Always Something New

Image by altelaumbanua via Flickr

"My son once told me, "Mom, you love change."  He was so right.  If I find myself locked into a situation or place or routine, I'll often create chaos just to force change.  It's how I'm wired. For example --

This morning, I was reading through one of my magazines and was intriqued by an article on a plug-in for bloggers called Zemanta.  It is available as a free download from their website or you can choose it as a gadget for Blogger, in my case, since this blog uses the Blogger host.  I'm sure it is available through Wordpress, as well.  Now with Blogger, apparently gadgets are going to be discontinued when Blogger goes to a new format but Zemanta has already come up with a work-around for that.  You can install Zemanta as a browser extension and continue to use its features that way.

So what ARE its features?   Well, as you start writing your blog posts, Zemanta starts suggesting pictures that might go along with what you are writing.  You'll see those pictures on the right in your "Zemanta Assistant" box.  You can hover over each one with your mouse and it will tell you the source and any copyright restrictions attached to it.  If you find one you want to use, just drag and drop it into your post.  I have to laugh, though.  Since Zemanta is scanning your writing and keying in on certain words, it can come up with some funny choices.  For example, since I wrote about liking "change," this is one of the pics, it suggested.

Image via Wikipedia

"Radical Cheerleaders at a Climate Change Conference"

Yup, that would be me....dancing around as a "radical cheerleader" for change.  But wait, there's more.....  Zemanta also suggests related articles that you might want to include at the end of your posts.  You can hover over them and see a short excerpt from each one with a "read more" link to click on if you want to go check it out before including the link in your post.  I'd highly recommend this.  Some of the blogs I visited were barely literate.  Others were quite helpful.

Zemanta also provides in-text links that you can pick and choose from.  How nifty is that?  I'll be exploring more things that you can do with Zemanta in the future and will report back to you as I find new things it can do.  Stay tuned!

Related articles

• Tools for Better Blogging (justgottasharethis.info)
• Zemanta Now Native on Blogger.com! (techparade.blogspot.com)
• Get Related Content for Your Blog with the Zemanta Gadget (buzz.blogger.com)

Curious As a Cat Monday

I stumbled across a nice little blog "meme" today that is called "Curious as a Cat" and features three different questions that you can choose from to answer in a blog post OR one picture that you can "show and tell" about, either saying what you think it is or what memory it brings to mind.  Well, I'm a sucker for fun activities and this one looked like fun.

Pug, my little Himalayan cat who has since passed over the Rainbow Bridge, seemed like a good pic to illustrate this  writing exercise so there he is, on the left.    In the meantime, I've just endured 2 hours of Fresca, the Wonder Dog growling and barking in my computer room as the air conditioning technician did a tune-up on our air conditioning for the season so I'm ready for some peace and quiet.  I also have the Commander at home today, first for the A/C guy's visit and then later for a doctor's appointment that he has and frankly, he's driving me nuts.  He keeps on poking his head in the computer room.  I'm not used to having someone at home during a weekday.  It feels intrusive.  I like my privacy.  Goodness, whatever will I do when he retires?   But on to our "Show and Tell" photo:

When I first looked at this picture, I thought of chicken cages.  But after I looked at it for a few minutes, it reminded me of a World War II Army barracks filled with beds and THAT brought back a pretty vivid memory of my Army accommodations at my first Service School attended after my initial Basic Training.

It was back in the early 1970's in Ft. Polk, LA and I'd been sent there for Clerk-Typist school, which violated the agreement of my contract for Air Traffic Controller School which is how I ended up at Ft. Benjamin Harrison in the Defense Information School for Broadcasting, but that's a story for another day.  Back to Ft. Polk.....

It was mid-winter and I was assigned to an old wooden WWII barracks with an open sleeping bay filled with beds.  There was a meningitis outbreak going on while I was there so because our beds were in long rows and close together, we had to take certain precautions.  Every person alternated the direction that they slept.  In other words, if I slept with my head on the headboard end of the bed then the next girl had to sleep with her head at the footboard end of the bed and on it went down the line.  In addition, we had to rig up sneeze guards.  We did this by taking our sleeping bag covers and tying them from the top of the bedpost where our head was located and then angling them down to the bottom of the bedpost where our feet were (at mattress level) and tying them off there.  That way, if I should happen to sneeze while lying on my side, presumably any germs would go into the sneeze guard and not into the face (or feet) of the person in the bed next to me.  It was quite a sight to see.

The other memory of that barracks that I have is that it was incredibly cold.  The barracks were supposed to have been torn down but they were still being used and they were very drafty.  I don't think the heat was turned on although it was January.  If it WAS turned on, it wasn't working very well.  I would go to sleep at night fully dressed and wearing my fatigue jacket.  Some nights, I'd even have my gloves and a watch cap on, I'd be so cold.  I was never so glad to get out of a place, even if it meant heading to Indiana in winter.  At least I had heat at my next barracks.

If you'd like to participate in the Curious as a Cat meme, head over here and read all about it.

Moody Monday: Nostalgic

Yearning to ditch the housework, the schedules, the worries.  Wishing it was as simple as grabbing my favorite toy and running outdoors to play.  Visit Moody Monday to see other bloggers' interpretation of the week's theme of Nostalgic through a photograph.