tutorial

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!

{ 4 comments }

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! ;)

{ 4 comments }

how now brow?

by Lara on October 29, 2009

in beauty

Yesterday I was driving home and checked myself in the visor mirror. I realized my eyebrows were looking better than they ever have in my entire life. What was I doing differently? Well, since my bf and I moved in together, I have been plucking a lot less, and I had already worked towards a good arch a while back. After years of over-plucking,  everything was starting to come together nicely.

Growing up, eyebrows were serious business. My mom had a flexible work schedule and pretty much took me everywhere she went. I would watch her get ready a lot of the time in front of her light-up vanity mirror and learned the ways of liquid eyeliner and eyebrow maintenance. She always told me to never pluck above your brows (I never listened and still think there are times when you must) and she plucked strays every single day to keep her brows tidy. She’s a fair heavily freckled red head with the finest of hairs. I am a fair lightly freckled brunette with coarse brows. Once I got started (because it’s really hard to go back once you start), if I didn’t maintain every day, it would look like someone had sprinkled black pepper on my lids. I’m also half Serbian and prone to a tragic unibrow so needless to say, I became a bit obsessed around the age of 13 when these things start to matter to a girl.

Not one to be bossy or overbearing, my mom pretty much let me think that I knew what I was doing, and figured I would have to learn from my own mistakes. The over plucking began. This was in the early 90s when my fashion icon was Kristen McMenamy. Not a good idea. I ruined myself.

Marie Claire Germany 1994
p: Juergen Teller

Not until about 5 years later did I truly recover from the damage I had done, and broken all my bad habits, as I had learned a few things along the way.

  • Eyebrow trends are ridiculous. Trends come and go too rapidly to be able to recover from them as they pass through. No one is going to think you’re not stylish because you don’t have super thin or thick or straight across eyebrows that happen to be in at the moment. Classic and pretty has always been acceptable and always will be.  (Or you could go super bushy… since it is all the rage these days, as Wendy B points out!) ;)
  • There are a few tricks to help guide you in achieving a good starting point, arch location, and end point.

  1. The inner corner of each eye should be your starting point. Honestly, I would leave this for last since everyone’s eyes are spaced differently and you’ll know what’s most flattering. Just avoid a unibrow and keep things even, avoiding an angry look. Mine extend a bit over this point and it works for me.
  2. Hold a pencil from the edge of the widest part your nose and angle it to the outer corner of each eye. This should be your end point and all stray hairs beyond this are fair game. This tip has always worked for me.
  3. The outer edge of the colored part of your eyes should be where the highest part of your arch is. Everything should start descending latteraly from this point and tapering off to your end point in #2.

  • I am a devoted tweezer. A few of my girlfriends get theirs waxed regularly but their brows look awful in that growing out stage where they need to be long enough to even get caught by the wax. No way José. I would rather take a few seconds every day when I’m doing my makeup to simply catch a few dark hairs growing in than go a week or more looking that messy. Now, if you have never plucked your brows before or you are a hot mess and overwhelmed with the thought of getting your initial shape mapped out, I would totally let a professional have at it for the first attack. Just make it incredibly clear about what you want. Bring a picture. Go to a reputable salon. Read reviews online and ask around. (Threading is also an initial starting point option but I have never tried it and I believe you still need your brows to be grown out a bit for them to catch, just like waxing.)
  • There are a lot of eyebrow tools out there. There’s the upscale Anastasia line that includes stencils and all sorts of things making eyebrow maintenance feel a lot more complicated and expensive than it needs to be.  Here is what I use:
  1. Get a magnifying mirror with a light. You have to see what you’re doing. Hairs are tricky devils. I have plucked in natural light and everything seemed fine and then under store lighting, I caught a glimpse in a mirror and had missed a few big dark hairs that seemed to fade away earlier. You can get a decent Conair one for about $30 at Target. I do my makeup with it as well. The magnifying side is the devil. That which has been seen cannot be unseen.
  2. Tweezers – different types of hair will respond differently to different types of tweezers. I can’t pull a damn hair out with mom’s tweezers and she can’t with mine. Some have straight tips, angled tips, wider flat interiors that hold onto the hair, textured interiors that hold onto the hair, some have a thinner metal that feels less bulky, etc. Everyone has a pair laying around. Try them out and if you can’t get a grip you need a different style. It should feel intuitive, an extension of your hand. The type that has always worked for me is a slanted tip.
  3. Once you get your basic shape down, you may find that you need to fill in a few sparse spots with an eyebrow pencil/powder. Please don’t tweeze around to accomodate these bare areas. Your brows will look wonky. Just pretend they aren’t there while you’re getting your shape down and worry about filling in these little areas later. I use a $3 Rimmel brow pencil that has a tiny blending brush on the cap. It has never failed me in all the years I’ve used it. If you use a powder, get a small sharp angled brush if it doens’t come with one. Try to match your color as closely as possible and don’t leave any harsh lines with your product. Softly blend in the direction of your brows, keeping the color contained in the hair area but also soft.
  4. I have a few long eyebrows that I sometimes have to comb up and barely trim with manicure scissors. To keep everything neat and in place all you need is some clear mascara. The cheapest $2 junk brand at the drug store will do just fine. Wipe off any excess clumps and brush over brows in the direction you need them to stay in. Some people spray a bit of hairspray on a tiny mascara brush.
  • Now that you have all the tools you need and a basic shape guideline, it’s up to you to show restraint and patience and practice a sense of symmetry. If you have to flip back and forth from one brow to the other to keep things even, then you must.
  • Pull the hair out in the direction that it grows – outward!
  • I promise you, tweezing becomes less painfull the more you do it. Ice up or use a tooth numbing agent like Baby Orajel if you have to at first. Carefully apply to brows only, let it sit for a couple minutes, wipe it off and pluck away!
  • Consider each hair carefully. Very Carefully. It can take up to 2 months for a brow hair to grow back completely.
  • The more you pluck, the less often you will have to over time. The constant trauma to the hair follicle will make them slowly give up.
  • Have fun being a girl and taking small moments out of the day just to care for yourself and put your best face forward.

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who knew you were an artist?

by Lara on September 29, 2009

in art,crafty,decor

I have been bemoaning my bare walls for a while now and am in the long process of fixing this problem with a project that has become way more tedious than I had intended. Last week, I was talking with an old friend about her own place. She and her husband bought their first home and it’s quite large and they’re having a hell of a time filling it, especially with this economy and a new baby zapping their finances. I told her about some inexpensive crafty projects she could get herself into (like I’ve been doing but less tedious) and she wanted me to send more info her way.

These are the tips I sent her for creating inexpensive abstract art for your walls.

First, you need a plan.

  • Where is this painting going to go? What size would look good in that space? Get your tape measure out and figure how much of the area you would like to occupy. Most of the canvases you can get on the cheap are rectangular. Do you want it to hang vertically or horizontally?
  • The bigger the canvas, the more expensive but you can also consider doing a pair of paintings. They can be placed side by side as you paint, treated as one, and then placed a few inches apart on the wall. You could do a series with as many canvases that you want.
  • What is the color scheme? Which emotions do you want to evoke with color? What is going to complement your decor? (Abstract art can be at home in any setting.) Do you want to stick with a cool or warm color palette – or everything in between? Or do you want a greyscale painting?

<<<COOL vs. WARM>>>

  • How do you want this painting to look? Seriously! What painting have you seen that has left you thinking about it when you walked away? Why was it so compelling? What were those brush strokes like? Were there any other techniques employed like drips or bleeding of colors together? Do you think you could try your hand at a similar style? Can you see yourself sitting down on your living room floor for a few hours, or a few weekends, making it happen?
  • Draw out a plan. Use markers or colored pencils if you can. Write notes. Think in terms of layers – like what colors should you use first. Write down the steps you want to take and the colors you want to use. If you are into being organized and feeling like you have control over a situation, this is especially good for you. If this type of painting is something you have never done before, you will feel less helpless when you sit down with everything in front of you. OR you could pick a color scheme and just go crazy and see what happens. Either way, I think even Pollock made plans.
  • Craft stores have huge sales all the time. You can get fairly large pre-stretched, pre-primed canvases for pretty cheap if you keep up on the sales. Here you can find all sizes and 2′ x 3′ ones for $12!
  • Artist quality acrylic paints are pretty expensive but crafting acrylics are dirt cheap. Look for 2oz bottles like this. They come in an insane amount of colors and usually run about $1 a bottle. If you plan on painting a background color, you may want 2 bottles of that base color, especially for large or multiple canvases. Check the finish of the paint. Some are matte, glossy, iridescent, metallic, pearl, etc. Don’t forget you can blend your own colors as well with the 3 primary colors and black and white, or mix any other shades of colors together.
  • Styrofoam plates are great for mixing colors on. If you mix a large quantity of a certain color and don’t plan on using it all in one sitting, put it in an air tight container. It’s so difficult to mix the exact color over again.
  • I like using 3″ foam brushes for applying base coats and sealants. They don’t leave brush strokes and are super cheap.
  • Larger canvases usually have a reinforcing board down the middle. Think about this when applying a base coat and painting in general. Try to paint with it and not across it as you can sometimes get some paint build up on the canvas where the edges of the board are underneath. Under the right light or at the right angle, you will see it when you’re done and it may drive you insane.
  • Do you want to use brushes to paint? Think about the size of the canvas, the size of the strokes you want to make, and if you want to do any fine line work. Check out the acrylic paint brushes available at the store. There are so many different types I can’t even begin to go into it.
  • You can also paint with cheap plastic squirt bottles, various shaped/textured objects, your fingers… use your imagination. Puffy fabric paint of all things is awesome for texture. It’s what I’m using right now in my tedious secret project. There’s also spray paint – to be used outdoors.
  • Do you want to add any other elements to your art like hand drawn effects or imbedded objects?
  • Plastic drop cloths are about $2, and there’s always newspaper. Don’t forget to protect your floors, and have damp paper towels ready for quick clean-ups. I always manage to spill something.
  • Acrylic paint is thick. You can change the opacity by simply mixing it with water. Practice on paper first to see what you’re working with before you put anything on the canvas.
  • If you are painting in layers, make sure to let each layer dry for about 30 minutes, unless you want a bleeding effect.
  • Keep your brushes in water when not in use. Acrylic paint washes away from brushes and skin and most surfaces pretty easily with soap and water but once dry, it can ruin fabric and harden up your brushes.
  • Think about sealants. Let your painting completely dry and add one or two coats of acrylic gloss, Mod Podge, or even spray sealant (in a well ventilated area).
  • Hanging an unframed canvas is totally acceptable . Framing is super expensive, unless you get creative with that as well. This is up to you.
  • Just remember that “the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry”. You can plan all day long and have wonderful intentions but I’m telling you now, unless you are a miracle worker, something is going to mess up. If just one thing goes wrong, you’re lucky. Just relax and embrace it. You’re not recreating The Kiss. Happy accidents can usually work in your favor. The project I’m currently working on is taking a bit longer than I expected. That’s okay, because it’s going to be awesome. For god’s sake, have fun! Express yourself!

Here are some inspiration pieces I sent my friend, to get her creative juices flowing. Maybe they will inspire you! All via Design Milk.

Elizabeth Schuppe

Molly Courcelle

Kristine Harper

Matt Sohl

Nicole Poko – she freezes paint and works with the cubes in various ways!

By implying that anyone could create abstract art such as this, I’m not trying to insinuate that these artists don’t have talent. You must have an eye for it and an ability to manipulate your medium through familiarity, and a bit of bravery.

This is pretty much what I’m trying to say:

So… do it!

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