Posted under
fun by The Blonde Diaries on December 4th, 2008 12:32 am
I was surfing blogs yesterday and came across a post about what that particular blog’s personality was. I have heard about personality tests for individuals (think Myers-Briggs) but I was curious to see what a “blog” personality was. So off I went to Typealyzer.com to check and see what personality my blog has and how it compares to my Myers-Briggs personality. I am attending a training this week and one of the prerequisites was to complete the Myers-Briggs test and to see what our personality type was. I am an ISTJ which is the same thing I was the last time I took the test over 10 years ago! I guess some things never change.
So over on Typealyzer you enter your blog web address and it skims your posts (or keywords or some other metric) and determines your posting personality. Your posting personality does not necessarily match your individual personality type which makes sense because you can “hide” behind a blog persona that is what you ideally would be like but for some reason you are holding yourself back in real life. So my blog personality is an ESTP. So two items are the same and two are the opposite.
ESTPs are “doers”.
The active and play-ful type. They are especially attuned to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and engaging in physical out-door activities.
The Doers are happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might be very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it through. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for any period of time.
I find it pretty interesting and a decent assessment of my blog. I tend to be fairly active in posting and tend not to let my blog sit unattended for long periods of time. I also tend to talk a lot about topics that interest me. I am guessing my health and exercise posts are what is giving me that out-doorsy trait because that is so not me in real life. LOL.
Check out your blog personality and let me know what you find out about your blog!
Posted under
General by The Blonde Diaries on November 18th, 2008 6:22 pm
One of the things I am finding that I like on other blogs is the use of photos in blog posts to supplement the post or to draw attention to the post. Often times, I don’t know where to begin looking for the perfect photo and when I do find that perfect photo on Google I begin to worry about copyrighted images and wondering if I must seek permission to use the photo in one of my posts.
Today, I found Acobox.com which is a photo hosting site for bloggers and photographers. This site allows bloggers to find photos to use on their blog without worrying about hosting the photo on either their personal server or through the usage of another program like photobucket or shutterfly. The photos are available without needing to worry about copyright as well. Photographers get a great outlet to share photos they have taken and to garner a following and potential buyers.
The site is really easy to use once you complete your free registration. You can sign in and start searching for blog pictures. Once you find a picture you like you can choose the alignment and then the sizing. Once that is done you just click on a box and the code is generated for you and you just need to paste that code into your blog post. Talk about easy! If you want to start using photos definitely head over to Acobox.com.
Posted under
General by The Blonde Diaries on November 12th, 2008 6:17 pm
A few weeks ago I wrote an article about the use of Dragon NaturallySpeaking software for the NaNoWrimo contest that began November 1. I have come across a ton of blogs participating in this contest while surfing through blog explosion and they are all using this software. I really think using this software to “type” for you is a really neat idea. I have continued to do a little more research into the software and ran across this post and a couple of videos which I wanted to share with anyone who is also intrigued by the software and wanting to learn more.
Hello my name is Brett Bumeter and I would like to introduce you to Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10. Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 is a program that enables you to type with your voice by speaking out loud. All you have to do is speak in a normal voice at a normal rate of speed, and your computer will capture every word that you say almost. The program claims to have about 99% accuracy, and it’s been my experience using the program over the last two years through versions nine and version 10 that this claim is extremely accurate.
The program is extremely fast whether you’re using a noise canceling microphone headset plugged into your computer or whether you’re using a pocket MP3 recorder. I actually use both setups and have had great success having my voice and words turned into text by typing them into my computer, as well as using my voice to turn my words into an MP3 file on my MP3 recorder which I can then import into my computer via USB, and have Dragon NaturallySpeaking transcribe those words automatically into text while the computer does something else.
Right now I am writing this particular note to you to kind of show you just what Dragon NaturallySpeaking can do. I say show you because I’m writing this letter with Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10. It doesn’t take a lot of effort to write with Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10, but it does take a little practice in order to start thinking quickly and thinking out loud with your voice. That the nice thing about it is that you don’t have to stare at your computer screen for long hours anymore.
Typically when we type with our hands, we tend to look at the computer that were typing on. To be more specific we tend to look at the computer screen, and this wears out our eyes and makes us physically tired. The muscles in our eyes absorb all that light from the screen, and the longer we stare at that light the more tired our body becomes. This can even lead to headaches or migraines or just fatigue in general.
So the cool thing about Dragon NaturallySpeaking is that you can look around the room, look around where ever you happen to be, and taken some sights and smells in that you normally wouldn’t have the luxury of doing with your eyes glued to your screen. This really does help to keep your brain moving, and it helps get you thinking outside the box and focused on those things that you need to be focused on.
If you are the type of person that uses a white board quite a bit, you can even stand up and start brainstorming on a whiteboard, while you are simultaneously dictating the thoughts that come to you onto your computer. Now that’s not necessarily the most effective way to capture information off of a whiteboard, but if you need the information copied into text form, it can be very useful and I’m simply trying to illustrate a point. 
There are many ways that you can use this particular program to save you a great deal of time, to further illustrate that point, I have written this entire note so far in under three minutes flat! That’s a little over 175 words per minute, and this is actually the fastest ever time that I have recorded with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. When I used version 9, I had clocked the program running at about 167 words per minute, and so with Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 and a brand-new laptop, I have just set a new personal record.
That doesn’t include editing time which I will go back and do now, but it’s still amazing to be a laugh your words and thoughts captured so quickly by your computer.
Sincerely,
Brett Bumeter
http://softduit.com
PS Even with 3 minutes of editing thrown in (which included writing the salutation and a few more lines) this article still only took 6 minutes to write, and that averages out to about 92 words per minute!
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Posted under
General by The Blonde Diaries on October 28th, 2008 4:59 pm
Is your WordPress Blog Stats Plugin working properly? I’ve noticed mine has been off the past couple of days and I was not sure if it was because I was changing my themes and trying out new ones of if this is a problem across the board. I didn’t notice an update to the plugin on my dashboard so I don’t think that is the case unless a new version is out and I need to go look for it. So is anyone else’s looking a little funky and if not is there a way to refresh or reset my plugin so that it is counting my visitors accurately? I reverted back to my old theme just in case that is the issue.
Posted under
General by The Blonde Diaries on October 26th, 2008 9:55 pm
Edited: Well, after posting this I found that the organize series plugin I use isn’t too compatible with the new theme. So until I can either figure out what to do on that end I’m trying another new theme. Hopefully I’ll be able to use the green one again down the road.
So far I am really enjoying the green and white themeing of this new WordPress theme that I have installed over the weekend. I am still not 100% done with tweaking it but quarter begins tomorrow at work so I need to focus on that first and hopefully over next weekend I can play with the coding again to figure out how to make this new theme perfect. I was finally able to narrow down the coding on the style sheet thanks to Kimberly and expanded the side bar to make it wide enough to fit everything. I was also able to narrow down the coding to insert my blog title and my “byline” in the header. Now when you are trying to navigate back to the main page you can click on the blog title and it will bring you back. I did just notice I managed to overwrite my search box. That will be the first thing I try and bring back next weekend. It’s always something isn’t it?
Well I have to be at work for 7:30 in the morning so I am going to sign off. Thanks for bearing with the changes and funkiness you may have run across in the past hour. Everything should be back working now.
