Diary of a Zombie

Mr Conehead, below, helpfully let me video part of his exciting day today.

I used the free Lego movie app on the iPad to create the film, but then had problems uploading it to the blog. I couldn't use the Blogger app to add it as there is no video upload option, so I switched to the web version of Blogger (still on the iPad)... but you can only upload video from Google+ or You Tube (not from the camera roll, where it was saved) - there is no file structure on the iPad so you can't navigate to where things are saved as you can on a computer.

So, Plan B: I signed up for Google+, downloaded the Google+ app to the iPad and should then have been able to add the video by using the clapperboard option on the blog toolbar. However, because the video was saved as a photo in Google+ it couldn't find it as a video (I couldn't see a way of changing it), and if I loaded it as a photo it didn't appear in the blog. Grrr.

Now we're on to Plan C; I added the video to Dropbox and am now writing this on the old and clunky laptop that objects to, well, doing most things. I think I have managed to upload the video though (using the clapperboard on the blog toolbar then navigating to find the video in Dropbox), so thank you computer. And thank you Mr Conehead for sharing your day with us:

Subscribers

Well, I've investigated a couple of things about subscribing to a Blogger blog:

I don't yet know how to see if anyone has subscribed to my blog, although I think there's a way in Wordpress so there probably is in Blogger but I haven't found it yet.

I used the cunning ploy of subscribing to my own blog (using the Subscribe by Email box to the right of the page) with a different email address to see how often notifications of new posts come through, and what they look like.

It looks like notifications come through once a day and include all the posts published on that day. I like the fact that the whole text of the post is included in the body of the email; I was expecting only the first couple of lines and then to have to follow a link to the blog to read the whole thing. Thumbs up to Blogger for that! The screenshot below shows how the email looks...

(In an aside, I have just been shown by a 7 year old how to get ... on the iPad in one keystroke instead of having to press the full stop 3 whole times in a row: you change it to the number view, press and hold the full stop then slide your finger up when the ... shows to select it. No idea how he knows that but I'm impressed!)

Time Zones

I've been playing about with the settings on this blog and have successfully set it to the right time zone. Send me a comment if you want me to share my knowledge with you!

Thing 3

No reflecting required for Thing 3 because it's technology that I'm familiar with already; to email the address of this blog to the team masterminding 23 Things so they can add it to the official blog to enable my lovely colleagues to easily find it.

In other news, I have added a Blogger widget (it shows on the right of the page in the web view, I'm not sure where it appears in the mobile view) so if anyone wants to receive notifications of new posts by email they can subscribe. I'm not sure if I get a notification if anyone subscribes; I'll Google it to find out!

Reflective Learning Part 2

Hurrah! My zombie is safely in that last post. I was going to edit that post to add a couple of points but having opened it I decided it would be easier to create a new post - I think the Blogger functionality may work better on a computer then the much loved iPad I'm currently using and I don't want to risk losing my zombie.

I think I could have uploaded my picture from web Blogger (rather than the app) if I had created a Google + account but at the moment I don't want to because it shares too much information for my liking. Anyway, I like the sense of satisfaction you get when you create a successful workaround so that made the laborious process worthwhile.

So what have I learnt from this? Am I reflecting? Shall I share my reflections? Well, it reinforced my thinking that Googling is a great way to find the answer to any technical question - that is how I found the free Blogger app. I also learnt (by playing around with the screen) how to save a picture from Facebook to the iPad photo gallery which will be useful in the future; initially I thought I'd have to take a screenshot of it which would not have looked so good. But* mostly it confirmed my thinking that I like playing with comic apps!

*I know, sentences should not start with but or and. But I've done it. And I'm using the informality of blogging as my excuse to carry on doing it.

(Now switching to the app to add an image...)

Reflective Learning

Hopefully somewhere on this post there is a picture of a zombie who has been reflecting on his learning. However, getting the picture on the blog was not as straightforward as I anticipated because I was determined to do it without using a computer.

Stage 1: create a photo, add a caption and speech bubble.
Rating: easy.
I downloaded a free app onto my Android phone called ComicStripIt. Using this app I took a photo of my slightly puzzled looking zombie, added a caption at the bottom, added a speech bubble and moved it around until I was happy with it then saved it and shared it on Facebook.

Stage 2: upload my captioned zombie picture onto this blog.
Rating: not so easy!
I switched from using my phone to the iPad and opened up Facebook so I could retrieve my picture. I don't use the Facebook app on the iPad (I prefer the web version) so I logged on using the Safari browser, found my photo (complete with a couple of comments from my friends) and saved it to the iPad photo gallery. So far so good.

I then opened up Blogger, created a new post and tried to add a photo. However, there was no option to add a photo from the gallery. Never mind, thought I, as I returned to using my phone, I'll do it this way and sure enough from the web version of Blogger I had the option to added a photo from the phone gallery. However, there was no option to save the picture from the ComicStripIt app to the phone photo gallery. Hmm. So I used What's App to send the picture from the comic app to a friend, then tried to save it from within What's App to the photo gallery. No joy.

So I am now back on the iPad having downloaded the free (and very basic) Blogger app and I think it has added the picture from the iPad gallery but I can't see where on the page it ill be. So I will now publish this post then switch back to the web version to see how it looks!