Continue reading]]> I’ve been struggling for a month to determine why WordPress will not allow me to upload new pictures with my blog posts. My blog host has been repeatedly, and spectacularly, unhelpful. Last week, even pictures that had previously been uploaded okay began to spontaneously resize themselves all over their respective blog posts. Have I mentioned, this kind of thing makes me nuts?

I finally took it to my blog guy (Joel is a gem!), who helped to narrow the focus to the point where this weekend I’ll be deleting and attempting to re-upload revised pictures all over my blog. I soooo hope this works!

In the meantime, the blog will stay up, but you still might see some wacky looking images here and there while this process is occurring.

Thank you in advance for your patience! Can I borrow it for awhile?
 

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… the more they stay the same! Photo Credit

In the next few months, I’m planning some key changes for Third of a Lifetime.

One dismaying fact about pulling together links for my “year end PTSD Resources” project was the huge number of broken links in the 50+ weekly Best Tweets series. The existence of a “broken link checker” plug-in — and zillions of very inventive, possibility-creating plug-ins for self-hosted WordPress — changed my world-view on the state of this blog.

So I’m happy to announce that Third of a Lifetime is moving to its own domain in the next couple of weeks — but I’m also pleased to add that nothing’s really changing! I’m keeping the same theme, with a few more bells and whistles. WordPress will automagically redirect links from this URL to the new one, so all the inbound links previously created won’t break. That WP began offering this mapping service clinched the deal. The new URL is not in service yet, but let’s say that it’s not changing much, either.

Also planned in the near future, my book Becoming One will be formatted for Kindle and other ebook formats. Both paper and ebook versions will be available for purchase directly from the new blog site, as well as from all of the usual suspects.

There’s more, but I need to pace myself. I’ve got my “dream big” thing going again, and I like the direction in which this is all moving. (Movement: my word for 2011!)  I will formally announce when the new blog site is ready for the world! Thank you for your support, both here and on Twitter, and (soon! shhhh) Facebook.

Continue reading]]> Google and YouTube have made a great video tool available for anyone: Search Stories.

Do you remember last year’s Google Super Bowl commercial “Parisian Love” that consisted entirely of a series of Google Search results telling a guy’s story of study abroad, meets girl, etc. through finding a church in Paris? It created quite a buzz!

They’ve made that same technology available for anyone, for free, and it’s E A S Y! You don’t need a camera or any special software. You only have to know how to fill in the search form blanks! I can deal with that.

I’m like a little kid who just learned how to tie her shoes: I did this all by myself! And you can do it, too, for any topic!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04KMkW1YRTI&fs=1&hl=en_US]

Continue reading]]> I really like the new Twitter Lists function; I already created about 10 Lists. (Go to my Twitter profile, and you can see them in the right column.) I have a lot on my plate lately, and I need all the organization I can get. It’s going to take some fine-tuning, but worth the time.

Before the Lists were rolled out, I somehow got the impression that not only could you create Lists to see all the feeds within that List segregated from your main feed, but that you could then tweet things that would only be seen by that particular List. Alas, not so. If there’s a third party app that does this for PCs, I’d truly appreciate someone pointing me to it.

Meanwhile, I came to a flat stop in my Twitter List enchantment when contemplating a List for tweeps/peeps who self-describe as either a child abuse survivor or a person with DID/MPD. On the one hand, they did self-describe, publicly. Somewhere. On the other hand, I’ve always felt a keen sense of responsibility for maintaining any survivor’s privacy to the extent I am able. Any List designated as “public” can be seen by anyone, and can be one-click followed by anyone. For these groups, that gives me pause, with good reason.

Over the last 15 years on the Internet, I’ve been targeted by (1) a guy pretending to be DID so he could talk to real DID people “to help flesh out the character in his novel”, which was not disclosed till much time had passed; (2) several ethically-challenged therapists (and at least one therapist wannabe) who “wanted some experience” with a DID client, without actually being their therapist; and (3) far too many people who get a thrill out of harassing vulnerable people. Also, I don’t have the issue of fearing someone (like a former abuser) might figure out who I actually am behind an online alias — but many survivors do.

So it made me a bit queasy to so helpfully, voluntarily, publicly, aggregate survivors for anyone to see and, perhaps, exploit. (At least don’t make it easy.) And that is where the public vs. private choice for Twitter Lists shines. I’ve made my survivor Lists private, and only I can see them. Even the people on the private List can’t see that they are on it. I tested this.

This works for me. Have you thought about these issues when creating your own Twitter Lists? How are you handling it?