Virginia Breeze

Good morning to you and a good morning it is except that Beth is outside raking the leaves from the infernal tree that has a backward internal clock and drops them all summer long.

Her presence in the front yard means that I have only a few moments before I must go out in the heat and start up the lawn mower.

But I am imbued with strength this morning after the nice comments that have found their way here. I am generally not worthy of these but feel it necessary to try and understand them. Wait. I hear a lawnmower. Never mind. It’s two doors down. That could have been real trouble.

A gentleman by the name of Robert R. Marsh who has developed the really cool similar posts plugin you see around here and many other places has been helping me with something this week. Go look at the photos over at Photolinklove.com and see if you see any difference!

These photo shadows have always put a twinkle in my eye since I saw them in Michael Brown’s blog. They are just so cool and Robert just figured out how to do it and put them here! You can’t just get these anywhere as far as I know. Sadish uses them in some of his themes. But hopefully now they will be available if Robert decides to make it so. Thanks, guy!

But that is not all! Things have progressed rapidly in an upward direction since a squirrel took his own life Thursday night and blew out the transformer out back leaving us without electricity all night long. It was like living in a cave only a very hot one.

But last night was much better as I conversed briefly but nevertheless in a very positive way with Jordin. Yes my dear readers. Just one year after she became the reigning American Idol (plus a few days but who is counting) your blogging buddy said something to Ms. Jordin that made her laugh.

I told Beth about it this morning and she was almost elated! But then she decided we needed to cut the grass. So I must leave you now.

Have a great, great day. And let me leave you with this.

Remember to follow your dreams. But also try to keep your grass from getting too long. And if possible set up some sort of outreach program for your neighborhood squirrels.

Mine need to understand that the metal tubes that are affixed to poles among their branches and homes are not rest stops. They are gateways to squirrel heaven. And it hurts me deeply when they go through that door.

Stay here and gather nuts my friends. And have a good laugh as you look down and watch the sweaty refections on the chrome dome going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth while you are bouncing and flying through the air.

Count your blessings but don’t try to make them all come true in one brief moment.

Good Evening. My name is David and I am a Themaholic. I can’t turn down a theme. It speaks to me and I surrender.

It doesn’t matter that I have pledged my allegiance to Sadish and his wonderful templates. Nothing matters except getting the next theme fix.

I keep telling myself “This time it will be different”.

Maybe it will. Or maybe I will wake up tomorrow morning full of regret and guilt because I traded Sadish and his great theme in for THIS.

But I don’t think so and besides the night is still young.

There’s lots of time left to install more plugins and see how they work. I don’t want to think about tomorrow.

When it’s still tonight.

Do you change themes very often?  Do you feel that people who change themes often are hampering their blogging efforts?

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How can you be a sage if you’re pretty? You can’t get your wizard papers without wrinkles. ~Bill Veeck

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Wisdom is the quality that keeps you from getting into situations where you need it. ~Doug Larson

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What? Unzipping the file is a very important part of the process. Nothing is going to happen until you do it. And it took me a long time to figure out how to do this in an effective manner. But after long experimentation I have found two effective ways to make it happen. Both work well. But only one way is free. You have to pay for the other.

Are you still here? Let’s move on. The paying method involves a guy in a cool maroon dress. Actually he is a wizard and he will take care of things in an effortless manner.

http://www.pc-shareware.com/unzipwiz.htm

The second program will do the same thing but it is not quite as intuitive. Still I have used it so we can’t say it is difficult.

http://www.camunzip.com/

Let’s start with this one. Download and open the program. Locate a zip file somewhere and click on it. Immediately the CAM UnZip program will appear with your zip file. In the top/left location it has Extract to: and the place it would like to go with your files. It would like to go to the desktop.

However you can create a file and put it in the file if you would like to do this. Right click on the START button down at the bottom/left of you monitor screen. Click on Explore. Click on your local disk (C:) and look below it until you come to your Documents and Settings files. Click on this and look on the right side of the window. Here are the files contained in Documents and Settings. Go there with your cursor and right click your mouse. Choose new and create New Files. Then click on New Files. You will see a lot of empty space on the right half of your window. Right click on your mouse three more times and create three files called Plugins, Themes and Misc.

Now go back to the CAM Unzip program and click on the half inch square box next to Extract to: and the files that are exhibited next to it. Your file tree should appear. Find C: and find Documents and Settings. Under it find New Files and the other three files you have created. Left click on Plugins and it should appear in the box next to Extract to:

That’s it! The Unzip Wizard has a similar and even easier process but we have run out of time and space. We have reached the point where we can actually unzip NextGen Gallery. I am sorry it has taken so long but I wanted to do this in a way that would demonstrated to someone with no computer knowledge how to do it. Things should go more quickly and perhaps be more interesting from this point. Later.

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More Writing About Blogging

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Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach that person to use the Internet and they won’t bother you for weeks. ~Author Unknown

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What, exactly, is the Internet? Basically it is a global network exchanging digitized data in such a way that any computer, anywhere, that is equipped with a device called a “modem” can make a noise like a duck choking on a kazoo. ~Dave Barry

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In part one we installed Total Commander and set it up so that it should work at this point. Once the username and password are installed all you have to do is click on the program and hit Control plus F to bring up the window with your blog’s name. Then you click on the name you want (if you have entered more than one blog) and hit Connect. Files flash before your eyes and you are ready to upload something.

But let’s be clear about one thing. I don’t know everything about this program. I can make it upload files and install them. Primarily that involves plugins and themes. All we are doing here is going over the simple stuff.

We are not going to install the NextGen Gallery plugin at this point. We are going to install Plugin Central so that almost ALL of our future plugin installations will be much simpler. Plugin Central was created by the guy I wrote about earlier. HIs name is Vladimir Prelovac and he helped me with my blogging efforts. Here is his blog

Vladimir Prelovac Online!

And here is the link to Plugin Central

So let’s begin to upload this plugin into our Wordpress Blog. We may not finish everything in this post because when you try to write down every step and leave out nothing you are going to take up a lot of space! But we will get there soon. I promise!

Hit Control plus F

Click on your blog’s name.

Hit connect.

See your cpanel and files on the left or the right half of the screen.

Double Left -Click on public_html

Double Left-Click on wp-content

Double Left-Click on plugins

Go to the other side of the Total Commander program and you should see your computer files starting with C Drive at the top (or whatever letter holds all your stuff).

You will find the Plugin Central plugin there and Double Left-Click on it. This should send all the other files away and isolate the one you want near the top of the window. Double click on it again and you should see some php files. One step above the php files is where you want to be so go back up one step. As a general rule one step above the php files is the file you want to upload in most cases. So it is good to check that they are actually there. This ensures that later when you go to your admin/plugin area there will actually be something there!

But we digress. You have an isolated plugin sitting there and you want to upload it into the plugin section that you have already opened on the other side. Left-click one time gently on your plugin and then press the F5 key. This will open a window that says Upload at the top. You don’t have to type anything in it if you already clicked one time gently on your plugin. Just click OK and files will once again flash before your eyes.

And you should see the plugin right where you want it on the other side of the Total Commander program and nestled securely with all your other plugins.

Next time I will discuss how you got that plugin from Vladimir’s blog to your computer so that you could do this.

Because we are not going to leave out any steps. That’s why I am doing this. Because there may be another older guy like me out there who would like to start a blog. And he wants to do it on his own domain. He wants to OWN his work. And he doesn’t have a clue how to do this.

When we went to school they didn’t discuss this stuff. I know it is difficult to comprehend how this could be. But believe me.

It was.

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