Blogging about blogging, parenting, and living in Australia
Written on April 15, 2010 by Jen
Six years ago I started blogging. I admit it’s dropped off a bit recently but if you read my last post you might get a glimpse as to why. I know what I’d rather be doing!
If you read my last post and have any questions about what I’ve been up to in the last couple of months then feel free to ask.
We also have mum and dad’s dog, Connie staying with us. She’s very cute.
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Written on September 8, 2009 by Jen
Filed Under: Weblogs
Farmer’s wife passed this onto me. As I’ve been flat out it’s about all I’m capable of doing to fill in my one word answers, although it took a bit longer than I thought because it’s hard to answer things with just one word.
1. Where is your cell phone? Handbag
2. Your hair? Face
3. Your mother? Family
4. Your father? 70
5. Your favorite food? Chocolate
6. Your dream last night? None
7. Your favorite drink? Water
8. Your dream/goal? Travel
9. What room are you in? Office
10. Your hobby? Singing
11. Your fear? Snakes
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? Happy
13. Where were you last night? Home
14. Something that you aren’t? Extrovert
15. Muffins? Meh!
16. Wish list item? Holiday
17. Where did you grow up? Farm
18. Last thing you did? Worked
19. What are you wearing? Semi-corporate
20. Your TV? Home
21. Your pets? Loved
22. Friends? Cherished
23. Your life? Great
24. Your mood? Middling
25. Missing someone? No
26. Vehicle? Car
27. Something you’re not wearing? Scarf
28. Your favorite store? Op-shop
29. Your favorite color? Purple
30. When was the last time you laughed? Today
31. Last time you cried? Often
32. Your best friend? Loved
33. One place that I go to over and over? Supermarket
34. One person who emails me regularly? Friend
35. Favorite place to eat? Japanese
I’m supposed to pass this award on, but as it’s already doing the rounds amongst bloggy friends I’m going to leave it up to you if you want to participate or not. As I said above, it’s hard to do a one word answer to these things. For example, Favourite drink. I mostly drink water but if we’re talking alcohol which I think this question may have then it’s bourbon. And I do cry often but it could be because I’m watching a sad movie, crying with laughter and less often crying because I’m feeling sorry for myself.
That’s it though, I’m not going to pad out all my answers with explanations.
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Written on August 18, 2009 by Jen
Filed Under: Weblogs
Would peoples’ lives be the same if they didn’t blog I wonder? I’m trying to get a collection of blogging stories going on, and while doing that I can’t not mention the more famous stories.
A couple of years ago or so I remember hearing about a blogger called Julie Powell who had blogged about cooking the 500 or so the recipes from Julia Child’s Mastering the art of French cooking cookbook in a year. Julie started her project back in 2002. As she wrote, ‘365 days. 536 recipes. One girl and a crappy outer borough kitchen.’
Then she got a book deal, the book called Julie and Julia and now that book’s been turned into a film.
John Moore doesn’t have anything good to say about it at all in his column ‘When celebrities actually did something‘, the title says it all really.
Jennie Yabroff asks us us to please stop hating Julie Powell.
So what does Julie herself think of all this? She says on Cinemeblend.com: ‘It’s the bravest thing you can do, to see a life you’re dissatisfied with and make a dramatic change. I hear that, and i understand it.’
Sounds to me like Julie’s life would have been quite different if she didn’t take it upon herself to change her life and doing it with Julia Child’s cookbook and a blog was the way it happened for her. It was fortunate perhaps that she chose cooking as her project. I wonder if it had been something else whether it would have caught on, as cooking websites/blogs seem to be very popular. My banana cake recipe on this blog is one of my most popular posts and this isn’t a food/cooking blog.
At least she actually earned her celebrity and didn’t rely on appearing on a crappy reality tv show to try and crack it in the bigtime like so many people try and do. I haven’t read the project’s blog from back to front, but it’s a huge commitment and great perseverence.
What do you think of the whole Julie/Julia phenomenon? Julie, if you ever read this I’d love your version!
Written on August 6, 2009 by Jen
Filed Under: Blog templates, Weblogs
I’ve been wanting to change my theme for some time now. It takes a LONG time (for me anyhow) to find a theme that I like to start with and am confident enough to change. I’ve installed quite a few themes, had a bit of a play and just given up. Using the theme test drive plug-in is an absolute godsend.
I even mucked around with a theme framework but gave up on that because it was too hard. After all the playing around I did, I still wasn’t convinced that it was a long-term good thing to do for me. I probably just don’t understand how they work or there isn’t enough documentation to support them – the free ones anyway. And that’s quite understandable because I know from experience that documentation takes time and effort. (Upon looking at the above website I note that they’ve now got documentation for creating a child theme which wasn’t there earlier. Still, I didn’t want to create a child theme, but use someone elses.)
I did contemplate paying for a premium theme but I didn’t even find one of those I liked enough to shell money out for and the more expensive (to me anyway) themes like Thesis just isn’t warranted for a hobby blog like this.
Anyway, I finally settled on this Blogwerx theme. I’d found it a couple of months ago, played around with it and moved on, but after unsuccessfully mucking around with theme frameworks I went back to it. I’ve changed it a bit and I still have the three column layout with the content on the left and sidebars on the right. I like this layout because if something stuffs up with loading in the sidebars at least the content is available due to the order of the page loading.
I even used the widgets this time, and made a new widget area for my Reviews and Giveaways section because I can’t show BlogHer ads there due to their ads policy. I was very proud of myself.
Now that I’ve implemented this new theme hopefully I’ll be more motivated to get back into the content side of things. If my blog was seven years old (and not five) I could blame the seven-year-itch for wanting something new and exciting to happen and inspiration to hit me in creating some exciting content. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way.
I’d like to know what your favourite Wordpress themes are, or even if you care about them. In the meantime I’ll stick with this for a while.
Written on April 29, 2009 by Jen
If you’re a regular reader you’ll know that I’ve been blogging at Semantically driven for just over five years now. If you’re new here, now you also know.
As part of my five year blogiversary I came up with the idea to collect people’s blog stories, I call it ‘my Blogging quest‘ and share them here. So far three people have joined in and I’d like to thank them for participating and share an outline of their stories here because they are all so diverse, but yet have some commonalities.
She from She became a butterfly started blogging before I did in 2000 and eventually moved from hosted to self-hosted as so many of us bloggers who want more options than hosted blogging systems do. She calls herself ‘She’ as she wants to stay anonymous because of some issues from a stalker in the past. She also likes the community found during blogging which is so far becoming a common theme. It’s hard to not write the word She here when it’s both a proper noun and a pronoun.
Margo from Writer Mom at Home has also joined in and is a relative newcomer to blogging starting in September last year but similar to ‘She’ above, started with a hosted blog and has now moved to self-hosted and can’t imagine giving up blogging any time soon. Margo’s gone from writing a journal type of blog to realising that blogging offers a whole lot more than that. I can agree with that.
Trish from My Little Drummer Boys has been blogging for nearly four years and started blogging to write about infertility and IVF and continues to do so to keep a record of her and her family’s life and she also learns a lot by reading others’ blogs. I love this quote fromn Trish, ‘Blogging isn’t just about daily dribble’. Trish also likes the community that blogging offers.
I’m an impatient lass and I want more stories please. I’d love it if you spread the word. I just need two more people then I’ll choose one to win a little prize – but a very practical one.
Tags: blogging quest
Written on April 16, 2009 by Jen
Filed Under: Weblogs
On this day five years ago I wrote my first blog post and Semantically driven was born. Normally I don’t celebrate my blogiversary but this year I’m going to and you’re invited.
My idea is that I’d like to find out how your blogging quest has gone for you. You write about it, add a link back to here so I know you’ve done it and then I compile a list of them all so there’s a central repository. I reckon there’s some interesting stories out there.
I’m even offering prizes to kickstart it all off. Please visit the my Blogging quest page to read all about it. I’d love it if you participate and Tweet about it, Stumble it etc – to spread the word.
I’ve no idea if it will work but there’s only one way to find out. Come on, help make my blog’s fifth birthday special.
Written on April 15, 2009 by Jen
Filed Under: Weblogs
My linky love posts are too few and far between because I have no easy way of compiling them, or they just slip my mind to actually do them.
A couple of bloggers I read are really good at them. Stand up Shai and Kikolani. So below are a few things I’ve come across this week.
Toni from The Happy Housewife has just had her seventh child – somewhat early – and she still remains happy and she still manages to update her blog just about every day. Luckily baby Cora is now home and being adored by all her siblings no doubt.
Jayne from Our Great Southern Land has a blog full of interesting back-in-time facts. I now know that in 1985 Australia was the first country to test blood donations for HIV.
And I’ve come across a couple of stories about breastfeeding your doll not being allowed at kindergarten, and a teacher telling one of her pupils she was pathetic. I think both these situations could have been handled a lot better and it’s these situations we don’t really want to deal with as parents but make us stronger.
I’m still reading the daily tasks for Probloggers 31 days to build a better blog but until now I’ve lapsed in actually doing anything.
Participating in the challenge has enabled me to find some new bloggers that I probably would never have otherwise come across. Below are a couple of them. For some reason I can’t actually get into the forum as it just keeps on asking for my username and password, grrrrr.
One blog I found was MyMarketer – Understanding Internet Marketing. The author of this is also participating in the challenge and he extended the list challenge to create a list of all the lists created as part of Problogger’s task in Day 2. There’s 603 lists there all in various categories. Imagine how much time you could spend just browsing them and then think how much time it must have taken to collate this list. Apparently he’s a new dad and is having sleepless nights. How I wish my sleepless nights as a new mum could have been spent in front of the computer, but they were spent pushing a pram back and forth.
Michelle from Retarded in Love – although she’s shortly getting married so she can’t be too retarded in love but like most of us has been in the past.
Stay tuned for my fifth blogiversary special tomorrow.
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