This was posted shortly after I posted my Blogging Fundamentals post today. It gives more information on generating your own blogging avatar. Enjoy!
I have been blogging for 2 month on WordPress and I believe in learning by doing and that is why I like to experience new things on the platform and look at other blogs how they do things. I have… Source: Get more readers with your Gravatar
via Get more readers with your Gravatar — Roberta Pimentel
Easy assignment for Day 13 of Blogging Fundamentals. The directions were to create a logo for the blog that would be used as the identifying icon in my WordPress communications. The purpose of the logo is to create one’s own brand.
For now, I created a logo of sorts by drawing a motif learned from the Zentangle book I used, One Zentangle a Day. It’s just a single Samson pattern that I filled in with two of my favorite colors. With any luck, it will replace the three-year-old photo of me as I blog and comment on posts. Here is what I created.
More than likely, I will change this icon at some point in the near future. For now, however, I will stick to this image, as it represents one of my current interests.
According to the information at WordPress, it takes several hours for the icon to “take effect.” If you are not seeing my new icon as an icon, either I did not give it enough time, or I did something wrong. Again.
Another learning experience, right?
Happy blogging!
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#educ_dr
Yesterday I goofed. It wasn’t what I wrote that was wrong (although I might clean it up a bit today). It’s that I got the tag wrong. Subsequently, although my post showed up here, it did not show up among other responses to the prompt. I am not sure what I did wrong, but I plan to figure it out.
Since Day 12’s assignment deals largely with commenting on others’ work related to yesterday’s prompt, I will sign off for now.
Happy blogging!
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#educ_dr
What happened to Day 10? Somewhere, I lost my way. Timely prompt, that: Nightmare. Today’s assignment is to use the inspirational prompt posted on WordPress’ Daily Post page, where you can get inspiration for blogging or writing (usually one word or a phrase), a focus for photography, news about classes, and lots of WordPress news and information.
Today’s prompt is Nightmare. The alternate prompt is Back to the Future. Hmm. Neither resonates with me, but I need to choose one. With my loss of a Blogging Fundamentals day, it seems appropriate to address Nightmare. (The appropriateness only needs to make sense to me.)
Today wasn’t all that different from any other day, but there were little clues that all is not as it should be. First, I awoke at 1:00 PM. None of the pets got me up earlier. Since I am an insomniac, it isn’t unusual for me to still be in bed when Hubby leaves for work. He doesn’t even kiss me goodbye anymore, claiming he doesn’t want to wake me. The truth is that he’s put on a few pounds and doesn’t want to climb the steps more often than absolutely necessary. But I always hear him collaring the dog in the bedroom to take him for a morning constitutional, and that didn’t seem to happen today. When I awoke, Mutt was asleep at my feet, clearly not in distress. I couldn’t believe I slept through the usual coaxing and commotion when Hub tries to get him ready to walk.
And the cats–both were in their usual early morning places, the little female between the pillows, the young tom against the back of my knees. The clock is clear: one PM. Why aren’t the cats hunting lizards? Is the clock wrong? Did we have another one of our daily power outages earlier than usual, and did the clock start at 12:00 again? Maybe it’s that sleeping pill I took last night. I have to be pretty desperate to use them, but I was going on five consecutive days of one or two-hour sleeps, so yeah; I was desperate enough to take the pill. It took until 1:00 AM to kick in (4 hours!), but finally I got so groggy that I barely made it up the stairs to crawl into the bed. When the pill kicked in, it did so really fast. The last thing I remember was arguing with one of the cats to make room for me. Then everything went black.
Usually when I take a sleeping aid, I end up with weird dreams. Usually, they’re kaleidoscopic visual trips out of the acid movies of the 1970s. Strange things happen in even stranger lands. But last night, nothing–nothing but blackness until I opened my eyes.
Slowly forcing myself up and dropping my feet to the floor next to the bed, I reached over for the clothes I wore yesterday and tugged them on as quickly as my rubbery limbs could work. The pets, usually stretching awake when I start to stir, kept right on dozing as though I hadn’t budged. Weird, I thought to myself. SheKat should be rubbing against my back, and HeKat should be scolding me to get downstairs and give him a treat. The cats hadn’t budged. Mutt should have been bouncing all over the bed with his favorite ball in his mouth, expecting me to wrest it from his mouth and throw it down the steps for him to chase. Instead, he rolled onto his back with front paws comfortably flapping over his chest and hind legs spread and bouncing toward the bedspread. Well, he’s having a pleasant doggie dream.
Making my way across the room to the door, I felt a bit woozy. Not dizzy, really, and not quite light-headed. Just a bit unsteady. I climbed down the steps slowly and carefully, holding on to the banister in case I got worse. Afternoon sunlight bathed the bottom of the stairs in an almost neon orange glow–except we don’t get sun there any time of the day.
My foot hit the floor at the bottom of the stairs and I stepped into a kitchen filled with the whirling kaleidoscopic colors and two-dimensional images straight out of the acid movies of the 1970s.
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#educ_dr
Day 9’s assignment required visiting other bloggers’ sites to get inspiration for a post. So I have set aside my own ideas for today and concentrated on finding inspiration. I started seeking last night, but we were having difficulties with our island’s internet services. After getting hung up for more than 5 minutes on one click, I decided it was time to set aside the task and do something else.
This morning, I picked up from where I left off last night but was interrupted–first by the handyman who came to fix a few things in and around our home, and later by my laptop, which apparently needed to finish a bunch of updates before it would allow me to work. I needed the laptop because it is difficult to perform some blogging tasks on mobile applications. Not all WordPress apps are created equal, but that’s more a function of the need to keep tight apps for mobile devices, I think. To keep mobiles running smoothly and quickly, some features need to be modified or reduced altogether. For this assignment, I needed my laptop because I knew in advance that I have trouble obtaining web addresses on my iPad–even after getting iPad-specific help from the Bloggers U team a while back. So I had to wait for my computer to update itself before I could go any further. I used the time to read through more posts.
The first thing I noticed is that one of the bloggers I follow, Don Massenzio, has been doing a lot of reposts and fewer original posts over the past several days. A lot of the re-blogs are about the writing process and writing techniques. Some are from a while back, others are very recent. Re-blogs are an excellent way to keep your site active when time is limited. We’ve all had clumps of days where our energy is diverted to more pressing needs, leaving us with just enough free time to check out and share others’ work and wisdom even when we do not have the time to create. Don’s selection of shared posts is diverse enough to hold your interest while focused enough to help all of us with fresh insights into the writing process.
The second thing I noticed was the number of posts that are based on some sort of challenge: writing, photography, poetry, etc. These are great for keeping one’s writing fresh as well as to help us with inspiration. I haven’t been involved with a challenge for quite some time, and have added that to my to-do list of blogging activities.
After a while, I came across a post that caught my eye. In today’s post, Deniz Yalim put together a list of what she called proverbs, among which was missing “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” What got my attention is that her definiation of proverb was closer to my definition of adage. That sent me to the dictionary for clarification. It was a real learning experience to find that I had been using the word proverb as though it were synonymous with parable, or a story that teaches or has a moral or lesson (like a fable); and using adage as though it meant a pithy saying about a cultural truth. As it turns out, proverb and adage became synonyms somewhere over my lifetime.
This piece of enlightenment brought to mind a conversation I had many years ago about how language changes. The conversation was with my husband’s friend, science fiction writer Gregory Benford. He was thinking about a short story he was contemplating about a group of people with apparently low mental acuity, and wanted the input of a special education teacher (me). The term he was going to use for them had been dropped decades before and was no longer the psychological term he expected to use. The word was “idiot.” It was an appropriate term before the mid-1970s, but had fallen into disuse as a psychological term. In short, the word’s pre-1980s primary usage had dropped back into a secondary–and derogatory–meaning. I was able to back up what I was saying regarding language changing across generations because I had my original copy of The American Heritage Dictionary as well as the updated 25th anniversary edition of the same dictionary. When he saw the change in the definitions, he was as astounded as I had been with other words.
Whether the definition of “proverb” that I use came from its usage when I was growing up or from a misunderstanding in my formative years, I may never know. We have moved three times since that conversation with Dr. Benford, and my original dictionary has been lost somewhere along the way.
The point is that language changes, whether we think about it or not. That can make it difficult to come to a full understanding with someone of a very different generation or whose profession is less sensitive to change in vocabulary or word usage in greater society. As technology has brought the world closer together, words and phrases from different cultures and countries have been introduced into unrelated languages as well. If we allow ourselves to recognize that language changes, we can adapt more readily to the changes brought about by global interactions. We can continue to grow with the shifts in meaning and the new vocabulary that would have little meaning without adaptation into our own language. After a while, we stop thinking about where the word came from or what it means; we care only that it has a meaning for us that will be the same–or at least very similar–to everyone.
Coming across the words “lorry” or “van” when reading a book by a British author no longer throws me for a loop, rushing for a dictionary. Spelling differences (US: color, UK: colour) or quotation mark order (US: double on the outside, single within; UK: the opposite) don’t even rate an eye blink. Yet I continue to be surprised when I sense a different usage or meaning for a word than I would have used.
It just goes to show: you can teach an old dog new tricks.
Happy blogging!
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#educ_dr
Every night, before I go to bed, I promise myself that I will change my morning routine. If I don’t start walking again soon, I may never make it a habit again. So, I will walk before I do anything more than drink my coffee.
Well, it didn’t happen again today. Instead of walking, I fell back on what has recently become my morning routine: pour a mug of coffee, open my iPad and check the latest postings of blogger’s I follow, “like” most, ignore a few, comment when I have something to say, grumble at those on which I can neither like nor comment…wait for the power to come back on by drawing…pick up where I left off, and scold myself for not walking while the sun was still low. The only interruptions are when the dog gets bored and brings me his ball for a short game of catch-and-retrieve-the-ball-for-him-from-under-the-sofa-and-repeat. I think the dog laughs every time I lie on the floor and reach under the furniture. He has me trained.
So… After telling myself I will visit the community pool around 2:00 PM when the sun is less brutal, I finish household chores, pick up my Kindle or iPad, glance up at the clock and curse for letting the day slip away without walk or wade or sun, and begin thinking about dinner. While food is cooking, I clean up the mess the cat made when he brought in his lizard snack, set the table, and wait for my husband to make his appearance. (Often, I eat without him.) Since we still have no TV service, we may settle back after supper with a selection from Netflix, but usually we just read. Going on three months of no television (and only a week with Netflix), I find myself barely missing the news. Maybe tomorrow I will get a call that cable will be installed, but I will not hold my breath. Island time is island time. Period.
Lastly, I go to bed promising myself that tomorrow morning I will walk, first thing.
There is no doubt that I need to get out of this rut. All it would take is leaving the iPad until later. But what would I do if I didn’t have posts to review while drinking the coffee that boosts the day? That’s a problem, because I know if I did not pick up the tablet, I would not get engrossed and forget my walk. If I did not need my coffee jump-start, I would not pick up the tablet. If I stayed in bed…
But I get sucked in by blog posts. (If I didn’t have those, I would be reading the news and getting depressed.) Since I visit the sites of each person I follow as well as new blogs when someone new has read or commented on a post, it takes hours to go through my email notifications before I am finished–especially on a day when it seems every blogger I follow has chosen to post something. I suppose I could just visit the sites and click on the like button without contemplating the art work or latest story; but I can’t seem to make myself do that. Good thing I am a reasonably fast reader, or I would spend all day reading WordPress posts.
And then there is my own blog to write…and errands to run…
Let me think about how I can force a change in this routine and fit in the things I want and need to do. All I know for certain is that it’s time to rout this routine before it routs me.
Happy blogging!
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#educ_dr
All day today I have been waiting for the power to go off again. Last night, we lost power for roughly four hours–third power loss of two or more hours in one day. Candle light does not make for good drawing or reading from a physical book. I got caught up on fun reading on my Kindle and iPad, however. It could have been worse. My devices could have needed charging…
Today, after posting my experiences with Day 28 in One Zentangle a Day, I decided to read ahead on the next 14 book days. Only 4 new Zentangle patterns are introduced during the two-week span (that’s book weeks), one of which is unofficial. Mostly, Week 5 talks a great deal about stylistic adaptations to Zentangling, while Week 6 discusses how to adapt tangling to various media, including porcelain bowls, acrylic jewelry, glass holiday ornaments, frames, book covers, fabric, and on and on. It also discusses the use of the patterns with calligraphy to embellish a letter or word. Week 6 is an excellent resource for the hobbyist, but professional artists and designers can take some of the ideas as jumping off points for their own creativity.
The week on styles is devoted not only to personal style and the incorporation of tangles into traditional art and design forms, but also develops the idea of modifying tangles for realistic drawings. I mentioned in one of my previous posts that working with this book has helped me draw things I couldn’t “get” previously, and Day 29 sort of addresses this by taking an official Zentangle pattern, Verdigogh, and making it into a feather and a pine bough with a little modification to the motif. The author encourages the examination of other presented patterns for elements that can be used in drawing non-Zentangle works.
Week 5 also spends a great deal of time (three days) on Zendalas. Taking into consideration the remarks of Day 29, the clear indication is that mandalas using your own imagination can be created in your own stylistic interpretations that go beyond Zentangles. When I thumbed through adult coloring books in hobby shops this past winter, it was pretty clear that mandalas are very popular for adults who want to color as their relaxation technique. Books-ful of mandala-based pictures of flowers, underwater scenes, almost anything you can think of, were represented in one page after another. Perhaps that is why the author spends three days on the subject.
Week 5–Day 30, specifically–answers a question I had posed two Zentangle days ago. That is, is it OK to start with a string in a specific shape? And the answer is an apparent “Yes!” The author presents various “strings” of purses, shoes, and other outlines that can be filled in with tangle patterns. There is no end to the possibilities.
For me, it is time to set aside Zentangles and start incorporating the techniques and patterns I have learned into my own artistic endeavors for a while. I also want the opportunity to continue using the patterns I learned and others I will pick up from other sources in a more meditative mode–one that allows me to choose all my patterns and use my own inspiration to practice the meditative part of Zentangling.
So I leave the topic of Zentangles with a tangle I created using only the three official and one unofficial motif introduced in the remainder of the book. I chose to do it in black and white, although it might actually be nice as a color-enhanced piece as well. The patterns used are Zander (the bundles of string or yarn or grain), Warmth (the weave pattern similar to Keeko but with two sizes of pen nib), Bronx Cherry (the raspberry-looking motif), and the unofficial pattern Stickers.
Until my next post, Happy Tangling!
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#educ_dr
Day 28 of One Zentangle a Day makes me think of scribbles. Scribbles is something we do to play when we are sitting reasonably still. Lots of scribbles are curvy. Since today’s Zentangle patterns are very curvy, I figure it’s a day to play.
Today’s lesson
Two patterns were introduced in this lesson. Eke is something that reminds me of cursive lessons many, many years ago. The Palmer Method, to be specific. Lots of loops and lines, but mostly loops, it seemed to me. Master the loops and you’ve got cursive down. The second pattern is Sez and reminds me of a bullseye target. Lots of circles within circles. Also introduced were tangleations of Eke, which particularly lends itself to modification.
The problem is that putting all these curves together, for a novice like me, seems to limit the imagination. Rather than wrack my brain too much, or take some time to explore the Internet for inspiration, I decided to just play around with three simple patters–Eke, Sez, and Rick’s Paradox to break up the curves. And I thought I would throw in more experimentation with the Koi gray pens as shading elements.
It will take time to learn to manipulate the pens to get shading down, but I need to start somewhere, even if the result is rather messy.
Using water-soluble color pencils, I filled each space created by my string with one color or another, then added water to smooth out some of the colors. I am not yet at a point where I feel comfortable applying color boldly; hence, the tentative strokes that are more difficult to blend. But I am playing, and doing so directly to tiles instead of in my sketchbook. There are already too many lumpy pages in my pad.
Yes, I’m playing today.
But what is play?
When we hear the word “play,” children immediately come to mind. Children play. They manipulate their environment, they imitate adults around them, they simply have fun. For children, play is their job. It is learning about their world and about their culture. They act out what they see, and often embellish with what they learn from other children, television, cartoons, etc. Their job is to find how they fit in to the world around them.
When adults play, we generally think of them doing fun, adventurous, or exciting things for leisure. But actors play, whether for fun or as a job. Artists play when they try out new techniques or materials. Scientists play when they experiment, even though their play is very structured. And have you ever been asked to learn something new at work, something that you will need to apply at some later point in time? That’s a form of play–learning to do something in a fun or non-threatening way that will be used as part of serious work.
So, play might be considered learning, especially if it is done in a fun way, and even if the person is unaware that the new skill or behavior later will be used (or suppressed, if the behavior or skill is “bad”) in a serious way. As an educator, I like the idea of learning as a playful, fun occupation.
So…
For toddlers and young children, play is serious business. For scientists and artists, play is definitely part of their work. Therefore, I am looking at today’s assignment and my idea of play and feeling like I accomplished something positive, even if the result is not necessarily pleasing to my eye.
Happy tangling!
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#educ_dr
Three motifs were introduced on Day 27 in One Zentangle a Day. They are Meer, Enyshou, and an original pattern called Reef. The first two have strong resemblances to earlier patterns, Finery and Squid, respectively.
This time, I remembered to add in the strings, and the resulting tile reminded me of the northern end of the New Jersey Turnpike, so I called the tangle “NJTpk.” Yeah, really original, I know. It made me realize I am homesick.
featured patterns: Meer, Enyshou, and (unofficial) Reef
Yes, I still consider myself a Jersey Girl, even though it has been more than 25 years since I have lived in the area. Even my mother hadn’t lived there for almost 20 years before her recent death. But once a Jersey Girl, always a Jersey Girl, regardless of age or current location.
Looking at the tile called to mind my stringless tangle for Day 26, and how it was difficult to make sense of it. By way of contrast, this tangle used a string which turned into a memory. I began to wonder how many tangles are drawn with intentional strings. That is, do tangle artists sometimes come to their tiles with an idea of what they want to draw and how they plan to draw it? Sometimes, especially if I am stuck for an idea, I draw a picture and tangle it in or tangle around it. Is that acceptable? Or is the intent of Zentangles to come in with a blank mind, scribble in a bunch of lines, and let inspiration wash over the pen wielded? If so, then the whole idea of tiles that come “pre-strung” seems to violate this principle. Yet, there are ample online markets that sell tiles that have an assortment of strings on them.
A comment made by the author about a sample tangle probably triggered my question about strings. The illustrator who drew the sample had said that the string reminded her of a bow. That got her tangle started. And the result was a very pretty bow wrapped around a rose created from a single use of the pattern Vitruvius (squares within circles within squares etc.). For my tangle, I really didn’t know what the outcome would be until I finished. I was so intrigued by the reminder of home that I didn’t even touch up a few spots I had meant to clean up. I know that clean-up is a no-no, but when your hand shakes, you find new uses for that opaque white Gelly Roll pen.
So now I have two dilemmas to ponder: 1) Conscious string versus non-intentional random string?” and 2) To erase/correct or let shakes lines be? Being a Jersey Girl, I want to follow directions that are important, but I also want to correct errors before anyone sees my work.
What would you do? Would you stick to the rules, or would you–at least sometimes–do what you feel better about?
Ah, decisions, decisions.
Happy tangling!
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#educ_dr
Day 26 of One Zentangle a Day. Today’s tangles are…well, they are uninspiring. One (Poke Leaf) I picked up from an ebook a while back and have been using ever since; the other (Growth) is the author’s creation and uncomfortable to my hand, though I have tried to recreate it a number of times over the past two days. It should be easy, but I cannot attain the effect the author intends. It may not be that the tangle motifs are the problem. In fact, it is probably that I am having a day that is more off than usual.
growth is at the bottom left. Poke Leaf is the spade-like pattern above Growth.
Putting down my pen, I began shading, and was struck by my inability to make sense out of what I drew. I kept going with the pencil, hoping all along that I could make this tile work. At last, I simply stopped working.
At the precise moment I put down the pencil, the power went out–yes, again (daily). All I could do was turn on my hotspot (which has enough bandwidth for typing but not for uploading). So here I am, writing today’s post. While I am waiting for power and the wired wifi system, I’ll keep writing. As of this moment, we have been out of power for two hours.
Oh, wait–it just came back on! Unbelievable! Tomorrow’s newspaper will tell me that we were powerless for only 15 minutes. It’s just as believable as the story that money given to the government-owned utility company by Parliament to purchase and install new equipment was “misplaced, ” instead of that it went into someone’s pocket. And the two hours–that’s the outside limit the company reported in last week’s press release.
Stop. Just stop telling us lies. No one living on this island believes corruption does not exist here. No one believes the money intended for new equipment was not directed (or redirected) to a personal bank account on another island or in another country. It’s gone and GEBE (the utilities company (don’t ask me what the Dutch acronym stands for, please)) won’t see it again–ever. The only thing residents can do is complain, mostly to each other. The country is only 45,000 strong, and there is only one utility company on this side of the island (Dutch, as opposed to French on “the other side”). We are stuck, and there is nothing we can do but complain and live with the status quo.
In last week’s weekend press release, we were told that GEBE is servicing all its relays, one or two at a time. They deliberately shut down power to selected residential areas to redistribute the load while they work. The power is redirected from residences to businesses. OK. I get that. And I am so pleased to be one of the selected, though that was not the intent behind the wording. But we have been losing power every day–for at least an hour to an hour and a half–for the past six weeks. And today marks the first, I am certain, of weeks of two-hour outages. How long does it take to service these relays? And why can’t we just be put on notice that every weekday until such-and-such a date we will be without power from 10:00 AM until noon, instead of using the variable schedule that seems like turning power on and off is an afterthought? We can plan around scheduled times. If a scheduled outage does not occur, think of how happy your customers will be, even if the power goes off again the next day.
Geez. Listen to me. I sound as though I have been living on this island all my life. We all know complaining only allows us to release our frustration. We all know that the power will be on or off depending on when the technicians get around to flipping a switch. It’s like a game. All of it is part of the Caribbean way. And the island of St Martin will always be Caribbean first and Dutch or French second. Just relax and let it wash over you. Kind of like perpetual meditation.
Yeah. It’s one of those uninspired and uninspiring days. I should have practiced the meditation aspect of Zentangle when I began working today instead of letting the local powers force me there. At least then I would have felt my “American right” to some personal control over an otherwise uncontrollable day…
Stop!
Happy tangling!
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#educ_dr
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