It's been four years

The last post in my blog is just before christmas on the 21st of December. Its high time that I rekindled my passion for writing and blogging, hopefully something that I have not lost over the years.

So my blog has a new name , time for the blooms to go away to reflect more about me , myself and Irene my world , is-as-is-me !

When I revisit my four years , the one thing that has turned my world upside down is my daughter Kv who at 1.5 years of age runs our whole family literally; everything revolves around her all the time. 

The fun shopping that I used to enjoy has become a scheduled one. The number of movies that J & I used to catch up in the cinemas is now a single digit.I do not have the luxury of a lazy Sunday and I cannot begin to write about how much I envy my pre-four year old for her 8 hours straight sleep :) But no , I would never for a single minute -well may be for a split nano second ;) )- swap it to go back in time. I love being a mother , I love my additional responsibilities.I am becoming a better person by learning a lot from her innocence. 

Okay , enough baby talk.Certainly that was not the only thing that happened in the four years.I had the opportunity to visit a majority of Europe from the romantic Paris city to the arctic side of the Scandinavia , I enjoyed all the scenic beauty. That's something to strike off the list.

And finally the world has changed a lot too , but you know that already , don't you ? Let me end the post with one of my memorable picture from the arctic circle in Norway !!

Lost & Found

For some reason I moved from blogger to wordpress & later from wordpress to blogger with a new identity.
I had my old posts back in wordpress and I wanted them all back safe & sound.
I googled a lot to find a tool called "blog2blog". Happy as one would be , I used to import all my posts even not minding the restriction of 100 posts per day.
The sad part of this whole thing was there was no means where I could migrate my comments.
A post without a comment is like a cake without an icing! (Chocolate cake with icing..wow)
Anyways coming to the point, I stumbled upon this wonderful utility only today wherein you can migrate the whole wordpress posts, including your comments&labels to blogger!
Wow .. and there my lost comments were found !!
Check this link for the tool!

How did this simple tool miss my eye until today .. Hmm..interesting..

Inspirational Blogger Award Contd.

Thanks for all the responses.
My first choice was very easy & she was the first person to comment.
Yes, its Honeybee for her spontaneity and humor. I had to give that to her.

I had difficulty in my second choice. With purpleheart on a vacation & santosh opting out I was looking at the rest of the comments.
I was startled at the similarity. All these guys think the same - THEY ARE GREAT

But atlast debating between Chriz & themahatma for commenting twice, I ended up giving this award to
themahathma, for the additional sense of humor.

Inspirational Blogger Award

Silverneurotic has given me the inspirational blogger award.Thank you silver!
It comes with this cute badge ,


Now comes the big job of awarding to someone. Like Silver, I also feel that all of you people in my blog roll inspire in one way or the other. So I'm going to give the award based on your answers to this question,

"Do you think you are inspirational? If so why?"

The selection will be based on the content,humor & crispness.
I'll close this on Tuesday 28/08/07 11:00 AM IST.

P.S: If you feel this is silly, then please feel free not to comment

My blog's makeovers

My dear blog,

I think you are really very lucky to have such a good owner who gives you new trendy looks as fashion changes

Like any other first time blogger, I choose the minima template initially,
I didn't like the navigation much, so I switched to a three column template & added a colorful header too ,
Now I really got bored with the minima look & wished to add some color to you, so I ended up with the three-column dots template,

Now this is the longest look that you have ever had.
When I realized that you needed another change, I choose this professional three-column rounder template,

And finally you now have this green look which I feel is trendy,cool yet professional

Until your next change,

Your loving,
Scribbler

Adding an image to the blog header

Earlier with Blogger, you had to tumble with the codes & use some { ,.img etc. to add a simple image to your header. And the worst part was that the image had to be hosted somewhere in the web.But now its possible to add an image to the header in just a click.So here are the steps to end up with a colorful header like mine.

1. Go to your dashboard.
2. Click Layout under Manage.
3. In the Elements that you find there you will have your header ;"Sweet scribblings" in my case.
4. Click the edit link there & a popup will open.
5. Browse your picture & add it or just give your web address(if you have it hosted).
6. You can place it behind /instead of the title & description.
7. Thats it,now your image is added to the header.

Pretty cool, right?

P.S :If you are unable to understand the steps mentioned above , you could have a peek at this screen cast that I found from blogger buzz.

Yet another look!!

My blog has a new make-over !!!
As usual it was not at all an easy task to arrive with the desired template;my three-column template making it even more difficult.Not to mention my widgets!
This is what I did ultimately,

• I downloaded the dots three column template from blogcrowds resources.
• Then copied the widgets manually from the old .xml file and pasted in the new file.(You can add it later through the page elements tab also. But this requires generating all your widgets again)
• Then uploaded the new template and made the final changes.

Hard work pays off atleast here. And this time I did keep in mind the changes needed for the smileys
And here is a glimpse of my old minima look.

Wiki

I had always been intrigued with the way wikipedia works ,managing its infinite users. My interests grew even more with the recent wikicamp held in Chennai & the subsequent reviews.
It was then I came to know about a new term called unconference !!
And now I'm a proud wiki member and have my own page in blogging wikia. Though right now this has nothing but my blog feeds. My wiki page
Wiki pages have this powerful versioning feature that versions every saved page in its history folder. I understood its immense power when I deleted some lines in a wrong page!!

I have even enlisted my name in the blogging wikians

Colorful backgrounds

Just added a colorful background to my plain header. Always wanted to add one ; but never knew a proper method do execute it.
Stumbled upon this site blogger tips & tricks by Peter Chen and included my forest background using this post.
The catch here will be finding the image with a proper size suitable for your blog header.
In case you just think "Man, every time my image is crushed due to my header height", no worries. Just go to edit html under template and look out for "#header". There include
"height:150px ;" anywhere within { & }. You can change the number as you please.
Did you find this useful, do leave a comment.

Smileys

Reading my helmet post one of my friends commented that just because I could add smileys I had put a whole bunch there! Yes , its quite true !!
I had used smileys previously also , like in this post. But when I changed my template, smileys seem to appear with a box around them as if in a mirror !!
So , I reinstalled them again and found out that I had missed a small piece of code in my new template and now here my smileys again
Smileys can be obtained with grease monkey and a .js script as described here
Have a smiley day !!!

I'm becoming little techi in my blog with this 2nd blogging post .. !!!

A different look

My blog has a new look now,having spent some good amount googling! It was not an easy task arriving at this template;I have a very poor knowledge in blog designing.Having read & heard from people that wordpress offers better designs than blogger I signed up a wordpress account . My first concern was if it was possible to move my old posts and links from blogger to wordpress? After searching a bit I found that yes,it was very much possible and cool all my posts got transfered just like water flowing from one cup to another!
Next, comes the design part. As mentioned in each and every page I read about wordpress there are plenty of designs compared to blogger.com. And after trying almost everything, I finally settled with this one.
Then came the problem which I found very dissatisfying since I had put a good amount of effort in wordpress!! There is no option where you can edit your template to change your fonts or rearrange your elements.Simply you cant touch the html code! I'll list the reasons which made me to stick to blogger.com:

• Fonts and colors can not be changed
• Page elements can not be rearranged
• Though there are huge templates ,to find one meeting all the requirements is difficult.
• Using a custom image is also pretty lousy as the image places are always horizontal and lengthy.

I went no further than this to waste anymore time. So I quickly learned from blogcrowds about the new template designs available.Though they are not as vast as wordpress, they are customizable in every inch.Even a novice like me who does not have much knowledge in html or css can easily edit the code using the online help.
So thats my blog's new look , customized according to my needs.Simply and neat as I want !!
And the new addition is the scripting in हिंदी!