Not A Priority

A lot of things have happened last month. I dropped one of my courses, I started following a new television show, and I have encountered many thought-provoking things.

However, clearly I didn't take the time to document any of these onto this blog or anywhere else. Even when I had spare time, I would always choose another activity over writing a blog post.

Why? I think one reason is my preference for thoroughness. Whenever I thought of updating the blog, I would want to make a super-long post that would outline my thoughts with great detail; I would never allow myself to write a 2-sentence blog post. But thoroughness is costly— it takes time. I have time to make a post, but obviously not enough to spend 2-3 hours in a single session. And since I do not have the habit of writing a post chunk by chunk, I just never wrote anything.

Also, I have started to think that perhaps it's not always necessary to write everything down. Why can't I just go through everything in my head?

Besides, school really is busier than last year, and also a lot more important. In my final year, almost all my marks matter, and I have to spend a lot of time and effort to prepare for tests and to go over assignments.

So unfortunately, this trend probably wouldn't change until sometime next year. Blogging isn't a priority right now.

When Memory Fails

I'm not sure if I've always had such problems with my memory, but ever since grade 9 or 10, I have had trouble remembering things.

Of course, it's nothing as severe as not remembering my name or address (actually, it took me a while to remember my new address when I moved...), but it's significant enough to be noticeable. For example, when seeing the titles of books that I have read just a year ago, I would sometimes be unable to recall anything about it and would have to search up the plot summary to evoke any memory of it.

A Summer Update

I have only had one post in the past 40 days or so, and that post wasn't even something that required a lot of time— I merely copied and pasted one of my economics assignment.

The question is— why? Shouldn't I have a lot of time due to summer vacation?

Well, throughout July, I have been in an intense camp called Shad Valley, where I participated in various activities from 9 o'clock in the morning to 10 at night. This is not to take into account the time for breakfast, showering, and Skyping my parents. So basically, I had nearly no time nor energy to update the blog.

For August, I probably won't be able to spend a lot of time on the blog either. I have an internship starting on August 7th, and it's from 9 to 5— it's longer than school! I am also volunteering at a hospital once every week, and there are just so many things that I want to fit into the tight summer schedule: applying for scholarships, reading novels, going to Bible studies, etc.

Still, I plan to write a blog post for every novel that I read, as well as one for my month-long experience at Shad Valley. I will do my best to make sure that I fulfill this goal!

Too Busy

Grade 11 is much harder than I had expected. Not only does it have a lot more assignments and tests than grade 10, each individual assignment is also a lot more demanding. As a result, three weeks into school and I am already struggling to finish everything on time!

With this kind of work load, I don't think I'll be able to update this blog very often. Besides posting my study notes (to prepare for quizzes or tests), I would probably only update this blog at most once per week.

So yeah, I hope things wouldn't get any worse.

Blogger: Line breaks All Messed Up

Yesterday late at night, I suddenly noticed that blogger's posting page looked different. I remember how the "preview" button was gone, and how you the taskbar had fewer icons.

Then, I went to my Blogger page, and I noticed that my most recent post looked strange— the line breaks weren't working properly! At some places where there were supposed to be a line break, there were none, and on other places, the amount of line breaks got doubled! I quickly fixed the line breaks for that post and then went to sleep.

This morning, when I woke up, I noticed that my most recent post was reverted back to its messed-up state! Then I looked at my other posts, and found out that most of their line breaks were messed up too! I noticed that posts with pictures were especially likely to have this problem.

So I spent an hour going through (many of) my posts and fixing the line-break problems.

*sigh* Why do strange problems have to arise everyday?

I'm Back (again)

For the past four days, I was away from home, for my family went to another city to help my sister get ready for university.

During those days, I did have access to the Internet, for my family actually brought a laptop. However, I didn't get very much time on the Internet— during the day we would be busy doing other things, and during the night my parents would need the computer to look up for various information— so I couldn't update the blog.

Now that I'm back, I'll be updating the blog again. :)

Blogger Header: Changed

A month ago I attempted to change the header of this blog to an animated fish image (read the post that I made at the time). However, that ended up as a failure, so my header remained unchanged.

Today, I made another attempt to create a Blogger header image. This time, I was a lot less ambitious. I only added the description "anything that comes to mind..."and tried to use gradients, lines, and sparks to make the header look less plain.

Unfortunately, the lines, gradients, and sparks didn't end up looking very nice, so I had to gave up on all of them. However, I didn't want my final result to be literally unchanged from my original header, so I added a spider to the image. I think the spider does enhance the header a little bit.

In total, I spent about one hour working on this new (simple) header, with most of the time being used on tweaking the image so that it fit better on the page. For example, I had to readjust the size and position of the image very often. Shame, shame, Blogger. Why do you have to make it so difficult for users to change the header images?

Anyway, I hope you'll all like this header better than the original one. :)

Hiding Contents in Blogger

Sometimes there are just things in a blog post that you want to keep to yourself. For example, occasionally in a post I would want to make an snide comment, and I wouldn't want the readers to see that comment for fears that they may get offended by it. At the same time, however, I would still want to be able to see the comment myself, for it may be needed for future references or other purposes.

Unfortunately, Blogger does not have a feature where you can make certain parts of a post viewable only to yourself, and as a result hiding contents in a post is not as easy and convenient as it could be.

Fortunately, however, I have come up with two methods to accomplish this task. And in the rest of this post I will describe them in detail.

Saving as a Draft
The easiest way to do this would be to create two separate posts: one will contain only the things you want others to see, and the other would contain everything you want to see. Then, you can simply publish the first post and save the second as a draft. The others will be able to read the published post, and only you would be able to see the contents of the draft.

One huge disadvantage of this method is that it would be very inconvenient if you want to edit your post later on. Every time you want to make a change, you would have to go through the two copies and edit them separately, and this could be a long and boring process. Of course, if the changes are minor, you may decide to just edit the published post.

Using certain HTML tags
Contents in between certain HTML tags would not show on the page. For example, if you add the below HTML code into your blog post (edit HTML), it would appear as if nothing has changed:

<style> { Hello!!!! La la la }

You could therefore use this to your advantage—you can use the above code as a content-hider! To do this, simply copy and paste the HTML code into the HTML editor of your post, then change the content in between the squiggly brackets. Alternatively, instead of using the squiggly brackets, you can use an end tag, like this:

<style> Hello!!!! La la la </style>

Be careful though: if you use this method, it is still possible for the readers to see the hidden content. They simply have to view the page source of the blogger post, and they will see all the HTML code of your post, including the hidden content. So do not use this method if you think your readers are likely to view the page source of your blog.

A Reading Log

(Check out my  new Reading Log!)

I have been wanting to have a reading log for a long time now, for it'd be nice if I could keep track of all the books that I have read. However, I have always been reluctant to actually start one because of the enormous energy that I would need to spend to come up with the list of books that I have already read.

Yesterday, however, I finally made up my mind and spent 4-6 hours working on my reading log, which  I made a page for accessibility reasons. So how come it took me so long? Well, the hardest part was definitely the part where I had to come up with all the books I have read. I had to search for their titles, and try to remember the approximate time when I have finished reading them. Also, besides coming up with all the books that I have read, making the actual table was also a difficult task. At first I coded the table manually using HTML. However, at the end it didn't look very nice because the table looked very squished together. I then transferred the table to Google Docs, and magically the layout looked much nicer.

That wasn't the end of the problem, however. I then had to spend about one hour fixing the HTML code of the table from Google Docs. At first it was simply too long (300,000 characters), and it kept causing my browser to lag. Then after I turned it into CSS, it started changing the layout of my whole blog. I had to look through the code and debug it myself.

Fortunately, it's all done now. Not only does it look nice, it is also very easy for me to edit. So in the future, whenever I come up with a new item for the log, I will edit the page. I am sure it will be useful at some time in the future

Just Two More Days

Summer school has been extremely busy lately, so as a result I haven't posted in three days. In fact, I probably won't be able to spend a lot of time on this blog  for another one or two days because I will be having my final exam on Wednesday (this is unless I decide to type my notes up as a means to study)..

The good news, though, is that after writing my final exam, I will be virtually done with summer school! True, I'll still need to go to school on Thursday and Friday, but I won't have any homework or test to worry about, so I will be able to spend my afternoon and evening however I want.

So hopefully I'll be able to have some more updates after Wednesday. I really have quite a lot of things to make posts about.

100 posts and 1000 views

Reaching 100 posts is like a milestone to me

I looked at my Blogger stats a few moments ago, and realized that I had just over 100 posts and 1000 views!

Yes, I know that the view count is not impressive at all when the popular websites get tens and thousands of views everyday. And the post count isn't very large considering the contents of the posts and the amount of time (five and a half months) that it has taken me to reach this number. However, no matter how insignificant these figures may seem to others, I feel proud of them.

The last time I had a blog, I only stuck to it for a month and had about 10 posts and 120 views. This time, however, I have been able to remain dedicated to my blog even after five and a half months, and as a result achieving 100 posts and 1000 views! This is not to suggest that maintaining a blog is awful and that sticking to it for a long time is painful. This is also not to show the fact that the view-per-post ratio of this blog is lower than that of my previous blog. Instead, it is to show that I have become less spontaneous and much more dedicated. Sorry, couldn't find better words to describe...

I am hoping that I can put more effort and time into this blog— well, at least during August, during which I am completely free—and I hope that I'll be able to improve its quality by doing so. Thank you to anyone who has taken a look at my blog, as every visit to this blog is a great encourage for me.

Blogger Header Image

This is the small version of the animation that I made

Today afternoon when I looked at my blog I suddenly felt that the top was a bit empty, so I decided to make a header image to fill the space.

However, the process wasn't nearly as easy as I have thought. Blogger did not have the options for us to change the image size or position, so I had to make tons of measurements before I could start making my image. Also, the actual image-drawing part was very tedious because I was trying to make an animated image that required lots of copy-and-pasting of the objects.

After about two hours, I finally finished the animation. But unfortunately, the final product was not suitable to be a blog header at all—it was too distracting. The animation contained so many movements that it made me feel dizzy, and I reasoned that it would probably do the same to the visitors. So even though I wasn't quite happy to abandon my work, I had to.

When I get more spare time, I will try to make another header image that is more simple and more suitable for  a blog. Meanwhile, I guess the blog will have to stay the same.

Strange Feeling

After I came back from my vacation, I finally got to use a computer. And since I wasn't able to get onto my favourite websites during my vacation, I had to spend a lot of time revisiting them one-by-one. Also, I couldn't refrain myself from playing my recently-downloaded pinball game.

As a result, I have been using my computer about 13 hours out of the past 22 hours. Sounds unhealthy right? Indeed. Just  two hours ago, when I was playing pinball, I had a strange feeling in my heart. It was a twitchy feeling that was slightly uncomfortable. I disregarded that feeling, but then it came for another three our four times later, and by then I simply couldn't ignore it. I was sure that it must be because that I was using my computer for too long. 

Therefore, to avoid having that feeling again, I must reduce the amount of time that I use my computer. I really don't want to have the feeling again! Well, I know that this isn't completely the computer's fault—I actually had the same feeling yesterday, when I was in the airplane—but I think there is definitely some relationship between using the computer and the having that strange feeling. When I was using the computer, I had the feeling about once every five minutes, which was way too frequent!

Anyway, because I have to reduce my computer time, I will also have to reduce the amount of time that I spend on this blog, which means that this blog will be updated less frequently. I will still try to have one post every day, but probably not a lot more than that.

I hope that this twitchy feeling wouldn't come again, and if unfortunately it comes a lot, then I will inform the adults around me.

I'm Back

I don't have much to say, so this will be a very, very short post: 
During my vacation I have thought of a lot of things that may be put onto this blog, and now that I am back from my vacation, I can finally start updating my blog again! However, I am very tired right now, so I won't be making another post until tomorrow.

That's it for now.

A Short Break

During the past few days, I have been particularly busy. I had several projects and presentations to work on, and there were many other things happening outside of school. I almost had no free time, and for this reason I did not update this blog at all.

Fortunately, I  should be quite free today and tomorrow, and so I will probably be able to make a few posts during these two days.

After two days, however, I will be busy again, as I will have to start working on my history project. And then I will continue to be extremely busy as exam time will be approaching. So unfortunately I probably won't be able to add a lot of content to this blog during June.

Changing Style

Normally I write my posts in paragraphs, and I just realized how in paragraph form the words are often cramped up and are usually harder to read.

Therefore, for the first time in a while, I decided to change the layout of the blog. I didn't change much– I merely changed the spacing as well as the font size.

I actually planned to use a new font too, but I just couldn't get used to looking at the other fonts and at the end decided to keep Arial. Anyway, I made the font bigger and the line spacing larger, and I think now my blog posts are a lot more easy to read.

Look at the comparison:

Isn't the new one a lot easier to read?

To see how I changed the format, see my other blog post:
http://randuff.blogspot.com/2011/05/blogger-changing-line-spacing-for-all.html

Blogger: How to Change Line Spacing

How do you change the line spacing of all your blog posts? Well, follow these simple steps:

1) Go to Dashbord → Design → Edit HTML

2) Search for .post-body and you should find something that looks like this:

Your code doesn't have to look exactly the same as the above example. You can change the spacing as long as you can find line-height in the brackets.

3) Next, simply alter the value after line-height. Usually blogs have 1.5 or 1.6 spacing, but of course you can change it to whatever you want. :)

4) Save the template, and all your posts should have their spacings changed. Hope this works!

Special Notes:
- This basically changes the default setting of the posts. So all of your current and future posts will be affected by this change

- However, there are exceptions. If you have altered the HTML codes of specific posts to change the line spacing, those posts will not be affected by this change, and you would have to change the HTML codes of those posts individually.

- This method of changing the line spacing is much easier than using custom CSS. Custom CSS can mess up your line breaks and it also doesn't change your posts immediately. So don't use custom CSS unless you are changing other more complicated things

Encryption

Due to privacy concerns, I have encrypted some of my posts, mainly the ones that reveal personal information. This is something that I really don't want to do (because it makes the blog look ugly), but I am afraid that if I don't do so my classmates are going to recognize me if they happen to be on this blog.

I wonder why Blogger doesn't even have the basic feature of setting the privacies of certain posts. For example, if a post contains personal information, that feature will allow me to lock/protect it so that only people who know the password can read it. I know that many other blog providers, such as WordPress, have this feature, and I simply don't understand why Blogger hasn't kept up with those blog providers yet.

Well, for the time being, encrypting some of the posts may be the best option for me. So if anyone happens to be  a regular visitor of this blog (which I doubt), I will say sorry in advance for the messiness that you're going to see.

Blog Tags/Labels

Just realized how to do this. I feel so embarrassed...


I just found another thing that Blogger should improve on— its tag/label system.

Blogger has made it so that if you want to change the name of a label, you would have to go through all the posts with that label and change them one by one. Also, say you want to add a new label and you want to use it on a few pre-existing posts, you cannot just select the titles of those posts and add them to under that label. Instead, you will have to add the posts individually. This is highly inconvenient and inefficient, especially when you have a large amount of posts. 


Fortunately I only have 25 posts so far, so changing the labels of the posts individually is still not a big problem. 

The "Next Blog" Button

It's always interesting to click on the "next blog" button to view all sorts of different blogs and perhaps find one that you really like. However, today I had a very strange experience with this button.

For about 20 blogs, all the blogs were in Spanish! As I do not understand Spanish, I had to keep clicking the button to find one written in a language that I understood. However, the Spanish blogs just couldn't stop appearing, and finally I had to give up...

I wonder why this happened. Does the "next blog" button simply leads you to the blog that has the most recent post? Although this may sound like a plausible explanation at first, I highly doubt it. Even if that happened to be a time where Spanish people were more active on the Internet, there had to be at least one post that was in another language!

Right now I can't think of any other explanation, but hopefully this mystery will be solved when I click the button more!