Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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Starting to feel a bit more like myself

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I think I might be starting to feel a bit better. Well I thought I was a bit better for most of the day, but I’m in pain now. Hopefully the pain is mainly from not really eating. If that’s the case I’ll be rectifying that situation shortly!

I didn’t sleep at all yesterday. I was up puttering around on the computer and I was in pain. Crohn’s hurts folks!

Finally around 6 pm I was so exhausted I fell asleep on the couch. I woke up at about 10 pm and had a late dinner while watching a bit of TV with my husband but by a little after midnight I was asleep again and I slept until about 9:45 am.

Perhaps all that sleep is why I was feeling a bit better for most of the day. I’m sure I needed it!

I’m getting back in the groove. I wrote a number of posts on my Gardening blog, put up some new pictures that will be posted over the next few days on my photoblog and I’m slowly working my way through each blog that I write in to make sure it’s got at least one new post.

When I’m short on time or not feeling that well I find it’s my celebrity and tech blogs that go the longest without fresh posts. You know I enjoy talking tech stuff – widgets, blog design, plugins and so on … but for some reason I don’t get to those sites to talk about that stuff as much as I should.

For those of you with multiple blogs do you find that one or two lack your attention when you get busy with life or other things?





Translate Tricia’s Musings!

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I don’t know if anyone noticed one of the new features that I’ve added to Tricia’s Musings and As the Garden Grows yet, but both sites are now using the Google Translate plugin.

I decided to add this feature because I know that both sites have quite a few readers who’s first language is not English. I, of course, don’t speak most of the languages that my posts can now easily be translated into, so I’m not sure how beneficial translating my articles will be in the long run.

It’s worth a try anyway.

I know that translators work best when the author uses proper syntax, grammar and spelling. I try. I know my grammar isn’t perfect, but I do make an effort.

The Google Translator plugin can translate a site or posts into the German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Russian and Chinese languages. I wish there were also a Nordic language feature.

As I’ve mentioned many times over the last few months this site will soon have a new look. It will happen soon!

None of my husband or I’s blogs currently use widgets. That’s about to change. I haven’t been using widgets because many of the codes that I use in my sidebars just didn’t work well in Widgets. I’ve known about a plugin called PHP-Exec for a while now, but it’s never seemed to work well for me.

I’ve recently discovered a similarly named WordPress Plugin called Exec-PHP and it works! Even better – it’s easier to use than the other plugin. You don’t have to wrap PHP code in another code. You just activate the plugin and tada you can use PHP code in your posts (in code mode) or in your widgets.

I stayed up quite late last night working on widgetizing my gardening blog on a test blog site. It was necessary to use the Exec-PHP plugin in order to use widgets on that site. Later this evening I’ll work on transferring the contents of my test widgets over to my gardening blog and it will officially be the first blog of ours that is fully widgetized.

I’m sure I’ll move quickly and use widgets for all of our blogs sidebars.

The great thing about using widgets on your wordpress site is that if you want to change your theme you can do so very easily as long as you pick a theme that is widget ready as your sidebar widgets should transfer over to the new theme quite nicely.

This theme is not widget ready at all. In fact the code used to make up the sidebars is very outdated coding indeed. It uses tables instead of unordered lists. Tables … that’s partly why this site takes a little longer to load than it should! So yes, a theme change is necessary.

So watch for the changes in our blogs and in the meantime if those of you who speak one of the languages that this site can now be translated in can give the translator a try I’d appreciate it. I’d love to know if the translations make sense! The translator buttons are located in the top left sidebar.

Dragon Naturally Speaking Medical cuts transcription costs for medical professionals

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The next time I go to work I’m going to have to tell the doctors that I work with in the ER about Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking – Medical dictation software.

Many of the doctors that I work with in the ER, regular medical doctors and specialists, dictate their notes via a phone service after they’ve seen a patient. Now, if they installed Dragon Naturally Speaking Medical on their office computer they could simply dictate their patient notes at their own computer. This software could dramatically lower transcription costs for hospitals, doctors offices and medical centers.

This software is said to have 99% accuracy. Dragon naturally speaking can be used with any type of medical software application as well as the full Microsoft Office Suite. I’ve used Dragon Naturally Speaking in the past, but this special Medical version contains a complete library of 14 medical specialty vocabularies covering over 60 sub specialties. The software can of course be further customized for individual specialty practices.

If you are a medical professional think about how Dragon Naturally Speaking Medical might save time and money for your office or practice.

Re-invent and Improve your blog

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There was a bit of heated discussion last week on the blog of one of the companies with whom I do some pa1d bl0gging work. They used to allow people to do three pa1d p0sts per day, but they’ve dropped down to two per day late last week.

They did that in the past for a few months and it actually allowed more people to get opportunities. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with what they’ve done. True they could have notified us in advance, but it’s there prerogative to do this.

Use this time to re-invent your blogs.

Stand back and take a good look at your site with fresh eyes. Believe me, you might not like what you see.

I’m not saying that I haven’t made a few mistakes with my sites. I have. But every once in a while I sit back and take stalk of what I’m doing and I keep trying to improve how I do things.

I’m stuck at home with a chronic illness. The money I make in various ways via the internet is the ONLY money I have coming in. I must pay the bills.

If the opportunities were truly there in the first place moving from three ops a day to two would hurt all of us financially, but the ops aren’t there. Hopefully now some of us that haven’t been getting any decent ops that FIT our sites will get some.

I do have several blogs on that particular companies system but as of the end of last week I’d only done 12 ops this month. TWELVE. That ain’t much. I do believe that most of the ops that I chose to take for my sites did fit their topic/niche.

Those that have been getting their 3 a day quota per blog … were all those ops really on topic for your site? Really?

Think about it this way. If every second post on your site, or in some cases large chunks of posts in a row are pa1d p0sts (some companies allow this!) do you really think your readers are going to stick around?

Are advertisers going to seek your blog out if it’s full of ads?

Is your sites PR going to go up? – Maybe maybe not. It depends on the quality of your posts, if you’ve been taking opportunities that fit your blogs topics, and most importantly if your readers are sticking around and occasionally linking to your site or your posts.

Now that we can only take two ops per day on this one site that many of us do work for try to find posting opportunities that truly fit your site.

If you write about things that suite your blogs topics it will only enhance your blog. Don’t kill your site by taking everything and anything just for the sake of money – no matter how much you need it.

I must be doing ok with my choices.

My readership has gone up each week. Many of my visitors interact with me via the comment section of my posts. I must be doing well in selecting things to write about that interest not only me but my readers as well.

Not only has my readership gone up, but so has advertiser interest. I’m getting offers for all kinds of things from free samples to sidebar links to posting and affiliate opportunities on a daily basis. See my post about Monetizing our Sites to learn what’s been happening here lately.

Vedis gave me a very nice compliment regarding my passion for blogging and how it shows in my posts – both pa1d and unpa1d.

I’m very thankful for that comment because it gives me some feedback as to what I’ve been doing, how I’m doing and what other bloggers are thinking.

All I can really say is that I try.

I try to write about things that interest me and hopefully my readers. Whatever I’m writing about I try to make it personal by adding my own experiences and thoughts into the post. I think that’s the key factor in any post. It’s the key factor in my posts.
These are mostly personal blogs that we are working on – make it personal. Write something that touches your readers.

You can’t do that if you are writing about things that you have no experience with or that you haven’t taken the time to research well.

I want everyone to have success which is why I take a moment to share what I’m doing every once in a while.

I know people are upset about the paid blogging company that has reduced the amount of jobs that one can do on a blog per day, but really use this time wisely.

Use this time to make your blog better. If you do you’ll probably end up raising your sites page rank and then you’ll also end up increasing the amount that you can earn through your blog in a variety of ways.

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