geek

backing up your WordPress blog

by Lara on September 8, 2010

Here are some quick tips on backing up your WordPress blog (both for free and paid hosting). It’s something you should do regularly. While your paid hosting site can usually save the day if you install a bad plug-in and everything disappears and you call them in a panic (happened to me a month ago), it’s always a good idea to have all of your hard work securely saved. Also, keep a few of your backups on hand just in case that most recent one was corrupted.

(Here are some tips for backing up Blogger blogs.)

First – if you are on the free WordPress site:

Go to your Dashboard, then Tools in the left sidebar, then EXPORT. Save this onto your computer. This will only save your posts and comments. It will not save your widgets, blogroll or theme. It’s the best the free site offers though. Do it often. (This is also how you transfer all your posts to your own paid site, if you want to.)

For paid sites:

There are a couple things you can do. First, you can install the WordPress Database Backup plugin. Once installed, you manage it in the Tools section of your Dashboard. I have mine scheduled to go once daily. It sends a small file to my email address where it can just sit in case I need it. This is a small file though. Only your posts and comments, I believe.

There is a much much larger file I like to download every few days. You create this file through your actual hosting site and it will only remain available for 5 days. From what I’ve seen on online tutorials, most Control Panels (the cPanel) on hosting sites look the same.

Go to your Files section in the cPanel and click on the Backup Wizard.

Click on Backup. Then click on Full Backup.

Make sure your correct email address is in the menu and click on Generate Backup. This will take a while. You will get an email notification when it’s done. Then, you can click “go back” on that screen or go all the way back to this same place (if you closed out the page) and click on the backup that’s available for you to download to your computer. This will also take a while since it’s a huge file.

So, there you go. You will have a small automatic backup emailed to you every day to save your butt in between this slightly laborious larger backup. I honestly don’t know what to do with that big backup. They say you can use it to transfer to another server or to keep a local file on your computer. Your paid host should be able to help restore you to a recent point if something terrible does happen. I’m sure there is some “GZ File” reader out there somewhere to open it if I ever needed to access it. I just like having it.

All your hard work is worth it.

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how to use twitter

by Lara on September 4, 2010

in geek

UPDATE on 9.15.2010 Twitter has changed and here is everything you need to know about those changes.

Most of you will just skip over this post but there are a few of you out there who have yet to join Twitter. I recently did a post on how to set up Google Reader for RSS feeds and now I want to help you figure out Twitter.

You know the updates you do on Facebook? Well that’s pretty much all Twitter is, in 140 characters or less.

There are a few ways you can use it: on your computer directly on their website, through an app on your smart phone, or through text.

Here is their support center with tons of info.

I’m going to go by the actual website and you will be able to figure out the rest. This may look long and complicated but it’s really quite basic. Even cats and the elderly tweet! I know you can too!

First off, you have to set up your account and come up with a name and user pic. Make your name short and sweet. Also, I wouldn’t use my entire real name on anything.

Send a tweet off into the world. I’m not going to tell you how and what to tweet. You’re an adult.

Who will see it? Everyone in the world can, unless you make your tweets private to only those who follow you. (You will get more followers with a public page. No one wants to ask permission to follow something they can’t see at first anyhow.)

But how will they see them? If you choose to keep your tweets public, people who directly follow you will see them. Anyone who’s nosing around lists to look for people to follow, or checking out conversations between you and someone else will be able to see what you tweet too if you leave them plublic. Also, if they do a search for keywords (usually to find people to spam) people can see your tweets, and there are things called hashtags.

Say you’re watching your favorite show and you tweet about it. You want that show’s fans to be able to find your tweet if they search, looking for a sense of community and to see what others are saying. For the sake of popularity, you could add #TrueBlood somewhere in the tweet. That little # sign makes it a tag. (Don’t use spaces.) Someone can click on it and go to all the tweets where people also tagged #TrueBlood. You can also use hashtags to be funny or use them like a side comment.

So you want to speak to someone directly? You type in the @ and then their name at the beginning of your tweet. (You can send one tweet to multiple people, just put the @ before each name and a space between each.)

EX: @milkglassheart you are the best!

Or, you can click on “reply” when you hover over their tweet (their name will pop up in the text box automatically), or you can click on “mention” in the drop-down menu after you hover your mouse over their name and click on the bottom right box.

So who will see that tweet? Well, the person you sent it to will see it, as well as anyone who follows both you and that person. This is how you get to see mutual friends having conversations.

Now, if you tweet like this instead, then everyone who follows you can see it because you wrote something before the @name

Hey @milkglassheart you are sooooo awesome!

There are a few silly little technical things like this that you have to do to make it work for you.

There is also Direct Messaging (sending a DM). You can only DM people who follow you back. No one else can see these tweets but you and that person.

Talk to people! Even the celebs and other well-known people! They will talk back to you! It’s crazy!

If someone you don’t follow mentions you, it won’t show up in your timeline. Only people you follow are there. You can find all tweets to or about you in the right side column under @yourname.

Now how in the heck do you find people to follow? Other than finding a twitter link on people’s blogs, you can also nose around and see who your friends are following or talking to. Twitter now gives recommendations for you to follow. There is also the retweet and the #FF (Follow Friday). Take a look at people’s tweets, checking out the ones that aren’t @someone and see what kind of stuff they write.

A retweet is when you think someone’s tweet is so great you want all your followers to see it too OR if you want to respond to someone’s tweet but you want everyone to see the original one you are responding to. (Personally, this gets on my damn nerves because some people use it every single time they respond to someone.)

Next to each tweet on the website, there is the option to retweet. It won’t come up in your own timeline though. You can find all retweets in the sidebar.

You can also retweet manually and type in RT then the person’s @name and copy & paste their tweet (maybe even add your own commentary in parentheses after).

The way to add a response on the website is to just copy and paste the other person’s tweet and write what you want to say then RT in front of their @name. (The reason I keep talking about the website is because different phone apps work a little differently and will allow you to edit a retweet before you send it so you don’t have to copy and paste anything. For my Blackberry, I use Ubertwitter.)

Look at this insanity! I retweeted a retweet!

So, you’ve retweeted something someone else wrote and your followers may enjoy it enough to want to follow that person as well.

Follow Fridays (hastag #FF) is where you can recommend people for others to follow every Friday. I don’t know how this all started but it’s just what some people like to do. I don’t do it but I’ve found some great people to follow from other people’s shout-outs.

You do not have to follow anyone back who follows you. If someone follows you and you check out their tweets, frequency, and subject matter, you may find that you don’t want your timeline clogged up with their crap. Unlike Facebook, Twitter isn’t so damn sensitive about not being friends; and if someone does have a problem with it then they need to grow the hell up. There’s a bunch of people who do #TeamFollowBack and #F4F (follow for follow – you follow me, I’ll follow you. Total garbage. These people for some reason care more about how many followers they have than the actual content they can enjoy.)

You can also unfollow a person if you get sick of their tweets.

As you can see, you also have the ability to block people from following you. It is your responsibility to report spammers and get them off of Twitter where they suck up space and make it shut down from overload (happens quite a bit). Check out all the little boxes and things to click around people’s tweets and you’ll figure it out.

You can organize the people you follow into lists. I just have a list of local people in Richmond, VA that I follow. This way, if I just want to see what’s going on in my city, I can click on that list and see only the tweets of locals. You can make as many lists as you want and organize them any way you want.

You can also add a star to your favorite tweets or any you want to refer back to. If you hover over a tweet, things will appear, including an empty start to click on. These will all be in your Favorites section on the right sidebar.

Oh, and there’s also TwitPic. There are others but this is what I use. You can upload pics from your phone or computer and your next tweet will be the link to that pic.

Aaaaand there’s TinyURL. If you want to share a link to a website but what you want to say and the link exceeds 140 characters, this will shorten it. You just copy and paste.

Oh, and if you sign up for Foursquare and link it up to you Twitter account to tell everyone where you go, you will annoy me and everyone else. You don’t want to do that, do you?

There are a bunch of other stupid little things about Twitter that you’ll figure out over time but this should be enough to get you started.

Here’s a list of a variety of people I follow to get going.

The Dalai Lama (no kidding, he has an authorized twitter account!)

Breaking News (great news source)

Sean Murray (funny funny guy. I follow A LOT of comedians. They always RT one another so, there’s an endless supply of new ones to follow all the time)

Here are more comedians I like: Alec Sulkin, Julia Segal, Kelly Oxford, Wendy Molyneux, Alex Blagg, Caprice Crane, Whitney Cummings, Suzy Soro

Agent Lover (She’s a fabulously funny fashion blogger and I love her tweets like whoa. There’s also Daddy Likey.)

You can follow the Kremlin. Seriously.

The Rules

Shit My Dad Says

Very Short Story (kinda weird)

Let’s Die Friends (love her)

Nucking Futs Mama (mommy blogger and a sweetheart)

Rich Juzwiak‘s cat Winston that’s all over the interwebs (Rich’s twitter)

Sockington (another cat)

Caramel Bobby (a dog)

Filthy Richmond (This local woman is raunchy and ultimately just wrong.)

I Eat My Kidz Snack (another ridiculous woman. I love her.)

Conan OBrien (There are tons of celebrites)

Karl Lagerfeld (So many fashion people, fashion mags and bloggers!)

Coco (Ice T’s wife. She is a riot! Thanks WendyB for making me Coco crazy!)

The Humane Society

CERN (You know I gotta follow them!)

Sarah Palin (Just so you can tweet her and tell her how stupid she is)

Just go check out the people I follow! If you have any questions, feel free to ask! Oh and follow me dammit! Let’s be friends!

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+ & –

by Lara on August 15, 2010

in + & -,decor

This past Tuesday I got a wild hair and finally redid our bathroom floor. Much like the situation in our kitchen, it was a mess but much more livable. The landlord has hired some real asshats to do work in this building. We had black marble vinyl tiles (Who am I? Liberace?). They were laid down sloppily and there were ripples. I removed up to three layers of old flooring in some spots! We also have a claw foot tub and they never once managed to put the flooring under it! Who does that? It never felt totally clean. I understand older Victorian homes in the Fan district are full of these charming little qualities (this is a college town so why is the landlord gonna care?) and I knew our apartment was a diamond in the rough but come the hell on! Do a good job when you fix something! I got three boxes of discounted out-of-print peel & stick tiles from the same weird place I got the kitchen tiles from. The only neutral thing they had was a grey stone-like pattern. Fine. If I weren’t renting, I wouldn’t put this pattern in my home (or peel & stick tiles for that matter) but whatever. It’s clean. It’s bright. It’s done. (I still need to crawl on the floor to reach and paint the neglected trim beside the tub and repaint the claw feet.) Decades of funk have been removed from my home. $27 and 5 hours of work. (Oh, and my crappy little vacuum decided to fart a dust cloud so, 1 hour of that was spent letting the dust settle and then wiping down every surface in there. Fun.)

I got approached to do my first product review and I’m really pleased with how it all went down. No one tried to sway me into a positive review nor did they ask for any specifics other than the links I already had in mind. I was compensated with being able to pick out a couple products I adore. It was a lot of fun and I hope to do it more often for companies that I believe in. Blogging about fashion is pretty much a giant product review anyhow so it only makes sense! The post is coming soon so keep an eye out!
Here’s a big fat review right here – the (corded so it doesn’t run out of steam, heh heh) Shark Steam Mop. I am so very in love with this thing! Get a gallon of distilled water and go to town. The pads are machine washable. The first time you use it, you may get some streaking from all the residue other cleaners have left behind. For $60, this eliminates chemicals and replacement pads a la Swiffer and your floors are sanitized by the power of scalding steam.

This blog has been at a new host for over a week now and I love it! There’s a lot more you can do with the WordPress.org platform on your own paid hosting site regarding plug-ins/widgets, ads, backups, etc. If any of you need advice on switching over from WordPress.com to the .org platform, please feel free to leave a comment or send an email. I will gladly walk you through the process. It does take a week to transfer over an existing domain. Ugh.
Isn’t this jewelry catchall adorable? Find it here.

If you love diy projects check out this blog P.S. – I made this… So cute!

I don’t have Photoshop so I was looking for something similar to Polyvore where I could add pictures to make a collage of sorts. Snapfiles is where I always go to find freeware software and it’s where I found FotoMix. I think a lot of you will enjoy using it. It’s super easy to figure out. The white background works well for the Polyvore style layouts. I also got Poladroid. It will make any picture look like a Polaroid! You can play with the settings for smudges and tilts. Here’s my first one. God I love her makeup! (at Katie Gallagher)

Finally switched from IE to Firefox. I feel so 2005… like finally giving up an AOL or Hotmail email address.
Oh! I found out that the cholesterol medication Lipitor can cause anterograde amnesia (unable to form new memories), which is exactly what my mom has been experiencing for a frustrating 2+ years now. I talked to her doctor and they switched her to something else. Keep your fingers crossed that this mess will settle down since we were seriously thinking it was Alzheimer’s or dementia.

I’ve been pondering the time wasted on over-explaining and dumbing down. Lately, there’s been a radio commercial asking people to bring their Civil War memorabilia to a show like Antiques Roadshow. They say that they want to hear your stories, where it came from, family history etc. I wondered why they wasted radio time when they could have just said, “prepare to give provenance”. I really dislike when people tease the use of a “five dollar word“. Those beautiful concise words that sum up entire concepts are my favorite! (Is there a word for that?) I think when you cater to a deficiency, you encourage it. Why is it so hard to look things up and learn something new instead of complaining when someone is proficient with the English language? PS: my friend MJ‘s boss sent her this and I just about died (I love semicolons):

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geeking out: economics and fashion

by Lara on August 11, 2010

in fashion,geek

I’m gonna tell y’all again to read this book, now in its second edition.

The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy takes the reader on a fascinating, around-the-world journey to reveal the economic and political lessons from the life story of a simple t-shirt. Over five years, business professor Pietra Rivoli traveled from a Texas cotton field to a Chinese factory to a used clothing market in Africa, to investigate compelling questions about the politics, economics, ethics, and history of modern business and globalization. Using the story of the t-shirt to illustrate the major issues of the globalization debate, this uniquely entertaining business book offers a surprising, enlightening, and balanced look at one of the major topics of our time.

via

It’s not about the fashion industry directly but, you see the entire process (from cotton plant to Goodwill plus all the legislation and people involved) as a whole. Each piece of the puzzle is tightly connected and inflenced by the others. It’s really quite fascinating.

Also, for more fascinating insider information… last week, Wendy B. tweeted about the blog of Fashion Incubator. It’s a helpful and informative site for the fashion/manufacturing indstry! SO many things to learn and become aware of! Check it out!

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nonfiction tees

by Lara on August 9, 2010

in fashion,geek

In June I did a post on independently designed t-shirts. I showed this particular shirt I found on Rumplo and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head. You know how you see something and can instantly imagine a half-dozen outfits with it?

Rumplo is like a clearinghouse for great tees all over the web. They will redirect you to the site it’s originally on for purchase. I had no idea where this tee came from. So, I dug and dug and finally found it again. It’s from an etsy shop called nonfiction tees and honestly, I want every single one. They’re brilliant! $15 a piece as well! I wish they did some v-necks but I’ll butcher with scissors again. Check out their listings carefully because they offer men and women’s shirts separately. They don’t print the tee until you order so, you tell them your size when you checkout.

Here’s the one I’m getting for myself:

My bf loves strange t-shirts as well so, I showed him their designs and being a nerd at heart, he got this one:

Check out these other great designs!

There are tons more! Check ‘em out!

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setting up an RSS reader

by Lara on July 27, 2010

in geek

A lot of you still go to each individual website when you want to see what’s new. You have your “Favorites” list of bookmarks and click on each one when in the mood to peruse the interwebs. You have to wait for ads to load and you never really know when there’s new content.

There is a better way! It is sooo much better that it’s worth the small amount of work to set it up.

That symbol up there that you see on blogs and sites? If you don’t know what it is, or have been intimidated by it… don’t worry. We’re going to sort it all out!

There are a lot of RSS readers out there but these two excellent tutorials focus on Google Reader, which I also use. Most everyone has a Gmail email account so, it’s only natural to use Google’s reader but, even if you don’t have Gmail, you can still set one up.

With an RSS reader, you basically get the main content of all the frequently updated sites you like to visit, after you subscribe to them. You don’t get the all the extra mess on the sidebars. No ads. Just pure content. Once you add sites you want in your reader, the new posts will automatically update. You can star items to save them. You can organize sites into categories. Mine are broken down into decor, fashion, art, things that make me laugh, local Richmond blogs, etc. If I just want to catch up on the funny stuff while I’m taking a break, I just click on that category and all the new posts from the funny sites I like come up and I conveniently scroll through them. You can also access Google Reader on a smart phone, which is so great when you’re sitting waiting somewhere.

There are some blogs that update constantly. You may wind up with 50 new posts a day in your reader from just one site, which can be overwhelming. I had to unsubscribe to Apartment Therapy because it was too much. Now, that’s just one of the sites I do end up going to directly and checking out once a month or so to catch up on cool decor ideas. So, finding your comfort level with an RSS reader may take some time. That’s okay.

So, when you have a bit of time, right click and open up >> Google Reader << in a new tab, as well as these two tutorials and follow along. Don’t get overwhelmed by all the steps. Take your time, play with the settings and learn it like you learn a new phone, and thank me later.

Subscribe to my blog while you’re at it! ;)

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particles

by Lara on July 16, 2010

in art,decor,geek

Someone is finally selling prints of particle tracks officially licensed from CERN. I am sooooo excited. I have been searching for so long. I even wrote to CERN to see if they were selling prints but they have bigger fish to fry. Media Storehouse has them in different sizes, framed and unframed.

I want to get a few of them in smaller sizes and hang them together. These are the ones I’m considering. Sorry about the watermarks. Nerds unite!

Bubble chamber particle tracks. Coloured image showing a collection of tracks left by subatomic particles in a bubble chamber. A bubble chamber is a container filled with liquid hydrogen which is superheated – momentarily raised above its normal boiling point by a sudden drop in pressure in the container. Any charged particle passing through the liquid in this state leaves behind a trail of tiny bubbles as the liquid boils in its wake. These bubbles are seen as fine tracks, showing the characteristic paths of different types of particle. The paths are curved due to an intense applied magnetic field. The tightly-wound spiral tracks are due to electrons and positrons.

Streamer chamber photograph of 220 charged subatomic particles spilling out from the collision of a high-energy oxygen nucleus with a nucleus in a lead target. The picture was obtained by the NA35 experiment at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory outside Geneva. In addition to the 220 charged particles that leave a track in the streamer chamber, physicists estimated that a further 80 electrically neutral (& therefore invisible) particles were created in the collision. From a run in November 1986.

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moo!

by Lara on July 15, 2010

in geek

My mini Moo cards arrived! I chose one of their cute ready made designs in 36 different patterns. (They’re having a 30% off sale right now!)

I chose a classic typewriter font in grey ink.

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hump day

by Lara on July 14, 2010

in geek,photo friday

the weekend is almost here! What are your plans?

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kawaii

by Lara on June 13, 2010

in geek

Because sometimes you need something childish and silly and utterly ridiculous to make you smile.

I have been collecting Japanese and Korean stationary for about 15 years now. I sold most of my collection on eBay a long time ago and only pick up a notepad of a new character once in a blue moon. Instead of hoarding it, I’ve been actually using the notepads lately and it’s always fun to look down at your grocery list and see a smiling cat ice cream cone staring back at you. Check out this silliness. All from ShopKawaii.com.