Kyla Matton Osborne (Ruby3881)
@ruby3881 active 6 years, 9 months agoForum Replies Created
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There are some help files you can download to install, or you can always Google anything if you aren’t sure how it works in LibreOffice. But if you’re comfortable in Word, you will probably find your way quite well, @morgoodie 🙂
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@morgoodie If you are in need of a free word processor for your laptop, check out LibreOffice. It’s very similar to Word in what it can do, though some of the functions are accessed differently. It does allow you to save to Word *.doc and other formats, as well as saving in the *.odt (OpenDocument) format, which is apparently preferred in some places because it’s more universal and less proprietary. Unlike the MS Office suite, the LibreOffice suite is free. It’s available in a number of languages too! you can download it at https://www.libreoffice.org/. Includes spreadsheets, database, a drawing app, slideshow creator, etc. |
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@morgoodie I completely agree that if editing is turned off even for posts saved as drafts, then having the option to save a draft is pretty much useless. It should simply be disabled until the user reaches a sufficient rank to have access to editing. @lookat and @kaka135 You may be interested in the Hemingway editor (http://www.hemingwayapp.com/) which can be used online or downloaded as a desktop app. I believe you pay a small fee (under $10) for the app, but you can use the online version free. It checks word count, readability level, grammar (including use of adverbs and passive voice) and a few more things. It will not catch everything, but it will help with the kinds of problems you mention. Just a quick note, if you try to close the tab or navigate away from the page, you’ll get a “leave page/stay on page” alert. That’s just to save you from losing an open text! Don’t worry, the app isn’t looking to hijack your browser 🙂 |
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@kaka135 Even when we were homeschooling there were a great many online resources, including whole sites that offered free texts and curricula. I think perhaps it was harder to find them, though 😉 A lot of folks worry about spammers with public groups, but I believe that there is a setting in the group that still requires admin or moderators to approve new members. For our group, the members must show proof that they are actively blogging or writing online. So they can’t really get in without showing that they do write! The public will be able to see the posts but nobody will be able to join the group without proof that they write. About the shortlink, yes it is also good to downplay the addition of the referral link. Not everyone wants to see that, and some people may be suspicious of it because they can look like the kind of URLs that are associated with advertising. |
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I can see why you would describe yourself as spiritual rather than religious, because the religion that most of us in the Western world have grown up with involves the elements that you mention (dogma, mandatory church attendance, the clergy as an intermediary, etc.) But I could take the reference to the Bible and to a single god (Yahweh) out of your description, and I might just as easily be speaking of someone who follows a NeoPagan path. One of the key points in the definition of Pagan religion is that Pagans tend to be pantheists. That is, we feel no great need to go to church because we believe all of Creation is infused with the divine spirit. Nor do Pagans feel a need to seek out a professional clergy member for confession or spiritual guidance, as we believe that as part of Creation we are also infused with divinity. My test for spiritual vs religious people is pretty simple: does the person speak of God (or Goddess, or multiple deities)? If so, they are religious. Most of the people I’ve met who self-identify as spiritual but not religious will say they don’t feel a need to personify the life-giving force in the Universe. By comparison, growing up in Quebec I met a lot of people who were “croyant, non-pratiquant” – “believers by not actively practising the faith.” Most of these people considered themselves religious, but had lived through the Quiet Revolution of the 60s and had come to appreciate having a choice to commune with God quietly in their own way. There may be an overlap between these types and those who identify as “SBNR” or “spiritual, but not religious.” But as the very root meanings of both religion (literally “to bind back again,” especially to God) and spirituality (infused with the air, with life-force, with the divine spark) also overlap, it doesn’t surprise me. |
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Your mention of using newspaper as a mulch reminded me of a video I saw for squash pits. Apparently if you dig a moderately deep hole and jam it full of old phone books and other paper, it holds the water in the ground beneath your zucchini, pumpkins, squash, etc. It’s supposed to really improve their productivity! [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=722C72pMHd4[/embed]
Hmm, I added the video URL through the “add media” button but it didn’t seem to embed 🙁 Let me try adding it as a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=722C72pMHd4
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No @dawnwriter, I didn’t actually get to see the comment. I got two notifications that you had replied, and a truncated version of the comment showed up on my mentions page. But when I clicked through to read what you had said, neither comment was there. All I could see was your remark about comments going missing 🙁 You are not the only one this is happening to. I have seen at least one other user who says the same is happening. And from the fact that I sometimes get two notifications for a single comment, I suspect others are experiencing something similar. They are probably just retyping the comment and sending it again. |
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Thank you @admin! I was just getting ready to submit an article that will be even better with the video, so this is perfect timing 🙂 |
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Thanks so much for those guidelines, @support! This is especially helpful for the featured images. Is there any guideline for those who want to add an image optimized for Pinterest to the posts? The optimal size for Pinterest is, as you can see in the image you shared, very different both in size and aspect ratio. When I uploaded a Pinterest-optimized image with my first post it ended up being shrunken down to less than half its size in the post. |
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Good question about the credits for videos, @kaka135! I think generally you would not need to give credit because you are embedding the content into your work. It remains intact and linked to the original source, and with a single click the reader is able to go to the page where it’s hosted in order to learn more. This contrasts with the use of an image that you are copying to your computer and then uploading with your article. If you were to stop just at adding the graphic, your readers would assume the work to be yours and would have no way to locate the originator of the piece. That’s why an image credit is so important. I do always try to give some kind of lead-in or credit in the body of my post when I embed a video, though. |
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@kaka135 I don’t think I knew you were a homeschooler. We homeschooled for six years before we moved, and this year we’ve done distance education with our two older girls. I never really used Facebook for homeschooling things. We had web sites and email groups, back when we were homeschooling. The FB things were just beginning to get going when the kids went back to public school. Facebook was much more just a social thing, back then LOL! The reason for the FB group becoming public once we’re well established is to allow better exposure for shared links, and to give an opportunity for members of the public to find our members’ work. Some may even be able to find work for hire, as has happened in other public writing groups I belong to. I preferred to set the group up as a closed group at first, though. This gives time for our members to get settled and establish a sense of community, and to set up different aspects of the group like contact lists for social media, and pages to highlight services our members offer to the public or other writers.
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@haraka I think it’s a good idea to learn the best practices for each site as we go along, and to share them with our fellow writers. There tends to be a certain fear in our community, when it comes to graphics and social media. I get a lot of negative reactions when I talk about things like finding safe images. People think it’s “bad” to use stock images purely because some writers didn’t know how to identify safe images or how to write a proper image credit. But actually, using a safe stock image on an article is better than recycling the same photo of your toddler in diapers or the same mug shot of you, over and over on everything you publish. Those images are not related to the content of most posts, and by using the same pic over and over the blogger confuses readers into thinking they’ve already read new content. The same goes with things like link shorteners, custom URLs, or following certain social media practices like adding a long image to posts for Pinterest to pick up. People fear what they don’t know, and they get overwhelmed by all the information coming at them. Instead of being determined to learn things one step at a time, they retreat and often end up adopting a practice that makes their content less valuable to a site. So my advice is to not generalize. Instead of never using a shortlink on social sites, it’s better to learn where it’s safe to do so and where it’s not appropriate. Twitter was the very reason people started using shortlinks in social media, and many services are quite compatible with Twitter. Facebook and G+ display the shortlinks without any problem that I can see. But as has been pointed out, Pinterest and StumbleUpon don’t like them. Your experience with other sites may show they do or don’t accept shortlinks. We must adapt to the requirements of each site. |
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@kaka135 Ouch! That’s a huge size in both size and aspect ratio! I’ve had a similar issue where an image I added to a post was enlarged and the aspect ratio was changed – even though I had submitted an image that was sized to match the size restrictions that were displaying in the dialog box when I uploaded it to the site. It’s very frustrating to have that sort of thing happen! That’s why I think we need to have advice from the admin on proper sizes for our images. Otherwise many people’s images will become distorted and pixelated, and content will not be attractive to visitors who are following our links in from outside the site. |
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I have always been rather uncomfortable with the idea of following a single spiritual guru. While I know some people who have found this helpful to them, I have seen far too many cases in both Eastern and Western style communities where the spiritual leader was either ill equipped to give the guidance sought, or was outright corrupt and just using people for money, free labour, etc. I am a NeoPagan. In my religion, it is very uncommon to see anyone following a single guru. We do have our spiritual Elders, who have helped us to explore our path and shared their experiences so we can learn from them. But for most of us, the Elders are just a number of older or more experienced people we have met along the way, and whom we respect because of the way they conduct themselves. They need not belong to the same spiritual path as the individual, just a related one 🙂 I respect a handful of Elders whom I have known personally. But there are also Elders whom I have met only peripherally, or have only encountered through their writings. I still count these people among my Elders. But ultimately, I make up my own mind about all things spiritual. Any teachings of my Elders (or teaching I give, now that I am an Elder in my own tradition) are offered for consideration only. There is no attempt to tell others what they should or should not believe, or what moral standards they should follow. Ours is a religion based very much in personal responsibility and free choice. It does not lend itself well to the hero worship prevalent in many other religions. |
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@kaka135 Thanks for the heads up about StumbleUpon not accepting the short links! I usually just hit the “Stumble” button without trying to share a shortened link or one that includes my referral code. Because once a page is indexed on StumbleUpon it’s a simple “thumbs up” for each subsequent person who wants to Stumble the page, I tend to leave the most basic form of the URL to improve chances others will Stumble the page. StumbleUpon has been giving me some good results on some of my pages, but I think it’s mostly as a result of someone influential who added the page on their StumbleUpon. I haven’t tried networking there yet, but I think it will be interesting to see if that increases the benefits. As for sharing on Facebook, please look for me there and send me a friend request. I can help you find some writers to connect with so that you can share your posts and resources, and gain from other writers’ experience 🙂 You can find my personal page on FB if you search “Kyla Matton Osborne.” Or you can send me a message through my writer page there. Just search for “Ruby3881” on FB. That should immediately bring up my writer page 🙂 |
