New52 | Week 47

Continuing on my tech-themed installment of New52 posts, spread out so as not to cause anyone’s brain to explode. (Non-tech readers, feel confident that you can skip by these posts and live a full, happy life!)

Several weeks ago I made a “To Do” list of things in my personal life that I felt either needed to be added as “new” or that needed to be figured out because they’d been abandoned. Reading was #1 on that list, and it’s something that has always been a very valuable part of my life from the time I was a kid (and read every single Nancy Drew book that the library carried back-to-back).

In 2009 I bought my first eBook reader, a Sony PRS-505, and immediately fell in love. I thought I’d miss the feel of a paper book in my hand but I quite honestly NEVER have. In the first year that I had my Sony Reader I read 40 books and felt like I’d rediscovered an old friend. In 2010 I added about 20 more books to that running count and then … time got away from me. Two full-time jobs, my addiction to reality TV, my dedication to memory keeping – take your pick.

As far as my Sony Reader goes, I stopped using Sony’s proprietary software fairly early on when Christine alerted me to a donation-ware software called Calibre, which gave me a lot more options as far as customizing my book library. The Sony software was always buggy and was fairly limited as far as the organization I wanted to do as my book library grew. If you have an eBook reader (including the Kindle line, the B&N Nook, iPads/iPhones and Android Tablets) and find yourself less than thrilled with the software that came with it, I suggest giving Calibre a try for managing your library.

Also if you have a variety of eReaders in your household, Calibre is also handles eBook conversions. Which is nice when you want to be able to read one book across multiple devices, or if you used to have one eReader and switched to a new one. Mainly I just like to have non-proprietary software for my electronics because I don’t want to reinvent the wheel if I change manufacturers one day and I don’t like being dependent on the whims of gadget manufacturers who often don’t put as much time into their software as they do their hardware.

I’ve mentioned how Tom claimed my Sony Reader as his own a few months back (and has read more books in the months since than he has in the past few DECADES of his life – seriously, get an eReader, folks!) and I really made peace with that because if I wasn’t reading, at least someone was!

Which brings us to when Tom bought me my Asus Transformer for our anniversary and I found a convoluted way of getting my ePub formatted eBooks onto my tablet by dropping them into Dropbox then going to my tablet and  importing them into Aldikowhich is a free eBook application for Android that will render the ePub format.

For the record, I can purchase books online through the Android App Store and other eBook retailers and download them directly to my tablet, but I like to keep all my books in my library on my computer for a few reasons – 1) so that they’re all in one place and I don’t re-buy a book I already have, which I’ve done a few times with books I purchased on my Droid phone and 2) so that I can re-tag them in Calibre with the genres and other identifiers that are important to me before they hit my device, otherwise I wind up with a messy library on my device and that drives me a little crazy.

So back to my “To Do In Life” list, I needed to find an easier way to make my books accessible on my tablet and given the fact that it’s WiFi capable (and my Sony Reader was not) I knew there had to be some way to stream my library over our WiFi and still be able to search my library by all the metadata I’d so carefully created over these past three years in Calibre. Having never investigated this possibility before, I was thrilled to see that Calibre has a built-in content server that allows me to stream my  library from my computer, on my home network or around the world.

Just a few clicks within the Calibre software and a quick entry into Aldiko and I could access my entire eBook library, my personal metadata organization intact, from anywhere in the house. I’ll tackle “around the world” when the need arises, which I don’t see happening.

For anyone keeping track, I’ve read 3 books since I got my library up and running. It’s amazing how much my laziness can win out over my desire to read. It fills me with a enormous sense of pride to be able to cross “Read more books, dummy!” off my ongoing To Do list for a happier life.

About This Project

New52 is a cooperative project between Christine and I that invites participants to live outside the box a little bit more and try things outside their comfort zone. Just because it’s 52 things for us doesn’t mean it needs to be 52 things for you. If you participate this week, please leave a link to your blog post, scrapbook page, photograph or other recorded history of your walk on the wild side in the comments below. It isn’t about making a life-altering changes every week, it’s about keeping an open mind and embracing little changes in your life.

New52 | Week 46

This is where things get a little crazy – not because I’m not doing new things anymore, but because I do them now and it doesn’t even register as an event in my mind. I sat down to write this post and thought “Have I even done anything new?” then I leafed through my past few weeks’ of entries on 750words.com and found new things all over the place. And there were enough geeky tech ones to do a tech themed series of posts. Lucky you! (My non-tech readers can safely skip by these tech related installments of New 52)

I’ll start with 750words.com itself, because I never featured it back when I first signed up. Katrina Kennedy chose it as her Pick of the Week when she was on The Digi Show back in late September. 750Words.com is an online writing tool built around the idea of morning pages with the idea being that if you can manage to fit 3 pages of uncensored, free-form writing into your routine each morning that it will clear your mind and allow for more creativity throughout rest of the day.

It’s a “mind dump,” really. I’ve done morning pages in the past – typically long-hand (pen and paper) – with varying degrees of success. I signed up for an account after the show with Katrina because the pen and paper aspect has typically been what causes me to lose motivation. With 750Words you do all of your writing online, it can be set to private (no one sees it but you), and it’s a place to get every random, half-thought-out, keeping you up at night sort of idea out onto a page. With the majority of my life led in front of a computer writing out 750 words long-hand can feel like an excruciatingly slow process, but I can speed through my morning pages in about 15 minutes this way. I activated email reminders on the site to send me an email each morning at 8am. In the beginning I would delete them on some days, then other days I loaded it up to write.

At first I felt like it was redundant because I had been using OhLife! as a journal in much the same way. Little by little 750Words started gaining traction with me, though. There’s something about the word counter down at the bottom that compels me to keep writing long past the moment when I would have stopped in OhLife. My first 100-300 words on most days can be easily filled with a recap of what happened the day before, at which point I would typically stop writing. On 750Words I hit that point, look down at the word count and think to myself “I guess I better get into the nitty gritty, now” and most days I stop writing and am surprised to see that I’ve rolled over 900-1000 words by the time I was done emptying my brain of any worries, thoughts, hopes, funny observations, etc. that I could think of.

The other thing that keeps me coming back for more is that 750Words runs an algorithm on your writing that attempts to analyze your mood, your mindset, your most commonly used (and possibly abused) words and other data over time. Sometimes it’s insightful, other times it seems a little off-base, but it’s interesting nonetheless to see whether your writing has been camped out in the “negative” or “self-important” camp for a few days in a row. Or whether the majority of my writing for that day revolved around work vs. family.

You can also create metadata in your daily writing to track things over time, which is where I jot down what I’m currently reading, something that I’m smitten with that day, what we had for dinner or where I was when I wrote it.

For the month of December I set a goal for myself to write every single day – a process that’s rewarded on the site with various badges – because I’ve been entirely too sporadic about doing these morning pages, way too sporadic to generate any sort of creative nirvana. Also I was usually squeezing my words in at the end of the day rather than in the morning, so I’m trying to shift that schedule in December, as well. I was really sad when I already  missed a day on the 3rd – we had company over and I didn’t think of it until well after midnight (the site is a real stickler for time). I beat myself up over it for a few minutes, but by the next morning I recognized that self-flagellation was only going to cause me to stop writing altogether. I’m not going throw the baby out with the bathwater, so I’m back on track for the 4th & 5th.

And I’ll be back tomorrow to explain how a few clicks on my computer got me back to reading on a regular basis.

About This Project

New52 is a cooperative project between Christine and I that invites participants to live outside the box a little bit more and try things outside their comfort zone. Just because it’s 52 things for us doesn’t mean it needs to be 52 things for you. If you participate this week, please leave a link to your blog post, scrapbook page, photograph or other recorded history of your walk on the wild side in the comments below. It isn’t about making a life-altering changes every week, it’s about keeping an open mind and embracing little changes in your life.

Star On Top (plus! The Black Friday Sale)

I’m beyond thrilled to be able to team up with Amy Martin ( blog | store | newsletter ) to create a holiday collection for 2011. I met Amy a few years ago, another friendship forged through scrapbooking. We participated on creative teams together, I worked more closely with her when I was a part of The Lilypad’s creative team (The Pollywogs) from about 2008-2010, and then she joined my creative team in 2010.

I’ve often talked about how Amy is my go-to template person (mentioned it here, and on The Digi Show here), I feel like everyone should have one. I’ve used a lot of templates from a lot of different designers and Amy’s make me feel as though she’s inside my head. (A scary place to be!) I think it’s important that everyone find their “right people” and Amy Martin is definitely one of my right people.

But she’s more than just templates! She’s a complex woman, that Amy Martin.

Star On Top contains 22 papers, over 80 elements, three of Amy’s awesome 12×12 page templates and two 4×6 holiday photo card templates. We wanted it to be holiday, and we wanted it to be BIG – so that it’s suitable for a variety of December projects. Because December is full of projects, isn’t it?

You’ll save 20% on Star On Top, and when you purchase the kit you’ll also receive the Star On Top 3×4 Journaling Cards as a complimentary gift. Add both products to your cart and let the cart work its magic.

Both offers end 11/28/2011, so hurry in!

CT Inspiration

[Show as slideshow]

Black Friday One Day Sale

It’s the One Little Bird Black Friday Sale! One day only, save 20% storewide on One Little Bird products – no coupon necessary for that!

Cage Liner Subscribers save an extra 20% on a selection of Holiday Products to use for your holiday gift giving projects (or the projects you’ll just keep for yourself, of course!) Check your latest newsletter for a coupon code. Not yet a subscriber? Subscribe now and get a coupon of your very own.

Landing Soon | Star On Top

New Digital Products

Life! It has been busy. But I’ve been working on a few new digital products and I’m happy to announce that you can find them in my store today.

You’ll find two new additions to the In The Loop family, the first is a new set of 12×12 page borders:

The second is a new set of photo frames:

And I’ve made no secret of the fact that I adore kraft paper (and beige papers, and beige kraft papers). For my fellow kraft devotees I created a set of 12 kraft papers in a variety of shades and textures.

And finally, I’ve added the 2011 Holiday Card to my store. This year I added a few extra templates for the card backs so that you can include additional photos. If you would just like the single photo on the front, there are text-only back designs for each card, too.

These 5×7 templates are sized to match WHCC’s Press Printed Card specs but can easily be cropped to match the specifications of other printers. You could print these cards as one-sided 5×7 photo prints at your local or online photo printer and be done in a snap.

I personally love to print the 2-sided cards at WHCC, and if you haven’t tried their service I can’t say enough great things about it. These two-sided cards are so easy to whip up, inexpensive to print, and everyone you send them to will seriously think you’re some sort of genius! Something this custom just blows their minds. Plus that extra side allows to include a personalized message (and additional photos) for your family and friends. A bit of a mini-newsletter all on one professionally printed card.

I printed last year’s design on WHCC’s Pearl paper on a whim, and the end product was completely magical. It adds a soft opalescent lustre to the design that added a very premium, luxury feeling to the card. A little something above and beyond the typical “flat white” paper feel.

Note that if you’re never printed with WHCC before, you’ll want to allow yourself a bit of extra lead time for your cards (3-7 days). Setting up a new account with them requires that you submit a few 8×10 test prints before your account is activated. The test prints are printed and shipped free of charge in order to allow you to verify that your color settings are in line with their printing color space (so hey, send some of your favorite photos!) Along with your test prints they include samples of their different paper offerings and further information about your account. So I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you to set up your account today and send in your test prints – THEN start working on your cards. That way by the time you’ve put the finishing touches on the cards your account at WHCC should be active – and some additional 8×10 photos for holiday gifts will be on their way to you.

As for all of these new releases, you can save 20% on every single one of them through 11/27/2011. Cage Liner subscribers save an extra 10% on these products using the savings code in their newsletter. Not yet a subscriber? You can subscribe now and get exclusive savings on new releases, free product downloads and notification of One Little Bird sales & events direct to your inbox.