Wild About Weaver: A (nearly) WYSYWYG CSS Wrangler

Do you want to make some tweaks to your WordPress site, but pale at the thought of editing the CSS stylesheet? Try using Weaver as your basic template. Based on the current basic theme (right now, Twenty Eleven) it then layers its own child pages onto the base, and gives you literally hundreds of ways to customize the appearance. Using its easy-to-understand administration tabs, you can make big or small changes, add snippets of code, and never have to worry about what the curly brackets { } mean… unless you want to. You may even find using Weaver helps you to understand CSS better!

My first reaction was, “Drop out, then. Nobody says you have to use Twitter, and if it isn’t fun, it isn’t worth doing.” I’ve certainly had days where I felt like I’ve had nothing to say to Twitter, and vice versa. In fact, I had a whole burn-out year where I rarely went near Twitter, and basically stepped back from all social media activities except some personal use of Facebook.

Ultimately, however, I’ve decided that there is much in Twitter that is worth keeping, and there are some simple ways to get rid of the parts that annoy you. Here are a few things you can do on a Sunday afternoon to make Twitter suck less, 7 days a week.

1. Use lists to improve the “Noise to Signal” ratio
If the tweets in your twitter stream are more annoying than edifying, you need a way to filter out the junk. I’ve classified people into lists through third-party Twitter management decks (like TweetDeck, HootSuite and Seesmic) and Twitter started this function a couple of years ago, as well. With lists, you can group the tweeps you follow into whatever works for you – close friends, news sources, music, fitness – and just look at Twitter through those filters. Much better than trying to wade through hundreds of tweets, some from people you followed back months ago and you can’t even remember why. That brings me to my next point.

2. Unfollow annoying twits.
If you aren’t getting value from the tweets that show up in your stream, turn down the volume. “Unfollow” is just a click away. If you take the first step, above, and put your favourite Twitterers into a list, you might get so used to the customized view that you never have to unfollow because you don’t look at that home stream anymore. But frankly, I still look at my “main” stream often, so it’s nice to just not have to deal with incessant marketing messages or self-centred drivel.

3. Spend less time on Twitter – while still posting to Twitter.
I’m thinking of the terrific, engaging posts this friend puts onto Facebook, and how they would work equally well on Twitter. Linking the two is only a step away, in her Facebook account settings. Better yet, she can choose which Facebook updates to share with Twitter by using one of those management tools I mentioned above. I like the ones with multiple columns for your favourite lists and search terms, with scheduled tweets so you can have a creative thought at 2 am that people might see at 8:30.

4. Don’t try to stay on top of it all
One of the most potentially annoying things about Twitter is when you try to read everything that comes across your screen. Can’t. Be. Done. What’s more, it’s way more input than anyone needs. Cut back to a couple of times a day, for just long enough to see if there are any good posts to your lists, and to respond to any mentions. If Twitter only takes 5- 10 minutes a day, it’s far less likely to annoy you. And on those days where the communication is better than you expected, you can take longer, much as you would an important email or phone call.

That’s not so bad, is it?

What if, for 30 days in November, you experimented with a new look? One that goes against the current fashions, and sets you a little bit apart? What if, for doing this, you raised money for a good cause? Does it sound like Movember? Exactly – but what if you, like most women, are challenged in the facial hair department? Then how about going without makeup?

This is actually Janis Lacouvee‘s idea, but I think it’s a good one. Like the guys with their moustaches, you can put the money toward charities working on men’s cancers – it could even be the money you save because you haven’t had to replace that colour-match foundation or the extend-a-curly-lash mascara. That’s my plan, since my father won a battle with cancer last year. (Actually, I’ll give more than the money I save – I only occasionally wear makeup at the best of times!)

So many women can’t imagine facing the day without their “face”. This is a challenge to present yourself as you are – perhaps professional, well-groomed – but unadorned. And if anyone asks what you are up to, you can always use “November – no makeup” as the reason.

With only days to go until November, I don’t expect that this idea will cause a groundswell of women to pack away their MAC and Mary Kay. In fact, now might be considered a “pilot project”, to be tweaked and rolled out in style next year. Maybe it would be best coupled with a different charitable focus. I think the idea is worth consideration.

So please, comment, share, and tell me if you plan to take up the November/No Makeup challenge.

Why would government departments want to blog?
I suppose the subtitle and subcontext would be why would anyone want to read a government blog? It sounds like a recipe for more spin, doesn’t it? However, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the quality of posts on certain government blogs, particularly when they know exactly who their audience is, like OpenData BC does. In addition there are some great “internal to government” bloggers who are both insightful and personal – unfortunately you can only access their work if you are work for the BC government.

The follow-up to this question is, of course, can government do a better job of blogging? It would be great to have some government communications people weigh in on this question. In fact, maybe I don’t want to do a speech on this so much as I want to moderate a panel.

Another topic was “Why I love Weaver, and how it has made me better at CSS”
Weaver is a very interesting template, in that it isn’t really a template so much as it is an approach to designing in WordPress that takes all the scary CSS stuff I’ve never bothered to learn, and makes it accessible to writers like me. I’d like to go through the Weaver Adminstration section in a Weaver-based site, and customize the 2011 template to look like something quite different than Weaver’s standard templates. I’ll show how it uses CSS formatting to make a customized theme in the same way as a traveller might use a phrasebook. Handy stuff.

The third topics is… shoot, I don’t remember the third topic. And that in itself is probably a good enough reason not to consider it.

So there you go, social media public. Tell me which topic stands out for you, and I will work with the folks at WordCampVictoria to make a great presentation. (Or, if you hate all of them, I’ll make the coffee at WordCamp….)

Then and now...

I find it fascinating that three boys born in 1994, 1997 and 2000 could love this 1980s-90s band, and find nothing unusual about that. Back when I was 15, any song that was older than 6 months was “old” , never to be heard on the radio again unless it was part of a “discumentary” or perhaps the countdown of the year’s best songs. We’d hang onto our favourite artists through our record collections, but old records were hard to come by unless you had a big brother or sister.

Now, it seems to be pretty common to pick and choose your favourite artist from any era, thanks to 3 generations of rock and roll, combined with the magic of the Internet. Sure, there will always be kids who like the current batch of pop music the best, even if it is manufactured commercial music like Justin Bieber, Katy Perry or Bruno Mars. But since digital media makes music from any time and any country so much more available, why not pick exactly what you want?

I love our world where Peter Garrett rocks on like he’s not yet an Australian senator; where “War of the Worlds” is more likely to be a 1938 radio play, 1979 record or even an 1898 book than a 2005 movie; where good music in specific and good culture in general can be found anywhere and everywhere.

Now I have to go plug in my smartphone so that I can read Pride and Prejudice in bed, with the Kindle app on my Android…

This is what I'm looking forward to

I LOVE putting sheets on the line to dry: the crisp feeling of them as I pull them off the line and then again as I slip beneath the covers, the anti-bacterial action of the sun, the fresh air smell. It makes laundry worth doing. It bugs me that I’ve missed out on months worth of air and sunshine on the sheets.

What’s more, I’m missing out on some great morning walks because I haven’t gotten around to getting one of those wonderful high-capacity grocery totes either. Here I am, living within a ten-minute walk to work, to my boys’ school, and to the shops, and I am still way too car-dependent. The moment I think about lugging a 4 litre jug of milk in a grocery bag, I go all wimpy and get in the car.

So along with my commitment to blogging every day (yeah, I know – missed two now but yesterday was NUTS) I’m going to commit to being car-free and clotheslineful, at least on the weeks when I am in my own bed and not at my sweetie’s place across town. Even then, HE already has a clothesline!

Heather is inspiring!  Figuring she had to fit time into her busy day to blog, she has developed her own strategy: use the 20 minute cycle commute to work to record her video blog!  And why not?  That’s when she gets  her ideas, and her iPhone is set up with a clip that attaches to her bicycle handlebars, so she can pedal and record at the same time.  The result?  It’s something like this:

How cool is that? OK, there must have been some time invested in editing and so on, but she’s fitting both the cycling and the vlogging (video blogging) into her life, and Heather is a self-confessed workaholic. If you don’t cycle you could try drive vlogging, dinner prep vlogging, laundry vlogging, bath vlogging… ok maybe not. But the possibilities are endless!

BTW, yes I missed yesterday’s blog because I “didn’t have time”. This post is my comeuppance.

EWomen Network is a business networking group for women, and it’s run very well by Kerry Brown.   Tonight there must’ve been 75 women there – and I knew easily 50 of them!  In that group, I have met the woman who sold my house, the woman who recruited me to work in her design group for the last two years, the woman who arranged our mortgage, the woman who helped us stage our home, the woman who coached me while I ran my own business, many social media clients, and many great friends.

I love my group of women, and recommend eWomen Network wholeheartedly for any woman running a business, or even just thinking about it.  But that might not be your calling.  In that case, I hope your take-away from this post is to find yourself a group to call your own.

It might be a church, a community organization, a business networking group, a running club or any number of organizations where people get together and share an interest.  Don’t stay on the fringes.  Get in there and get to know people. Offer your talents, take some phone numbers,  go out for coffee.

As a kid, I was told “You get out of it what you put in.” EWomen Network has shown me, on a monthly basis, how true that is.  Thank you to my wonderful network of friends.

I haven’t officially applied, but here in Victoria we are fortunate to have Royal Roads University, which is geared toward working professionals.  They’ve got a Professional Communications graduate program which looks like a perfect fit for both my interests and my qualifications.

As well, I’ve learned about an interesting organization of academics and researchers called HASTAC (pronounced “haystack”) who are keeping each other and the wider public informed about Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology and how it relates to digital collaboration.    I mention that because when it comes time to do involved research and a thesis, I’ll want to have a community of people who are interested similar fields of inquiry.

I hope to get going in January 2012 – should be well into the blogging habit then, so this isn’t the last that you’ll hear about it.

It seems one of the main sticking points in the negotiations is the question of “protecting the jobs of teachers” – or rather, how you reward good teachers and get rid of bad ones.

There are some crappy teachers, just as there are crappy mechanics, crappy lawyers, crappy retail staff.  Except lawyers, mechanics and retail staff can be “let go”.  Where most of the public would have a problem with the BCTF negotiating position is in a comment that Ms Dodd made to my previous post. She said, “Would you work for any employer who doesn’t acknowledge community commitment via seniority and job security?”  Actually, that’s generally how it works in the private sector.  Job security is something that very few people have.  If you don’t do your job right, you need to find another job.   Hell, if your employer doesn’t like you, you need to find another job.

The average employee in BC makes $35,000 a year.  He or she gets 2-3 weeks vacation.  Maybe unpaid time off for bereavement.  The average employee is also very dedicated.  A couple of months ago, I quit working at a place where I loved my job, and was challenged daily by the amount of information I had to learn and remember, loved the sick, injured and elderly customers I served, and was expected to do training on my (unpaid) lunch half-hours.  I made less than $12 an hour, and would never get more than 32 hours a week on average, because that would make me full-time and then the company would have to pay me benefits. I certainly know what it’s like to work two jobs!  I don’t want teachers to experience those work conditions – nobody should have to. But it’s a reality for many British Columbians, and teachers need to realize that.

So yesterday, I was feeling like the problem is that the government employers and the teachers’ union have a poisoned relationship.  Today, on further reflection, I feel like the problem is that public-sector employees are being paid in large part by a population that will never share the kind of benefits that union members get.  That isn’t right, either.  And I don’t know what the answer for it is.

I’d love to hear more thoughts – weigh in again please, previous participants.

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