Chrissy Munder's Blog, page 53

Another tidbit for the "You never know when this will be useful" side of things

How to find your direction using the Moon.  I love these little snips.



More detailed information available from ModernSurvivalBlog:

If you are lost at night, or simply wish to navigate at night, the moon can be an important indicator of general direction if you understand its shadows and how it moves across the sky.

Here’s how… click HERE to read more . You know what we'll be doing tonight. :)

Just what am I looking for in a website design?

I'm not sure. But I'd sure like to figure it out.

This bit of thoughtfulness is brought on by goal number seventy-five on my 2013 list. No, please don't ask my status on numbers 1 through seventy-six. Anyway, back to the website, there's no particular reason why this has made my list other than a desire to freshen things up. Let's just put it down to a Spring kind of thing. So I head out to my handy website manager and contemplate my template choices. There's 187 of them. Surely I can find one of them to tickle my fancy?

I'm feeling drawn to light and bright, clean and uncluttered. Easy enough, right? That eliminates a lot of the darker and browner options, and most of the greens (my favorite color) are just a little too neon. Not feeling the red and pink vibes, so where does that leave me? Orange? Am I really feeling orangey this year? It's amazing how much time I can waste spend on something as simple as choosing a color.

Of course, when I find a color mix I think I can live with, the button style isn't wowing me; neither is the main setup or font. Picky, picky, picky. I could spend the time and figure out how to change most of that, but then, why am I bothering with a template in the first place?

Then I sit there and contemplate the amount work involved in changing everything around - what if I don't like it? What about all the work to change it back? And this is why goal number seventy-five is still on my todo list.

How about you? How often do you change things up on your website? And when you do, how easy is it for you decide to take the leap?


Many thanks to Kelly over at Clkr for the color wheel.

Dreamspinner Press Celebrates Six Sexy Years!

Can you believe it? May 2013 will make Six Sexy Years for Dreamspinner Press! They want us to celebrate with them, so watch out for great discounts, special events and sexy giveaways all month long!



Here's a few highlights:
Each week, they will give away two eBook readers of the winner's choice! One will go to a customer who purchased books from them during that week. The other will go to one of the authors spotlighted that week.
Visit @dreamspinners on Twitter where they will have at least one #TweetAway each day, with extras thrown in from time to time!
New Discounts every week! Kicking off May 1-5 with 40% off all books (including in-stock paperbacks) by authors who signed with them during their first and second year of business (that includes me!) Visit Dreamspinner Press for a new list of spotlighted authors and discounts each week.

Plus you can look forward to free reads on their Facebook page toward the end of the month as they share anniversary stories written by their authors! 

Watch them on Facebook, Twitter and DreamspinnerPress.com for more details as they celebrate Six Sexy Years.

How do YOU handle attributions for the graphics used in your blog?

 by thesparechangekitchen

Case in point, the lovely image of me (*cough* yeah, right) thinking about this very topic and used above. Like anyone, I enjoy using images in my posts and I've been trying to do a better job of inserting the proper attributions on any images I use. I've done some web searches, played around with a few different programs, and even joined some creative commons groups in my search for appropriate clipart, but I'm still not happy with the attribution aspect of things.

Most of the time I'll put the image in place as desired, make it clickable for the info link, and then put an additional bit of info re: the photo at the bottom of my post. You know, the old "this photo courtesy of somebetterphotogthanme". It works. But this is the year 2013 and I'm filled with attribution envy when I see a cool post with the info tastefully entered in a frame under the image. My little grabby hands come out and I start to whine. I wanna!!

Sadly, I'm just not savvy enough to figure out how to make it so.

Nor do I want to download yet another program to my desktop. Back to it being 2013 - Surely there's a program out there on the web that will do this for me? I got all excited when I was given a link to the site Imgembed and the very concept made me cheer, but have had no luck signing up or searching for images just yet. Further reading tells me it's in beta, so I'll keep my fingers crossed. The best I've found has been ImageCodr.org for any images from Flikr.com. It's what I used in this post, and while the attributions are all in place and clickable, I've not yet found a decent way to center a post, or have it hanging on the right or left. Once again my lack of web savvy leaves me rather frustrated,

So, I'm curious what others are using. If you are one of those amazing people with the info all entered in a frame that moves with your image, how do you do it? If not, how do you handle the attributions on your blog graphics?

LOL on a Monday Morning! Okay, cackling, I'll confess, I'm cackling...

Why you ask? I've just read the best description of a conversation between a writer and their inner saboteur I've ever come across.

Here's a taste:

Let’s ignore Ollin’s suggestion that we ‘Write First.’ I mean it’s not a big deal right? We don’t need to write now anyway, we can do it after we check our e-mail. Why don’t we do that right now? Shall we? Yes, why don’t you just click on that Firefox icon and open up a web browser and see if you got a response from what’s-her-face about that watchamacallit. Yes, just click on the Firefox icon. Dooo it. Dooo it. DOOO IT!

 by Karen Lynne Klink
But wait, the best is still to come. Even if your inner saboteur isn't screaming at you from the shrubbery, click here to read the article, How To Finish Your Best Writing Day Ever by Ollin Morales and see how the crafty writer thwarts their inner saboteur.

You'll be cackling too.

Alternative to Google Alerts?

I'm still playing catch-up across the web, but one of the items I've run across has been rumors that Google Alerts may soon go the way of Google Reader. Has anyone else heard these rumors? I'm not trying to fan the flames or stir anyone into a panic, but if you are an author who depends on Google Alerts to keep up on your books and author name across the web it's something to keep an eye on.

In that light I'm sharing a link to an article posted by  Carolyn Nicander Mohr on the Wonder of Tech Website regarding an alternative service recently launched called Talkwalker Alerts. Without knowing more about the service I can't say yay or nay, but it appears that you can import your current Google Alerts into this service which is certainly reason enough to take a look. For more info on the service and instructions on how to setup an account and import your Google Alerts you can go ahead and read her article here.

Many thanks to Eliza March  for the tweet that directed me to the article in the first place.

And for those still looking for an alternative to Google Reader - I've heard good things about The Old Reader.

You never know when this may come in handy....

I'm a sucker for tidbits like this. Not to mention they make terrific story bunnies.

Ready, Set?

Jeez, not really. First I have to figure out who nabbed the picture of me in my Superman jammies.

Happy April Fool's Day! Sorry, no good jokes today, just me, peering around the corners to see what's going on after three months offline. I'm slowly wading through inboxes and remembering what groups I belong to in order to turn the digest feeds back on.  As well as figure out new f'list feeds, FB changes, and the like. But first I wanted to wish a belated Happy Birthday to everyone I missed, extend my congratulations on all the new releases, and say hello to new friends and followers. 

Now, back to that inbox....





Photo courtesy of and copyright to cellar_door_films via the Wana Commons

Looking for Chrissy in the New Year?

We seek him here, we seek him there,
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.
Is he in heaven? — Is he in hell?
That damned, elusive Pimpernel

Can you tell what movie we watched last night? Nothing like the old favorites. That little riddle is also a nice segue to sharing that it looks like my online footprint is going to be sharply reduced in the next several weeks. But don't worry, I'll be back online and Tweeting my Free Kindle Picks o' the Day before you know it. (Wait, you didn't know I Tweet my Free Kindle Picks o' the Day? I sure do - just visi @chrissymunder on Tuesdays and Thursdays when I return)

In other news, my continued efforts to avoid starring in an episode of "Hoarders" and my 1-Project-a-Day Decluttering has been a great success over the holidays. It's hard for me to get into the ruthless mindset as even the slightest little bit of bric-a-brac is associated with a memory, but once I'm there - look out! There's even new shelf paper laid down in the kitchen cupboards. Focusing on only one project each day, no matter how small, not only gives me a great feeling of accomplishment, but it also cuts down on the whole overwhelmed thing that can become so paralyzing. Let me know if you have any favorite hints on how to cut the clutter.

Happy New Year!!