Pages ... if I get around to it ...

Showing posts with label geocities. Show all posts
Showing posts with label geocities. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Androids And Apples And Apps And Accounts And Annoying Computers And Stuff

Ok ... so that is a good post title for a letter A post, as we go into Another round of ABC Wednesday ... so ... Ahh ... er ... now what do I actually SAY? lol

I guess I was thinking I should post about that stuff because it has All featured rather a lot in my life lately ;-)

note: As this post has become Awfully long ... feel free to just look at the pictures if you don't want to read All that stuff I have raved on About ;-)

Anyway ...
I am not quite sure where it all started ... maybe way back - when DH bought our first computer, almost 21 years ago? LOL

Actually ... this little quilt, that I made last year, kind of tells the story - in fact that is exactly what it was meant to be About ;-)

... the words sewn onto the background are all the things I started playing with/using, and in the Approximate order I discovered/started using them ...
The couple on the right are the ones not quite in order ... Fractint is a computer program (still around but was less complex, but took way longer to do stuff, back then) that draws fractals ... can't remember when i started messing around with that ... probably not long after we got the computer - whenever DH downoaded and installed it and told me about it ;-)
The digital camera came sometime later ... if I had to put it in between the other stuf it probably would go between geocities and google - I was already using e-mail and yahoo stuff by the time we got our first digital camera (and now my PHONE takes better photos than that camera could!) I probably could have added more stuff like using various photo editing software and stuff ... but I decided that "digital camera" could cover all that stuff too ;-)
For the first few years we had the internet ... which I think we had access to before html/the www - DH used to run a "bulletin board" where people could dial up and download/upload files and e-mail or something like that ... but once web browsers and stuff turned up - I started "surfing the web" every now and then ... not too often - because when I did - I would sit at the comptuer, get "lost in cyberspace" and then it would be 8 hours later! oops?! LOL (some things don't change much ;-)
At about the end of 1997 DH called me over to the computer and showed me how to use the e-mail program to send/read e-mails, and to read newsgroups ... and he "created a monster" LOL  - I found a quilting newsgroup (and a couple of others) and joined in ... then someone on there told me all about Scquilters (the Southern Cross Quilters e-mail list) and I joined that instead ... that later moved to "e-groups" which got taken over by yahoo to become yahoogroups ... sometime after joining scquilters I was looking at someone's quilt website on geocities and got curious and clicked the link to "get your own Geocities page" ... just to see what was involved in case I wanted to later ... a couple hours after I clicked - I was up way too late And I had a website on Geocities! LOL
Sometime over the next few years I also joined a few other e-mail lists ... one or 2 of those have died, all the others either were already on, or moved to, yahoogroups ... and I also used to do quite a lot of "surfing the net" ... and signed up for a pile of different free e-mail addresses and stuff (on sites that have mostly died since then) ... and sometime or another Yahoo, and a few other similar websites started to get not so good (free yahoo mail forwarding kind of ceased to happen, and yahoo bought Geocities and then later on the killed it) and Google got better and became the main search engine ... and I found blogger and started this blog ... a year or 2 before Google bought Blogger - lol
I am still active on a few yahoogroups ... and, after resisting it for a year or 2, I joined Facebook ... and Twitter ... but still didn't use them for a year or so ... but then I realised that a pile of people I know from the Scquilters yahoogroup are now hanging around on Facebook ... so I relented just over a year ago, and let one of them drag me in - lol   Then I found that a couple of them were messing around with Twitter, so I had a bit of a fiddle ... that was in the middle of last year sometime - which is when I made that quilt  ... Twitter is kind of where I got the title for the quilt, but I still didn't think I was likely to use it that much, because it didn't seem to be my thing ... nor did smart phones (which DH took me shopping for a few months ago, and  I kind of wondered why I had one for the first month or 2 ... but then I found out about the CSIROTweetup - LOL ... so I started using Twitter (and Facebook) on my phone, and on the iPad that DH had bought earlier in the year (another thing I wasn't sure I would use much, although I did use it for Gmail and Facebook while we went on a holiday in the middle of last year - I posted photos of all the different food we ate ;-)  funny thing is I think now I use the iPad more than he does - lol)  ... once I worked out how to use the thing, I also started using a heap of other apps on the phone - some that I found out about during the tweetup, and a few I have found since, and then when I went away for Christmas I started using a few things on the iPad (mail and e-books mostly).
I think in the last month or 2 I have probably spent more time on Twitter than on any of the other things! (but I have it set up so my tweets get posted on my facebook - lol)

er ... this has got rather long - and that was kind of only part of what the title of this post refers to!
I was also going to mention how, when I went up to visit Mum and Dad for Christmas/New Year, I spent quite a bit of time fiddling around with all that sort of stuff - because Mum bought an iPad just before I went up there, and she was having a few problems with her computer/e-mail ... and if you have not used Any Apple software or Anything with Apps or signed up to many things where you have online Accounts - it can take a bit to get one's head around it All ... and I am no expert either - I just play with it - LOL  ... but I ended up doing all sorts of odd stuff like using my phone as a wifi hotspot so mum could download iTunes and a big iPad software update (her dodgy internet plan did not have enough data left to use to do that, but my phone plan did ;-) and setting up e-mail stuff on her laptop (a fairly new one, not her first, but a different version of windoze that is a real pain to find how to do stuff in) and then setting up her new internet stuff - she changed from a wireless dongle on a network where she only had a bad signal, to a plan where she gets a lot more data for only a bit more money and has a little modem thingy that connects to 3g and is a wireless hotspot that she can connect either her laptop or her iPad to (which solved the problem of her wondering "should I have got a 3G one instead of just a wifi one?" - she can use her month's worth of data on either the laptop or the iPad rather than needing 2 different plans ;-) Trouble is - that stuff all had to be installed/set up/etc ... so Mum was glad I was there to help figure it all out - LOL
Also, while I was there to help set stuff up, Mum decided that seeing she had such Awful wireless reception from her ISP, she would change over to Another one instead (one that has better 3G coverage in her Area ;-)  ... so I ended up helping her find her way through the maze of Accounts and passwords, And had to explain All About how the Admin password was for the thingy that connects to the net and then sends out the wifi signal that her laptop and ipad need Another password to Access and that those are Additional to the password/login she needs to Access her Account/e-mail/etc on her ISP ... the sort of stuff that can be Absolutely confusing At first, but All makes sense once you get your head around it - probably All stuff that I have learnt About a lot more slowly over the years, while watching DH set all that sort of stuff up while I just used it All ;-)

... and this is where I Added a few ideas (below) for the rest of this post, then left it As it was for a few days (although I did just Add a few more words and stuff to the bit Above)

And maybe some Additional A stuff?

As if this blog post needs to be Any longer?!!!! ... Anything I might have Added, I will be Able to use next time Around the Alphabet - lol

Authors?! (the 2 I met on the Tweetup and how/why I am reading their books? ;-)

er ... yes I did want to mention that About now, but it will Also fit quite neatly in with what I am planning to do for my letter B post, so it will Be in there, if I get Around to Actually writing the B%^&#%& thing ;-)


Anyway ... this post is probably Awfully boring with so few photos ... so here is Another one:

"Aggie's pants" (Agapanthus) ... I took the photo, with my phone, a day or 2 ago, and I just noticed , as I was putting photos into an Album on the computer and choosing which one of  3 Agapanthus photos was going here, there is An Amazing thing About this photo - there is Also An Arachnid on the Agapanthus flowers! (the pink hand is pointing to it ;-) 

I Am sure I have some other Amazing photos I could put in here, but I keep getting lost on Twitter before I get Around to uploading them from the camera's memory card ... and I am not doing that now because DH and I are About to go out, As soon As he gets home from work (unless he has changed his mind since he rang me from work earlier today) - And I want to try and post this before I end up being too late ... Again 
(oops - he is home, hope I have not left Anything out/messed up, because I am About to post this As it is and hope it is at least mostly Alright ;-)

Thursday, July 23, 2009

A is for ... ABC ... Again ...

A is for ...

Alphabet! ... and All the letters in it! LOL
yes - ABC Wednesday is now starting it's 5th round ... so - let's see how well I can keep up this time ... lol (it is a wonderful excuse to try and post at least once each week - lol)

A is Also for All that stuff I posted about last time (Arachnids and Aykayem and All sorts of other Amazing ... or was it Awful? ... stuff)

And ... er ... And! - that word that one should NOT start a sentence with - lol

A is for Antarctica!
... An Amazingly Awesome place that I really want to go to ... which is why I decided to try and blog my way to Antarctica ... trouble is ... I will need more than 2000 votes to win (someone else already has 2002 votes, and a few others are not far behind) ... And I don't think I have Any yet ... sigh ...
(maybe I need to change that Awful profile picture? ... or do some Advertising ... maybe I should tell the ABC radio people About it? - I could tell them that they need to help me, by doing an interview/publicity/etc, because it should be an Australian who wins? - LOL)

A is also for Astronomy ... which is Also Apt - not just because 2009 is the International Year Of Astronomy (As I mentioned in the other A post) but it is Also for the Aniversary of the first Moon landing - 40 years ago this week (I could have said "Today" if I had posted this on time - lol) and Apollo 11 and the Astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, who were the first to set foot on the moon. (First humans, and first Americans ... much to Russia's disgust ... hmmm - I wonder if humankind would have made more/greater advances, or made less progress, if America and Russia had been working with each other rather than against each other?)

A is also for ACTTAA - the ACT Textile Arts Association (which I am a member of) ... and the theme for our exhibition (in a couple of months time) is partly to do with it being the year of Astronomy - the theme is "Heaven And Earth" (the other thing is the fact that it is also the year of natural fibres)
... I guess that theme kind of covers everything ... well Almost Anything Anyway ... it could be possible that there might be some where/thing that is not part of Heaven or Earth? lol
I Assume one would have to ask an Astrophysicist about that one?

I Actually had an Amazing and Awesomely odd thought About Astrophysics last night ... (it was to do with Black holes and the Big Bang theory - But that can wait for next week ... or whenever I get around to doing my "B" post - lol)

hmmm A is also for the Absence of Any images ...

... In order to make this post more Attractive, I might have to Add one:



This is from my Geocities page (the one that is about to be Absent because it will not exist any more once yahoo "flick the off switch" sometime soon) in fact I just went and copied this one from the geocities page because I can't remember where on the computer I put the original (bigger) copy of it!
(it is Also possible that it is Absent All together ... As in ... it isn't where I put it Anyway ... the likelyhood of that Awful fact being Applicable is dependant on where I Actually put it in the first place ... And ... it is possible that the image IS where I put it, but where I put it is not in Any of the places where I think I ought to have put it - it could be in Another folder Alltogether ... maybe even the other "Andrea" folder, which is on Another computer ... Ahhhhrrrrgggghhhh ...)

So ... what is it? ... well - this is what I have written under it on my geocities page:

This picture is actually an image of gaseous pillars in the Eagle Nebula, M16. It was Taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, on April 1st (!) 1995 .
The image is courtesy of the Space Telescope Science Institute (ST Sci), operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), Inc., for NASA., and NASA.Material created with support to AURA/ST ScI from NASA contract NAS5-26555 is reproduced here
was reproduced on my geocities page with permission.
I drew in the fuzzy bit at the top right hand corner (because it had nothing there, just black squares - the image is actually made up of several smaller ones, and there were a couple missing in the corner).


I still think there is something kind of weird and eerie about that image ... that tallest pillar on the left kind of looks like someone got a whole zoo of animals (both real and imaginary) and kind of squidged it all up together ...

... maybe some Aliens did that to it, just to drive us nuts?

A is Also for the Awfull smell of whatever DD just cooked herself for a Midnight snack (toast I think) which would probably smell ok if I was hungry and I wasn't half alseep, and hadn't had black pudding for supper A little while Ago ... hmmm - DD should be in bed - she has school in the morning ... then again - so should I, because I also have school in the morning! (actually I have to go to work in the morning ... but ... I work at a school - lol)

I can think of At least one other A word ... but that could be a bit Awkward (As it is a bit Awfull) because I want to try and keep this blog "family friendly" ... or at least not too bad mostly - lol

so .. I will bid you Adieu (or however u spell that word) ... and I could say a goodbye/goodnight/etc in a couple of other languages that have words for it that start with A, but I can't be bothered looking up how to spell them ...

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Alas Poor Geocites, I Knew It Well ...

Yes ... I just found out that Yahoo are closing down Geocities, and deleting all the Geocities websites (well the ones that don't move to PAID web hosting and get the URL re-directed), in late October ...

Which is a bit dissapointing seeing I HAVE a Geocites website!
... not that I used it any more - LOL
but ... it IS the first website I ever had, so it sort of has a bit of sentimental value ...

... which is why I was happy to see that, because Yahoo were good/clever enough to tell them, the nice people at the Wayback Machine are busily archiving as much of geocites as they can before it goes offline, and I am also pleased to notice that they have already (as part of their normal crawling around the www over the last several years) archived a couple of older versions of my geocites home page, and some of the stuff on it (the photos don't work, nor do half the links ... but that is not surprising - some of the links and photos don't work anymore on my geocities site itself).
What they have archived for my site can be found at http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Bluffs/9279/ (well it could 10 minutes ago, but now they seem to be having "technical dificulties" ... hopefully that is just temporary ... hopefully it could be because they are adding to it already - I just submitted my URL for archiving again - the nice folks at yahoo geocites provided the link to a page on the wayback machine site where we can do that ;-)

The only bit if my geocities site that I really wanted to keep, and have it at it's original URL, was this - http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Bluffs/9279/sigscquiltpic.jpg ... because the URL, and my name, was mentioned in an article in a magazine! (in Down Under Quilts magazine ... who now have digital copies of their magazine online ... but not the one my URL was mentioned in - that was 5 or 10 years ago!)

hmmm ... I guess I should just print out all the pages on my website and stick them in a folder to probably never get around to looking at in my old age ... because I don't think anybody else will really care/be interested in looking at what I had there ... LOL
but ... just in case I am wrong/you are curious (and happen to be reading this before those yahooligans delete it) the URL for my Geocities page is http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Bluffs/9279/ ... or http://www.geocities.com/aykayem/ (they came up with those shorter URLs later on, so those of us with the original longer ones ended up with 2)

btw ... I do also have a few crochet patterns on my geocites site ... but I already had plans to move them to my blog (either this one or one of the others, with a link in the side bar of this one) anyway ... once I have printed them out, crocheted them again so I can find/correct all the mistakes (I know there are at least a few mistakes in there, and will probably find more) and maybe tidied them up a bit so they look/work ok when they are printed ...
(of course, me being me, and considering the fact that I have been meaning to do that ever since I started this blog - it may take me a few weeks/months/years to actually get around to DOING it ...)

Hmmm ... This post doesn't have any photos, and nor did the last one I wrote (which is now not the last one I posted - lol) - I wonder if I can find photos, of the things I wrote patterns for, on the computer?

... er ... maybe not quickly ... but I found a few photos of some other stuff I have crocheted, from way back in 2002 (which was about when I wrote those crochet square patterns that I have on geocities).

In fact I found a heap of other stuff, and I put a whole pile of photos in here ... and it made the post rather long, and disjointed (seeing it was about 2 different things - lol) - so I have just decided to cut and paste all the other stuff into a different post - and post that one before this one ... so it still appears on my blog with this bit on top of the page, and then all the weird photos under it ...
- so if you want to pretend that I left them all in here as one big long blog post, then you should be able to just scroll down a bit, skip the short paragraph that explains what they are (for anyone who just finds the post by itself somewhere/somehow without reading this first) and keep reading ... or just look ... or whatever ...

ok ... the photos are now in their own post ... and DH is waiting for me to finish this so we can go and get fish and chips for tea - LOL