Journal - Email Blues

Okay, so I had another idea for my Blogger problems. I thought I would create a whole new Blogger account, completely separate from my existing account. I would then try the keyboard shortcuts in the new account and see if they work. That would tell me if there’s a problem with the current settings in my existing account, or if the problem lies elsewhere. It’s a long shot, but I’m running out of ideas.

In order to creat a new Blogger account, I need a new email address. Creating a new account with the same email will only attach a new blog to my existing account.

My existing email is through Google, a g mail account, so I went there to create a second email account. I went through the setup and provided all my information, but I got hung up on the CAPCHA. The Google mail CAPCHA has a listen link so you can hear the numbers and type them out. I listened to the recording and I could hear the numbers fairly well, although some of them were hard to understand. The main problem was the numbers were being spoken too close together. I would hear a number and type it rightaway. As soon as I typed the number, my screen reader would say it back to me. While my screen reader was talking, the next number was being spoken on the recording and I couldn't hear it. I tried several times but just couldn't manage it.

Next, I went to Mail dot com. Mail dot com is unique in that you can actually choose your own domain from a long list. First you choose a category that interests you like music. When you choose the music category, it gives you a list of domains to choose from such as “@matchbox20 dot com” or something like that. My favorite was the World category. Under the world category you can choose domains like "@rome dot com", or @paris dot com.” Anyway I went through the sign up process and got to the CAPCHA. Let me tell you, Mail dot com has the best CAPCHA I’ve ever seen. Or heard. When you click the listen link, you first hear a clear woman’s voice explaining exactly what you need to do. She says, “Listen to the recording and type out all the words you hear with spaces in between them. If you can’t make out all the words, don't worry. Just make your best guess." Then the recording begins. It sounds like a clip from an old movie. You can hear someone delivering a perfectly clear line of dialogue and all you have to do is type what you hear. No evil voices in the background trying to distract you by sucking your soul out through your headphones. I was very impressed. I got a new email account. The only problem was, I couldn’t log in to it to check for mail. Every time I try, I get a blank page that says "User name service." No links, no nothing, just those three words. Maybe it’s a temporary glitch. I’ll check back there later.

Finally, I tried Microsoft’s Hotmail. At Hotmail, you can choose from two different domains, “@hotmail dot com", or "@live dot com." I keyed in all my information and got down to the CAPCHA. Here, I had the same problem I had with G mail. The numbers came too close together. Also, Hotmail's CAPCHA does not return your cursor to the text box after you click the listen link. The other two did.

So that all took me about an hour and I accomplished absolutely nothing. That’s kind of how this whole week has been. I'm trying so hard to keep my Blogger blog, I really don’t want to have to learn a new system at Wordpress, but I'm just not getting anywhere. I haven’t completely given up hope yet, though.

Hebrews 10:36 You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.

James 1:2-4 Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

Journal - Critical Mass

Well, I haven’t written anything for a while, as you can see. I’m starting to get a little bored with the whole blogging thing. That's how I am, I find something new that interests me and I put a lot of time and effort into it for a while, but I always end up getting bored with it eventually. That’s one reason why I always found it so difficult to settle down with one job for very long.

This time it has been kind of weird. I’m bored with the blogs, but I don’t want to be bored with them. I want to keep doing it because it was really fun for a while. Bonus points to anyone who can explain that. So anyway, instead of just giving up on the blogs altogether, I decided to try and shake things up a little bit.

What I decided to do is come up with a new name for my audio book review blog, “Reviews From The Deep.” But that was too easy, so instead of just renaming it, I decided to create a whole new blog with the new name so it would have a new URL and everything. And that’s just what I did. My new audio book blog is called “Critical Mass Media, Audio Book Meltdown.” Since it was an all new blog, I wanted to put some different gadgets on it and do a few different things with it. So far, it has proven to be very challenging, which is a good thing because that will keep me interested for a while.

The first step was creating the blog. A simple enough task, unless you happen to be blind. To create a new blog, you have to complete a verification. It’s a little box with some letters and numbers in it and you have to type out what you see there. It’s called a CAPCHA I think, although I don’t know where that name comes from. Maybe Ro will tell us. They do that so you can prove that you are a human being and ot some auto-spammer. They have a little thing you can click on if you’re blind so you can hear the numbers instead of seeing them, but they never work. Until now, that is. When I got to the CAPCHA, I clicked the listen link and I could actually hear the numbers and type them out as it played. It really worked! I was very pleased about that and was off to a good start on my new blog.

The next step was to export all of the book reviews from my old blog, and then import them to the new one. That step was pretty easy, there are links to click on to export and import. Basically it’s just saving a file to my computer’s hard drive, and then opening it back up from the new blog. No problem there, all of my book reviews showed up with the comments still attached and everything.

Now I wanted to put some fancy gadgets on my new blog, namely a counter, and a drop-down list box for the labels. These are not standard gadgets that are available through blogger, but can be added by adding some raw html code. I ran into some trouble there. I spent about five hours working on those two things and got absolutely nowhere. That’s pretty frustrating because things like that used to be pretty easy for me. Not to worry, I’ll keep working on it.

Also, I ran into another problem. About the time I created my new blog, something that I use a lot quit working. To create links in a blog post, I use the keyboard shortcut "ctrl-shift-a." Suddenly that stopped working and I get some funny warning message when I try it. I think that some security setting in Internet Explorer has changed, but I haven't found out which one yet. I put a message in the help forum about it but haven’t gotten a reply yet. I'm going to do some research on that as soon as I'm done posting this. Anyway, that's why I couldn't provide a link to “Critical Mass Media” here. No big deal, the blog isn’t ready to be looked at yet anyway.

So those are the things I need to figure out. After that, the next step will be monetizing the new blog. Monetizing is a fancy name for using your blog to make money. Since I’m writing audio book reviews, I want to link them to websites that actually sell the books and get a percentage of the sale in return. That's called an affiliate partnership and both Audible.com and Amazon.com have affiliate programs. I'll have to figure out how that whole thing works, that's kind of new to me.

So that’s what I’ve been doing for the last several days. So far so good, my interest in blogs has been rekindled. For now, at least. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

Ecclesiastes 1:3-9 What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again. All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.