NOTICE: (Updated March 5, 2010)

Beginning December 19, 2009, Books 'N Border Collies will be posting but only intermittently while I pursue personal goals. I plan to share some reading I'm doing, but there will be no reviews. I will, however, be sharing my exploration of vegetarian cooking and the cookbooks and websites I use to educate myself. I hope you enjoy it!

Lezlie



Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Spring Cleaning


Hello, Everyone!

In an effort to keep things easily accessible and visually uncluttered (and just because I'm learning how to do new things on this blog. . .), I've made a few changes:

1. I've added a pic of our old tomcat, Jack. He was feeling left out. :-)

2. I've taken the list of "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die" from the bottom of my main page and it is now available from the sidebar under "Ongoing Reading Projects".

3. In anticipation of doing reading challenges every year until I die, I've made new links by year on the sidebar. Under each year will be links to both my personal pages for that year's challenges and to the Official Challenge sites. (It currently looks a little lonely with only 2008 there.)

4. I've added "Reviews" links to the sidebar which will list and link all the reviews I've done on this site both by author and title. I've also made a separate one for short stories.

5. And last but not least, I've added links directly to Amazon.com of the books I talk about on this blog and a general Amazon.com search box on the sidebar. It's an easy way to see the descriptions of the books and what others had to say about them. Not to mention a convenient technique for further enlarging all of our TBR piles!

I think that's it for now. If any of you have any other suggestions to make this site more usable and/or entertaining, please let me know!!

Happy Reading!
Lezlie

12 comments:

trish said...

Wow! You been busy! Unfortunately, since I read all my blogs in Google Reader, I rarely remember what they look like. But your blog looks great right now! :-)

By the way, I didn't know you did agility with your dogs. My poodle did it for a while...no competition, just training, but he was the best in his class if I do say so myself. :-)

Lezlie said...

Trish ~ Thanks! Hey, I have a question for you: Since you're the only person I know who reads this via Google reader, how does that work? I'm a little concerned that people who "subscribe" or read it in some other manner than coming to the site are getting bombarded with posts everytime I notice there is a spelling error or make a small change to lists or something.

Isn't agility awesome? We've been competing for a bit over a year and it is just a blast! Poodles are really smart dogs. It wouldn't surprise me at all if he was top of the class!

Lezlie

BooksPlease said...

I always have difficulty with linking to ongoing lists, so I'm very impressed. I find writing a post in Blogger quite difficult as the paragraph spacing jumps a lot, so I write it first in Word. I use Bloglines and you can set it to ignore updates - I don't know if Google Reader does the same.

Eva said...

Your kitty is adorable. :) And you're so organised with all of those lists!

I use Google Reader, and I don't have it set to anything special (I'm new to it), but I don't feel bombarded by edits at all. I used to worry about that too, but it's really not a big deal. :)

Lezlie said...

Books Please ~ I have the same issue with writing posts in Blogger. It's one reason why I update posts so often! I think I've got it the way I want it, then once I see it actually posted, I see something else about it that looks funny to me. And it drives me crazy that it doesn't want to put more than one space anywhere. I sorely need to brush up on my HTML skills.

Eva ~ Thanks! I'm a chronic organizer. Another reason for so many updated posts. I'm glad that doesn't seem to be an issue for people. And Jack thanks you, too! :-)

trish said...

Lezlie, like Eva said, changes don't seem to be a problem in Google Reader. I'm going to do a post on this in the next few days, because it really is an amazing tool!

Lezlie said...

Thanks, Trish! It's good to know I can correct away without bogging subscribers down. And I'll be interested to see your post. I had never heard of Google Reader until very recently.

Lezlie

Jeane said...

I liked looking through your Review list, that's handy! I use Google Reader too, and new edits never come up. I didn't set it to anything, I think it automatically only shows the first rendition of a post.

I have a trick for adding extra spaces: put a line of dots.... and then change the color so they match your background. They never get lost, but can't be seen.

trish said...

Jeane, actually new edits show up, Google Reader doesn't let you know about them, but they will show up in your Reader.

Also, if you want extra paragraphs, just put '<' 'p' '>' (without the quotes, of course) and that's html for a hard return (like when you press 'enter' in Word).

Lezlie said...

Jeane ~ That's a great trick! I'm going to have to try that one.

Trish ~ Thanks for the tip! I finally remembered to pick up a book on HTML, too, so that should help.

And thanks everyone for the information on various reading tools. It's good info to have! It looks like it's mostly not a problem, but I'll try to keep my re-posts to a minimum anyway.

Lezlie

Teddy Rose said...

I love what you've done with your blog. I've been thinking of doing some simular things with mine.

I didn't know about The Animal Rescue site. I just added it to my blog under In Loving Memory of my Girl Tina. Thanks for this!

Lezlie said...

Teddy Rosr ~ Thanks! And your welcome! :-) I'm glad you're adding the link to your blog, also. The more we can get the word out, the more we can help! I love the pics on your blog of your "kids". And you're a vegan, right? That is so awesome. I hope to have that kind of discipline someday. I'm not much of a meat-eater anyway, so it's really giving up eggs and cheese that stand in my way. . .

L.