Ask MCB/CG Day – 17
This is way late but today is ask MCB/CG day. We try and do this once a month for any new readers, but we were on vacation the last week in December and didn’t get to it. I should have posted this it earlier in the week but I had a hard time getting re-adjusted to work as well as some other things on my mind. We’ve never done this on a weekend (when less people are blogging) before. We see how it goes. Maybe the concept is getting stele and all the good questions have already been asked. This is the eighteenth time that we have done this; so we don’t expect everyone to have read all of the earlier questions. It’s usually been pretty fun. Here are the rules for any new visitors. Feel free to ask us anything. You can ask a question in a comment or in the Shoutbox. We’ll respond in the comments or, if the answer is long, in a separate post. We will answer anything that is asked, usually before our next post. If you don’t read this when its first posted but still have a question, go ahead and ask it. There isn’t a cutoff date. So please leave us a question if you’ve got one.
P.S. I have a question for you guys. Does anyone know what is wrong with Blogrolling? No one hardly ever shows up as being updated anymore. I feel like a stalker since I have to visit people’s blogs several times a day to see if the have posted anything new.
Being fairly new to your blog, I was wondering how you and cal girl met?
My bloglines seems to be working just fine and telling me when new stuff gets posted in various blogs.
You may have been asked this question before but are you or your lady ever worried that anyone in your real life or that of your kids might one day discover your blog, and with it your pictures?
Kittty: We met many years ago when we were both in college…
California Girl had played Ms Pac-Man before moving to Ohio to continue her education but there were none to be found in the game room at the university we both attended. So, she decided to try a different game called Mr. Do!, a game at which Midwestern City Boy was the baddest man on the planet. I had all of the high scores using the initials “WIZ”. She was watching me play one evening when I set a high score and asked “So you’re the Wiz?” I said yes, introduced myself and asked if she wanted to play a double. She declined, and said she’d rather watch until she figured out how to play. I told her that “I’m going to play for a while” but she still insisted on watching. I was good enough at the game so that I usually pulled up a stool while I was playing and could have a conversation at the same time. So I explained how it went as I played a few games then left. We bumped into each other again, the next night, and the next night, and the next night… For our first date, I invited her to the homecoming dance.
Rob: Bloglines doesn’t seem to have an OPML interface that I can use as a source to update the list of links on the sidebar (which is what I also use). Otherwise, it seems far superior to Blogrolling.
We aren’t too worried about being discovered. Most of the people I work with aren’t into blogging and even if they were they would most likely be interested in G-rated blogs. It is a concern but not one that we let overshadow everything else. And if anyone who knows us came across our blog, the photographs should not be a revelation. They should be able to figure out that we’re sexually active.
So far as the kids go, I’m a lot more worried about other things that are out there. The internet is a BIG place. And like everything else, it has places that children should not go. The kids need to stick to kid-friendly sites. There’s nothing here photo wise that they wouldn’t know if they though about it but it’s not their business (or anyone else their age). But, to be honest, I think teenagers these days are a lot more interested in Britney Spears and her wardrobe malfunctions than a 40-something married couple.
It’s a remote possibility but we wouldn’t like my parents finding it because we wouldn’t hear the end of it for a long time. They don’t seem to understand when things are none of their business. We have received quite a bit of unsolicited/unwelcome advice on a wide variety of things from raising the kids to career guidance. It would be jut one more thing that would be “discussed”.
I remember you saying you had an infra-red remote shutter release. But do you have your camera permanently set up in the bedroom? Adapting mine for remote release is such a fiddly business, I could do with having two cameras.
Alfie: We only have one camera for us adults. When we’re not using it to hake private photographs, we take it out and about with us to take pictures of the kids, etc. We don’t have to adapt our camera for remote shutter release. It’s built in. All we have to do is select a menu option ad we are ready to go. We use a small tripod that is very easy to put away if. And the actual remote we have is very small. I fact it’s so small that we are always concerned about losing it. (It’s abut the 1 ¾ x ½ x ¼ inches.)
MCB, you can use Bloglines quite easily for your blogroll.
First of all export your Bloglines as an OPML file. Bloglines does have an import feature for OPML files (see the Help FAQ in Bloglines for details).
Then set your Bloglines list to display in date order (ascending or descending).
Then you need to make your Bloglines subscription public. Once you’ve done that you can get a piece of JavaScript from Bloglines, paste into your sidebar and voila, you have a date ordered blogroll.
I ditched Blogrolling for Bloglines a long time ago and it works pretty well on PM, although it’s by no means infallible.
I also use Bloglines to read blogs on my mobile phone which I find very handy when I’m out and about and have time to kill for whatever reason.
Ed: I will have to check into Bloglines in more detail. I am not happy with Blogrolling at all. One good thing about Blogrolling when it worked was hat it was easy to upload my blogroll information into the WordPress links database. Then everything was right her and visitors didn’t have to run any JavaScript. I’ll see what I can do about integrating whatever I can get out of Bloglines with WordPress.
happy new year mcb. do you and cg have any resolutions or exciting plans for 2007?
Joyce: As a foursome, we want to live large and enjoy the last two years that we have together. As a twosome, we want to have some new adventures and check off a couple of things from the to-do list. For example, we’d love to have sex outside underneath the sun (as opposed to underneath the stars). But it’s harder to find privacy in broad daylight.