I’ve done some minor updates around the blog as suggested by the Blog Improvement Project Week 4. Nothing too hefty, just some minor maintenance I’ve been meaning to do. After my rant about Social Media sites, I thought about being connected and getting the blog out there. I also thought about making it easier for people who do use those kinds of sites to share my blog with others. So I’ve decided to stick with the AddThis social bookmarking widget. It is fairly widely used and I appreciate that it’s design is not intrusive like the other widget I was using.

I have an issue with my sidebars: what should go “above the fold” … or to use a non-newspaper term, “above the scroll”. What fits in the sidebar before you have to scroll? Should my Knitting Widget be so high on the right side? I think my feed is important to have on the left. I have participated in so many things (Swaps & Challenges in particular) that I moved all older buttons onto the pages. But what’s different from Weeklies and Participating? And do you (as users) prefer Categories or Archives better? I don’t like Wordpress.com Tags since it doesn’t show me everything on the blog I’m viewing that has been tagged, so I was also more into categories.

I’ve also been working on my blogroll. If you have added me to your blogroll and I have forgotten to add you (not intentionally), please let me know so I can add you! I tend to forget that adding people to my Feed Reader does not equate to my Blogroll.

1. I’m tired, I’m indecisive, I am having second thoughts.
2. Why do I have to wake up and not just sleep in.
3. How does this Twitter thing work, anyway? (Or more importantly, what’s the point of it!?)
4. Every morning, I put my phone in my pocket. 
5. I consider myself lucky because I have parents who will/can support me.
6. One day we’ll see THE WORLD. (Yes, I have a Bucket List!)
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to doing absolutely nothing, tomorrow my plans include class  in the morning(ugh!), but it’s Adobe InDesign(yay!) and Sunday, I want to enjoy a cuppa tea at the inaugural T.E.A. meetup!

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I missed last week due to crazyness, and I haven’t blogged much this week just because I haven’t felt the desire too. However, both last week’s and this week’s Booking Through Thursday questions were great, and I’d love to share my thoughts.

“How do you arrange your books on your shelves? Is it by author, by genre, or you just put it where it falls on?” (02/19/09)

I may be a total nerd (well, maybe not considered so in the literary community) but I arrange my books by Author Last Name. I like that I can easily find whoever I’m looking for. I have two long shelves that run the length of my bedroom’s northern and eastern walls near the top crown moulding. They’re nearly full, and I’ll be moving soon so I’m thinking of getting floor-to-ceiling shelves, but I suppose I’ll have to see how much space my new apartment(!) has.

ETA: Marina brought up TBR (To Be Read) books! Those don’t go into my regular shelves until I’ve decided that I want to keep it. Those are piled all inside my bedside table, which is just a 2-shelf table on wheels that was supposed to be a printer/office sidetable.

Collectibles: Hardcover? Or paperback? Illustrations? Or just text? First editions? Or you don’t care? Signed by the author? Or not?

I only have a few books I would consider collectibles, and it’s usually just a book I cherish. Is it sacreligious that I would read my ‘collectibles’? I would definitely recomment hardcover for collectibles just because they’ll last longer and are often more attractive with a dust jacket. If I was going to go to the trouble to get something signed by the author (we don’t get many big names doing readings here) I would make sure it was a first edition hard cover copy.

I wish I was a cat; they’ve got thee life. It’s been one of those weeks, and it’s only Wednesday! But instead of going on about all the minor hiccups in life (that make everything seem like too much to handle), I’ll just share a very late Whiskers on Wednesday post. Henry and I both slept in today, which was actually quite necessary as I haven’t been sleeping well.

Remember my rant? Well after talking about it with a number of people, and feeling quite justified by all your support, I am the Assistant Organizer of a new Tea Meetup on Meetup.com!

We are called T.E.A., which stands for Tea Enthusiasts & Aficionados, but we welcome even just the humblest tea drinker to a “master”. The point is to have a cup of tea, expand our horizons (local shops, sharing knowledge) and enjoyable conversation. If you are in the Greater Vancouver / Lower Mainland area… please join us! (P.S. I designed our banner!!)

This was the creation that I submitted for the Cocoa Swap 2 Marshmallow Contest. It had to be made of only marshmallows and toothpicks (check!) and it had to have some sort of yarn content (knitted speedo! check!). Here is the scenario I set up:

And I found out earlier today at the Cocoa Blog, that I won! Aww thanks everyone who voted for my Marshmallow Diver.

I’ve been working on getting the blog “out there”… and I am shocked and just how many damn social networking sites are out there! I transferred my blog from Feedburner to Feedburner-owned-by-Google, and included a little “readers” button… now I think it’s broken because sometimes it says 24, and othertimes it says 56. I hope it’s 56! I also added a plug-in for the blog called Social Bookmarking Reloaded and they have so many options for sites to “share with”. I only selected the ones I knew, but holy crap, look at this list!

Del.icio.us   | digg   | FURL   | reddit   | Technorati  | Newsvine   | Ma.gnolia   | Google Bookmarks   | Squidoo   | Netvouz   | Blogmarks   | Scuttle   | Tailrank   | OKnotizie   | Bookmark.it   | Linkagogo   | Socialdust   | SlashDot   | Diggita   | FaceBook   | Wikio |   Barrapunto   | Kipapa   | Blogmemes   | Blogsvine | Scoopeo  | ZicZac  | IndianPad  | Technotizie   | Diggitsport  | Leonaut | Tipd  | blinklist   | Feed Me Links  | Yahoo My Web  | Socializer  | Stumble Upon  | RawSugar  | BlinkBits  | Rojo  | Co.mments  | Bloglines  | Segnalo  | Netscape  | Ask  | Delirious  | Live-MSN  | Sphinn  | Seotribu  | Upnews  | Health Ranker  | NotizieFlash | Fai informazione  | BlogSphere News  | Mixx  | MySpace  | Plimsocial  | Twitter  | BlueDot  | Connotea  | Mister-Wong  | Social Bookmarking Reloaded

Some of them I know to be outdated (Netscape) and others I assume are country-specific (Fai informazione), but some I’ve never heard of before! There must be people using them… because they obviously exist… but how many social networking sites does one person (or blog) need?!

Other things I’ve done have been “claiming” my blog on Technorati, which sort of makes sense so far. I signed up for StumbleUpon (still don’t really understand that one) and I don’t really get LinkedIn or Del.icio.us either. If anyone can shed some light on those, that’d be great.

I’m on Facebook the most often… and that is definitely a personal account but I use it for work too because FB doesn’t like duplicate accounts. I am now on Twitter, although I don’t really understand why it is fun for personal accounts. I can see how it would be excellent for events and news and all that. I’ve got Twitter for two of our projects at work because they’re community/arts/literary events.

To be dead honest, I’m starting to feel drained by Social Media. I was thinking after driving home after saying goodbyes to Ruth and her husband that I hadn’t done anything social-media-related all day and I felt such a big weight lifted off my shoulders. Maybe I get too worried about being “connected” or “in the loop”… but I don’t like getting left out. I know that blogging is a form of Social Networking… but it’s a lot more personalized than a 140-character limit for messages about what you’re doing.

The 81st Annual Academy Awards are just around the corner (this Sunday, February 22) and I’m gearing up to put in my votes! Every year, with my friends Nigel and Deepinder, we cast our votes for who will win the Oscars. Oddly we’ve never watched together but we definitely should one year. I’m interested to hear people’s opinions and votes for the Oscars. Unfortunately I don’t have time to make all the polls, so how about just Best Picture?

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I have seen a few of the movies nominated for various awards at this years’ 81st Annual Academy Awards. My favourites were Slumdog Millionaire and The Reader. I’ve made my predictions on their official ballot (PDF download on the website) and I’ll let you know how well I do!

If you already follow Ruth’s blog, you’ll know that she recently went on vacation and ended up in my neck of the woods. Well that opportunity couldn’t pass us by without meeting up for some knitting, chatting, and sight-seeing. Ruth got into town on Sunday night (exhausted I’m sure) and I had emailed some of my knitter friends to meetup at a local tea shop for knitting on Tuesday evening.

Unfortunately a number of people couldn’t make it due to illness and/or other obligations, but we still had a lovely time!

Here is Julia and Marianne (who met for the first time, but I knew each individually).

And here is Ruth and myself.

I found this teacup in an antiques store earlier this week. I know Ruth uses and collects them so I got it for her as a Vancouver souvenir. My sister told me “Royal Albert” is one I want to look for. This particular pattern is called Lavender Rose (odd since it’s quite pink), but it was one of the nicest teacup-and-saucer sets that I found in the store.

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Warning: I’m going to rant, but I’m not going to name names or link sites.

I recently joined a local group that has meetups. The focus of these meetups is tea. Our last organizer went AWOL, and so I was very excited when the new Organizer stepped up! I would have myself ages ago except it costs to become an Organizer, it’s free to just be a member. Anyway, I messaged the new organizer expressing an interest in meetups around local tea shops and cafes in Vancouver. I included website links and several location suggestions just incase the Organizer wasn’t from Vancouver proper. I got the most infuriating response back… and when I read it at work, I actually said out loud: “Tea snob!”

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