Rod Lawrence, Tim Ernst, Two Artists' Nature Journals

There are two web journals I'd like to share with you that I really enjoy reading.  I guess one could call them 'blogs', but the way they are written without using blog platforms such as  Wordpress or Blogger, they seem more intimate and therefore more intriguing to me.  Both of these guys are good writers, both have a love and respect for nature (they actually live in the wilderness), and both are great, well-known artists in the area of their specialty.

Rod Lawrence is an author and acrylic wildlife painter.  I came across his journal one day as I was thinking about trying some acrylics and wanted to experiment with creating bark textures, fur, etc. and remembered that I have his book, Painting Wild Life Textures Step by Step (just noticed when making this link that this book is now out-of-print.  You might try Alibris or Amazon - can view inside book at Amazon - or one of your favorite used book sites to locate it if interested in getting one).  After reading a while, I thought I'd look him up on-line to view his website and was pleasantly surprised to see that he occasionally writes about happenings in and around his home in a journal format.  Although his postings are sporadic (like someone else i know), he states he only posts when he finds time and is just trying to give readers a feel for what life is like at his wilderness home in Michigan.

Tim Ernst, a nature photographer,  is very well-known in these parts and throughout Arkansas, as well as outside the state.  He lives close to the Buffalo River which he calls Cloudland.  His Cloudland Journal is very similar writing to Lawrence's - about living with nature, but with many more photos and posts.  Although I have a tiny patch of woods and hollow behind my home, I don't live at all in a wilderness area like these two men, which is why I so enjoy reading their journals.  And because I respect the ruggedness of the Arkansas wilderness, I have a great appreciation for the way they live.  Their writings reflect a simple, quiet but sometimes rugged life, yet I'm sure these two men lead very busy lives with such successful careers and can only imagine that they relish being home from their many travels on the road.  I had a chance to attend a slide presentation given by Ernst a couple of weeks ago, promoting his new coffee table book, Arkansas Autumn, and his trip to Iceland with Iceland nature photographer, Daniel Bergmann, but I missed it and of course am now regretting doing so.  I'll just have to catch him next time around.  I came across his journal because I've really been concentrating on my photography lately and wanted to view his recent work.  I hope to some day take one of his workshops.

So sometime on a cold winter's day, like me, you might like to curl up with a hot cup of coffee, tea, or cocoa by the comfort of your own fireplace (or electric space heater) and go into the wilderness via Tim and Rod's writings.  Happy reading, and if I don't get around to posting again before Christmas, Happy Holidays!

Re-designed my Blog, XML Note-Taking Tips101

Well, as you can see, I've been busy the past couple of days re-designing my blog site. The dark background and colors made it seem just to 'doom 'n gloom' so I decided to spruce it up a bit by lightening everything up, especially the background color. I've also wanted a 3-column design since the beginning but just now found a site's tip/instructions that actually worked for me. I use Google's 'Denim' template. If you're wondering where I found the instructions for how to change that template from 2 to 3 column, go to Computer Consultant's blog site. I'm trying to think if there are any tips I need to give you before you try it.

[March 23rd: I'm adding this advise a few days later to this post - did not see the sense in putting a whole new 'addendum' post separate from this one - I forgot to mention the most important thing I discovered to make these instructions work! After you follow the instructions Computer Consultant gives you for your 3-column blog and try to preview your blog, you may get a message from blogger like I did, that says something like 'can't load your template, this 'widget' is not loadable' (can't remember the exact wording). I then went back to view the html template, and where Comp. C. had me put in the info for my 'Profile' widget, I removed that from the html. Then blogger allowed me to view my template, but wait! It did not look 3-column - it just looked the same except my 'body content' was shifted to the left of the screen. Well, here's where you need to go to 'Layout' and there you will see that indeed you DO have a left column 'add a gadget' there. Yes! Now go ahead and add a widget using the left-column's 'add a gadget'. It doesn't matter what you add, it can be anything for now. This will get your left-column started. Then you must add your following gadgets BETWEEN the 'add a gadget' widget and your first widget or else it will 'jump' over to the right-column. After you've added a few widgets using that column's 'add a gadget', you can go back and remove the first widget if you want. You have to use the left-column 'gadget adder' because you'll notice that at first, you're not able to move widgets from the right-column to the left. However, after I added a couple of widgets, I was then able to move them from left to right and vice-versa; however, you'll notice that doing so is a bit tricky for the last widget in both L. and R. columns, because of the html coding, they don't want to stay put if you try to add them to the end of either column, so you have to 'lock' them in place by first putting them 'between' widgets on whichever side you want, and then you can move them up or down anywhere within that column. Hope this tip helps - it's key to making these instructions work! My apologies for failing to mention it the first time I posted this.]

Note: These tips are for those of you who are into customizing your blogsite, in this particular case, a 'google' template. However, the tips I give below can be applied to any xml/html file.

Of course you want to be sure:

• To first save your current template using the prompt within your google blogger account before making any changes. Go to 'Layout', 'Edit Html', and click on 'Download Full Template'.
  

• I printed off Computer Consultant's instructions prior to making any changes. Just makes it more convenient, also nice to have in case I forget (senior moments are comin' faster these days) where I got these instructions.

• I keep a notebook of my css/xml/html tips and info for my website and blogsite.I jotted down beside each 'change' on this printed off sheet, what I initially had in my css, so that I would know what my original dimensions were in case I see that I need to tweak it a bit before saving. Of course if you don't like the result or it doesn't work, you have your saved template (I hope!) you can just reload that, but this is a habit I started a long time ago, and it comes in handy sometimes for re-adjusting widths, etc., so I continue to do it.

TIPS: You can also make note of what you are doing within your html editor by preceding your note with a bracket (<) followed by an exclamation (!) and two dashes (--) and ending it with 2 dashes (--) and a closing bracket (>). Do not space between the bracket, exclamation, nor the dashes; however, you can space anywhere between these note tags. As long as you do this within the body of your html document, it will not show up on your site. It's only for you're own benefit or to explain to others what you have done. Sort of like 'note taking'. I use this puppy a lot to remind myself of what I did and why. I'm quickly learning with blogging, there are SO many gadgets that require embedding code into the body of my blog, that there is no way on earth I can remember why I put it there (sometimes I can't tell what it is just by reading it) unless I make note of it, so I use this tag to do so.

For making notes in the 'css' part of your html (that's the listing of 'div' elements or 'styling elements' given above the 'body' part of your html document), you can use /* before your note and end it with */ which is great for noting details of what, why, and where that particular Div element will show on your site.

If you want to see how I use these 'note' tags:

Go to my website (really, I'm NOT trying to plug my site, just want to show an example of how I use this tip, yeah right) and do a 'view page source' by placing your mouse on the site; right-click your mouse and choose 'view page source'. If you can't do it that way, go to your 'view' tab at the top of your browser screen, click on it, and choose 'Page Source' from there.

This shows you the html document for that site (BTW, you can do this on virtually ANY site, a great way to learn mark-up language!) You can see where I have used the beginning (< ! --) and ending (-- >) brackets (I'm only spacing between the dashes, exclamation, and brackets here so you can 'see' them) and /*note tags*/ to serve as a reminder of what I did. (you can only see the /*note tags*/ on this line because they are within the 'body' of this page-that's why I had to put the css note tags in parenthesis, so they would be visible to you - hope this isn't too confusing!).

On the html 'view page source' for my website, look near the top, ABOVE the 'body' tag (the /*tag*/ only works ABOVE the body tag of your html file) along the left side of the page, and you'll see where I noted the end of my meta tags with:

/*end of my meta content*/

You would have to go to my 'style sheet' or css document to see all of my css notes, but if you use Firefox (may I count the ways of how much I love Firefox...)Web Developer, you should have that option when you right-click your mouse.

Let me know if you have any questions, and I'll certainly try to answer them. I only do html/xml/css as a hobby. I learned html back in the 90's when I was designated as the 'web person' for my department. Then I had to learn css on my own while creating my website. I enjoy learning css and web development, so this is just '101' stuff mostly that I'll be giving tips on. Hope it helps you if you're into customizing your site(s). Again, let me know if I can help, if you have tips to add to this post, or if I've mis-informed with incorrect advise/tips by leaving a comment. And please let me know if you like the new design of my blog site. Thanks for reading my rambling mind's post today, and have a great one!

Raisingmaine-shy about blogging

I recently came across this interesting post regarding a blogger's concerns about becoming an overly cautious writer on her site(click on her link to read entire story):

clipped from raisingmaine.mainetoday.com I am becoming a shy blogger. Words that used to flow freely from my head onto paper and off to you are now being edited to destruction and my final thoughts just before I post are, ”Yeah So?” thus I post nothing. It reminds me of when I was in 7th grade and my family moved from the suburbs of Boston to our summer home on Cape Cod. I wrote a great blog about my niece’s wedding. How I danced so much my thighs still hurt, how very very blessed I am to have nine brothers and sisters and mostly that my children chose to go with me. My overly cautious editing killed it. I think I need a trip to the woods Raye. I am not sure this venue is the place for my boldness or the place to show slivers of myself, but I struggle writing in any other way. i don't even blog, and STILL i edit and carefully choose every single word that i say on this site. i have admitted that there are things i won't talk about because i'm never sure who is reading [this was a comment in response to her post/rjd].

I enjoyed reading her thoughts on becoming shy about blogging and over-editing her posts. I could really identify with it. Being new to blogging, I tend to hold back on revealing too much of myself, although for artists, that comes with the territory. Expression requires 'exposure' to some degree. It's the act of exposing via one's posts to the entire world that can be intimidating, at least for me. I'm curious to know how you feel about this. She seemed concerned about remaining authentic to her readers if she holds back too much. But how much is too much? Are you new to blogging and find yourself continuously re-editing your posts? If your a seasoned veteran, do you still do the same, or do you even think about it? Let me know what you think! I hope this clipmark post works this time. I originally had a much better post and lost it. See, there I go, having to re-write and edit again!

Now Where was I...

Oh yeah, when last posting, I was going down into the hollow to take some pics and assess the damage from the ice storm. Actually, it wasn't as bad as I first thought, given all the damage to people's yards and our streets. This is a pic of some trees on top of the slope that uprooted.
Surprisingly, many of the oaks that completely uprooted were fairly young trees, maybe because of their limited spread of roots. Some of the oldest trees took the storm much better. This image shows what a limited root system the young trees had compared to what a much older tree would have.

Many trees just split multiple times right down the middle of their trunks. This was especially true in town. Lawns look like they're landscaped with bouquets of 'toothpicks'.

Scenes of the bottom of the hollow:



Okay, enough pics of trees already! As I'm posting this, my husband is outside with the chainsaw cleaning up the mess and I need to go help. Back in a bit...

Cleaned up in the yard all day, now it's time to get back to art! I did accomplish one major goal over the past two weeks and that was getting my Etsy Shop set up. This is truly a milestone for me in goal-setting. Although I only have a few things listed so far, I feel that I can get things going now that I'm finally set up to sell on-line. Tomorrow I'll start testing my liner glaze tiles for durability. Will let you know how that goes.

The Plunge

Well, I finally decided to take the plunge and start blogging. Why? It just seemed the thing to do, since everyone else is doing it. There are actually several reasons why I decided to blog. Mainly,

• I hope that blogging will help me in the self-discipline area, particularly in setting and attaining new goals. This is an experimental exercise on my part in 'staying focused' because of my interest in more than one art medium. I'm anxious to see if blogging has helped others in reaching their goals as well. Perhaps sharing my experiences will help readers in whatever they are struggling with in their situation.
  

• It will enable me to convo with other artists about art and to solve problems in a particular medium we may be working in, whether it's watercolor, ceramics, photography, or whatever. Hey, maybe we'll just talk gardening!

• I don't want to get 'left behind' in the world of web technology. I love the internet, and everywhere I turn, I'm reading 'Get a Blog!' So there, I've done it.

There are a couple of other reasons not worth mentioning now. I hope to get some photos soon of what I'm doing. Well, here goes, my plunge into the blogosphere...