I really want to figure out how to get an image in my entries. I also have a small book to read on using WordPress and am planning to make this site mine, using my own design. I found a set of basic templates in HTML5 and CSS3 from Zeldman that will get me started. I just need a block of time to fiddle with things.
During morning prayers, I started thinking about my expected lifetime. That lead me to the Social Security Administration’s actuarial tables. According to these data, I have an expected lifetime of about 22 years. That’s long enough to accomplish some things, should I decide to press on.
The expectation is that a man my age will live to be about 82-years old. That’s a lot older than my father and both of my grandfathers. Yet I don’t share many of their life decisions that probably shortened their lives. What it means (at least to me) is that I have time to become skilled at something, should I choose to do something different than I am now. It also has financial implications because I need to plan ahead to provide for myself.
Of course, my assumption is that I’ll remain healthy for that time. That’s something I can work on so that I minimize the risks of major disease. I can’t eliminate them, but I can minimize the risk.
That leads to the second part of my prayers — what should I be working toward? Where should that be? What do I want?
I wish God would lean down and whisper in my ear the answers to my questions. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work this way. I suppose if it did, I’d be as crazy as the Irishman who was close to William Wallace (in Braveheart) who claimed that God spoke to him. That’s probably not a good place to be.
Still, I wish God would just tell me the plan instead of me having to work it out. I’m lazy that way.
The “Media” button on the dashboard is the image control button. You can upload files through it. Alternatively you can directly link to your photos in Picasa or Flickr and presumably other photo sites. PIcasa’s link function gives you an alternative to linking with embed code (like YouTube’s “Share” function). I don’t know if the others do.
I haven’t gotten far, yet, but one of my next things (other than a real theme) is to determine how I can link content from my Flickr account to my weblog. One of the things I didn’t like about the old CMS was that I could not find a way to do this.
Flickr is my preferred hosting site just because I’ve been there forever. I have quite a few images there.
I’ll also be looking for an Instagram plug-in. I post images on IG every day or two and they are fun.
You can get a URL to an individual photo at Flickr like this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/56759872@N00/3770789014/
But I see no way of embedding it through code there. What I do is use the media link in the WP dashboard to upload the photo (browsing for it using the button in the media “add new” file screen). It allows you to align the photo L, R, or C and size it and possibly some other things.
Thanks, Links… I played around with a few plug-ins last night, but couldn’t find the right “thing” to do what I want. My goal is to avoid double-hosting my images, but that just might not be possible. I can get close with Photonic Gallery, but I haven’t quite figured it out (yet).
I used to enjoy puttering around with this stuff, but not so much anymore. I’m probably just in a different personal place and the free time I have is pretty precious.
My priority is to get my own theme set up and running. I really liked the look of my old site. It was easy to change between my summer and winter color set and banner image. Now I’ll have to learn a new set of codes so I can edit one of the themes to work the way I want.