How to use this blog

Hi, if you're new here, this page might be useful.  If you're new to reading blogs, this will hopefully be even more helpful.

There's nothing to it, really.

1) How to Read

Well, obviously you can read, that's not what I'm meaning.

Firstly, it's important to know that blogs work upside-down in relation to time.  What this means is that the older posts are further down the page.  Although a blog like this one is divided up into pages (to help loading times) it's useful to think of it as one very long continuous page.

So, if you've decided from a brief look that you want to get a sense of how this has all developed (I often do this with interesting blogs I find) and follow the threads of thought through time, you can start further back, or even at the beginning.  There are two ways to navigate around the posts.

The first way to navigate is just to scroll up and down.  You'll find at the very bottom of each page little clicky things for 'older' and 'newer' posts as appropriate, and they move you a whole page at a time.  The second way is to use the navigation bar over there on the right, where you can see the headings of the posts.  They're in date order, with the older ones at the bottom.  Each month they are 'zipped up' so just click on a month to expand all the posts in that month.  Then just click a heading and it will display just that post.  Easy!

Note too as you're reading that if you see some words in a different colour or that are underlined, it's normally a link you can click that will take you somewhere good.  Except for the one in that last sentence.  It doesn't go anywhere.

2) Comments and questions

Do feel free to comment or add your 2cents' worth at any time.  This helps me know what people are thinking about my writing here but more importantly everyone who reads can have the chance to learn from your perspectives too.  Sometimes a little conversation gets going, and that's nice.  If you want to ask me something, just do so as a comment.  I check things most days so can respond in a timely manner if I so choose.

To leave a comment, just click the 'comment' thingy at the bottom of each post.  You can be anonymous, you can be anyone really, but you'll have to make a choice about that in a drop-down menu after you've clicked 'comment'.  It's easy peasy.  note though, that some people have encountered the odd glitch with this (there's a few posts about it) but this seems to all be fine now.

I love comments and questions.

3) You can be a follower if you want, and other cool stuff

Don't be afraid to just click around on things and see what they do.  You'll discover links to good sites, there's a function so you can email a post you like to a friend (the little envelope icon at the bottom of posts), you can subscribe so you get notified when something new happens - there's lots of stuff you can do - and I'm adding things every now and then.  Like the new share bar at the bottom of each post (added June sometime 2010) where you can just click it and share posts you like on Facebook, twitter, and a whiole bunch of other places people share stuff.  Don't worry, you can't break anything.  I'm pretty sure you can't, anyway.

4)  Enjoy!  

And if you like it, remember to share it with the ones you like and love, in case they might like it too.

Information wants to be free.