How to Back up your Blog, Picasa Pictures, Templates, and more

I was doing a backup today in anticipation of changing my template again (Yes again. I like to decorate for the holidays ;) ) and I realized that not everyone knows about Blogger and Google's various backup tools. So here you go:

To backup your Blog Posts and Comments

• Go to your Blogger Dashboard
• Click on the "Settings" link under your blog
• You should be taken to the "Basic" tab in "Settings."
• Click on the "Export Blog" link at the top
• Click the "Download Blog" button on the next page and save the file to your computer
• * If your computer doesn't download a file but, instead, takes you to a new page with a list of your posts, try a different browser. Mac Safari - for example - doesn't always work correctly, but Firefox usually does.

This will not delete your blog (unless you clicked the "Delete Blog" link!) Exporting your blog saves a copy of your entire blog in an XML file, which can be imported to another blog if you'd like - comments and all. Many Non-Blogger blog hosts can also import your XML backup file.

Back up your blog as often as you'd like so you always have a copy in case a glitch eats your blog! Label and date your backups too so you know which is the most current.

* Note: I read somewhere that there was a problem with posts that had "read more" links getting fully backed up. I'm not sure if that glitch was fixed. I've just tested this. All your content is backed up, including content after the "Read More" links, but if you import those posts (to a new blog for example) the post's content is shown in its entirety with no "Read More" link. - Not the worst thing in the world IMO.

To backup your blog's Template

Your Template is the design and layout of your blog, nothing more.

• Go to your Blogger Dashboard
• Click on the "Design" link under your blog
• Click on the "Edit HTML" link
• Click the "Download Full Template" link
• This will also be saved in an XML file so make sure you don't confuse your template backup (which is just your blog's design) with your full blog backup!

To backup your Widgets

There's no super easy way to do this. A Template backup (above) will save information about which widgets you had, but it won't remember their contents. I don't think the full blog backup retains widget info either, but it might. Here's what I do:

• Take a screenshot of the page to know which widgets to add back someday if needed
• Manually drag, or copy and paste links that are generated by widgets, into a text file (link lists, blog lists etc.)
• If there are any html/javascript widgets that contain code, open each widget and copy and paste those codes into a text file (Codes like Stat Counter, SiteMeter, badges etc.) 

I don't backup things like the Archive or Label widgets (which can regenerate their content automatically). For those I rely on the screenshot(s) to remind me to put those types of widgets back if I ever need to re-create my blog one day.

To backup your Picasa Web Albums

(You know all those photos you upload to your Blogger blog? They're stored at Picasa. If you've never heard of Picasa, read the comments of this post for more info.)

Here's a tool not a lot of people know about. You can backup your Picasa web albums, all in one go, using Google Takeout. But there's a catch. Google Takeout will only download 100 pictures from each of your albums. The solution? Don't put more than 100 pictures in any of your Picasa albums! If you have more than 100 photos, create a new Picasa album within your same account. So long as none of your albums have more than 100 pictures, all your pictures - from each album - will be downloaded.

• Go to Google Takeout
• Click on the "Choose Services" tab
• Select Picasa Web Albums
• Click "Create Archive"
• Click the Download Button

You can also use Google Takeout to download other information you store on Google. Click around their page and see what else you'd like to save.


If your blog is not hosted at Blogger, your blog host probably has similar features. Poke around to find where they are and use them! Glitches happen all the time and it's a shame to lose years worth of posts when backup features are available.

Baking "don't"

If you ever decide to make a pie out of a pumpkin sitting on your table, (because that's what you bought it for, and you haven't had time, but you're worried that if you don't use the pumpkin soon it might start to go bad.) and if you know you don't have any normal flour in the house, and you don't feel like running out  to get normal flour or a pre-made crust, or bothering neighbors for those items, and if you're wondering if oat flour will work well enough for the crust... let me save you some time, aggravation, and oat flour. The answer is apparently no.

Of course it probably didn't help that I forgot to add a binder...

As soon as I mix up the rest of the pumpkin, it's going straight into ramekins as pudding!

Unexpected benefit from watching the Space Station

I watched a little of the Space Station this week. It's been a while since I've done that. I found it calming in a "familiar" sort of way. Weird, I know, but since I watched it practically non-stop for about a week my brain now experiences a level of comfort when it sees it. Familiarity brings me a great deal of peace. (Well... good familiarity. Familiar crap makes me feel crappy!)

Watching the International Space Station this week also made me a little sad because some of my favorite astronauts will be returning to Earth soon but that's for another post. The post below, however, is yet another that I wrote a while ago and saved to draft. Here ya go:

*  *  *  *  *

I've pretty much finished my spree of space posts, but last night I discovered what I think might be a really great benefit from having watched the International Space Station for about a week. I was able to fly MUCH more easily in my dreams last night!

Oh sure, ROLL YOUR EYES, but you don't understand what an issue this has been for me! Do you know I actually had to develop a whole other technique for flying in my dreams? I've had SO much difficulty flying at times - which is annoying because WHOSE DREAM IS IT ANYWAY???!!! But, a few years ago, I figured out that I could sometimes levitate instead - directionally too. Which is a bit different but can sometimes achieve similar results when necessary. - When I'm aware enough to remember. (BTW, I found this was also the key to moving objects in my dreams. I tried "willing" things to move for months and got nowhere, but when I tried levitating them I was able to succeed.)

I lucid dream a lot. I have since I was four. And sometimes it gets boring, so I try to master new skills (- like telekenisis.) - You would too if you found yourself sitting in your kitchen every now and realized "Huh... I'm dreaming again... Now what?" I mean one can only fly out a window so many times. And visiting your favorite literary or television characters gets tricky because it's easy to lose lucidity once you get there, and then it rarely works out right.

Last night, for example, I got my outfit right, and I got a main character right, but the setting was totally wrong. - Yet another thing I have to work on. It's not the first time I've arrived someplace, looked around and said "Ok this isn't right... This is my dream... let's change it...." -and it doesn't change :P

So anyway, where was I?

Oh right... Flying. Much easier last night. And I think it might be due to having watched others do it so effortlessly for over a week now.

So if you have trouble flying in your dreams, might I suggest watching the space station... ;)

I'm using up samples

All those little bottles of shampoo, conditioner, soap, creams, toothpaste, razors, and shoe polish, from hotels, gift baskets, and eager sales people? I've got about 3 large zip lock bags full of them, and I'm finally going to use them.

I know... I should save them for traveling, right? Do YOU use those when you travel? I don't! I think I will, but I don't. I either travel with small bottles of my tried and true products, or I use the small bottles provided by hotels and bring home about 5 to 10 more little bottles and soaps by the end of my visit. And if I'm visiting relatives or friends I again bring the products I'm used to, or I use their stuff. They like their stuff. Maybe I will too!

So these zip lock bags full of tiny little bottles saved for traveling? They haven't been getting used. But they are now! 

I will not be buying any new toiletries until I've used up all the stuff in those bags. I reserve the right to try something, decide I hate it, and throw it out if needed, and in an emergency I still have some of my regular products on standby, but the assortment of tiny bottles and soaps will be my only source of bathroom supplies until they all run out. - Which I think could take a good year or two!

Some of these last longer than I expected. I'd been thinking that each product had enough for one use, but not so! A small "packet" of toothpaste (Think foil packet that ketsup comes in at a fast food place) is lasting me a full week, and sample bottles of shampoo and conditioner are lasting about that long too. Soap seems to last forever (even the small ones) and I rarely use moisturizer so lotion samples will probably last forever too.

I'm kind of excited by this! I like using up stuff. I just hope nothing blinds me or turns my hair green.

Safari Ad Ons

Leave it to me to be random in my subject matter.

I found a new (new to me, not really new) Safari add on that I love. Hopefully it'll perform as faithfully as my other Safari add on (which I also love!)

Add on #1, for Safari web browser

AdBlock

AdBlock does what the name sounds like. It blocks ads from loading on web pages. I've been using this incarnation of it for about a year. Previously I used similar ad ons and/or other browsers that had a "block ads" feature built in.

AdBlock for Safari is now an extension. Once it's installed, you can enable or disable it in your Safari Preferences pane under the "Extensions" button. To customize it further, you have to click on the "hand" button that's added to the top of your browser window, right next to the forward and back buttons on the left side. Hate ads? Get this.

New toy add on #2,

Safari Cookies

It's a cookie manager. I get annoyed by sites placing cookies and databases on my computer and tracking my every move. While I do like staying logged in to certain sites and not having to re-log in all the time (which is done via cookies), I don't like every site remembering where I've been and where else I've been and making suggestions. It's creepy. But if I clear cookies all the time, I'll also clear the useful ones, like the log in cookies. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to say "Ok, keep THOSE cookies, but get rid of the rest!"? - You can. With Safari Cookies.

This is not an extension and, as such, I thought it hadn't installed properly the first three times I tried, but it had. I just wasn't looking in the right place. After it's installed, look in the top bar of your Safari Preferences pane and you'll see a chocolate chip cookie icon all the way to the right. That's where you configure it.

I'm happier now.

You're welcome.

(If you don't use Safari, your browser probably has similar features built in, or similar add ons available. Do a web search and see what you find.)

In a galaxy far far away... I'll be having a panic attack

Yesterday's One Word exercise (Galaxy) reminded me of a fear I have of not knowing my way home if I ever get stranded outside of our solar system.

Who has fears like this? Apparently I do. Or at least one was fostered in me about fifteen or so years ago at a planetarium.

I was sitting in the dark auditorium, looking up at the (fake) night sky, as stars and comets and little arrows whisked all over the place pointing out this feature or that. I want to say the narrator's voice in this presentation was Robin Williams but I might be mistaken. Maybe Billy Crystal? Anyway, this was not like planetarium shows I'd watched as a child, with specs of light. This was a whole surround sound video type of thing.

At one point the video showed an example of just how small we and our planet are. The view zoomed out to show a continent... a familiar sight. Then further to show our planet.... also familiar (Look! That's home!) and then further out to show our solar system... (That's us! Third rock from the sun! Look how pretty our solar system is!) and then further out to show our solar system amongst many others.

Right about this point my brain came to a screeching halt as I realized that I had no idea which of those stars was our own solar system. Next the view zoomed to a picture of our galaxy. This made me feel a tiny bit better. Our galaxy's images are, again, familiar. Then they zoomed out to show our galaxy amidst BILLIONS of other galaxies.... and that's when I panicked. And this panic was not alleviated by the view zooming further and further and further out and my realizing OMG I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE MY PLANET IS!!! HOW WOULD I GET HOME if I was THIS FAR OUT IN SPACE??!!!!!!

I seriously panicked! I was staring at the ceiling of the planetarium thinking "I have no idea how to find or figure out which galaxy is ours!" I had no frame of reference. I know how to identify our planet within our solar system and I know that we (supposedly) live in a spiral galaxy, but if there were a BAZILLION points of light spread out in front of you, who would have the TIME (or the FUEL!) to check out the INFINITE number of possibilities! I couldn't even narrow it down to a cluster! No clue. No idea whatsoever how to identify which little spec of light might be ours, and which direction to go if I ever got "out" that far.

I had to keep telling myself, in my head, "You're still ON Earth, you're sitting in a planetarium in a museum, you haven't gone anywhere and oh btw, YOU VERY LIKELY NEVER WILL!!! SNAP OUT OF IT!!!" I even made myself look around at the room and the chairs and the people, to try to ground myself, but my brain kept yelling back at me "Yeah but WHAT IF???!!!"

You know what finally made me calmer? When the video zoomed back down little by little, back to our galaxy, our solar system, our planet, our continent, and then finally, to us. THAT put my whole body back into a relaxed state. Not my telling myself anything logical! No! My brain had been freaked out by images, and that's what it took to calm it back down. Those same images in reverse!

To this day I'm still surprised by how immersed I was and how freaked out I got once I couldn't recognize "landmarks" (space marks?) past a certain distance from "home." This has since been a source of amusement and slight concern to me. (Concern because who takes something like that seriously? Again, apparently that would be ME.)

So I thought about that again yesterday, when I had the word "Galaxy" at One Word (I also thought "NEVER GIVE UP! NEVER SURRENDER!" - Which I quoted backwards yesterday. My bad. It sounds better to me the other way.) Anyway, I remembered seeing these once upon a time and wondered if I could find them again.

I did. They're here: Location Earth Dog Tags. (And they come with a money back guarantee if aliens fail to understand the map and bring you home while you're wearing one of these.)

But they seemed to be lacking in information. So I looked up the original Pioneer Plaque drawing,

Click picture to "embiggin"

which still leaves something to be desired in its clarity, but all things considered, it's the best I've got at the moment. (More on that image here.)

Both images are now downloaded to my iphone, which puts me in a slightly better position if I ever leave Earth while out on a walk or running some errands (and also if my phone is charged and I have a compatible power source to re-charge it "wherever.") If, however, I'm ever abducted from my bed, I'm pretty much hosed. Well... if I were ever abducted from my bed I'd be pretty much hosed with or without directions to get home.

* FYI, I've never had a fear of alien abductions. The fear was really just about how I wouldn't know how to get home from too far out in space!

No Cell Phone Call Block? No Problem!

Despite being a long time registrant on the Do-Not-Call list, once in a while I get random calls on my cell phone. If it appears to be Spam, I ignore the call. If it appears to be a wrong number, I call them back and let them know they've reached a wrong number - but that rarely stops the calls. (I've had a chinese school calling me for over two years every time "Ping Ying Something-or-other" misses school. Hopefully Ping Ying is ok because his (her?) parents have no idea!)

So I have this problem: Repeated calls from spammers and/or wrong numbers that I can't get rid of. Most cell phone companies do not offer a way to block calls from a specific number, but there's a free workaround that helps. It's very simple and pretty ingenious.

• First, download (or make) a silent ringtone. You can google "silent ringtone" to find one, or if you know how to make your own ringtone just record 30 seconds of silence. 
• Put the ringtone on your phone. 
• Create a new contact and call it "Ignore Me" or something similar. 
• Assign the silent ringtone to that contact. 
• The next time a repeated spammer, wrong number, or chinese school calls your cell phone, select their number from your recent calls list and use the "add to current contact" feature to add that number to your "Ignore Me" contact. 

Now whenever one of those numbers calls, you won't hear a thing. No ring, no nothing. And if you happen to see the call come in, the "Ignore Me" text will be displayed. - BRILLIANT solution.

It doesn't prevent the calls, it doesn't stop them, and some callers may still leave messages, but most of the time you won't even know they called. It's a pretty good interim solution until your cell phone/carrier implements call blocking.

I found the above information several months ago via multiple websites so I don't have a specific URL to credit for the idea.

I have 3 pairs of scissors

One in the kitchen
One in the bathroom
And one by my desk.

I strongly believe in having duplicate items if you need it in more than one location and frequently find yourself stopping to go look for said item to see where the heck it was last used.

The first time I think I heard this philosophy was with regard to vacuum cleaners. Someone was saying that if you have more than one floor in your house, you should consider getting a vacuum cleaner for each floor, and leave it on its floor, instead of hauling one machine up and down the stairs all the time.

This made perfect sense to me. And scissors are way less expensive than vacuum cleaners!

Sprucing up the blog again

It's not Christmas anymore, but it's definitely still winter! The Graphics are from Graphic Garden, and credits, as always, can be found at the very bottom of the page.

I may still tweak. I always tweak ;)

While I was updating the blog template, I found a great online graphics editing site called pixlr.com Since I'm still without my regular computer, I'm also without graphics software at the moment, so this site was perfect. Very PhotoShop-ish. I'm not sure how they're able to offer such a great service. Hopefully I haven't missed something, like massive viruses in the files! :oO

Avocado + Paper Bag + Banana

That's how to ripen an avocado.

I knew about putting an avocado in a paper bag to ripen, but that didn't always seem to work, and I'd never heard about adding a banana. My friend told me about this missing "ingredient", so I added a banana to the bag and sure enough, my rock hard avocados were ready to eat in just 2-3 days.

Just a little tip I felt compelled to jump on and write about.

The Resorts

I'd like to spend more time checking out the resorts this trip - Especially since I have relatives staying at the "real" resorts - and I'd also like to check out some of the trail walks if I can. I wonder if they're relaxing and pretty or just a bunch of boring paved  walkways?

Re: "The real resorts" -did you think I was staying at one of those? No. I'm staying at one of Disney's VALUE resorts.  Which is kind of like Disney's answer to a tacky motel. This isn't to say that they don't have their charm. Plus, they're still on property so they have all the perks that the other resorts do, but don't cost nearly as much. Great for sleeping and park hopping, but for "hanging out" I'll be making use of all the extras at the relatives' hotels. I heard one of them has a water slide...

Epcot: Club Cool

This was possibly one of the "coolest" new things in the park for me. New to me anyway. I think it's actually been there for a while.

It's a Coca Cola gift shop, and in it are lots of little self-serve soda machines with samples of Coca Cola from different countries. And even better -it's free! You can drink as many little sample cups as you'd like!

Some weren't bad. Some were pretty good (I liked China). And one was... well... let's just say Italy's is made for a different kind of palette. They were out of Mozambique's Ginger Soda that day. I would have liked to try that.

Epcot: Mission Space: DON'T go in the ORANGE line!

Never having been on "Mission Space" and not having had time to sufficiently research this ride before leaving on my last minute vacation, I was unaware that there was a spinning and a non-spinning version of this ride. I thought it was "spin or get out of line."

Now, I know I get motion sickness, but since I'd just come from the "Test Track" ride, and ignored all its scary precautionary warnings and done just fine, I thought I'd ignore Mission Space's warnings too. But that's because I didn't realize that I could still go on the ride and NOT SPIN if I went in the GREEN line.

I won't go into all the details, but, I've now learned an apparently little known fact about Disney World. A fact that the RIDE EMPLOYEES don't even know about and insisted was not so. Many of the gift shops, in all the parks, have a special plastic bin that they keep under the counter, out of view, that contains Advil, Pepto Bismol and DRAMAMINE. Nobody on the "vomiting rides" seems to know this!!! But all the little gift stands do! Most also have some kind of dry crackers or pretzels available for the "easily-queasy."

I sat with another woman, a complete stranger who I bonded with as she generously shared her peanut butter crackers and sips of water with me, as we sat together, side by side, after the ride, both of us afraid to move -for fear of hurling- for over an hour, as employee after employee told us that no place sold any kind of anti nausea meds or crackers nearby because that would compete with the food stands in the park. But about an hour and a half later (yes, an hour and a half!) when we both, unsteadily, decided to try to venture outside, she decided to say something to the ride's gift shop about how they should carry stuff like this, and that's when the man behind the counter gleefully produced his "drug bin" and informed us that most of the gift shops had them. -This guy was one room away from where we'd been sitting for over an hour! The gift shop was part of the attraction, yet nobody working on the ride seemed to know that pretzels, Pepto, and Dramamine were available only a few feet away.

Grrrrrrrr!

On two additional occasions during this trip, I needed to avail myself of drug boxes, and I had no trouble finding them -Now that I knew they existed! One was at the gift shop attached to Expedition Everest in the Animal Kingdom (which also had pretzels for about a buck or two) and the other was a shop at the end of the Winnie the Pooh ride in the Magic Kingdom.

To Clarify...

Expedition Everest:
Fine except for one part in the pitch darkness which must have done some kind of spin because, while I couldn't see it, I suddenly wasn't feeling so hot.

Winnie the Pooh:
NOT a problem. ;) But, after having had the unexpected problem with Expedition Everest, I bought  Dramamine in anticipation of going on Space Mountain an hour later, (but the ride malfunctioned and I never got on!)

Mission Space:
Orange line = Unsteady on my feet and unable to move my head without feeling like I was going to vomit,  for over an hour after the ride. Then generally queasy for the entire rest of the day (and this happened at 8:30 am, so that was a very LONG "rest of the day!")
Green line = Probably a much more pleasant ride. Unfortunately I wouldn't know!

The Plan

My general plan for the next few days is to visit the parks early and late in the day, when it's cooler outside, and to either nap or hang out at the resorts in the afternoon. Heat + me = Not a good match!

Disney Day 1: Icicles on the Castle

I was at the Magic Kingdom from 6:30pm to about 12:30am. The castle is decked out in icicle lights for Christmas. It's amazing. And the lights change colors over time. Mostly blue and purple but I also saw it pink, green, orange, and white.

It turned out that 6:30pm and onwards was the perfect time to get on every ride at the Magic Kingdom with no lines. So much so that, as I walked through long empty winding corridors, that usually hold  lines of people, I sometimes wondered if I was going to get mugged!

The reason it's a great time to get on the rides is because people line up an hour or more in advance to see the 2 parades and the fireworks, so if they're THERE, that leaves very few people on the rides! The first night I missed the fireworks but I caught a few from the top of a Splash Mountain. That was cool! I, and several cars of strangers, cheered each time fireworks burst over our heads as we we zipped up and down the tracks.

Speaking of parades, I finally caught one. I'd never seen a Disney parade before, but I decided to watch the 11pm Spectro Magic parade. It's AWESOME! I am now in love with the bizarre, and kind of creepy, clowns at the beginning of the parade. Particularly the ones spinning around on what look like giant lit up Christmas Ornament balls. SO cool!

Luggage Tag

If you stay at one of Disney World's on site hotels, they now have a FREE shuttle service that will take you from the airport to your hotel. You don't even have to claim your luggage when you arrive. They'll do that for you and bring it to your room a few hours later.

I'm impressed these arrived so quickly. I only made reservations a few days ago.

No idea what time it is

I was trying to figure out how much time I had left to write a post, but I couldn't find a clock. Because I unplugged them all. Sort of.

A friend and I were talking about what kinds of items we kept unplugged when not in use, and she said that anything with a clock built into it, used electricity while plugged in. So I unplugged my stereo, my vcr, and my microwave, because I rarely use those so it seemed kind of silly to keep them plugged in if they were only being used as oversized clocks.

So now, I'm saving electricity.

I also have no idea what time it is.


... I need to buy some clocks.

I've figured out how to save time folding laundry

1. I am no longer turning clothes "right side out" when folding.
   
   I admit it took my slightly OCD-ish self a couple of weeks to get used to this, but really, things fold or hang just as well inside out as they do right side out. And in the end, I'd rather take an extra 30 seconds while dressing to turn things the right way, than take an additional 30 minutes while folding laundry to turn everything right side out.
   
   
2. I've also stopped folding underwear.
   
   Yes, folded underwear looks nicer and neater in the drawer, but once underwear is on your body, you can't see any wrinkles in it. At least not under anything I wear. And on occasions where it is absolutely CRUCIAL to me to be 100% seamless and wrinkle free in all areas, I use that lycra/spandex stuff and that never gets wrinkles anyway.