Singing again and other news

After weeks of not singing a note, I'm finally back at class. It's actually a nice feeling, even though I'm a bit disappointed by how much my voice's quality slipped back.

Oh well. I'll catch back up as soon as possible.

Otherwise, I'm still going strong in my carb-fast. Next week I'll be reintroducing selected carbs to my diet so it's not a shock for me when I have to eat lots of bread in Berlin.

And yes, I'm assuming there will be lots of bread there.

BUT! There will also be lots of walking, so it shouldn't be too much of an issue.

Otherwise, I'm re-thinking the structure of my blogging at the moment.

I currently have three. All are at least moderately active. But the thing is, I don't think the third blog is sustainable. I started it as a chronicle of my activities as a new orchid grower. All nice and well, but I made one very crucial error. I assumed orchids to be tricky little buggers.

And they're not.

So now I'm stuck pulling at my hair because half the time, I have no idea what I should write about.

Now I'm wondering. Would you all mind terribly if I combined this blog with that one? It's not highly scientific or anything and hopefully it shouldn't be all that boring.

The reason why I want to merge the two is that orchids are starting to form a significant form of my life, so it can be put in here every now and then.

What do you think?

Beginnings Blogfest

Today is L.G. Keltner's Beginning's Blogfest. She was nice enough not to stipulate what type of beginning we should work with, so I thought I'd be different and let my two entered posts run along the same line.

MFB's post is about what my first days as a beginning blogger were like. Here, I'm sharing ten tips I wish I knew when I started. So let's just jump in, shall we?

1. Don't sit there waiting for people to come. Get out there. Comment. Draw attention. DO NOT SPAM COMMENTS. 
2. When commenting, DON'T DO THIS. or This!!!! (In case you're wondering, I didn't do either, but saw people who did, and it's rude and annoying.)
3. Leaving nice comments showing you actually read what people wrote, brings those people to you. 
4. Get involved. Help when people need help. Even if it's spreading the word. Even if it's posting on your STILL tiny blog.
5. Use the above to ask for advice. You'll get it in spades. 
6. Short posts. I repeat. Short posts. 300 words are optimal. 
7. It's okay to poach followers from blogs. Go to the big ones and go visit as many of their followers as you can. Trust me, they want the interaction as much as you do. 
8. Don't ever think people will continue to come to you if you stop visiting them. It's nothing personal, but there are thousands of bloggers. If you don't stay in their awareness, they'll forget about you. 
9. If someone writes something controversial, think before you comment. Yes, disagreeing is fine, but don't be rude. It's not only between you and the blogger. Everyone else can see it too. Nothing creates a worse impression than a rude comment. 
10. Blogger has word verification activated as a default. If you don't want to annoy more than half your readers, de-activate it. It's not that hard to check comments for spam. You can even activate a moderation option so nothing goes through without your say-so. 

There are many more about the finer points of blogging, but those you can figure out for yourself. But if you apply the ten tips I gave, you'll be well on your way. Promise!

Anyone have more tips for beginning bloggers? 

Counting Our Blessings

This will be just a short post, since I'd like you all to rather watch the video I included and take some inspiration from it.

Today is a day I want to count my blessings and the first one is that I reached my 200th post today. 

I truly hope that I managed to touch your hearts and lives in the same way that you have mine. You are yet another blessing to me. Thank you. 

I'm not going to go into more blessings on here, but I'd love it if you'd share some of the blessings in your life that you can think about. 

In the mean time, here's the video. 

Have a blessed weekend!

In Which NaNoWriMo Gets in the Way

Hi. So sorry for not posting. I'm doing NaNoWriMo again this year, so I might be a bit random in all my postings.

It's just a choice I made, since drafting a new story has to take priority some time, and because I haven't written anything new in a year, I figured giving myself a month in which to try and do it would be worthwhile.

So far things are a bit weird in the story, but we'll see how it turns out.

How are you doing?

My thoughts on running a new blog.

As I mentioned before, I recently started a new blog.

It's about me learning how to grow orchids. This has advantages and  disadvantages. Advantage: there's ALWAYS something to write about. So much so that it's difficult for me to stay to my Tuesday Thursday Schedule for it.

Disadvantage, only people interested in orchids will want to follow and read it. Which means I'm once again stuck talking to myself... Sigh.

It reminds me of the very first time I started blogging. I felt like a lone voice in the dark with no one to hear me. But boy, did it teach me to get out there and fast.

Luckily for me, I have a day off today, so I am going to spend this morning hitting as many orchid blogs as I can. The way I see it, if only five people come by to visit, that's okay. At least I'm not talking to myself.

That's what makes a blog successful. The owner can't just sit around and wait for people to find them. We need to put ourselves out there. We have to get involved in the community, learning from them, teaching them and being there for them.

After lunch, I'm also going to visit as many of my regular commenters as I can. I'll also visit some blogfest blogs, hopefully meeting some more people there as well.

Oh... if only I were the Ninja Captain...

Do you have a system for visiting blogs? Do you visit widely, or stick to the ones you really like?

Housekeeping and music

As you can see, I changed up the look.

The standard background just didn't work for me any more, so I thought I'd put in one that better suits me.

This one works. My favorite color is blue and I love music so... I don't think I'll get a better representation of my personality than that without paying for the background.

Not much else to say news-wise, although I did now open a third blog. It's very low priority, though, so I probably won't neglect this one more than I have recently. Basically it's about me learning to grow orchids, so if you're a grower or would like to try your hand at it, I'd love to see you there.

Singing-wise, I'm back to regular solo-instruction, and I'm now learning this:



Yeah... so different from when I started, but that's good.

That's me for now. Any Puccini fans? What's your favorite operatic aria? And what do you think of the new look?

Why I took all google images off of my blogs

Hi all! I guess I could have written a huge long post about it, but I've found two posts that did really well to convince me as to the dangers of using copyrighted photos.

So... I'll link you to the first one instead. Please please please don't let ignorance come back and bite you. And please please share with your blogging friends.

If you haven't read Roni's story, please do so now.

Thanks!

Have you heard about this before? Are you taking down copyrighted images?

P.S. Thank you, Madeleine, for bringing it to my attention.