Women's Legacy Project

Our Lives Change The World

Information and Tech

7 Things To Stop Giving A Darn About In 2015

Blogging & Writing, How To, Information and Tech

Ok, the word, darn, in the title really means sh*t, and we all know it.  But the expression is so quaint and rooted in women’s culture; I just have to use it.

needle-517037_1280
Darning Needle

 
I stole the idea for this article from the Huff Po, I did not read their article because that corporation does not pay their writers and that is just plain wrong.  Blog or not, good writing is worth paying for, and, “Yes I know that I ended the previous phrase, which could have been a sentence, with a preposition.”  Sometimes I still use two spaces after a sentence.  Take that grammar and consistency police.
Stealing ideas is a difficult topic to broach.  Intellectual  property is real.  Sacred iconic designs of First Peoples should not be used disrespectfully, or without permission.  Stealing certain previously composed patterns of notes will land you in big fat DMCA prison.  Ideas for a list that bloggers can write about probably does not fall into this subcategory of protected ideas.  Reprinting the entire article that Emma Gray, the editor of HuffPo Women, would be wrong.
Writing this article is not wrong.  In fact, I think it falls into the appropriate use of  “imitation is the most sincere form of flattery” genre of idea generation.  But sincere appreciation is shown through referencing those works from which you have drawn to create a new piece of art, writing, or speaking.
Obviously using a writer’s work (and bloggers are writers, my sweet) without proper permission is theft, so that is also obviously NOT one of the things to which you should give no thought as this year unfolds. Segue to the list this post’s title promises:

7 Things To Stop Giving A Shit About In 2015

(or any other year…)

  1. Celebrity.  If I were going to go for recognition with achievement… well… I can’t even finish this sentence.  I just don’t get it.  Vacuous notoriety for vapid air heads.  Just don’t care.
  2. Having the Right Things.  Right is a world I do not much care for.  I’m on the left of the spectrum.  Right by which decree?  I like nice things but I define right all by myself.  Be comfortable and think about why something is right.
  3. Wearing the Right Things.  Same as above.  Decorate yourself as you wish, with what looks good on you, what feels good.  Polish some old shoes.  Give the money you save to charity.
  4.  Reality TV.  Okay, all TV watchers have some sort of secret peep show relationship with some series.  But…
  5. Faux News. I’m not even going to go here.
  6. What Politicianists Want Us To Do.  Yes, I made up the word politicianist, but it is a good one.  Like capitalists or industrialists, “politicianists”  raise what should be a part of normal society to the ¨uber-absurdity of being all one does supposedly to help others but in fact to serve oneself.
  7. Old Occurrences That Haunt You.  Because, well, we all know that regrets, and allowing the past to haunt us sabotages everything good we can do in the future.

So, just about a week into the New Year, as resolutions drop like flies I just thought this might provide a good replacement plan for a few dear readers.

First World Problems

Blogging & Writing, Home & Family, Information and Tech, Politics and Government

On a recent weekend I spent the morning thinking about women, education, empowerment, information, fundamentalism and the tremendous power we fortunate women who have access to social media and the time to use it are frittering away. I am not lecturing, I am as guilty as anyone.
First of all, I do not expect every woman to want to be political. I understand that politics is man’s game, that is, a game where the rules were created by men.  Our current political system is derived from previous systems and those trace back to territorial and resource protective strategies as old as human communities. Rancor is ever-increasing, and it was not great to begin with.
I really do understand wanting to stay out of the fray.  To live a functional life I have to manage my stress level quite carefully.  Bumping over a stress limit can send me into a fit of tears and fight/flight behavior that is nearly impossible for comfortable folks to fathom.  I have learned to recognize these very thing  lines between acceptable and melt down levels fairly well and only veer off course a couple of times a year.
Some of this may be my basic constitution that infused my personality with a toughness and resilience long before any trauma and situational stress triggering of post traumatic stress reactions ever came into play.  But maybe I learned to be tough after living through nasty situations and breaking through barriers in my path.
But all that said, I expect women who are aware, intelligent, and informed to do everything they possibly can to help others who do not have the luxury of time and money to spend on activities that do not directly support food, shelter and basic hygiene in their lives.  Most of the world is hungry, has no access to clean water, water with which to wash, nor access to toilets.
philippines-321674_640
If I can keep knocking away at the problems as I see them and keep crafting solutions as best I can, almost everyone can.
In basic anthropology courses I took when I was an undergraduate, I was exposed to the concepts of environmental degradation, climate change, and that pandemics and starvation are likely to emerge when ecosystems, if not the entire biosphere, begin to fluctuate and exhibit crazy flip-flops looking for a new balance.  No guarantees that humans will be around when a new balance emerges.  That was a long time ago.  We’ve known.  Those of us who understood have not been silent, and are not silent now, but most of the women I know, even the really smart ones, avoid thinking about unpleasantries of what life will be like in a decade or two.
Just Blog It
We can change things.  But we have to act.  Now.  A major opportunity exists in form of elections next month.
I personally believe if enough of us decide to write about making intelligent choices in this election, in light of current events, that we can have a significant influence on how our women readers think about the issues and get them to the polls.  I will be writing pieces about ebola, fundamentalism (as in ISIL,) infrastructure, community, and scientific/critical thinking. I hope these will give others ideas as to how they can frame issues.
Let’s do it.
 
 
 
 

Friday Find – Photo Watermark by Ifunia

Blogging & Writing, Graphics, Information and Tech, Reviews

I am returning to my old ways.  Sounds scary no?  Actually it just means a bit more organization for me and predictability for you.  I used to do Wednesday App of the Week.  But today is Thursday and this post will go live tomorrow.  So Wednesday App of the Week is transforming into a Friday Find.  (Skip down to the Photo Watermark heading if you just want the review and not my delightful lead up to it.)
In the manner of any good 21st Century entrepreneur, the recent leaks of celebrity images, got me to thinking about how to protect my highly prized images.  Oh stop it!  Not that kind of image.
I have hundreds if not thousands of images that I created for use in Virtual Worlds when I built, played, and mingled in them. They were primarily textures I created using GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program) an open source program much like Adobe PhotoShop®.  I used them as wallpaper in buildings I made, and as fabrics for clothing, curtains, and pillows.  Rocks, mountains and machines also had my images slapped on them.  If you bought textures from Casita Gaia in Second Life®, those were textures I created.
Using these images more widely on the inter-webs means that I have something worth something.  So rather than trying to turn these graphics into items for sale, I decided that I would use them in my own media and marketing efforts, and use them as image frames, meme-ish text backgrounds, and on occasion as plain old pretty images for my blog posts.  To do this I need to watermark them, so it becomes more difficult for someone to lift them from my website or blog and use them.
As I said, I create images in GIMP.  Love the product!  But opening it and creating a transparent layer of the proper size to match and then overlay the various images and them batch processing them as new files takes more time than I want to spend.  I knew there were lots of programs and apps that could do this, but I did not know of a specific one.  I wanted to use the app on my desktop and laptop as that is where I access most of these textures for manipulation and not on one of my mobile devices as image manipulation on those just isn’t for these presbyopic eyes.  So I scanned the apps in the App Store.

The Search

I searched the term “watermark.”  A page that looked much like this one below resulted.
apps search watermark
Some seemed too limited in scope.  Some seemed too expensive.  Some had rotten reviews or no reviews.  Some were version 1.o.
I knew what I wanted; I’d been thinking about what I needed to do and how I wanted to do it for months upon months.  So it was simple to eliminate the ones that did way too much, or that did not focus on watermarking.  I already had a great image manipulation program.  I wanted something just for watermarking.  Anything without a review will not get my purchase;  if someone wants me to beta test they are way off the mark they should ask for beta testers before marketing the app.  Then I clicked on one with lots of good reviews that showed a $2.99 price.  This page then came up.
photo water mark
It had a clever icon.  I liked that… a lot. It also had a simple descriptive title.  The reviews were well written, quite different and told me that people who had wanted to do what I wanted to do with my images sincerely like the app.
I did a quick search on the company, and it showed a legit company with a track record.

The Sale

The price was right.  And the marketing of the price was right.  In the image above you might be able to see the line just after the title that reads:  ***** Limited -Time Special Offer!!!  Regular Price: $18.99 *****  I am such a sucker for a bargain.   The “reduced” price did it for me.  I saw that and the purchase was made before I could stop myself, if I had wanted to stop.

PHOTO WATERMARK Wins My Approval

photowatermark
Actual batch watermarking of my images.

Intuitive, simple, effective.  What more could I want?  It did what it promised.  It was easy.  I have the products I wanted.

  • I opened the app.
  • I clicked add files and chose one of my textures.  I repeated this until I had a bunch of images showing in the white work space below the active image area.
  • I clicked on the text button on the upper right and then took my cursor and dragged a box over space on the image where I wanted text to appear and typed my text.
  • Then I highlighted the text and clicked on the font button and selected a font and color, then I scaled and aligned the text box.
  • I highlighted all the images in the white lightbox below the working area and made sure the one image I had typed text on was showing in the work active space and then selected the light blue “Apply to All” button.
  • Then I pressed save and a save popup box appeared and I created a new folder and selected the type of file I wanted – .png or .jpg were the choices I remember.
  • Then this resulted:

my watermarked images in a folder
I’m a happy camper.  I don’t know if I would have paid $18.99 for this.  Probably not, I am cheap.  But I am very happy with the products!  I suspect there are many bloggers out there who would love the ease and effectiveness of this product.
sote background
blue circles
autumn colors and light oil
As you can see, the watermarks do appear on different size images.  I was able to alter individual marks after the watermark was applied to all the images to adjust location and such but before I saved them.
Photo Watermark by Ifunia gets my vote, and I haven’t even tested out a bunch of the functions of the the app.  This company creates apps for both Windows and Macs so if Photo Watermark is not yet available for your PC, keep checking.
————-
I received no compensation for this review.  I simply wrote about a product I purchased and liked.

Heartbleed and Your Blog Security

Blogging & Writing, Business, Information and Tech, Security

Concerned about the Heartbleed computer vulnerability?  Me too.

What Is HeartBleed?

As soon as I heard about the massive hole in Open SSL that leaves the majority of sites and blogs on the internet open to data grabs, I went to a popular computer tech site, TechCrunch, to find out what is what.  The article there seems like a good overview of what is happening with the massive breach that makes, according to most reports I have read, over 60% of sites using OpenSSL protocol vulnerable to massive data breaches.
As soon as I realized this was very, very bad news. I then went to my “go to” source for blog security:  Sucuri.com’s blog.  I trust this company and if my site gets hacked these are the people I am going to for help.

Is My Site Infected?

Sucuri recommends going to  http://filippo.io/Heartbleed/ in order to find out if the servers you are using are affected by the vulnerability.
This site then recommended Heartbleed.com as a good source of information about the Heartbleed hack.

heartbleed

Fixed Open SSL has been released to fix the problem, but it must be deployed.  This is something done at the hosting service level so there really isn’t much an individual blogger can do beyond find out what the status of updates are on your hosting companies servers.

Recommendations

I can only tell you what I am doing;  I cannot make recommendations for you.  The old adage, “If in doubt, don’t.” seems like the most prudent course of action.
I will continue working on my sites as long as my host’s server comes up clean per testing on Filippo.  I probably won’t visit too many other sites and  I definitely will not use any financial or sites that have my private health information on them for a few days, or until I find out more about how the Apache and perhaps other types of servers are compromised and whether accessing my accounts makes my data more vulnerable.  I do not think it does.  But, better safe than sorry.  I’m banking in person and making any health copays in cash.  I’m also going to purchase groceries with cash.  I probably will not shop for anything else for a few days.
I will try to update this post when everything seems okay.  It could be a while.
 
 

Happy Pi Day & Women's History Month

Information and Tech

Pi Day

Pi is pronounced just like pie.  Pi is a transcendental number, and  represents the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.  Why is March 14th Pi Day?  The 14th day of March is written, in the United States, as 3-14.  Three point one four is often how pi is abbreviated although it has been calculated out to 10 trillion digits.

Celebrate Reason & Women

I love science, and although math is not my strong suit, I love the concept of Pi Day in all its nerdy glory.
At this particular time in history, I think it is more important than ever to celebrate knowledge.
This month is Women’s History Month, and Makers is honoring Katherine Johnson, a mathematician – I like their film interview with her, and I recommend watching it at makers.com/katherine-johnson
If you don’t know who she is, you have been missing a wonderful story of  behind-the-scenes history that is the perfect melding of mathematical history and women’s history.  There are so many aspects of her story that elucidate unspoken, or glossed over, truths in our culture.  I am fascinated by this pioneering womann research mathematician.
But a series of video interviews with Mrs. Johnson are also available on You Tube.  I include two below.

Katherine Johnson: Working at NASA:
Katherine Johnson: America’s First Space Flight:


I knew I had run across found an image of woman mathematician while hunting through government archives for retro women’s stories.  But I couldn’t find it.  I knew it was a public domain photo I used for something last year.  It was driving me crazy.  So I went to Pinterest and I found the pic!

c9105176aa575687f078806977cd554a
This photo is of Melba Roy, NASA Mathmetician, at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland in 1964. II suspect that she worked with Katherine Johnson.

This is all so relevant today.  The talk of black men engineers having a hard time at Langley (pre-NASA ) while black women were preferred in their jobs and the talk of working on planes and black boxes in the early days of flight data recorders perfectly flowed with the news coverage, at least the MSNBC news coverage I was watching as I wrote this post.

And That Indiana Pi Thing

Oh and I almost forgot.  I always mention the silly Indiana slip-up where they attempted to legislate the value of  pi to the 3 in the late 1800s.  They would have done it and left it that way if not for a Purdue Professor.  (Go Boilers!)

Fortunately, this vote took place the same day the head of Perdue University’s Mathematics Department, Clarence Waldo was at the statehouse securing funds for the University’s budget. When he heard the assembly was discussing mathematics, he listened in and was amazed. He spent the rest of the day educating Indiana senators on geometry and properties of transcendental numbers. His lessons were effective enough that the bill died on the Senate floor on February 11. — on About.com

Now go enjoy Pi Day!

pi day

5 Twitter Marketing Tactics Guaranteed to Annoy

Blogging & Writing, Business, How To, Information and Tech

Today I began checking out a new social media marketing dashboard.  I entered the hashtag #midlife and I saw posts from two of my most savvy blogging tribe compadres doing everything right, I note what they are doing right and move on, and then I see it.  The twitter post went something like this (oh and all the links have been changed, unlinked, and changed to a pretty light blue that means “there was once a real link here”):

Get your FREE Midlife Manifesto e-book buff.ly/1cmUVEm #midlife #women #wisdom http://t.co/xyz773pic.twitter.com/xyz77

This tweet seems promising, I love the concept of  issuing a manifesto, so I click to find out more about the book.  A Mailchimp sign-up box appears.  This makes me think of rule No. 1 in “How to Alienate Potential Customers, clients, and readers.”  In a word, phrase with image actually:

bird saying "twit!"
Don’t be a Twit!

Please do not do any of the following if you want to attract my demographic group, that has both money and power btw, to your site or product.

1. Engage in a one-sided sales pitch

Per the Tweet listed above: Who in their right mind will sign up for email from a site they haven’t even seen?

This shows that the person or company behind this tweet or site knows nothing about marketing. It certainly means that the poster places no value on me and hasn’t taken my experience into account.  Maybe the content is good, maybe it isn’t.  But I now have negative confidence when a few seconds ago I was neutral.  Don’t do this.  The subject may be great but you didn’t put any effort into finding out how to get me to want to see what you have to offer and download it.    That shows me that you don’t really value me.

Or this one that will set many if not most women into a frothing tizzy.

 2. Insult me
I saw a tweet just like this one this morning from  [names have been changed to protect the stupid):
@soandsolifeguru  Are you over 40 & lacking ‘spark’? I’ll get you fired up #motivation #midlife pic.twitter.com/yrbusstudwalltheanswrs 

Yeah, sure.  Put me down, call me old, and say that you, a man, can change me and teach me how to  act like something I am not, a giddy 20-something babe.  What your message really sends out to me: You are really telling me I’m old, have lost my zing, and  that you can save me.  I’m in the prime of my life, Mr. Creep.  Go back to the 1950s and help some TV Mom.  You want me to click on you.  No way.

3.  Appear Desperate, Un-savvy, or Rude

You can do this by tweeting what is essentially the same post, slightly altered in no way that counts several times in a row.  I found what I saw as essentially the same tweet appear concurrently in my search feed at 10:43 AM, 10:36 AM, 10:31 AM, and 10:29 AM from the same account @shewhoshallremainnameless
Obviously I’ve changed the account name because I am a nice person.  Only the links have been changed to protect the innocent in these actual tweets:

Tweet #1

She’s Got A Ticket To Ride, But She Don’t Care: Paula in #Vegas E-bk A #BLANKETY BLANK  ATE MY #MIDLIFE thisismywebsite.com

Jan 14, 2014 10:31 AM

Tweet #2

Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone: Wendy in #Vegas E-bk A #BLANKETY BLANK  ATE MY #MIDLIFE thisismywebsite.com

Jan 14, 2014 10:31 AM

Tweet #3
2 Sandwiches Short of a Picnic: Paula in #Vegas E-bk A #BLANKETY BLANK  ATE MY #MIDLIFE thisismywebsite.com
Jan 14, 2014 10:31 AM
Tweet #4

#Velveeta Cheese Shortage got you down? Laff it off w.: #Vegas E-bk A #BLANKETY BLANK  ATE MY #MIDLIFE
Jan 14, 2014 10:29 AM

Posting essentially the same post several times in a row definitely shows that the poster either does not understand the etiquette of non-sequential posting, or does not know about the scheduling of posts.  Either way there is a lack of professional knowledge about how to use social media to promote a publication.  The last option is that the poster is just rude and does not care enough to take the user of the social media channel into consideration and that is simply rude.

4. Post a Professional Retweet Without a Disclaimer
 Here is a “anonymized” version of what I would consider another bad tweet I spotted today:
RT @PenelopesAgent: “titleofmemoir” by @PenelopeBoredom is “Truly inspirational!” viewtitle.at/titleofmemoir  #sequel #memoir #midlife #depression http://t.pseudonymauthor.co.uk
This is questionable under several of my  “Annoy Me” triggers, but the biggie is that I have seen this retweeted several times this morning by the same two or three people.  Either they are friends of the author in which case they need to understand they are hurting the author more than helping her, or, and this is a big or, this is an undisclosed paid tweet.  If so, it is illegal in the U.S.  Any compensation for any post has to be disclosed.
5. Be Blah and Use Empty Words

The tweet discussed above in number 4:

RT @PenelopesAgent: “titleofmemoir” by @PenelopeBoredom is “Truly inspirational!” viewtitle.at/titleofmemoir  #sequel #memoir #midlife #depression http://t.pseudonymauthor.co.uk

uses the word inspirational which is a ho-hum word.  No one can know what inspires me.  It is presumptuous to use the word inspirational.  If I have been inspired by something I can say it inspired me to do something or be something but that is the extent of how it should be used unless you want to make people like me yawn.  The hashtags #memoir #midlife #depression signals a real sleeper to me.  #memoir should never be the first tag.  Personal exploration would be better, it uses more of your 140 characters, but it says volumes.  Similarly, the hashtag #depression does not exactly provide motivation to click through.  Cure depression, survive depression, stop depression; these are phrases that could be turned into hashtags that convey much more.  And the contextual association of midlife, depression, and memoir sort of create a “downer nexus,” no?
I know coaches tell us all to get out there and just do it and you will learn, gain experience, and become better or even expert, but it really is just fine to research best practices early on in your Twitter career.