Shaking things up

Okay, so I came on the blog today to bug people about not blogging, then I decided to check the blog to make sure nobody had posted recently and guess what--two of you (Maggie and Bri) had! Sorry! Okay, BUT: I think we can all agree that we've been a little remiss about posting lately, and how are we supposed to keep in touch if we don't ever write on the blog? I blog way more at my personal blog and WAY more at my Tumblr than I blog here because I feel like people don't read this. I have a two-point solution to this problem, which I will lay out for you now:

1. Everybody get Google Reader. Y'all have a Gmail account--I know that because you have to have one to have a Blogger account...right? Maybe that's not true, but since Blogger and Gmail are connected, most of you probably have a Gmail account. I have so many I can't even keep track! Anyway, Google accounts have this cool feature called the Reader.



All you have to do is subscribe



by typing (or copy+pasting) our URL [http://foursandfriends.blogspot.com] into the field.



The Reader will update you every time there's a new post in a blog that you're subscribed to. Then you'll know immediately when somebody posts, and you can scurry over to comment (seriously, comments are the soul of blogs; we should really do this more, so that we can have a diablog instead of a monoblog, as Diablo Cody would say) or write a post of your own.

2. We should post more. Let's just agree that nothing is too boring to post. Navel-gazing is the soul of blogs (I know I just said that about commenting, but let's just pretend that blogs are extraterrestrial beings capable of having more than one soul). You may think it's boring that one of your company's clients recently died in his sleep of an undiagnosed heart condition at the age of twenty-seven (SCARY!), or that your boss' high school aged son is eating all the Girl Scout cookies you bought for your office mates, but nobody else will! Somebody say something funny? Put it on the blog! Have a really excellent sandwich for lunch? Blog about it! Nothing's too small or too boring!

To that end, I offer up this humble tidbit from my life: My coworker Vicky brought me an X-Files movie poster from New York Comicon! Maggie and Cambria: jealous? Also, I was stuck in the lobby of our building for fifteen minutes because they shut down all the elevators due to a fire drill (we have fire drills like every three days here, it's a totally ridiculous, post-September 11 overprecaution) and hell naw am I going to walk up twelve flights of stairs (I already had to walk up the escalator to the subway today, and I was PISED!).

So come on, guys, let's do better--you know you want to!

(P.S. When did I become everybody's blogmom?)

Happy Easter, clowns!

It's a Peep show! Geddit?

Also, I started a new blog for myself, using my real full name, so that if (cross your fingers!) I get a book deal, I can use it as my author blog. But that's a long way off! Still, visit it if you want...I probably won't be blogging so much at word/play anymore. With the Tumblr and everything, I mean, how much can a girl blog? Check the Tumblr for some choice quotes from Cambria. Miss and love you all!

I Tumble for ya

Guys! Heads up! Thumbs down! What?! Pay attention. Get a Tumblr. It's less than a blog, but more than, say, Twitter? I don't know, I have no idea what Twitter is. Nevermind! Sort of like Facebook but not as stalker-y, sort of like Blogger but easier to use, you can just sort of add shit from the internets or your own mind (whichever's less scary) with the click of a button. Read this NY Observer piece about 21-year-old (!!!) Tumblr founder, David Karp, then check my Tumblr out, then get one of your own and post the link here so everyone can enjoy it.

Thanks Scott!

Scott made me an admin again . . . woohoo! As my first order of business, I moved his post so that it appears after my other ones, not before. Except, now this one is going to sit on top of it. Oh well! Tough titties. (I'm sorry--is that too vulgar? Tough . . . testes?)

Anyway, I also wanted to say that if you guys want to add anything to sidebars (links to Flickr or other photo albums, personal blogs, websites you like, MySpace pages, etc., go right ahead and do it. If you're thinking, "Why Anna, I would just love to do that, but unfortunately I do not know how," comment to this post something to that effect and I'll tell you how--with screencaps! (Hopefully)

Also, a word on pictures: Big pictures (like, bigger than 400(w)x300(h)) will push the sidebar to the bottom of the screen, making everything look pretty whacktastical. What I would suggest is creating a Photobucket account for yourself (I can create one--apart from the Photobucket account where all of our group photos are kept--for everybody to use if you want) and upload the photos you want to post on the blog there. Then, if you click on the photo you want to use, you can edit it down to size--there are options for websites/blogs that get it to a manageable size. Voila.

Laters!

'Cause I'm an idiot, and I'm your best friend

Okay kids! Here's hoping people are reading this blog more often, because your friendly neighborhood blog admin (a.k.a. ME) just removed the account she used to use to blog on this blog (the foursandfriends gmail account) after adding her other Blogger persona (gobananza@gmail.com) as a contributor so that she didn't have to keep signing in and out of Blogger if she wanted to post on both her personal blog and the MoCa blog in the same go. BUT, she is, in one way, smart--she made each and every one of you (with the possible exception of Carrie, because Carrie just joined) an admin on the blog, meaning that YOU (and by YOU of course I mean whichever one of you rocks the most) can make her an admin again.

Until I'm an admin, I cannot do anything to the template, which means that if there are any funny html shenanigans going on at MoCa I cannot stop/fix it. DIRE STRAIGHTS, my friends! Also, I cannot invite new people and I cannot control the posts (like, if you remember yesterday, when I dipped into Carrie's post and changed the size of her picture so that it all fit on the screen, etc.). Maybe you don't remember, because you visit but sparingly. Long story short, somebody make me an admin again.

Okay, here's how you do it:

1.) Sign in to Blogger
2.) Go to Settings.
3.) In the settings toolbar it should say things like Basic, Publishing, Formatting, etc. On the far right there is a link to a page called Permissions--click it.
4.) Under the heading Blog Authors there will be a list of all of us and our status (everyone's should say admin except mine and possibly Carrie's).
5.) I think (I'm not sure because I can't see it) there is a link that says make admin next to my status. Click it. Yay! Done.

I'll be waiting with baited breath, y'all. Maybe Bri can do it, since she's rife with the free time, even though I know it might be a bit complicated--I left detailed instructions, though!

You're welcome for that Jimmy Fallon shout out. Talk about old jokes.

This is how you post a picture

Okay, so here's the html for posting a picture:

<*img src="thehtmlcodeforthepicturegoeshere"*>

You're going to want to delete those asterisks (it won't let me write that code and then have it show up unless I fuck with it) when you actually try to post a picture.

Also, I find it helpful that when I don't know how to do something that someone else has done, I just right click on the page and say "View Source", then scroll through until I find the code I want, then shamelessly pirate it. Sometimes it's some complicated CSS bullshit that I don't understand, but a lot of the time it's just simple code. That's basically how I learned this in the first place.

Layout finished (sort of)

Your unflagging, tireless "web designer" managed to get this blog in semi-decent shape today while she should be packing. Don't know how on the grid she'll be over the next, mmm, say two to three months, but she hopes to check back in on this blog and post often. Don't leave it blank--post! Or, at least, leave me flattering comments about the design.