June 2008

Today was the photo session for Guerita’s ballet concert, so full hair & make-up was required. After much worry about how I would manage to do her hair and make-up, I chickened out and arranged for someone to do it for her! I discovered that the ballet school had a hairdresser and make-up artist available to do it for anyone who wanted - and the price was only $30 total for hair and make-up for both days (the photos and the concert) which I thought was a pretty good deal. Particularly since it turned out the hair was not to be done in a bun, but ringlets and I don’t even own a curling wand. I was happy to completely avoid the embarrassment (for me and Guerita) of doing a shoddy job.

Guerita was pretty excited about the prospect of going off to have all this done, although the reality of it all was a bit more tedious. We had to wait for a while before she got started and then she was required to sit still for over an hour! Not an easy feat for her.

The novelty wore off pretty quickly

but she was very happy with the finished result (lipstick already needs touching up!)

And here’s a sneak preview of her ballet costume…

In other news I’ve also joined the Through the Lens - Digital Photography 101 Group, conducted by Hallie at The Rubber Room. This is exactly what I need right now - a bit of guidance and a little push to get me using the manual settings on my camera, and hopefully some tips on what all the buttons and dials mean. It seems to be a pretty active group so I’m looking forward to learning lots of new tricks from everyone.

The first assignment was to read the manual for your camera and take the best photo you could. I did actually read the manual when I first bought the camera and even bought a guidebook to go with it, so I kind of remembered some of the terms, but because I hadn’t put each thing into practice a lot of it was a jumble of confusing terms.

One type of photography situation I really want to work on is taking pictures when the lighting conditions aren’t perfect. When I can, I try to think about the time of day, the position of the sun etc, but the reality is that I often just pick up the camera to snap a few photos of the kids doing something interesting, so you can’t always plan each photo like a “session”.

Like today, for example where we were sitting in a room in someone’s house with the curtains drawn and the overhead light and a few lamps on. The Auto mode prompted the flash which made Guerita’s skin over-exposed and look even paler than it is, like in this photo.

I remember reading (not in the manual, on a blog I think) that in low light situations, where the automatic modes would prompt you to use the flash, it’s good to use the Av mode which lets the most amount of light in. Maybe someone will correct me here, because I know this is all related to shutter speed and the slower the speed, the more light comes into the lens, thus compensating for the lack of natural light and making up for the lack of flash. The result should look more natural than with a flash but when I’ve played around with this before the photos often still came out too dark.

Today while I sitting there for hours watching a parade of girls turning into painted dolls, I had a little play with the dials and discovered one I didn’t know was there! On my camera (Canon Rebel XTi) you move the top dial to Av mode, hold down the Av +/- button near the LCD screen and twiddling the little dial near the shoot button and you can adjust the aperture value up and down. Obviously I hadn’t read the manual that closely or I would have realised this earlier! By increasing the aperture value you decrease the shutter speed and let more light in. Here’s an example of 2 photos taken straight after each other with different aperture values (on my camera the first is at 0, the second at 2).

The data for these photos (and I still don’t understand all these numbers, but I’m learning) are:

Photo 1
Shutter speed: 1/80 sec
Aperture value: f/5.6
ISO: 1600
focal length: 55.0mm

Photo 2
Shutter speed: 1/50 sec
Aperture value: f/6.3
ISO: 1600
focal length: 55.0mm

I know the assignment said to take the best photo you can, and this obviously isn’t the best photo, but it’s going to be my entry for the first assignment, because it shows something I learnt about my camera, and I think that’s what the course is all about.

…I’d be tooting it right now! Except in a humble way of course, because I always feel awkward talking about recognition.

My theme customisation rated a mention today on the WP-Premiums - A Premium WordPress Theme Showcase site! You can see a whole lot of customised themes over there, rate your favourite and see the most popular.

If you felt like, you could go over there and rate my site. Mind you, I have no idea what I would get out of it, other than a smile on my face!

Well, I already have a smile on my face. As they say at the Oscars “It’s just nice to be nominated!”

I just couldn’t help myself! I was planning to wait until we left Mexico to load the new theme, but everything was ready and I was so excited about it, that I just couldn’t wait. Plus once we’re travelling and back in Perth my Internet access might be a bit sketchy so I didn’t want to load it up and then disappear. For now, my header says “almost back home”, but pretty soon, it’ll change to “now back home”.

So, let me show you around the new look Roaming Aussie Mum…

(if you’re reading this in a RSS reader, click on over. Go on!)

First things first - the theme I am using is the Thesis Theme by DIY Themes. This is actually a premium WordPress Theme (meaning I paid for it) and its the first time I’ve ever used a paid theme. I could never see the point before since there are so many free themes out there, but as soon as I saw this theme I fell in love with it and you get so much more than just a theme with this one.

It was developed by Chris Pearson of Pearsonified, whose blog I already read. His blog has great articles on customising themes, WordPress and blogging in general. You’ve probably all seen one of his other themes before, since his Cutline theme is one of the most popular themes out there. He’s also responsible for the Neoclassical, Copyblogger and Pressrow themes. I don’t fully understand all the ins-and-outs of SEO and theme structure, but Chris’ themes are certainly easy to use and beautifully presented.

Probably the most impressive thing about the Thesis Theme, is the support that comes with it. There’s a blog, with articles about how to use the theme, a user manual, and a forum where thesis users can get help with customisation, troubleshooting and just sharing ideas and inspiration for using the theme. The theme author is a regular contributor to the forums and not only have I got help over there from him, but I also discovered new blogs to haunt. Here’s a few I found through the forum (great blogs and great examples of ways to customise this theme):

Scribbles and Words
Wild Keys
Simple Mom
The Blissful Pixel

As well as all this support, when you buy this theme, you are then entitled to all the upgrades to the theme, for free. So every time Chris adds a new feature or fixes a bug, and releases a new version, you can upgrade easily.

Ok, so that’s my plug for this amazing theme. I love it, and I hope you do too. To find your way around, here’s a couple of things to notice:

• the pictures in the big image box at the top right are rotating so you’ll see a different one every time you visit or click to another page. These are some of my favourite photos an I’ll be adding to them as time goes on.
• Up the top left you’ll find tabs to various pages for my blog - most of which were already there, but one new addition - the Design page which sets out all the tweaking I have done to this theme, and to my previous theme.
• Underneath are a few more of my favourite photos (because I can’t help but put photos of my kids everywhere!). I’m using the Photoxhibit plugin for this but it still needs a little tweaking. When used in a post the plugin will open the photos in a lightbox, but in my sidebar it doesn’t want to do that. Bear with me while I sort that little glitch out.
• There’s a new blue box of text in the first sidebar, with a welcome message - click anywhere on that to go to the about page

For those of you who followed my previous post on getting ready for my new theme, some of the points there might make more sense now - like my custom background, made in Photoshop with a pattern using a “lace” brush, and my header image using a few swirly and heart brushes and fancy text. The little heart swirl is also my new favicon - the tiny image you see on your browser tab when my site is open, and also now in Google Reader in Firefox if you have the Better GReader add/on installed! Check out the design page for information on how to make one of those.

I’ve got my fingers crossed that it all goes smoothly with the new theme. One of the plugins I used to make sure everything would look right is the excellent Theme Test Drive Plugin. This lets you activate a ” test drive” of your desired theme that only you (the logged in administrator) can see. It’s fantastic for trying out new looks and I used it constantly to make sure all my little tweaks came out the way I wanted to. The only problem I found with this method was that moving widgets around in my sidebars when it was activated caused the sidebars to wig out. I suspect this had something to do with going from 3 widgetised sidebars to 2, but in any event, I would be wary of making “structural” changes while you’re in test drive mode. I found I wanted to move a lot of things around for the new theme and doing this even in test drive mode would also change things in my existing theme, so I also used a spare test blog to try out all sorts of fun and crazy stuff to see how it looked. Even if you don’t happen to have a spare domain name lying around (because I know you’re not all as crazy as me), you could probably test it out on a subdomain - something like www.subdomain.yourdomainname.com, if you are able to have another installation of WordPress on a subdomain (not sure about all that - check with your host!).

Other than that, everything else should be pretty straight forward. I’d love to hear what you think, and if you come across any problems or glitches or something just doesn’t seem to display right, please let me know!

Guerita has been going to ballet classes for a year now. It’s very much “the done thing” here in Mexico for girls to go to ballet. For boys I think the norm is tai kwon do or perhaps baseball when they’re older. We tried out a few ballet schools before finding one we liked - a “Baby Ballet” class that wasn’t too serious or technical - she was only 4 when she started after all, it’s not like we were looking to start her on her ballet career or anything.

I was a little surprised when early on in the year, I got (nicely) “told off” for not putting her hair in a proper bun for the classes (complete with hair net and headband to keep her hair out of her face). Apparently the kids take the whole thing more seriously when they are dressed the part. Parents are not allowed to watch the classes, except at the designated demonstration classes, because it is too distracting for the kids and they can’t concentrate on learning ballet. This takes half the fun out of it for me - being able to giggle at the kids running around the room pretending to be ballerinas. And I can’t say I’m particularly worried about her taking ballet “seriously”! Anyway, despite these few little quirks, we are happy with the ballet school - Guerita loves it and the teachers are very nice.

Next week they have their end of year concert - not surprisingly a very involved affair with professionally made costumes, rehearsals and the like. No doubt it will be one of those kids’ concerts where for the 5 minutes your child is on stage you are in raptures and the rest of it you’re trying not to yawn. The school teaches Jazz, Tap and Hip Hop as well as ballet so it could be pretty tedious.

2 days before the concert, though, they all have a professional portrait (photo) session, individually and as a class. They have to be in full costume, hair done just so and with full stage make-up on! I am terrified at the thought of having to do Guerita’s make-up to a professional stage standard. I barely wear make-up myself, let alone know how to do proper stage make-up.

The school has provided us with instructions - they must wear very dark brown eyeshadow, eyeliner and mascara. They must have pink or red blush and bright red lipstick. I don’t even own red lipstick! I might have to go with one of my muted pinks, I think. Obviously, the colour scheme is designed with the olive skin, brown hair and brown eyed colouring of every other student, which is understandable, but it could look a bit strange on my pale little blue-eyed, blonde haired girl.

I will not be at all surprised if the teachers have to do a fix-up job when we get there!

And you know I’m going to be taking photos to show you how it turned out.

I have been meaning to right a post about task management for ages now. A while ago I posted about getting my emails organised and always intended to follow it up with a to-do list post. Well, with the amount of things I had on my to-do list, posting about it kept getting put off, and life got in the way. But I have actually been testing out a few options for keeping on top of my tasks, so I thought I’d give you a run down of a few of them.

Now, obviously, if you prefer, you could use a simple pen and paper, there’s really no need for fancy gadgets or software, but I do like to organise these things on the computer - partly because I am a gadget geek, but also because the ease of updating (and keeping things neat) appeals to me. Many of the online and desktop tools I’ve found have other functions that can make getting and staying organised much easier, so if you like to be “electronically” organised, you might like to try them out.

Microsoft Outlook

I’ve noticed a lot of people spend a lot of time complaining about Microsoft products which I have to admit annoys me sometimes. To be honest there are a lot of computer snobs out there, and I don’t really buy into that philosophy. Yes, there are some products, like Firefox that I find to be better than the Microsoft version (Internet Explorer), but I don’t subscribe to the “everything Microsoft is crap and you’re stupid if you don’t believe me!” camp.

As I said in my email organisation post, I use Outlook and have done for a long time. Regardless of how you feel about Outlook, chances are if you work in an office, you’ll be expected to use Outlook and its probably a pretty common product for most (PC at least) users to use.

One of the reasons I like Outlook is that you can manage a lot of different things from the one place - email, contacts, calendar and tasks. There are also a lot of hidden functions that once you start playing around with you can make work for you. For example I always start up Outlook with the “Outlook Today” page which gives me a snapshot of upcoming appointments, tasks and email. This works quite well, but I would love to see a drag and drop gadget style “home page” for Outlook, along the lines of iGoogle, with lots of options for customisation for displaying only the information you want. I have seen a few tutorials for building your own Outlook Today page, but I haven’t had a lot of success with these (I think my HTML knowledge needs a bit of work for that).

I also like seeing my tasks in calendar display and there are a number of different views in Outlook to allow you to do this.

This view is activated by default when you are looking at the Day or Week View of your calendar, but you can also adjust it through View>Daily Task List.

It is also very easy to turn an email into a task or a task into an appointment or any other type of item in Outlook - simply by dragging and dropping it into the heading on the left taskbar (in my image above - see Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Tasks at the bottom left). I use this frequently when I receive an email containing a task I have to do - just drag it to tasks and a pop-up box comes up allowing you to put in due date and other information.

So I like using Outlook. It’s familiar and useful and has a lot of functionality. The disadvantage of Outlook, however, is that you are tied to a particular computer to use it. If you regularly switch computers and would prefer an online solution, then Outlook probably doesn’t meet your needs.

Remember the Milk

Remember the Milk (RTM) is an online task management tool, developed by Aussies, so I I like the idea of supporting it. It has a lot of useful features and can be used in conjunction with Gmail, which brings Gmail slightly closer to offering all the features of an all-in-one manager. RTM is a fairly simple task management tool, which allows you to enter and track tasks from any computer.

I had planned to give you a review of Remember the Milk, but I’m currently having trouble logging in (some problem with a desktop shortcut keeps logging me out). These are the features the website lists:

• Managing tasks easily and quickly with intuitive interface
• Receive reminders via email, SMS and instant messenger
• Create as many lists as you like and organise them how you like using tags and notes
• Give your tasks a geographical location and see them on google maps
• Share send and publish tasks and lists with you contacts
• Add tasks by email even if you’re not logged into RTM
• Access RTM on your phone
• See tasks grouped by today, tomorrow and overdue. Set up recurring tasks
• Search tasks with Advanced search

So the things I like about RTM are that it is simple to use and allows hierachical task lists - ie a top level task (list) with lots of “sub-tasks” within each list so you can group your tasks effectively, it integrates with gmail and igoogle, google calendar, twitter, iphone and blackberry.

I was going to say that I didn’t like the fact that you couldn’t see your tasks in calendar format, but I just noticed the link-up with Google Calendar which allows you to see your RTM tasks in your Google Calendar and plan your time.

Lifetick

This last tool is actually the one I am using the most at the moment. It’s a new player on the market and is also developed by Aussies. Lifetick has a lot of the good features of RTM including hierachical task lists - it starts with “Core Values” (your top level groups). Within each Core Value you can add Goals, and then within each goal add tasks. The interface is slick and easy to use and if you’re a very visual person, you’ll like this tool - there are a number of different views for your tasks, including pie charts, lists, various widgets and a journal.

I really like the way tasks are organised in this tool and have found it not only helps me keep track of tasks, but helps me organise in my head the things I have to acheive using the Core Values and Goals.

For example, my Core Values are the big things in my life I need to work on - Kids, Travel, House, Blog and a few others. Within the Blog Core Value I have goals of “Re-design Roaming Aussie Mum” for all the tasks to implement my new theme, “Blog Maintenance” for all the ongoing tasks, and “Aussie Bloggers” for the guest posting and things I have to do as a moderator of the forum at Aussie Bloggers.

The Status page also allows you to drag and drop widgets to display different information about your tasks, such as Next 10 due tasks (from all goals), Overdue Tasks

Lifetick is free with limited functionality (limit of 4 goals and no access to status and journal), but it didn’t take me long to decide that I wanted the full version which only costs USD$20 (AUD$22) for a year.

So, how about you? How do you manage your to-do list?