The Art Of Changing Your Mind

Some may think after seeing that title that I am going back to my old blog on Google's Blogger. Some of the long time readers I have would be use to that kind of announcement because I have done it before. I think I am pretty well set with change last night to go back to a right sidebar. As you see I had already changed my mind about that before this story posted. Ha Ha
In this case that is not going to happen. Not even close.

I like the Wordpress platform a lot. I am even getting use to their new editor where I write and insert the photos. Now that I have found the icons for bullet points and the small bits to add to the content I am much happier. They were well hidden deep in their menu.

I've adjusted my photo size so once they are inserted they come in at the right size. I like the size of the photos overall when the post is opened up, but I'd prefer them to be as wide as the website, without a sidebar. Yet without a sidebar, the footer is too long and I don't care for that look after trying it a day or two.

So I am suspended in between the cells of my brain, wondering what my next move is. I hope it is sitting still now, without more design changes. That way can free up some of my time and crawl away from this computer again. I feel that I am falling into a two blog a day schedule. I am going to still schedule what I can for a very early post time.

That way I can take the events and photos of the day and post those in the early evening Eastern Time. I think the first post of the day that is scheduled early in the morning, will be posts that I write as the feeling hits me. Different topics most of the time and I'll still try to include some photos from the file I have. Any announcements will be all verbal like the one yesterday.

I was reminded again the other day that I am really writing for me. That is a hard therory to wrap my mind around, because it doesn't feel like that. I try to post photos that are some of the best ones I take for the day and those that I think the readers will like.

Besides if I am only writing for me, then why is the blog public? Why do I keep looking at different theme choices in design and ask myself "what would be best for the readers?" Or ask "will anyone even scroll to the bottom where they would see the the information that use to be on a sidebar?"

Is any of this important? Not really. It's just a place to write, good or bad. Yet that would be like saying it doesn't matter what color your house is inside or outside because "it's only a place to live." Plus I like to fool around with my blog designs until I don't want to change it anymore. THEN ... I know it's the right design. Or I just like making changes.

There is one major obstacle to that. Looking through different themes soaks up data like a sponge. My data limit is between 600-700Mb per day to keep within the 20Gb per month I pay for. That doesn't mean I stop when 700Mb is reached. I do what I want all month and buy more at the end of the month if I run out of data.

When I am checking out themes for hours on end, I will burn around 1.2Gb of data  in a day based on previous experience.

By this time in the post most visitors have clicked the back arrow and have left town. Should I be concerned? If I was then it would only make sense to stop this post right here and click the 'publish' button. Since I am "writing for me" I continue with the post (probably a boring one) and take the time I need to insert the photos between the paragraphs instead of the much faster way of doing the opposite.

So .... I think you've seen about all the changes you are going to see for a long while. The new domain name is set. I believe that most people saw the post where I told them I was changing the domain name. So we will see if any gets "lost" after the change.

I guess I am kinda 'old school' when it comes to the modern designs, plus those don't really seem to fit the hounds and what I write about. The theme I have right now is about as modern as I can get.

I look at this site to see how it works on a tablet, smart phone, laptop and my iMac. A few times I noticed that large photo at the top was loading really slow but I think that is more my internet connect than it is file size. If you have that large photo taking too long to load let me know.

dI like the list of blogs and websites I follow, but not many others do. Since the majority of visitors for the past 7 years are here and gone in less than 5 seconds I am assuming this design is basically for me. I do the same thing sometimes when I visit blogs, just a quick glance to see a photo or see what they are writing about by checking their title.

It was a good time to do all the blog movement and design changes because it rained most of the day and night on Friday and continued through Saturday morning. Southern Indiana has has over 52" of precipitation since last January 1st.

When I change my mind there is way too much analysis that goes into it. Way too much, except when I trade cars. People know that once I am on that mission things are done within 24-48 hours max. Adding another hound, could cause me to think for weeks. (no, not going to happen)

It takes a lot of skill to change your mind. I like to start a brand new spreadsheet to get everything out in front of me where I can see it, then the decision becomes clear. I do not nor will I do a spreadsheet on whether to change the blog design. I know one friend that would be in shock if I didn't "spreadsheet it".  Ha Ha

With the blogs I follow I can't same very many, two or three, have changed their blog design after more years than I have had mine. Many people are still driving their same car or truck for the past 5-6 years and I cannot remember how many different ones I have had in that same time span.

I justify changing my mind a lot as if I was wearing different clothes every day, or a different pair of shoes, taking the leash or camera on Stella's walks, and even meal changes. That really isn't a good justification for change.

Enjoyment is a better word. "I enjoy changing things."

Speaking of photos ... I find it really hard during the winter months here in 'the tropics' to take photos every day. The trees are barren, leafless. The field is dormant with browns instead greens. Most of the the skies are gray and overcast. It would make no difference if I were to drive the local area to take photos, it all looks the same ... unless it snows, then there are a lot of photo possibilities.

Some say there is beauty in everything and the picture is there somewhere. Others might say that the best picture you will ever take is when you don't take one. The problem with that is I can't remember that beautiful sunset three years ago like I did then.

So I am thinking this winter you might see a lot more 'old' photos I have in my files mixed in between these unorganized paragraphs. My writing proves I like to change my mind ... it can change as fast as a new paragraph.

That drives me insane and is a habit I wish I could quit. It's just a lack of focus and a brain that is hopping all over the place.

So let's see what happens.

The coffee is gone. The Saturday morning walk was postponed due to rain. If MLB can do it so can I. I'm not hungry, don't want to read a book, don't want to watch tv or a movie nor do I want to watch daily news ... I am also rethinking that decision.

All the photos were take by me with a small Olympus camera 15 years ago. It was on a MLB Baseball Tour for 14 days, 13 cities (games) and 1 day at Cooperstown NY. Over 3,500 miles driven, plenty of room on a large bus with 32 people. One of the best vacations ever. If you might be interested in something like that, take a look at Jay Buckley's Baseball Tours.  (not an affiliate link)

Hoping for dry weather here today (Sunday) in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Happy Independence Day

Happy 4th of July everyone.

I took this photo in June 2003 while passing through Philadelphia on a two week vacation, a MLB Baseball Tour. 30 of us spread out on a tour bus letting them do the driving as we stopped at 13 cities in 14 days, saw 13 ballgames and our day off we toured the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown NY (beautiful area). We started in Chicago and ended the tour in Chicago. Yet standing in front of this Liberty Bell and rubbing your fingers over the words made you forget you were on a baseball tour and instead it felt like you were in a history class.

You might notice a change of tint or color in today's photos. A few weeks ago I was back to analyzing why my photos are not as good as they were when I bought the camera in September 2014. I contacted Mark over at Box Canyon Blog to see what camera he was using for his crystal clear photos. His answer led me into researching point and shoot cameras of all sizes. I would compare CNET reviews with the reviews I was finding in my internet search and Amazon customers.

Due to taking a lot of my photos with a zoom lens, I decided not to buy the smaller point and shoot cameras. I thought about buying a different lens, luckily the ones I wanted were sold out at Best Buy.

Why?  I changed the setting the other day from Automatic No Flash to 'Landscape' and found I had more color, depth and if I took pictures in good light they looked perfect. Taking photos at 8am with parts of the field shaded is not a good time for premium quality photos.

So as a test this morning I moved the setting back to 'Automatic No Flash' and I can tell a huge difference. The other day I posted photos without making any edits. I had to edit everyone of these photos this morning.

You can barely see the moon is still out. I saw the moon much earlier this morning as I stood outside a little after 4:30am wondering why I couldn't sleep. It may have been the 3-hour siesta I took the previous afternoon or the way the Reds lost a game in extra innings after leading it for 9 of them. Most likely it was because of that long siesta ... not the Reds loss.

While Stella and Heidi remained asleep, Sadie was up and wanting outside as soon as she heard the chimes from the computer when it boots up after turning it on at 4:30am. I went outside with her but that did not mean she was going to eat at 4:30am ... once she figured that out, she slept by my desk chair until Heidi and Stella woke up four hours later.

What did I do at that time of day? Well for one I took advantage of my free 50Gb of data I get every month from 2am-8am every day. I did updates to the computer, my laptop, my phone and tablet. That took a lot of data all on HughesGen 5's dime.

I am also continuing the latest project of moving CDs to iTunes on my computer. Not only are the CDs now available to play while I sit at my desk, they will be available on my phone, tablet or laptop if/when I travel. After they load I can right click on the file and highlight 'Get Album Artwork' and it will load the image of the album cover IF Apple has it in their store. If not, it is simple to type in the name of the band and album in an internet search, download those images to your computer ... then upload it to your album file.

It takes time but I have plenty of time and once it's done I will only have to do it again when I buy CDs. I still buy them because I have not come to terms in my mind of buying electronic music ... there is something about having it on your self knowing you own it and not just the 'rights to it' since you bought it electronically.

Stella has something new happening this summer. Last year it was losing a lot of weight but this year she has an allergy of some sort, where all the hair on both ears is gone. {correction: the top third of her ear is hairless} She doesn't scratch that area so that is not the cause. She has maintained her weight gain this spring and summer and has no other rashes anywhere else ... except her ears.

This morning for a change Stella thought she was definitely on the deer track ... she acted as if she was on a mission to find them up until we made the final turn for home.

Although the temperature was about 20° cooler this morning than it will be late this afternoon, the humidity was so high you could cut the air with a knife while on the walk. It wasn't too long into the walk where I was ready for the 13-15 minutes to be up and we could be back inside with the AC already on this early in the morning.

There are a couple of good things about loading all the CDs into the computer. Maybe even three of them. I am pulling a handful of CDs off the shelf at a time. I can then dust the space on the shelf the CDs took and also dust the tops of the CDs that have collected dust. I usually dust the tops of the CD cases by annually, otherwise I use the vacuum to get what dust I can. So that's two.

The third and possibly the most important thing is I am finding music I forgot I had. Not only am I finding a few CDs where I have no idea who the band is but I have no idea what kind of music they play. Luckily my OCD kicked in a long time ago and I alphabetized them as are my DVDs ... otherwise I was buying duplicates.  LOL

It's been a while since both hounds headed for the 'far right corner'. Stella was sure the deer were headed that way. She doesn't run anymore but by the time I turned from taking the photos of the white flower, she was headed toward the gully.

Sadie was caught by surprise and took off after Stella with me running and yelling after them to keep them from running down into the gully. By the time I got to them, they were already turning around and heading my way.

Unlike last summer, the field has not turned into an ATV Park. I've seen the neighbor riding his ATV only one time since they cut the field and I have seen no tracks that lead down into the gully where he spent a lot of time last summer. There is still plenty of time left for them to show up. Maybe he and the field owner's grandkids are at camps or on vacation this time of year.

For anyone that might want to try the Beta version of Apple's new OS ... DON'T ... I knew the issues before I decide to load it because it is the Beta version and they pass it out to developers and volunteer users for their feedback to fix the bugs etc. I just forgot how it can operate ... things may hang up, some programs may not respond, can't be shut down and you might get to the point where you have to save what you are doing and then reboot your computer.

I just did that. There are ways to go back to the older version OS that does work but you need a backup (which I have) and you would wipe your hard drive clean, then restore from that backup. The problem is, in the past week of using this new OS I have made changes to spreadsheets, and added hundreds of photos to the library.

I cannot remember how that all works if I restore from an older backup before I started the new Beta OS. I just thought of an idea that might work. I'll drag my photo library file and all of my spreadsheets to the "cloud" and then wipe the computer hard drive to nothing and restore from my older back up, then drag the spreadsheets and photo library from 'the cloud' back to the computer.

Did I confuse you?

That will give me something to do today ... I like that kind of computer work.

I thought about cropping this photo but decided to leave it as is ...

Once we turned for home, I was hot, the hounds were hot ... they both moved on the path ahead of me setting the pace to return home.

By this time Stella reached the yard she had had enough ... once her mouth opens and her tongue falls out ... that mean she is hotter than normal. The AC was on her mind instead of her stopping under a tree and scratching ... to end every morning walk.

Out of five shelves that are 28" long full of CDs, I have half of the last shelf to do, importing the CDs to iTunes.

I just thought of a reason that I cannot go back to an older version of the OS ... it's going to take 5-7Gb of data to load the current macOS High Sierra after I wipe my computer clean. With six days to go on my billing period I would run out of data before the upload would finish. I am not in the mood to spend $15 for 5Gb of additional data ... so I'll stick with the beta version of macOS Mojave. This new beta version overall works okay.

No big plans today ... baseball games will be on the tv as background noise unless something happens. The hounds will sleep most of their day away until our second walk after 8pm. Since the trees have grown between my house and the town park a few miles away, we can barely see the fireworks anymore. Luckily all three hounds are not afraid of local fireworks that will be going off ... a few neighbors behind me and out of view, sound like they are shooting artillery instead of fireworks.

I would have waited to post later but with the heat and the daily routine, there will not be that many chances for anything to change or to add more photos that is blog worthy.

Happy 4th of July from 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.