OK everyone forget what we learned so far about geting paragraph spacing on this new HSB interface- for the real answers, go here, courtesy of good friends at this here 'ol blog.

I can't believe it, I missed my blog's Birthday. I will have to back-date this entry just to make it look good.

I started blogging one year ago [today].

So! Happy Birthday to my Blog.    

The best thing about blogging so far has been the acquaintances I've made. We all share a unique lifestyle, as well as our joys and even horrible tragedies, when they happen to each other.

Since you have all been here for me I don't want to cop out on you>

The next thing I have learned from blogging is I've become a much more succinct reader and writer.

That saves time, which is truly a blessing.

God Bless you all~

and what does it take to get paragraph spacing on this new HSB?

The winner is I Love My Blog.

I'll let you know when the bumper stickers (and maybe more..?) are available!

Thanks to all who voted.

This is your last chance to vote for your favorite blog bumper sticker. I need some room on my sidebar and am taking the poll down. I am considering printing up the winning bumper sticker (when I get my next windfall of cash)…(you know, one of those surprises from God) and making them available at only pennies above cost (hey, I have to teach the kids something! With a Socialist representing VT in Washington, we need some good old fashioned Capitalist training around here.)

Anyway- I think it will be mail order only, because that’s the only way I can handle getting the kids to help out. All orders will receive a free complimentary Keep Your Baby bumper sticker (or how many you want.) (See below.) Yes, these are absolutely free, as many as you want.

So vote if you haven’t, or vote again for your favorite- go ahead, throw the votes, it doesn’t matter. Soon we may all have a blog bumper sticker we can use and live with!!  

When I began a blog I realized it would be very easy to be someone I’m not, or to at least sugar-coat my life. For example, it would have been easy to make it look like I am completely together all of the time, effortlessly gliding from one project to another, as I smile at my compliant children. It’s too easy to laugh at all the difficult moments I have, and I don’t remember how much I’ve shared, so I hope I’ve never given that impression. [I am an organized person who uses organization to free up time in life to actually live, but I am not married to it.]

Then I read or heard something recently which made me see blog identity in a different light. Our blog is a unique place because we can’t be pre-judged here. Strangers cannot bump into our blog with preconceived notions of who we already are. As long as we’re honest, the basic facts of our lives will be the first thing a person runs into.

Furthermore, we get to choose what those basic facts about us are going to be. We decide what we are going to disclose. I would guess that most reasonable honest folks are sharing up front what they most want to be known for at first glance.

So many of us include our relationship with God, the number of our children, and then perhaps a few other things, like where we live, maybe some educational & experiential background, etc., the choices are endless.

We are given the opportunity through our blogs to create the most important side of ourselves to share with others. That is, to me, one thing which makes a blog so…fascinating. I am visiting a page which a person has created to introduce their self to me.  Even though our homeschoolblogger community focuses primarily on homeschooling, I think the effect is the same.

I am meeting someone who shares these things with me before we walk into a room and all of my first-impression sensors go to work. I get to meet someone based on their values up front right away, and then I get to read their writing, a sure introduction to a person’s mind, soul and strength.

So in this way, I think blogs are a very individual way to meet someone. I think all this has something to do with the love of blogging. If you like people, you are going to love blogs, and vice-versa.

All of the above presumes I am visiting honest bloggers: at homeschoolblogger, and at sites that take place because of this site, I am not worried about falsity.

Did you see the article in USA Today about blogging? (No link.)

Apparently the best defense to a libel suit is being able to prove what you say is true. How this fits in with our post post-modern definition(s) of truth, I do not know…perhaps inferences or opinions are free of libel suits, but out-and-out accusations are open to libel..?

I really liked these words from LaShawn Barber’s Corner:

Blog because you like/love it, not because you want to be read and linked by “A-list” bloggers…

…blogging is open and democratic and egalitarian in the sense that starting a blog is free and non-discriminatory, and relatively painless to set up. The more you put into it, the more you’ll get out of it, but you have to be realistic.

There is no affirmative action in the blogosphere, and for that I’m glad. People link to bloggers they like, bloggers who share their views and write good posts. It’s voluntary. There are no government quotas to fill or entitlements to hand out.

I think those are great words about the spirit of blogging.

Many bloggers also read those whose views they do not share.

I think most bloggers must love to write. I  write (non-electronically) all over the place: childrens’ books and journals, my own journal, letters…whatever and whenever I can. That’s why blogging captured my interest so much. (Then I realized I could have a support group in a box anytime I wanted to. Then I realized bloggers were changing the shape of main stream news!)

It can lend to the general discussion, but my priorities are pretty clear: 6 children, 14 more years of home education. The best use of the blogosphere for me is to share in discussion, learn, be encouraged, and try to encourage others. (I am opinionated enough to have plenty to write about otherwise.)

Sometimes I come across something specific I want to talk about. It’s fun to interact with folks. It’s a change from the usual work of the day, which just ends up enhancing the day. A good challenging talk can be a useful exercise for an instructor in rhetoric (as most homeschool moms usually become), not that I’m there yet.

We can’t be all of who we are through the keyboard, but I do enjoy what we can convey.

Enjoy your blog!

I know this shouldn't be difficult, but I am only getting the HTML code at the bottom of my post when I try to add tags from Technorati Tag Builder/ Ultraseeker- I do not get the neat little sentence of tags by subject.

I've read the directions. What am I doing wrong? 

This is what my husband wrote about my excitement over his starting a blog:

“It means a lot to her to be able to share with ‘Big Daddy’ what has been ground shaking for her.”

He’s right on the 1^st account, and the 2^nd: I ABSOLUTELY love writing and reading blog(s). It is wonderful on so many levels: sociability, support group in a box, creativity, keeping up with news, networking, finding deals, and being an example to our children.

What? Why?

For this reason, now hanging over my computer:

“Blogs can assist the forward-thinking homeschooler and encourage the isolated mom, but the relationship between blogs and homeschools goes deeper than that, in my opinion. I see significant parallels between the two movements. Journalists and educators have a lot of power in our society; the two professions essentially shape what Americans think. When homeschoolers dared to teach their own, it drove the NEA crazy... and now that bloggers are in full swing, the mainstream media is feeling the heat. I see bloggers and homeschoolers as the two most obvious success stories in our post-modern world.”   -S. Somerville                     (emphasis mine)                

This quote is from one of several Scott Somerville interviews recently done.

The way I see it, if I am supporting my children in their blog experience, it is an avenue to teach what we’ve already been learning about being an informed, active citizenry; it also prepares them with a skill to develop and carry into their, and America’s, future.

It's time to vote for your favorite blog bumper sticker.

The winning slogan will eventually be made into a bumper sticker available for purchase.

The voting takes place on my side-bar.

There is still time to enter a suggestion for a bumper sticker: just leave it in the comments.

Thanks for voting!

Homeschool Blog Watch compiles several of the latest homeschool blog headlines into one place. You can add your blog by reading the info here; brought to you by homeschoolbuzz.

OK, let me see if I can get this straight…

The White House staff watch Technorati and TruthLaidBear to see which topics are getting the most attention, to be prepared for it to hit the other news. They anticipate the printed and TV news media reporting on these items after it has surfaced in the blogs. 

That means the bloggers are now forcing the hand of the media and news outlets.

A news anchor doesn’t sit down to the mike anymore to talk about what the old news generators have put before him/her. The news generators of old must be doing a hot dance to keep up with the blogosphere (or they’re going to be unemployed pretty soon, right?)

This means the news is not a media hand me down to the public anymore; the public, by demand of interest, is deciding which items are going to be talked about.

Do you feel like a Founding Father would smile about this? I do.

I went to visit TheTruthLaidBear Homeschool page, and saw my blog listed! I'd asked Dana to check my blog for me to see if it's appropriate for the page. She prefers the blogs to be about homeschooling, for the most part. It's a wonderful "front page" blog round-up, welcome to all interested.

Of course, I take exception with being listed as "a insignificant microbe" in the ecosystem. The grammar is wrong, and you know, that's hard enough for a homeschool mother to live with!

Secondly, I would prefer to be called a significant microbe, not for my ego, which matters not, but because it's proper.

There is no such thing as an insignificant microbe. It defies God's creation to think it so.

Let's imagine a day in the world without microbes:

Nothing dead would go away (or decompose). No recycling of energy into other forms of energy, as the First Law of Thermodynamics states: Energy cannot be created or destroyed; only changed from one form into another.

All the oceans would die without phytoplankton.

All the plants would die without being able to fix Nitrogen or change it into other forms.

We would all starve, not only from all the above, but also because we'd be unable to digest our food.

So you'd have all the plants, people, oceans, and soon animals dieing, and then the bodies lying around in great heaps, without microbes.

And they call us insignificant. Humph! Microbes, unite! After all, a microbe took down Alexander the Great, right?

Have a great day everyone!

Is it just me, or do they not exist?

While getting our van ready for travel, I wondered about blog bumper stickers...is there such a thing?

My (quick) online search disclosed only 2 results.

1- Pro-blog, made by blogger Bill Bobbs:

                                         I Think, Therefore I Blog.   

1- Anti-blog, probably funded by the New Your Times, in an effort to stifle the competition.

So perhaps there is a need? After all, bumper stickers make a statement. You have to admit they are part of our culture. My husband and I made a bumper sticker once, to empower women carrying a child (and being pressured into abortion)

 .

So many people dislike it, it doesn’t last a day on bulletin boards.

Then there was the time my Bush bumper stickers got scratched off my van on Election Day 2004.    

Anyway, bumper stickers do not go unnoticed.

Leave your idea for a blog bumper sticker in the comments. I'll list them all (with credits) when I return, and set up a poll (separately, without names) for voting.

Who knows, God could bless us and fund blog bumper stickers.  I think He cares about a free & independent press in America.  Genious is already getting me make-your-own bumper sticker prices.

I’ll start:

BLOGGER  ON  BOARD

I  LUV  TO  BLOG

I  LOVE  MY  BLOG

IGNORANCE IS BLISS…

OR YOU COULD BLOG

IF YOU DON’T READ BLOGS,

YOUR NEWS IS OLDS

UNITED ARMY OF BLOGGERS

Or,

UNITED ARMY OF BLOGGERS

We Are Watching You

And

 Have Your License Plate

BLOGWATCH

IN EFFECT

I BELIEVE

in BLOGGING

LOOSE AMERICA'S CHAINS

BLOG!

OK. Do you have any ideas? I’d love to hear them. You have time: I will set up the poll when I get back. (We’re going 2,000 miles by car, if that gives you any idea how much time you have!)    If you want to, you can leave a link to here from your page, so we get a lot of input.

SpunkyHomeschool has posted some blogging tips.

There is a link to tag your blog entries and one for getting news alerts to the subjects that interest you.

Remember, it's about a strong and independent free press, for a strong and independent free people.  Keep blogging! 

A homeschooling Wiki has been set up by KnowHomeSchooling. SpunkyHomeschool added a page for blogs. Instructions to add your blog are here. Someone may find you from this page.

What is a Wiki? Definition and link to more info is here

Many are using their weblog title to name their blog. Just be sure that you use your username when you edit the URL code. If you enter your username twice (as shown in the code supplied by Somerschool) it will also display on your page next to the text you've supplied about your blog.

If you joing the Wiki, you can also add your expertise to the definitions, and help build a great resource for homeschooling. Folks considering homeschool may browse through there as well.

Here is a warning from the sign-up page:

From the website, defining Wiki:

A wiki is a type of website that allows users to add, remove, or otherwise edit and change all content very quickly and easily, sometimes without the need for registration. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for collaborative writing. The term wiki can also refer to the collaborative software itself (wiki engine) that facilitates the operation of such a website (see wiki software), or to certain specific wiki sites, including the computer science site (and original wiki), WikiWikiWeb, and the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

The word wiki is a shorter form of wiki wiki (weekie, weekie) which is from the native language of Hawaii (Hawaiian), where it is commonly used as an adjective to denote something "quick" or "fast" (Hawaiian dictionary). As an adverb, it means "quickly" or "fast".

In essence, a wiki is a simplification of the process of creating HTML pages combined with a system that records each change that occurs over time, so that at any time, a page can be reverted to any of its previous states. A wiki system may also include various tools, designed to provide users with an easy way to monitor the constantly changing state of the wiki as well as a place to discuss and resolve the many inevitable issues, namely, the inherent disagreement over wiki content. Wiki content can also be misleading, as users are bound to add incorrect information to the wiki page.

Many wikis will allow completely unrestricted access so that people are able to contribute to the site without necessarily having to undergo a process of 'registration', as had usually been required by various other types of interactive websites such as Internet forums or chat sites.

The first wiki, WikiWikiWeb, is named after the "Wiki Wiki" line of Chance RT-52 buses in Honolulu International Airport, Hawaii. It was created in 1994 and installed on the web in 1995 by Ward Cunningham, who also created the Portland Pattern Repository.

Wiki is sometimes interpreted as the ackronym for "What I know is", which describes the knowledge contribution, storage and exchange function.

Key characteristics

A wiki enables documents to be written collectively in a very simple markup language using a web browser. A single page in a wiki is referred to as a "wiki page", whilst the entire body of pages, which are usually highly interconnected via hyperlinks, is "the wiki"; in effect, a wiki is a very simple, easy-to-use user-maintained database for searching information.

A defining characteristic of wiki technology is the ease with which pages can be created and updated. Generally, there is no review before modifications are accepted. Most wikis are open to the general public without the need to register any user account. Sometimes session log-in is requested to acquire a "wiki-signature" cookie for autosigning edits. More private wiki servers require user authentication. Many edits, however, can be made in real-time, and appear almost instantaneously online. This can lead to abuse of the system.

URL of this page, with more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki

Why Homeschool has links to suggestions for increasing blog traffic.

Rajesh Setty has informative technical advice on increasing blog traffic here.

One of the suggestions involves burning your RSS Feed. If you have learned how to use RSS to consolidate your reads, you can  learn things to do with your own RSS by reading at this site:

site address: www.feedburner.com/fb/a/home

Now I am way, way a newbie at this so if I can take the plunge and write a tentative post about it, and you don't know what I'm talking about, you can still try it. Experiment! Get messy, make mistakes...it won't be that bad.

Somerschool has begun, and the first lesson is Using RSS Feeds. An RSS feed allows a user who has subscribed to your feed to view your headlines (titles), posts, or summaires, at a site the user has chosen- which then compiles all the feeds subscribed to, into one place. There is nothing displayed by your site feed that is not already on your blog.

Bloglines is one such compiling site: free, easy to use. You can look through their website without signing up if you first want to learn more about their service. They offer other services, like blog searching, really handy…all free.

I know you are thinking, “I don’t need another website to manage,” and, “I get the same thing when I use my HSB Friends link.”

Let me use my husband as an example: 

He is a scientist. They go to conferences in order to share ideas and current research. The big draw, like most conferences, is seeing your favorite folks in the business. Well, what if those people blogged their thoughts, projects, etc. all year long? A blogger is doing that.

Now there is a community where all those people can read one another’s thoughts, and you get to hand-pick which ones you are going to read. Everyone else can read them on a global basis, including yours, and you can all comment to each other. It is a daily conference in a box. (I don’t know why everybody doesn’t blog, each profession.)

Well, each blog is like a newspage from a person. Do you have time to pick up each newspage and look it through it? Would you like it all compiled in one place? This is useful if the minds you want to read do not blog specifically on HSB.

If you sign up at a place like Bloglines, add the URL of the first site you’d like to keep track of, and see how it all works. The news they have there is very informative for using and understanding the site and its features. You can start small and add as you go.

You can create for yourself your own newspaper, off the internet, providing the site you want has as RSS Feed. I have invested some time today in setting up my individualized, personal newspaper of tomorrow.

View the incoming of the people you want to read in one place. THAT is time-saving!