Tag: blogger

The Never Ending Book

On By Michel McDonaldIn AutobiographyLeave a comment

Just when I thought my book was finally ready to be published, I read it again and found more mistakes and then have to start all over again.

I sent my book out to several people a few weeks ago and they sent me feedback with highlights and notes so that I will know what needed to be fixed.  Up until recently I thought my grammar was correct considering I used spell and grammar check “After The Deadline” which told me I was right.  Apparently not.

I went through the book correcting everything that was highlighted.  I did search and replace and fixed countless issues and read the book again to be sure I had it right.  Naturally I found more errors.  I fixed the new errors, but to be 1,000,000% sure that it is ready, I will have to read it yet one more time.

The more I read my book, the faster I get at reading it.  When I first began, it used to take me a week or more to read it, now it takes 2 days.  I guess the more you read the same story, the easier it gets.  Now if only I could read other books that fast, I would have a bigger library under my belt.

I will start reading it again tomorrow from the beginning and hope that I don’t have to make any more changes.  I feel that when I can read my entire book without opening the document file on the computer to fix something, that is when it’s finished.

I’m going to be blind by the time this book is done lol.  At least I’m learning better grammar which will help me be a better blogger.

I’m Almost Finished Restoring Posts from Blogger

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

When my blog crashed, I started restoring posts from YouSayToo from that date going back to July 2010 but then decided to go back from the beginning of my blogs time in 2007 which I had to get from my Blogger blog.  For the last couple of weeks I’ve been restoring 2007, 2008 and 2009.  I just finished restoring July 2009 and there are only a couple more months worth from 2009 on Blogger.

I think that when I am finished with all of this I will wipe Blogger clean because there are some posts that I purposely didn’t restore because they were terrible posts.  I’m shocked they got posted at all.  Since I didn’t delete them during the restoration I won’t remember what is what so I’ll just wipe it all.  I can export my blog from over here to there easily but I’ll wait until everything from YouSayToo is restored to do that.

This has been so hard on my wrists from copying and pasting and resting my wrists on the laptop and the hard gel mousepad from the desktop so I decided to start wearing my wrist splints which has helped today.  Unfortunately, I have no splint for my eyeballs which are so blurred from staring into the screen for 8 hours or more per day.

I don’t know how much longer it will take me to finish restoring everything but I’m working as hard as I can since I am one person.  To prevent this from happening again I’ve had my blog email me backups once a week which I will store on my desktop just in case it crashes again because I refuse to go through all of this one more time.

Crocheted Kitchen Towel Topper

On By Michel McDonaldIn crafts4 Comments

Remember going to Grammas house and seeing these on the oven or fridge door?  Ever wondered how they make those?

I always have a towel on the fridge door because… well, that’s what you do, right?  When I’m done with the dishes I dry my hands on that hand towel.  Well I was thinking, I wonder if I could find a pattern for making the towel topper so when I dry my hands it doesn’t come off all the way.

Well I found one and you are welcome.

My search brought me to YouTube which has a full 22 minute video of how to make it from sewing the chain into the towel with the yarn, crocheting all of the rows, making the button and the button hole and then finishing it off.  It’s really not that difficult and it looks so good.

The video on YouTube also has a link for the full instructions which is over on the Art of Crochet by Teresa blog on Blogger.  The video is over on YouTube via the Art of Crochet channel.

My problem is that I have carpel tunnel syndrome which means my hands get numb very quickly and I feel a very painful pinch in my palms so I shouldn’t really work on this.  The problem is that I love to crochet so that’s a huge bummer for me.  I mean, I can see the endless possibilities with this, I can make a topper for a towel for every holiday and for every season.  Like in the summer I can have the sunflower or watermelon towel, Christmas can be the Christmas towels, Halloween, Easter…  If there is a towel for everything then you bet that I would want to make a towel topper for that time of the year.

I found like 4 Christmas hand towels in a drawer too that would look so awesome with the vintage Christmas yarn that I have that has the mixed red, white and green colors in it.

Maybe some day I might be able to do this but for now I can’t but that doesn’t mean I can’t share the pattern and video with all of you crafty people so besides the link above which you can view to rate, comment and subscribe to, here is that video.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdePxyZ6Kog

Restoring My Blog

On By Michel McDonaldIn BlogLeave a comment

As some may know, I recently lost my blogs database.  The database was corrupt and even the backup that my web host had was corrupt so I had to start over.

It has been a little over a week now and I have been working hard for at least 8 hours a day restoring posts.  I have almost 500 posts back and I have not given up totally on getting the rest back but I do need to take a day off.

I was restoring them backwards from the day my blogs database died until July 2010 but then I decided that 6 months is good enough, I will start from the beginning in 2007 and work my way to where I left off to fill in that gap.  I want to do it chronologically because there were posts that had links to past posts and the only way I could restore those links is by restoring old first then newer.  Does that make any sense?

As of right now the restored posts are from the very beginning in 2007 all the way to the beginning of October 2008.  Then July 2010 to now.  There were specific posts that I wanted to restore because I see people are still searching for them so I did a search on my blogger site so I could restore them out of order (but with their right dates and times).  Those are the KFC posts, Star Tatoo Girl and Bokni Magus posts.  Those were by far my most popular posts and now they are back.

Now, I need to take a break because I am very bored with the whole process of copying and pasting from Blogger and YouSayToo lol.  My old posts can be seen on those other sites until I can finish restoring them here.

I got some reading to do so I will continue where I left off tomorrow.

My Twittascope For Today is Laughable

On By Michel McDonaldIn Blog1 Comment

Here is my horoscope today from Twittascope:

“Someone may come to your rescue today, whether you need the assistance or not. But in any case, accepting help is wise because it can deepen the bond of friendship. Don’t worry if another person’s involvement actually reduces your efficiency. Ultimately, it’s not about increasing your production; it’s about improving your relationships.”

I think it’s hilarious because what could I possibly need anyone to help me with? I mean seriously. Does someone think they can help me copy my blog posts over to my blog? It’s not happening. Even if someone did help me, they wouldn’t be as emotionally invested in or as passionate about my blog as I am. So they would do a half ass job at best.

No amount of help is going to truly help me because this is something that will probably take months to do even with help. I’ve already copied over 200 posts from YouSayToo and have over 400 more to copy. Then I have my Blogspot site that has all of my posts from my earlier days when I first started blogging and I’ve already started pulling posts from there last night.

I can import from Blogspot and I already tried but only 60 out of 901 imported so I ended up deleting what was imported because nothing was right. Everything was double spaced with no titles, descriptions, tags or categories and there were errors in some of the posts because I didn’t use spell check at the beginning.

But I could be wrong, maybe the horoscope meant some other job like helping me clean the lawn or something. Who knows what it really means. Even then, I really don’t care enough about the lawn right now since the grass isn’t growing. It’s fine until April when I start watering.

Then again, when has my horoscope ever been right? I just don’t think it applies to me today. But it is funny that anyone would want to help me with anything. Especially where it says that accepting help will deepen the bond of friendship because I really don’t have that many friends outside of the computer. Unless it means a computer friend wants to help me with something? Hmmmm, what could they help me with? Hmm let’s see… Nothing lol.

Stupid horoscopes…

Wait, just wait for an update, I’ll probably be coming back in a few hours or maybe later tonight saying “OMG it happened, someone asked to help me” lol.

Fixing My Blog

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

Yesterday when I got on the computer I discovered that my database had issues and I went half of the day without any blog posts but my blog was still functional, sort of. I called my web host and they fixed the database but could only give me their backup from before December 23rd. I thought, ok that’s fine. I’ll only have a month of posts to restore, no big deal.

Unfortunately it wasn’t that easy because as I was restoring the 2nd post everything went wrong. The backup that they installed was still corrupt and everything disappeared. Not just the posts but my entire blog became useless. I couldn’t do anything at all.

Today I got back on the phone with them and thought it was all fixed when I hung up but it was far from fixed. I didn’t call them back but instead I re-opened my support ticket and sent them an email telling them it’s still not working. I got tired of waiting so I just decided that they weren’t going to be able to help me so I’ll just start over.

I created a new database and started from scratch. I got most of my ad’s back up so I get paid for them and while I was at it I figured, while I’m starting over I might as well change the permalinks. It’s the way the website address (URL) looks. Instead of being xanapus.com/blog/?p=(numbers) it’s going to have the date and the name of the post in the url. That makes it easier so if I have that issue again with my database then I can easily add the posts without having to contact the companies I do posts for with a new url because they will automatically be the same as before.

The downside is that I had over 1700 posts. I had more than twice that amount of comments and they are all gone now. The only way I can get any comments back is if new people comment. I was fortunate to have 616 of my blog posts copied over to YouSayToo and I had about 609 posts over on Blogger so all I have to do is copy and paste those posts.

The good thing about being able to copy my posts back manually is that I can edit which ones I copy over. Like all those Roku posts, I can finally just delete all the useless posts and make 1 new post review of the product.

The bad thing is that my arms and wrists aren’t going to be too happy with me. I’m already in pain in my left arm and both my hands from the carpel tunnel syndrome. This is going to take a lot of time to do but I will get as many posts back up as I possibly can.

I have spent the last 4 years making this blog what it was, I am not about to throw in the towel just because my database is corrupt and I wasn’t smart enough to do backups. Although, I will be doing monthly backups from now on lol.

My widget bar on the right doesn’t have everything in the same order as it was and I’m probably missing a few things but those are things that I thought might have been there.  I’ve also changed the paragraph style so they are fully aligned like a newspaper or book.  I think it makes it easier to read.  That has always bothered me but 1700+ posts made it difficult to want to change every post.  Now I can since I have to manually add them.

Well, tomorrow is another day and hopefully I can get as many posts added as I can before my arms fall off.  I copied 18 posts tonight but that was in a very short amount of time.  Tomorrow I will have the whole day to get as many copied before I get too tired to go on.

So until tomorrow…

New Xanapus` Lair

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

I have some good news and I have some bad news.  The bad news is that my database was too corrupt for me to fix so I have to start all over from scratch.  The good news is that I was smart enough to back up my blog over on Blogger last year but that doesn’t give me over a years worth of blog posts back.  However, I did also send my blog posts over to YouSayToo as well which means I will have those missing posts.  Thankfully.

So I will be able to manually copy and paste my entire blog but it will take time.  I’m not sure if I will copy every single post back but I will try my best.  I have to copy all of my paid blog posts before I will copy my regular posts just so I can get credit for those that I wrote all month-long.

Wish me luck lol.