Monday, September 10, 2012

Monday Reports from the Stupid Blogger

Today was the first day of school.  It was busy and stressful and I have to go back and do it again every day until the middle of next June.  But today I'm not going to blog about teaching Latin.  I'm going to try to turn over a new leaf as a blogger and become less stupid.

Apparently I've been making one of the most ignorant mistakes all along in my blogging career for the last 400+ posts.  I have been taking photos, some of them very nice photos, and sharing them with the blogworld.  But I have not been resizing them smaller before doing so.  I have known, somewhere deep down, that people with better tech skills than I think this is an important thing to do.  But I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to do it, so I just kept uploading mega-sized photos (which I do know how to do).  I don't think Blogger likes me.  So last week I read a post from Connie at Freemotion by the River about how to add watermarks to your photos, and she linked to a free photo editing program called Photoscape.  I thought, "I may never get to the point of adding watermarks to my photos, but surely I can figure out how to resize them."  So I downloaded the program... or I thought I did. 

What I had actually downloaded was Gimp, another free photo editing program.  Why it was Gimp when I thought it was Photoscape I have no idea.  I also have no idea why when you download these free programs they also try to get you to download more free programs - a new toolbar, ads for easier online shopping (!), or free online games.  I couldn't figure out why Gimp said "Gimp" and didn't look like the Photoscape on the website.  I couldn't figure out a lot of things about it, actually (in the midst of all this Daniel skyped from college and said Gimp is crazy complicated.  I had noticed that).  I finally, after three tries and (more than coincidentally) after Steve came home, figured out how to download Photoscape rather than Gimp.  (This is why God puts us in families.  He knows some of us are good at teaching Latin but absolutely stupid at anything on a computer).

With a LOT of help from Steve, I think I may have resized my first photo.  I am hoping to go back and replace the megasized ones gradually, and then maybe Blogger will stop giving me the cold shoulder.  I present the most recent quilt top I pinned for Steve's mom, for Design Wall Monday:
One of those pretty diamond quilts.  It's large... couldn't get it all into one shot even standing on the couch.  But the new file from the "diminuenda" folder (things to be shrunk - it's a gerundive) uploaded so fast.  It's great to know that I may be on the road to less stupidity in my blogging.  I have a lot of photos to resize, but we'll start with baby steps.  I have resized one photo and uploaded it.  Now, of course, I also want to make a diamond quilt.

Baby steps, Kathy!

Stash Report: (no changes this week)

Fabric used this week: 0 yards
Fabric used year to date: 55 yards
Added this week: 0 yards
Added year to date: 28 yards
Net used for 2012: 27 yards

Yarn used this week: 0 yards
Yarn used year to date: 6144 yards
Yarn added this week: 0 yards
Yarn added year to date: 3503 yards (all handspun, not purchased)
Net used for 2012: 2641 yards

2 comments:

Judy Dietrich said...

Dear Kathy--you have posted 400+ more posts than I have--I have not even put a picture up to post. Sometimes we are so hard on our selves--it is hard to make changes!! I used to teach & I know what you mean about repeating each day....but you are reaching out to young people & they will gather information from you during your teaching. One thing is the fact that you keep showing up each day to repeat what you did the day before!! Students need lots of people in their lives to be able to get a feel for where they come along in the world. You made a change in someone's life today--and that is good. Judy

Connie Kresin Campbell said...

Kathy I am so sorry you downloaded Gimp by mistake. I know that is a program that most people aren't interested in learning....Photoscape is pretty easy to use. Just take one post at a time......kind of like one day at a time........you'll get them done! Thanks for sharing.
Freemotion at the River Linky Party Tuesday