All posts by Robin

I'm a woman in my early thirties living in North Carolina, USA, and I have a lot of varied interests; I love creative writing, music composition, web design, surfing the Internet, thinking out loud, and gaming. And yes, my glasses are crooked. :)
Wednesday in the Word

God’s Protective Promise

Leave a comment

Isaiah 43:1-3a
1 But now, this is what the Lord says–he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel; “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. 2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. 3 For I am the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior…”

This is truly a Scripture passage for our time, as our whole world faces social, political, and economic instability, not to mention ceaseless war, natural disasters, and rampant destruction. It’s admittedly hard for us to trust in God when He feels so far away from what is reported in the nightly news.

But this Scripture from the Book of Isaiah should reassure us as much as it reassured the people of ancient Israel: God is with us, even as we wade through floods, even as we walk through fire. Even when it seems the world’s problems are crushing in on us like a trash compactor, we know we can rely on God, because He rescued ancient Israel from slavery, starvation, and the spiritual bleakness of sin, and He will do the same for us. All we need to do is trust in that promise, and give those problems (which are unsolvable for us) over to Him.

Tuesday on the Soapbox

Slaying the Clutter Dragon, part 8: Where the Beast Hides

1 Comment

Throughout this series, I’ve been cleaning and de-cluttering, reclaiming my bedroom inch by inch.

Wait, let me rephrase that. Throughout this series, I’ve been moving junk around and not really dealing with it, getting one space clean at the expense of another space. LOL!

This is how a lot of us deal with clutter, actually–we move stuff around instead of getting rid of it, or we shove it into corners and under furniture so that we don’t have to look at it. Neither approach treats the disease of “too much stuff;” it only makes the symptoms a little easier to live with.

In my case, my bedroom’s dumping ground has been part of the finished basement, seen below:


Yeah, all of that mound of toy clutter came from my closet upstairs. I stacked it all down in the basement instead of dealing with it weeks ago, mainly because of low energy levels and wanting to get closet shelves clear first. But as I decluttered the closet, I ran into a problem:


The closet clutter did not just confine itself to one section of the room, but began to crawl into other areas…


…hiding in plain sight…


…spilling forth onto the floor…


…commandeering other tabletops and various surfaces…


…and generally taking over the basement room, as it had taken over my bedroom closet so many years before.

I surveyed this with a weary eye in my last installment; I thought I had been routing the Clutter Dragon, defeating it where it lay, but instead, I only moved its habitat. Now the Clutter Dragon reigned over its hoard in the basement, rather than my closet. 🙁

I simply could not put off the job of sorting and donating/throwing away any longer. If I kept delaying, I would end up with nowhere to put the rest of the clutter from the unfinished closet, nor would I be able to use the basement space for anything. So, with a tired sigh, I began to attack the clutter problem directly, finally dealing with the cache of childhood that had been stored so long.

Invading Clutter Valley

Since I knew I would not have the energy to deal with all the items today (especially not the mound of items in the first picture), I decided to tackle what I could–the valley of clutter between the coffee table and the love seat (both of which are hidden by clutter in these pictures).


This floorspace absolutely had to be cleared first before I could even begin to scale “Clutter Mountain.” Thus, I began to sort and deal with items as I could.

Zoning the Room: Keep, Sell/Donate, and Toss


First, I established part of a nearby tabletop as the “sell/donate” zone, with several small boxes to hold items that still had good life in them. For instance, the box above holds small toys, dolls, and game pieces…


…while this box holds various children’s literature, and so on.


I even did establish a “keep” zone as well (the seat of a broken computer chair), though I made sure it was a lot smaller than the “donate” zone. (Since this basement room has been pretty cluttered anyway, I had to work with the zones and the space I had–thus, why a chair seat functioned as the “keep” zone.)

As for the “toss” zone, that was the big black trash bag I carried around the large room with me, which you’ll see later in this post. This was possibly the most important zone of all, the one I had to make big decisions for, and the zone that, as a hoarder, I hate and fear the most. There’s just something so wrong about throwing away items one has paid good money for, even when they’re irreparably broken or otherwise ruined.

And yet, I couldn’t just leave them scattered about. Not if I wanted to be able to live in my house rather than just tiptoe around teetering piles of junk. If I was truly going to reclaim my room from the Clutter Dragon, I had to start actually chasing it out rather than just chasing it around the house.

Sorting, Tossing…and Surprising

So, with the makeshift zones established, I began to slowly fall into a rhythm of picking up items and deciding where they went. I did not move on from one item until it had been solidly put in one of the three zones, and I forced myself to move quickly through the items, making decisions that should have been made years ago.

Nor did I allow myself to fall too far into sentimentality as I categorized. Some objects that did have fond memories attached were put in the keep pile, but anything that didn’t have a memory with it, or didn’t absolutely have to stay because of the memory, got put into the sell/donate pile. Not only that, but I kept the trash bag with me so that if I found an item that was too broken or ruined, I could quickly put it in the trash and be done with it.

I really hated this part at first. My ankle was hurting, I was tired already, and I detested having to make quick decisions. But I also knew that if I didn’t do it right then, and do it quickly, I would never get it done at all. My record of cleaning and organizing (or rather, procrastinating about such tasks) showed that plainly.

So I kept moving…and as I did, I began to enjoy myself. It felt–GOOD to purge some of this old stuff. (Yes, I just admitted that; I just admitted that it felt good to throw stuff away. You may check my identity later. XD) The rapid decision-making, the firm, decisive action being taken after years or decades of hem-hawing, was in some way electrifying. The process became easier and easier, until…

Clutter Valley Cleared!


While it may not look a lot different from the “before” picture of Clutter Valley, now you can at least tell that there are furniture pieces and floor under there! And now I can walk through without stepping on Legos or tons of other tiny little toy pieces! YAY!


This is the “Donate” pile, rife with toys–the other items seen in this picture are not part of the “Donate” pile officially, but there was nowhere else to put them in the room. This pile will grow larger in the weeks ahead!


And this is the itty-bitty “Keep” pile–it’s mainly made up of empty boxes and small crates that I can use for categorizing later, as well as some very special memory items. Can you believe it? I have committed to keep less than 10% of what I categorized today! :O


And this is the “Toss” pile, stuffed inside this giant black bag. It’s pretty much stuffed to the brim…


…and this picture proves it! WOW!

The Real Victory Today: My Mindset

Though it may not look like much of the war on clutter was won today, there was an important mental victory scored–me actually learning to like the de-cluttering process. I’ve put it off for weeks and weeks, hating and fearing it because of its time-consuming, hair-tearing decision-making…but I learned that it can actually be a rapid, freeing process, if you let it. That just might be the most important lesson you can take away from this whole series!

Next Week: Scaling Clutter Mountain

You remember that big mound of clutter on the hidden coffee table? Well, it’s getting conquered in next week’s post–just wait and see!

Monday in the HTMLab

Break Out of Web Design Cliches

Leave a comment

We’ve all fallen victim to them, as web designers. After a while, a certain style or structure of site layout becomes second nature, and you just begin to design every site the same way regardless of content. Either because it’s easier or because it’s familiar, we can all fall into the “web design cliche” trap…but we don’t have to be trapped by it forever!

Common Webdesign Cliches, Illustrated


Full-size screenshot

While the above image I’ve made is rather tongue-in-cheek, this fairly well describes several of the design cliches I’ve seen in the last few years. (Sadly, some of these are the same ones I find myself relying on, so I’m kind of preaching to myself today, too. :P)

For instance:

900-Pixel Two-Column Layout with Floated Divided Layers

As you see in the above screenshot, the old faithful 900px two-column layout looks sharp and clean, but somehow…a little bland and overly confined, too. In this age of mobile screens and bigger screen resolutions, should we be confined by this limited-width design anymore?

I will admit it’s an easy design to make and it’s very familiar…I almost want to say “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But then again, it might BE a little broken for our tablet and smartphone age, when it can’t shrink and grow with our various screen sizes.

Blue, Gray, or Black Layout Colors…but Mostly Blue

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love blue, and I love using it in layout designs. It’s just that about 70 million other designers apparently love blue, too, and think that it’s a great color for their websites as well.

Along with gray and black, blue is generally overused on the Internet because it’s a “safe” color, a “sleek”-looking color. There are definitely instances where blue, gray, or black may be called for in design, but these days a “safe” color choice can make an otherwise awesomely-structured layout look less than original.

Huge Header Image


I’m as guilty of this as anybody–making a wide, occasionally awesome header image for the top of many of my layouts. I got used to doing this in webdesign about six years ago, and it’s been just plain hard for me to imagine a site which doesn’t use a header image of some sort.

But when you have this much visual space at the top of a layout, even if you’ve got a fairly eye-catching image, you’re not really drawing any attention to your content. Nor is it giving your site a good first impression, graphically speaking. (This has been a very hard lesson to learn for me, but it’s a necessary one from a user’s standpoint.)

Huge, Empty Footer


Footers are great little page-enders. They give your users ways to navigate your page without scrolling all the way back up to the top, as well as including extra links and info that don’t need to be front and center on your page.

Yet many of us web designers have gone a wee bit overboard when it comes to footers, trying to make everything BIG and important-looking, and usually ending up with the above result: a very spacey, empty-looking end to a page. If you’ve got a small site and don’t really have a lot of info that needs to be in a footer, it can even look like an unintended space at the bottom.

Gradient Background Image

Ah, gradients! I love them, so much…and yet they, too, can look generic. We designers have often used gradients to give a slightly dimensional effect to our websites, but they can very easily become a design crutch, too. We can begin to depend on them for backgrounds, when perhaps another kind of background effect might look better.

Simpler is better, most of the time, but in this case, it’s almost too simple–it doesn’t brand your site or add much visual interest. And, in the case of mobile browsers, it might never even be seen, not in the way you intended; spacing issues can throw off a gradient background image and make it render strangely behind the text.

Left-Aligned, Spaced Out Navigation

This style of navigation began life, most likely, as an “ease of use” design choice. It still is very easy to use and easy to look at, especially when you have a lot of links in your main navigation, but you still need your navigation area to look organized.

But what about sites that might not have that much navigation, like this example? For smaller sites, the left-aligned navigation adds almost too much white space, and takes away from the space that the content could expand into as well. You end up with a large dead space in the middle of the layout, if you’re not careful.

Moving Away from These Cliches

Making different design choices doesn’t mean you have to completely rethink everything about the cliches I’ve mentioned. Instead, you can make small or medium-sized changes to the cliches themselves, like the ones I describe below:

Instead of A Two-Column Layout…

…Think about a three-column layout (two sidebars, either flanking the content or both out to one side of your content), or even a one-column layout with all your regular sidebar stuff in the footer or across the top. A three-column layout could work well for a big, media/content-driven site; a one-column layout would likely work best for a small personal site.

Instead of Left-Aligned, Spaced-Out Navigation…

…You could try a series of icons for navigation on the right side of the page, or text navigation strung across the top of the page. Maybe even try a navigation bar that scrolls along with the user as they move down the page, especially if you have long pages. You still want to make sure your navigation is very easy to find and use, but making it neater and more tightly-organized can only help the process.

Instead of Blue, Gray, or Black Layout Colors…

…Try other colors, possibly used alongside blue, gray, or black to make it a little less jarring. A dark burgundy could give subtle punch to an otherwise gray layout; a bright splash of pale yellow or green could liven up a black layout.

And if you really want to break out of the color cliche, try “strange” color combinations; recently on my main domain and its subsites, I’ve tried combinations like navy and peach, deep red and bright periwinkle blue, pale green and deep purple, etc., with success. (It all hinges on how much or how little you use each color; using a bright or vibrant color is great for drawing attention to new or featured content, for instance, but it’s not great for dousing the whole layout.)

Instead of a Huge Empty Header or Footer…

…Make your header or footer retractable (with jQuery or a similar language), where the user can “fold” it up out of the way with a click when they don’t need to view it. Or you can use your header as an advertising space for your most accessed/favorited content, and your footer as ad space for other webmasters’ sites. Anything that uses that space as a content holder rather than dead space!

Instead of a Gradient Background Image…

…Check out what kinds of subtle, site-branding patterns you can use instead. You don’t have to have an animated GIF background image (God forbid!); you can try a small tiling symbol that represents your site, done in subtle shades that blend nicely with your overall layout’s colors. (For instance, for my main domain, I could use the stylized sun icon as a small tiling image in a slightly deeper or lighter shade of burgundy than the background color, adding a little design texture but not too much.)

Summary

Safe and familiar designs don’t have to trap us, as designers; sometimes, we just have to be willing to step outside our design “box,” just a little, changing the cliche just enough. Even the tiniest of changes can get our design Muses going again!

Saturday with the Spark

Why AutoTune Annoys Me

Leave a comment

AutoTune, the darling of the modern music industry–the software that can make even a honking duck sound like an opera soprano (supposedly). It’s supposed to make singers sound better and more on-key, and it does.

Well, it makes them sound more on-key, as well as fake.

Time.com and HowStuffWorks have explained AutoTune, its history, and its use within the vocal music industry to subtly enhance singers’ vocal performances, fixing the pitch where it went a little flat or a little sharp, making a rough voice sound just a little smoother, etc. This is generally accepted use to ease and shorten the recording process, which is understandable.

But, starting with Cher’s “Believe” in 1998, a lot of recording studios have not only used it to gloss over singers’ natural flaws, but also to “overproduce” the voice, making it sound robotic, unnatural. And sadly, this is the use of AutoTune that prevails today; rather than subtle editing of the voice, there are painfully obvious pitch changes that result in odd voice tambres, like nothing that ever came out of a real human’s throat.

I have perfect/absolute pitch, and one would think I’d enjoy the perfection of precisely-struck notes no matter what they sound like, but instead, it annoys me, and bothers me. I like human voices to sound, well, like human voices, and yet these days, it’s as if the humanity has been scripted out of the recorded voice, leaving something that is technically perfect but without the necessary miniature vibrations (also called “vibrato”) to give it that human touch. Though the pitch-perfect sound makes my ear happy, it sounds soulless; it has no emotion, because all the tiny variations of pitch that GIVE a sung sound emotion are gone.

Perhaps this is my years of choral singing and private voice lessons talking; perhaps I’ve simply grown used to the sound of an unedited voice or group of voices, and it’s only a preference issue. But I worry about where we’re headed as a musical society, if we keep editing out all the imperfect/human bits of music. Pretty soon, if we’re not careful, there won’t be any real humanity in music left.

Friday around the Web

Code of Ethics, Funny Youtube Comments, Ballet and Jeans, and Beauty Tutorials

Leave a comment

Native American Code of Ethics
Interesting how this code of ethics matches up fairly well with Christianity, and with other peace-seeking religions as well.

25 Youtube Comments that are Actually Funny
(Some slightly NSFW, but all are snicker-worthy.)

Ballet Performance as Jeans Commercial
Amazing ballet moves, all advertising stretch jeans!

25 Hairstyle Tutorials and More
Cute ideas for simple hairstyles, eye makeup, and even nails!

Thursday in the Zone

Stick Smasher

Leave a comment


An old favorite recently rediscovered, Stick Smasher is an action game about survival. Can you withstand five levels of knife-wielding red stick men?

Basic Gameplay

Simple mechanics: destroy bad guys, get a few life points, survive a few seconds, rinse, repeat. 🙂 Each level lasts 50 seconds–can you survive that long?

Controls

  • Press A to smash the knife-wielding bad guys when they get close enough
  • Hit Spacebar to jump (you can also hold Spacebar to jump continually)
  • Press D when you’ve got a glowy bomb to nuke the whole screen full of baddies
  • Use Left and Right Arrow keys to move around

Items In-Game


Regular Bomb 		These bombs roll from right to left across the screen, beginning about 30 seconds after gameplay starts on the first level. When you touch them, these bombs explode, hurting you slightly but also blowing up any enemies next to you. This is the preferred way to get rid of small groups of enemies at once.

Glowy Bomb 		These bombs fall from the top of the screen occasionally–you must touch them to “catch” them. Once you have them, you can hit D at any time (even while in the air) to destroy all the baddies on your screen at once. As far as I can tell, this bomb does not hurt you to set it off.

Life Point Heart 		These hearts fall from the top of the screen every so often, and like the glowy bombs, you must touch them to collect them. They give you about 10 Life Points back, which can mean all the difference if you’ve been knifed or bombed a few times.

Best Strategies


This screencap from one of my playthroughs is the single best strategy for surviving the game: keep jumping around. (See yellow arrow.) Staying aerial means that the baddies can’t knife you unless you land for too long, but since you can hold the Spacebar to jump continuously, there’s no reason to stay on the ground much at all. I pretty much never use the A key to smash the baddies; using A means you’re locked in place on the ground, which means your health bar is far more endangered.

I usually like to jump all around the screen, keeping the baddies running back and forth. However, you can jump around close to the right side of the screen if you want to camp out and wait for bombs to come rolling through. This way, you can jump on a bomb and wave bye-bye to 5-10 baddies at a time! (However, I have noticed something strange about the rolling bombs: sometimes you land on them and set them off, but they don’t destroy any baddies nearby. Not sure what causes this to happen.)

Besides keeping an eye out for rolling bombs, grab the falling pink hearts and glowy bombs whenever you can. If you have to make a choice between getting a bomb or a heart, go with the bomb; you can set it off across the whole screen, and get a ton more life points that way. (Remember that getting rid of bad guys gives you a few life points apiece! :D)

The End Result


At the end of the fifth level, this screen will appear, with your final life score at bottom right and your game score at top left. For this runthrough, I got a pretty high score–close to 1200. The life score was about the highest I’ve ever gotten it, too. :O

Once you’ve managed to survive through the fifth level, Stick Smasher becomes more about perfecting your skill at avoiding the knives, using rolling bombs effectively and carefully, and getting both your life score and game score as high as possible. See if you can match or beat my score! 🙂

Play Stick Smasher: Stick Smasher @ MaxGames.com

Wednesday in the Word

Who’s the Better Christian? Not Always the Louder One

1 Comment

Matthew 19:26-30
26 Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

27 Peter answered him, “We have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?”

28 Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. 29 And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life. 30 But many who are first will be last, and many who are last shall be first.”

Just before this passage, Jesus has spoken with a rich young man (v. 16-22), and the young man has walked away sad because he can follow every commandment, but cannot find it in his heart to give up his wealth and follow Jesus. When Jesus then remarks that it’s “easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (v. 23-24), the disciples are shocked; if a rich man who follows all the commandments can’t get into heaven easily, then who CAN?

Peter, as always, voices the concern of the disciples in v. 27, but Jesus has already answered the problem in v. 26. If you think on a worldly level, trying to “do enough good” to get into heaven, then getting into heaven is impossible. You can’t be righteous enough on your own. But if you trust in God daily, and believe in Jesus as your Savior, the One who paid the cost of your sin and gave you the gift of righteousness, then you will get into heaven. Salvation, leading to eternal life (v. 29), is a gift, not something earned.

Jesus also mentions in v. 28-29 how the disciples themselves will be helping to lead among the followers of Jesus. They are not literally going to judge who goes to heaven and who doesn’t; the word “judge” is used here in the Old Testament sense, meaning a leader like those elected during the Book of Judges. Those who have led others to Christ in this way, those who have followed the faith despite personal, familial, or financial crises, will be rewarded in heaven, not with material goods, but with eternal life with God.

But there’s an important caveat here in v. 30: “Many who are first will be last, and many who are last shall be first.” What this means is that many who look like strong Christians may not actually be saved, and those who don’t appear to be “Christian enough” for the Sunday morning crowd may actually go to heaven in spite of public opinion. Salvation is a highly personal matter, and those who just “act saved” are doing just that–putting on an act, while others who serve quietly and faithfully are actually doing the work of Christ. My NIV translation notes that “in the kingdom of heaven there are many reversals, and the day of judgment will bring many surprises.”

I believe this means that we can’t tell on earth who will be “first” in the kingdom of heaven; Jesus warns us of this. The best Christians may not always be the ones who donate the most money to the church or the ones who are always there on Sunday morning–we might be surprised who we see (and don’t see) in heaven.

Tuesday on the Soapbox

Slaying the Clutter Dragon, part 7: A Desperate Sally Forth

1 Comment

Despite pain from old injuries in my right wrist and right ankle, this clutter warrior managed to battle the closet enough to clear one more shelf. This post, while being just a little shorter than usual, does represent one more victory.

The Constant Thorn in My Side: An Incomplete Shelf

About a year ago, I partially cleaned off the most accessible shelf in the closet (a little below waist level), just enough to store my HeroClix and other gaming supplies.

The problem?


I didn’t clean off the left side of the shelf…


…or the right side of it, for that matter.


Plus, there was a little stuff piled up in front of the shelf (sitting on top of massive stacks of junk, lol), which made it hard to get to the parts of the shelf I actually am using these days.

So, with braces wrapped around both my wrist and my ankle, I studied the closet, and determined that today was a good day to finally clean off those three un-cleaned areas. I figured it would be an easier task that wouldn’t strain my injured joints too badly.

I Crammed HOW MUCH Stuff On That Shelf?!


After a little work to clear the left side of the shelf…


…and a little more work to clear the right side…


…and even getting that middle stack a little lower…


I ended up with all of this spread across the bed. My powers of junk hoarding and compacting are unsurpassed. XD

Most of it is remnants of schoolwork, old projects, a few books, and the like–a childhood time capsule, if you will. I threw out all the obvious trash (such as a box of super-old Halloween candy corn…God only knows what year it was from, ugh), and carried the rest of the items down to the basement, where the Clutter Dragon’s infamous closet hoard is currently stashed.


A few avalanches of junk happened as I shifted the closet’s junk topography (LOL). This is one of the many little crashes I heard and saw as I moved junk and set it on the bed. Ah, the hidden dangers of cleaning! The closet never fails to try to attack me with the only weapons it has–clutter! 😛

The Shelf Finished at Last!



Finally, after moving all the junk off the bed, wiping down the shelves to get rid of any dust (or worse), and readjusting the remaining items, I had a finished third shelf in the closet. YAHOO! At last! I have yet to use the space I reclaimed, but I’m sure I’ll find something. You know me, there’s always a need for more storage in my room!

Next Week: The Part I Hate The Most

As I carried my burdens down to the basement, I realized something…the basement room is beginning to overflow with all this closet clutter. The LAST thing I need is for the Clutter Dragon to find a new home in my house! >:C

So, next week, you will see the true carnage begin, as I start to sort these remnants of childhood into “toss,” “keep,” and “sell/donate.” This is the part of de-cluttering that I have been avoiding for too long, and it can’t continue. If I don’t remove these items from the house in some way, then all this effort has just moved stuff around, like a kid avoiding eating vegetables by moving them around on the plate.

This is the takeaway lesson for this week, and for the weeks to come: if you want to de-clutter, then you have to actually GET RID of items. Hoarding them won’t make you happy, especially if you move them to another part of the house only to keep tripping over them. Stay tuned as I begin to toss, sell and donate items from the Clutter Dragon’s horrible cache!

Monday in the HTMLab

3 Rules for Promoting Your Blog on Twitter

Leave a comment

Isn’t it odd that back in January of this year I wondered about the usefulness of Twitter, and my ability to use it to promote this little blog of mine? Now I can’t imagine my blog without it, thanks to some auto-tweet WordPress plugins that help me keep my Twitter stream updated.

However, even though I’m using Twitter for this blog officially, I fully admit to still being a Twitter newb, even after managing several Twitter accounts for my various sites. I know I’m nowhere close to being as adept with social media as some of my fellow bloggers. But I have learned a few unspoken rules of the Twitter community, which I think have incredible value for us bloggers.

#1: Follow People, and You Will Be Followed

We all like to receive praise for our work, as I referred to in my comments article last week. Following another person’s Twitter is a digital pat on the back for them, and it may lead to them following you back if they find your blog (and its Twitter feed) interesting.

Now, when I say “follow people,” I don’t mean just follow random people willy-nilly. Follow fellow bloggers, people who are doing what you’re doing, as well as other websites that cover the same basic topic(s) as your blog does. (For instance, my Crooked Glasses Twitter follows Twitter accounts that cover all of the various subject matters I write about, as well as several fellow bloggers.) This is part of building a Twitter following that’s legitimate and networked together–once you follow them and they potentially follow you, you have a connection you can build on.

I didn’t realize this for myself until I began my work with the Save City of Heroes movement on Twitter, and began to follow a bunch of people with my City of Heroes site account (@skiesoveratlas). When I first began using the @skiesoveratlas account, I had thought, “Well, if people like my site, they’ll just follow, right?” WRONG! I had to get my name out there first, had to follow people and let them know I was there. Once I started following the people who were active in the #SaveCoH movement, lo and behold, I began to see people following me, too, and liking what I had to say.

But just following other people is the first step. There’s another step, too:

#2: Retweeting = A Necessary and Helpful Courtesy for Fellow Bloggers

I’ll admit, this is something I don’t do well on my Crooked Glasses Twitter account, because I cannot have constant access to Twitter (dialup internet at home, and no money for a smartphone). But a strong retweeting presence on your own Twitter stream can help your blogging cause in two ways:

#1: Gets the retweeted party’s name out to your followers, giving them more site traffic
#2: Builds your connection with them and gets them interested in what you’re doing, too

As I said before, we all like getting praised for our efforts, and retweeting is another form of digital praise. (I know I get warm fuzzies from seeing that someone has liked something of mine well enough to retweet it, anyway. :P) When you retweet, you are saying, in effect, “I like what you said so much that I’m sharing it to my followers, too.” With that simple click, you show your solidarity of opinion with them, and you connect to them more effectively.

Retweeting blog posts and articles by fellow bloggers can also boost their popularity. I know I can credit retweets as the biggest reason I have any followers on Twitter–I certainly haven’t done my part to retweet anybody else on my Crooked Glasses account, but other people have liked what I’ve said enough to retweet what I’m doing. Thanks to other people being more on-the-ball with social media, I’m doing well, too. That’s part of how Twitter works for bloggers–we all build each other up, just with a click of the “Retweet” button.

With that realization, which has just come to me over the past two weeks, I think it’s well past time to start retweeting and giving back to the community which has helped me so much…even if I have to battle 15-minute load times on Twitter (which is a sad reality)!

One important thing to remember about retweeting, though: it’s not just about retweeting everything the people you follow say, as you’ll see below:

#3: Your Twitter Feed is a Curated Topic List for Your Users

A personal Twitter account is very different from a website/blog’s Twitter. On a personal Twitter, you can pretty much retweet at will; on a site’s Twitter, you must be more circumspect, more selective.

For instance, my blog’s Twitter has attracted a large number of Christian websites and blogs because I write weekly about reading Scripture and otherwise living a Christian life. If I were to suddenly retweet a whole bunch of anti-Christian sentiments, tweets riddled with curse words and offensive opinions, etc., how Christian would that seem? I’d lose those followers in a heartbeat, and for good reason: my Christianity would be in doubt.

We as bloggers have to remember our site’s image, its “brand,” if you will, when we retweet. Our site’s Twitter feed functions as not only promotion for our work, but official endorsements for other people’s work through retweeting. If we retweet something that doesn’t work with our “brand,” people lose confidence in us, and we begin to lose community interest, like in my example above. So, when we retweet, we need to make sure that what we’ve retweeted is in line with what our site’s about. That way, we don’t confuse our followers.

And, by retweeting selectively, we also create a “curated” Twitter feed and build trust in our credibility. When I retweet something through my blog’s Twitter, I want people to think, “Wow, if Crooked Glasses retweeted it, it MUST be good!” Not only do I want to build a strong community through my retweets, but I also want to draw people’s attention to what is legitimately wonderful content that ought to be enjoyed. I will be a much better advertiser for someone else’s work (as well as my own) if I’m seen as a keen judge of worth and reliability.

Summary

Through following other bloggers and retweeting especially great content they’ve made, you can actually build a strong, legitimate Twitter following for yourself. Once you connect with other bloggers and website owners through social media, showing interest in what they’re doing, they will likely be interested in what you’re doing, too, and the cycle of positive influence will continue!

Saturday with the Spark

Bead Textures: Sparkly, Pearly, or Metallic

1 Comment

What is “bead texture,” you might ask? Bead texture (not just how the bead feels, but how it reflects light) makes a distinct visual difference–a sparkly blue bead will catch more light and be less subtle than a pearly blue bead will, etc.

Today, I thought I’d feature a few examples of favorite bead textures I like to use in my jewelry projects, so I can draw the eye better to my necklaces’ focal points, and create lovely earrings that complement rather than detract.

Sparkly Beads: For Centerpieces and Catching the Light



Swarovski Victory Pendant

Swarovski Teardrop

Fire-Polished Beads

Metallic Beads: For Secondary Designs and Setting Off Focal Points



Shamballa beads

Casbah beads

Hematite Ovals

Pearly Beads: For “Background” Colors and Soft, Subtle Enhancement



Silver-Blue Glass Pearls

Pressed-Glass Beads

Mother-of-Pearl Melon Strand

What to Do With These Beads?

In my designs, I like to mix and match sparkly textures with pearly or metallic, to naturally draw the eye to certain parts of the necklace or earring and let the other patterns recede into the background.

The sparkliest and most eye-catching beads are generally the ones I reserve for the main focal point of the necklace, though sometimes I’ll “hide” a tiny sparkly bead in between a couple of equally-tiny metallic or pearl beads, just for a little extra interest.

Metallic beads, I find, are great for spacing apart pearl or sparkly beads–they are the “in-between” texture, since they can function as light-catching, but they can be less so if they are darker in color. Thus, they work great in just about any kind of project, no matter the length or complexity. You just need to make sure the color of the metal complements the other beads you’re using!

Though sometimes I’ll use a whole necklace of pearl beads, I generally like to intersperse them with metallic or sparkly beads, since their more subtle shimmer pairs well with the shinier textures. It seems they help set off the colors in the sparkly beads, especially if they are in the same color family.

Patterns and Project Ideas

Now that you’ve got ideas for using different beading textures together, here’s a few links to get you started on various beading projects and patterns. Happy beading! 🙂

Off the Beaded Path Project Ideas and Patterns
FaveCrafts.com Beading Patterns
KandiPatterns.com Bead Design Tool
CraftBits.com Bead Craft Ideas
OrientalTrading.com Beading Projects