they can be managed again in the browser.

An add-on has been released in the meantime that fixes the issue for affected systems. The Add-on Recovery Tool – Firefox 7 is available at the Mozilla add-on repository.

via www.ghacks.net

Unless I see a problem, though (and there have been none, so far) I'm just gonna stick with my spankin' new NoScript installation.

No Food Porn, Today, Kids

A dear, sweet cousin of mine -- who lives in Florida -- called my local grocery store, today, and had $100 worth of food delivered. After yesterday's disaster (a dish I like to call "OMG You Sure That's Edible"), Mom and I were both a bit hungry. (And I'm not just being picky, here. My last bite of OMGYSTE almost caused a gastric revolt.) So, when the food arrived, I whipped up the quickest small pan of homemade chili in the history of two-burner hot plates.

I'd show you, but you'd only see my chili-smeared spoon in my chili-smeared bowl.

I will share one quick tip, though: Sneak a little turmeric into the chili, and even my sodium-addicted mother won't realize that you're out of salt.