new tricks

I am the most non-techie person that you will ever meet. I have used computers most of my working adult life, but I am not that curious about what's under the hood, so to speak. I like learning new software, but probably go about it the most inefficient way possible, trying this and that, knowing more about what I want for the outcome than in how is the best way to get there.

Part of setting up a blog is learning how to tweak this site so it will look and do what I want it to do.

Of course, I am limited by what Blogger allows. Blogger is the company, owned now by Google, that provides free websites for bloggers along with the software to build a blog. If I wanted more bells and whistles on the site, I would have to pay a monthly fee for an upgrade.

Still, I am surprised by the bells and whistles that come, free, from Blogger and from other sources. Like comments from Blogspeak. There's another comment program from Halcon that looks cleaner. I am not a fan of smiley faces and dark blue background. But then I would have to back out Blogspeak code before adding the new code, and that maybe more than I am able to do.

When I decided to start the blog, I had to choose a template from Blogger. They offered six choices. I went for more white space. I am not a big fan of color, bars and frames. I like the elegance of text on white.

So I picked the template. And I ended up with body text that was sans serif. The text size was very large. And the linking area wasn't divided at all, and I am one of those people who usually sort their books by kind.

So I fiddled with the template code, using my little knowledge of HTML, the internet codes that tell the browser where to put text, what font to use, what colors, and what sizes. Most blogs use sans serif text (block letters like Arial). I find it easier to read serif fonts. I also practiced on links, creating ways to divide them, doing a lot of what happens if I change this percentage, or take away this particular bracketed command.

In doing this several times, I finally got the text smaller, got a serif font list in the template style sheet, and made the headlines over each blog entry smaller.

The headlines for each blog entry were quite large, and in lower-case, part of the original template style. I didn't mind using sans serif for headline text, or even keeping headlines in lower case. But at a larger size, they look like hip newspapers from the 1970s. Bringing the type size down works for me.

With any technology, there is a child-like desire to play all the effects to see how they work. It's good to get that out of the system and then settle down to what is necessary and what works.

I think I am through tinkering for a while. The archives are stuck in the style where I was a couple of days ago. I don't know if that is forever, or if eventually they will catch up with this permanent style.

Not to bore you about all this, but if you are interested in starting a blog, and I hope more people do, this is some of the things you have to go through.

And as old as I am, I like to learn new things.