Embedding a YouTube video in a blog

Wow! Am I chuffed!  I managed to embed the YouTube video in the previous post.

I had tried a few times a couple of weeks ago – but got no joy. I don’t know what I was doing wrong. But the process is simple enough.

When you see a video you want to embed (rather than merely give a link in your post so that the reader can leave you to go and view it … and get distracted and spend the next hours viewing YouTube instead of reading your great posts!!) look to the right of ther YouTube page.
There you may see a box marked “Embed”. In the box is some code.
Click inside the box and the text inside it will be highlighted.  This is what you must copy. The keyboard shortcut for that action is Ctrl+C on a PC.

Now go into your post and hit the tab that transfers you to HTML view. In the place in your post where you want the video to show, click and paste in the copied coding (Ctrl+V).
Save your post and view it to see if all is working well.

When I’m previewing a web page I’ve made or, in this case, a post with a new trick in it, I imagine I feel a bit like fishermen do when they are waiting to see what is on the end of the line or in the net they are hauling. It’s a good expectation. And even if I’ve failed to do what I wanted, there’s usually a reason, and finding it is the next challenge.

About RSS feeds

What is RSS? What are feeds? Why should I use them? These questions were all answered for me when I found a great wee video on YouTube.

Learning about blogging makes me want to visit other blogs and learn from them how things might be done. Having found Technorati, and visited a few blogs today, I realized the value of subscribing to an RSS feed. Now, at last, I can get my head round it a wee bit.

If you watch the video which I am going to try to embed in this post you will see a great teacher and communicator in action!

 

Technorati

I have just discovered Technorati. What a great way of getting to know what other blogs are out there!  they offred me a way to “claim my blog”, so that it can benefit from the tools available at Technorati. Writing this post is part of the process. It will be fun to explore and learn more about how to use Technorati to find cool stuff, and also to enhance this blog. Next I’ll need to fins out how to place the little badge thingy on this blog.

I see that many blogs have a little orange feed icon. The theme I am using (Pressrow by Chris Pearson) has only a text link to the feeds. But if you’re like me, you’ll hardly know what to do with them! I aim to find out.

 

Adobe InDesign CS3 rocks!

I just love InDesign CS3. After all the problems I had getting the new CS3 suite installed I am delighted with it.

The upgrade from CS2 has been well worth while and I am discovering new benefits every day. So far the best thing for me has been the new tool panels (or are they palettes? I always get mixed up because I think the different programs in the suite call them different things). They dock perfectly, the icons are easily recognized, they fly out and slide back very elegantly. And the new effects pallet/panel is great. Applying effects so quickly to fill, stroke, text or objects – the versatility and usability is far better than CS2.

There is still heaps to learn about InDesign, but I get great help from the podcast done by David Blatner and Ann-Marie Concepcion. They speak so personally to us listeners; as a noobie I get a lot from it, and yet don’t feel they speak down to me, or over my head. They are not only very knowledgeable and informative, but also personable and humorous. Their podcast (InDesign Secrets) is the highlight of my week-eek-eek-eek (You have got to hear an episode to get that reference!!)

Cranford and Miss Marple

It was an excellent production, and thoroughly enjoyable.  Every episode was loaded with cracking narrative and stunning photography (the lighting was a particularly joy). I viewed them in the evening, and all the following day pondered on the latest episode.

I was reminded of a remark made by a character in a Miss Marple story. He said something to the effect that she viewed the world through the prism of her small English village.  I think Mrs Gaskell has done the same with Cranford. 

When I speak of Miss Marple I mean, of course, the Agatha Christie character. My flat mate and I bought the boxed set of Miss Marple mysteries. She is captured impeccably by Joan Hickson, a fine actress. There is nothing that jars about her performance and after watching an episode, I always feel relaxed and uplifted. I cannot say the same about modern crime drama, which I find I cannot watch any more, because of the violence and harsh reality.

Escaping to an idyllic village – whether Cranford or St Mary Mead – is my idea of a chill-out zone!

I had known of Mrs Gaskell before, but never read any of her books or seen any film of one. So this was new for me.  I’m looking forward to the promised Cranford Christmas special at the end of the year.

Stay calm and follow instructions

Last week I hit a bad patch with my computer software.

I had been using Adobe CS2 for a while, and now I was to upgrade to CS3.  As always, I did a web search of any known issues and discovered that some people had hit bad problems – all the programs in the suite loaded without difficulty, except Acrobat and Acrobat reader 8.

I imagined that I would be one of those who had a trouble-free install and pressed ahead.  It wasn’t to be.  All went well – Photoshop, Illustrator, Bridge, InDesign all loaded smoothly; then, just as the green bar had crept almost to the end, and just as Acrobat was loading, the installation stopped and a message told me that one element had failed to install - Acrobat.  Forty minutes to install and almost an hour  to uninstall the whole suite ate into that evening. I tried again – twice! Install…get stuck…uninstall.

Drastic measures were called for, so it was a late night spent scouring the web for a solution.  Finally I found it, in the shape of post by Larry Riggs. This analysed the problem, explained a solution and then led me by the hand through the inplementation.  Adobe CS3 is now fully installed and operating sweetly.

Larry’s solution led me “to boldly go…” into the depths of the registry.  It sounds really neat in Larry’s words: “drilling down to CLSID at the fifth level.”  !!!

The lesson I learned in all this is to stay calm and follow instructions.  This guy knows what he is talking about, explains in a crystal-clear manner ( even I could understand it), has helped hundreds to resolve their computer problems and gave me confidence to go ahead and do it.

I prayed for God to help me and as I set off following the info on Larry’s page, I realized that what he was asking me to do would not crash anything – indeed it was reversable. So, having read carefully the whole thing, I followed step by step and ticked everything off as I completed it.  IT WORKED!

If you have this problem, or are contemplating upgrading to CS3, you’ll want to see Larry’s masterly piece .  

Cranford and Mrs Gaskell

Today I discovered Cranford.  Not having seen the original BBC series, based on three novels by nineteenth century writer, Mrs Gaskell, I bought the boxed set from Amazon. The reviews were very favourable and I haven’t been disappointed. On the contrary, the humour had me laughing out loud; the acting was brilliant and the costumes, scenery and photography were outstanding.

I’ve finished episode 1 and can’t wait for the free time to view another succulunt chunk! 

Learning is a joy

Mum always told me: “You can learn something new every day.” I’ve found that to be true. Most of what I have learned has been known by others before I even heard of it! But it has been new for me – whether an idea,  a skill, or even some little item to drop into what my dad used to call “My compendium of useless facts” -which, in dad’s case, were far from useless.

This blog will be as much for my benefit as for others, as I chart the  things I find which are new for me.