Tag Archives: tutorial

Why I chose the Coraline theme & the Eaglefeather font

Posted on August 21, 2010 by Daniel Greene| Leave a comment

WordPress Blog Theme

The WordPress Coraline theme came out the other day, and I like it because:

  • It has a “Leave a comment” link that can’t be missed. The one in the Twenty Ten theme is hard to find. I want to engage readers in conversation, and a loud “Leave a comment” or “# comments” link grants them easy entry.
  • It allows for a body, feature bar, and two sidebars beneath the feature bar. This means I can feature my latest tweets. And knowing that whatever I tweet will be featured prominently on my blog might give me pause before I tweet while drunk. Not that I would ever do that!
  • Like the Twenty Ten theme and the Kubrick theme before it, it allows me to have a banner image, which I think it is fun.
  • I can use the right sidebar to feature my latest Flickr photos on par with my categories, tag cloud, etc. in the left sidebar.

Typekit Web Fonts

I’m also using Typekit to stylize my blog with a Frank Lloyd Wright–inspiredfont. I chose this font because: Continue reading →

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The Typekit Fonts Tutorial for WordPress.com (via United Stage)

Posted on August 19, 2010 by Daniel Greene| Leave a comment

For those who are in their TypeKit Editor and just want to know the CSS selectors used in the Twenty Ten theme, I am sharing this list compiled by David W. Boles. Thank you very much, David!

content, body, p, h3#comments-title, h3#reply-title, #access .menu, #access div.menu ul, #cancel-comment-reply-link, .form-allowed-tags, #site-info, #site-title, #wp-calendar, .comment-meta, .comment-body tr th, .comment-body thead th, .entry-content label, .entry-content tr th, .entry-content thead th, .entry-meta, .entry-title, .entry-utility, #respond label, .navigation, .page-title, .pingback p, .reply, .widget-title, .wp-caption-text, input[type="submit"], #access .menu-header, div.menu, #colophon, #branding, #main, #wrapper, blockquote, blockquote cite, blockquote em, blockquote i, body, input, textarea, .page-title span, .pingback a.url, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6

The Typekit Fonts Tutorial for WordPress.com UPDATED:  July 4, 2010 I spent the afternoon trying to figure out how to code Typekit Fonts into all 14 of my WordPress.com blogs to add some spectacle to the drama of this United Stage blog.  The process isn't simple or intuitive and since there really isn't any  step-by-step documentation that I could find to help me, I decided to help myself — and you — by constructing this Typekit walk through for the new default Twenty Ten theme.  You star … Read More

via United Stage

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How to add tweets / retweet buttons to your WordPress.com blog

Posted on August 5, 2010 by Daniel Greene| 4 Comments

Have you seen all the blogs with the tweets / retweet buttons? They make it very easy to spread the word about the blog posts you like, don’t they? Great SEO for bloggers, too. I wanted these buttons for my blog so I did some searching to find out how to add them. Here’s what I found.

Mirella McCracken had the easiest how to add a retweet button tutorial I’ve found; in fact, she had the only correct answer I have found anywhere! (Where did she get it, I wonder?)

I can add to Mirella’s post by saying that the answer is a shortcode. WordPress developed these since they don’t allow embedded scripts in WordPress.com blogs for security reasons. I learned about shortcodes when I moved my blogs from WordPress.org to WordPress.com. In a WordPress.com blog post, you can use a simple shortcode to embed a YouTube video or a Flickr video. What I didn’t know about was the TweetMeme shortcode.

The TweetMeme shortcode for WordPress.com looks like this: Continue reading →

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How to upload vertical video taken with a mobile phone

Posted on July 9, 2010 by Daniel Greene| Leave a comment

This is a brief video I uploaded to see if a movie rotated in QuickTime 7 Pro can appear on YouTube in vertical format. I took this video with my Nexus One upright (vertically) at the Sea Life Aquarium in Tempe at the Arizona Mills shopping mall. Looks like it worked!

How to do this? Quoted from QuickTime 7 Pro help:

Continue reading →

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Nexus One Car Dock Test Drive

Posted on April 13, 2010 by Daniel Greene| 1 Comment

I ordered the Nexus One Car Dock the day after it was released, and it arrived today by FedEx Ground. I put it in my car tonight to see how the car dock, Car Home, speakerphone, etc. worked. I’m happy I got the Car Dock, though I do wish the other Android apps like Phone and Contacts would go into landscape mode, because that’s the way I like to view my Google Maps GPS navigation.

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Posted in Consumer Reviews

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Choosing the right font styles & variants

Posted on March 12, 2010 by Daniel Greene| 3 Comments

for beautiful, readable documents

I’ve spent the last few days in my spare time learning and re-learning about choosing the right fonts, styles, and variants for writing and reading. Since other Web authors have taught me so much and answered so many of the questions I pose to Google, I like to give back by sharing what I’ve learned with others. Allow me to distill hours of my research into minutes of your time.

I’ve been puttering around with fonts again ever since I got an eBook reader and started noting the lack of advanced typography in eBooks of the ePub format. I also started to think about tinkering with ePubs to improve their readability or even publishing my own texts in the ePub format. One of the places I went to read and discuss typography in eBooks was the MobileRead Forums. Another place I learned a few things about fonts was Ralf Herrmann’s Typography Weblog, which turned me onto this funny video about some of the fonts we all know and love.

Avoid fake styles & variants

Continue reading →

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Posted in Communications & Media

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Generic blog spam must be stopped

Posted on March 6, 2010 by Daniel Greene| 4 Comments

Spam filters need to learn new tricks

Why don’t blog spam filters recognize as spam those generic comments that link to commercial websites? Akismet used to filter all the spam that came into my blog, but now there’s a type it never catches– generic comments linked to a money-making (or even phishing or malicious) websites. These spammers write adulatory comments that don’t address the content or topic of the post. They tell you that you have just earned a new follower and that they will add you to their RSS feed straightaway. They say things like, “This is the best post I’ve ever read on the subject.” Note they say “the subject” without naming it. Sometimes they even write editorial comments that have nothing to do with your blog post. Here is an actual examples taken from a recent comment on my blog:

Here’s one posted on my blog entry “Comparison of EPUB Download Sites“

How risky is blogging really? Blog firings are relatively rare. In a recent survey of 279 human resource professionals by the Society for Human Resources Management, just 3 percent of companies reported disciplining bloggers and none reported firing anyone for blogging. You’re more likely to get in trouble for fooling around online or downloading music at work. About half the companies in the survey said they’ve fired or disciplined employees for Internet use that was unrelated to work duties.

Note I didn’t say anything about “blog firings” or the risk of blogging in my post.

If there’s any risk of blogging, it’s for your blog to be highjacked by people using your publication to promote their get-rich-quick schemes.

Continue reading →

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How to get your Flickr photos to show up in your Facebook profile

Posted on May 2, 2009 by Daniel Greene| 13 Comments

So many of my Facebook / Flickr friends ask me this question, I’m going to blog the answer for the good of whoever wants to know. It’s easy, actually; Flickr will link to your Facebook account and automatically post your latest uploads to your FB profile.

Just go to your Flick Account Settings and click on the Extending Flickr tab. See at the bottom of the page? It says “Your Facebook account Link your accounts to share your Flickr updates on Facebook.” Click that link, and it will create a dynamic link between your Flickr account and your Facebook account. When you upload new photos to Flickr, they will automatically be posted to your Facebook profile as thumbnail image links like so:

Flick-Facebook Upload Update

Here is a caveat: it doesn’t always work automatically. I often have to go to my Facebook profile and click Settings (the one with the gear icon) below my status entry field. Then I have to click Update next to the Flickr import link. I often have to click this three times before it actually imports my latest photo links.

So, there you have it. That’s how to link your Flickr account to your Facebook account and have your Flickr photos show up in your Facebook profile.

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Genre Recognition Venn Diagram

Posted on March 14, 2009 by Daniel Greene| 1 Comment

I’m such a nit-picking perfectionist it’s killing me! I’m working on tweaking my slideshow presentation for a workshop I’m teaching at the Arizona RID State Conference, and I’m creating a Venn diagram because it was suggested by a few of the participants when I first taught this workshop last November. Problem is I’ve never created a Venn diagram before. I’m trying to represent how Genre Recognition is a skill that develops at the intersection of Discourse Analysis, Predictive Skills*, and Genre Theory.

Is this diagram readable? Does anyone have any suggestions for improving it? Can you believe I’ve been working on this for an hour? Urgh! I hate being a perfectionist!

*While Googling "predictive skills" (a term used a lot in ASL interpreter training), I could not find a single page that defined the term. Hm… interesting.

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Posted in Interpreting for the Deaf

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Library –> Geotagged with the G1!

Posted on October 24, 2008 by Daniel Greene| 5 Comments


Library –>
Originally uploaded by Daniel Greene

Why buy books when you can borrow? I love my public library!

I took this photo on my new T-Mobile G1 with Google. It automatically geotagged it before I emailed it to Flickr. For those who are wondering how to geotag photos with the G1, I’ll explain– and then you’ll see how easy it is!

When you go to the Camera app, hit the Menu button before you take a shot. Select Settings, and then select “Store location in pictures.” This setting will stick until you change it again.

For even greater accuracy; i.e. to pin your location down to Street level, go to the Home screen and pull up Apps; then select the Settings icon. Then select Security & location. Then select Enable GPS satellites and make sure it’s checked. Deselecting it will conserve battery power, but only when you’re using Maps or an app that uses Maps, such as Camera if you selected “Store location in pictures.” You can always deselect it if you want to save battery power and/or don’t care for pinpoint accuracy.

I love how effortless it is to take and share geotagged photos with the G1, and I am fully satisfied with its accuracy. My husband and I are going to the Mediterranean for two weeks, and while we’re there, I will take geotagged photos with the G1 in Airplane mode (because the GPS works even when wireless services are turned off), and when I find free WiFi hotspots, I’ll moblog them to our family website, smithersgreene.net

And when we get back home, I can’t wait to borrow another great book from the library!

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