Thanks to one of my gorgeous readers - Jeanie - I found out that my blog had all but disappeared. Any page I tried to view gave me a 404 page error. Everything else was there, just no content.  She emailed me first thing this morning and I didn’t read it until I got back from my mini Easter break this afternoon.

I immediately panicked and wondered when the last time I did a backup was - too long ago I’m sure. Once my little panic was over I thought I’d better fix it.

Knowing that Wordpress runs from databases I logged into my blog’s Cpanel and went to view the post database to see what was there. A message informed me that I had a “WordPress MySQL database error: Table is marked as crashed and should be repaired.”

After doing a quick search I came across this very helpful post, and within a minute had repaired my database and was back in business. So if this ever happens to you, it’s probably a database error. I’m thankful that it wasn’t someone hacking in which has happened to me before too.

Naturally I’ve now done a backup. I was imagining having to manually redo my last few week’s worth of posts since my last backup but it’s all sorted.

I’ve been using Twitter for more than a few months now and up until recently I’d never done anything to really enhance my use of it.

I recently found out about a Firefox add-on called ‘Power Twitter‘ and I really like it.

One of the things that used to annoy me about Twitter was that the links to images and webpages were always in a tiny.url form, or in a form that was so early web days (a ‘naked URL, not a link behind words) and didn’t mean anything.

Power Twitter adds this functionality. (Click on any image below to view larger one).

It also shows images, rather than links to images which I just love because I’d rather see it all in the one application rather than have to open another application. To tell the truth, I usually didn’t click on image links and it took me ages to learn about this thing called Twitpic. Apparently it will show Flickr, Twitpic and Youtube links inline within Twitter.

There is also an inbuilt Twitter search function. It doesn’t show trending topics like search.twitter.com does but you can search for anything you want. It’s very handy.

Another handy little feature (you can see why they called it Power Twitter) is hover over people’s avatars and it shows their latest status updates.

The only drawback - and it’s only a very small drawback - is that it takes that little bit longer to load. Twitter loads as normal, then Power Twitter kicks in. It doesn’t bother me at all.

All in all I like having Power Twitter in my Twitter life.

What makes your Twitter life easier?

Just as well I’m fairly active in the blogosphere, twittersphere and a few other electronic spheres because I’ve been hearing about people having to move their Feedburner account to a Google one.

I login to Feedburner every now and again and all I had to do one day was sign in with my Google account. I didn’t receive any notification to do anything else and so I didn’t.

But apparently I’m supposed to change my Feedburner address and add a 2 in it in some places.

To say I’m quite annoyed is an understatement. I’m not so annoyed that I have to move to something else that is Google, although they’re taking over Microsoft in the takeover stakes, but I’m annoyed at the fact I haven’t received any information about it.

Surely, an email to all Feedburner customers would have been in order with step-by-step instructions on what to do?

I’ve found something along those lines over here.

So this post is a bit of a rant about what a hassle (and I nearly wrote another word starting with H but this blog is the one place I don’t swear more than bloody) it’s been and to make sure that this appears in the feeds okay, both for me and for you.

I’m now off to make some food to take to the pool. Ta ta.

I’ve been having trouble with advanced scheduling of posts so this is a test. I think it’s something I’ve been doing wrong, ie not selecting published as the publish status while also setting a time in advance for when I actually want it to publish.

UPDATE: Yes, it was indeed me. In Wordpress, select Published as the Publish Status. Edit the time you want to publish the post and then select publish. It will schedule the post for publishing at the allotted time. Make sure you’ve set your local time settings in your Settings though.

I was going to delete this but thought it might be useful info for someone.

Yesterday in the early evening after a couple of other things I had to do, I attended my first blogger/social media meetup in Adelaide.

I was really nervous because I wasn’t exactly sure who’d be there and if I’d know anyone so I had someone to talk to at first. It didn’t matter because there were a couple of people I’ve met at Flickr meets and the others were very friendly so my nervousness was unfounded.

It was one of the rare parties I’ve been to where my son was one of the oldest kids and it was great not to have to supervise him too much around the water feature - not like the other parents had to do for their young-uns. I was surprised that my son didn’t want to go into the spa which of course was fenced.

I finally met Shai Coggins who I’ve been friends online with for a little while now and who raved about my banana cake recipe. If you haven’t made it yet, it comes highly recommended.

It’s kind of strange to go to a function where everyone’s talking about blogging, plurking, twittering, facebook and just about everything online, and everyone knows what the heck everyone means. The consensus at the end of the night was that JJ should start his own blog. I can’t remember how the subject came up, but should he ever want to blog, I’m all for it. I may have to censor it a little bit so he doesn’t incriminate me himself.

I didn’t meet everyone there but there’s always next time. I’m a bit naughty because I took my camera but didn’t take any photos. Again, next time.

I’ve had a Flickr account now for around two years and I love it as a place to keep my photos. Keeping that site and this one separate doesn’t work because photography is part of what I do, therefore part of what I write about.

On that note, I saw an old school friend the other night. It was the first time I’d seen her since I left school over 20 years ago. She found me through Facebook. Facebook is another place I share my Flickr photos which she sees. She told me that she really likes my photos and was even able to tell me which ones she likes, like the one below.

Getting my photos from Flickr showing up on my blog has been a bit cumbersome, but doable.

Manually adding photos to blog from Flickr

In Flickr, I select the photo I want from my collection, click on All sizes and choose the medium size (500 pixels wide).

I then copy the HTML code that will link back to that particular photo.

Back to my blog, I go to the HTML view and paste the code into the blog.

I then change back to the visual view and select the image, hold the shift key down and drag the picture into a size I want, in my case 450 pixels. Holding the shift key down keeps the photos proportions correct. If your blog’s main window is 500 wide then you don’t need to fluff around resizing images.

Here’s the result.

Adding your Flickr photos to blog using Wordpress plug-in

This was how I used to do, but I found a plug-in over the weekend that takes away having to visit the Flickr website. It’s the Wordpress Media Flickr plug-in and so far works a treat.

Once it’s installed and setup to talk to your Flickr account, just select the Flickr icon in your post window. Note, you can also view everyone’s photos but because of copyright reasons I plan to avoid this. Here’s how to add others’ photos to your blog under the Creative Commons licence.

Then select the size options and where you want the photo to sit within your post. I choose 500 wide and the default alignment because I add my own style to it. I still have to resize down to 450 wide but this is really easy as shown above.

If there’s an even easier way to do what I’ve described above, please let me know. I’m all for shortcuts.

A few months ago I jumped on the bandwagon that is Twitter. There was so much talk about it on the interweb that I felt a bit left out not using it. I ummed and aahhed, however, because I feel like I’ve got enough on my plate but I eventually caved in and created myself an account and started Twittering. I actually quite like it because it has attractions that writing a longer blog post doesn’t.

Just as I did this I started hearing about Plurk. For those who haven’t heard of Plurk, it’s similar to Twitter in that it’s a micro-blogging platform but it’s a lot friendlier in its reply mechanism and timeline scenario. You can now easily add your Twitter friends who are also on Plurk.

On the weekend I created a Plurk account. I soon realised that I did not want to update on one platform, then switch to another and update that. It also means that I have to create new friends on Plurk when I’ve already got them on Twitter (well some anyway).

The updating in two different places is the main timewaster for me though. I thought there must be a way of doing both and after a short search, I found that there is. A website called Ping.fm is ‘a simple service that makes updating your social networks a snap.’

I had to email them to get a code to join as it’s still in Beta. I did this, and two days later got the email. It was really easy to get setup and I’ve added Twitter and Plurk to my list of social networks I want to manage. I may also add Facebook down the track after some more experimenting.

Now that I’m a Pinger I have a code to pass onto whoever’s interested in joining. Just leave me a comment and I’ll email you back with it. I also have no objection to having more friends on either platform - hint hint.

This post is part of Problogger’s group writing project.