Thing 2 - Blogging (the technical side)

Here I'm going to talk a little about my experience of setting up the blog. The technical stuff. In my next post I'll talk about the psychological/emotional (yes really!) stuff - which for me is a much bigger deal! I thought I'd break it into two posts so that anyone reading who doesn't want to be privy to my blog neuroses can avoid them by just reading this first post...

I have to admit I'm finding Blogger quite fiddly to work with. It was really easy to sign up, name, and choose a basic template, a definite point in Blogger's favour, but once I began to want to fine-tune things (font sizes, font colours, etc.) I started to feel a bit dazed and confused! I am at best a third-rate techie, and have to keep asking a longsuffering colleague for help (which he willingly gives). When I'm in the advanced tab of the template designer I'm not always sure which option corresponds to which element of the blog design. I'm sure once I've spent a bit more time fiddling around I'll get the hang of it, and in fact the kind of changes I want to make are probably barely perceptible to anyone else, just personal whims regarding the size of this text with relation to that, or the amount of space between things (if you read my first post, you'll know that space, be it white or, in the case of my blog, a pale custardy colour, is important to me!). I'm sure there are very good reasons for Blogger to work the way it does, so I don't really mean to suggest that my niggles should be catered for, but it's just a bit frustrating to have an idea in your head of how you want something to be, and for it not to be immediately obvious how to achieve this.

One final thing - I wanted to use one of my own photos for the background, but it has to be under "300K", and seeing as all my photos come from a fairly decent digital camera, the file sizes are much larger. Can anyone help me with this? Is there a simple but effective way for me to reduce the file size of my photos?

Thing 1 - iGoogle

Earlier this week I set up an iGoogle page. Google has been my search engine of choice (and in fact my web browser home page) for as long as I can remember, chosen over others for the clean feel of the interface – for me the visual simplicity was the great appeal. It was therefore with some reluctance that I proceeded to, as I saw it, clutter up my iGoogle page with gadgets. Furthermore, I found it difficult trying to anticipate what I would find useful. I hoped that using the search facility or looking at the favourites under “add stuff” would give me some ideas; however, completely different searches gave me very similar results, and clicking on the “you might also like” link produced some downright bizarre suggestions! I did persevere, and currently have a home tab (BBC weather, BBC news, mini Wikipedia, Google calendar), a library tab (Cambridge libraries widget, COPAC searchbox) and a travel tab (National Rail train journey planner, tfl tube map, Google map search). My minimalist tendencies held me back from exploring the more light-hearted gadgets (quotes, photos, etc.), but hopefully I will mellow…

It’s taking me a while to get used to using iGoogle, largely because of habit, rather than conscious resistance. I still head, without thinking, to my favourites list to go to websites, rather than using the gadgets on my iGoogle page, even when the gadget would supply me with all the information I need. Once I get into the habit of using these gadgets I think I will appreciate having them all in one place right in front of my face (as opposed to hitting my browser’s favourites button and scrolling down a list). It goes without saying that, as a librarian, the opportunity iGoogle presents me for categorising, organising and consolidating my resources is very appealing! I am still very much a fan of the visual simplicity of classic Google, but having set my iGoogle theme to ‘Swan Lake’ (a photo of ballerinas in tutus), I get a balletomanic thrill every time I view the page, which mostly makes up for the lack of white space.

Over the coming weeks and months I will, no doubt, get used to iGoogle, adding gadgets and rejigging my tabs and pages as certain situations present needs, opportunities and inspiration. Exciting!