Spin!

Remember this girl?

Me either.  :(  

That photo was taken at the Pasadena Triathlon in 2008.

It's been way too long since I've been in the saddle.

A big thank-you to Jen Jarvie for starting a new Spin Class.

Dominica desperately needed one.

Everyone Loves an Irish Girl

In my 27 years, this is the first time I will be without corned beef 

on St. Patrick's Day.  

My Irish blood is craving a dinner like this:

I looked at every store, I called the island meat guy (Malcom), and I asked my favorite restaurant Pagua Bay to no avail.  There is no corned beef on this island.

I suppose some green beer will have to do.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

CHS

It has been brought to my attention by Kristen from Louisiana to Dominica that there is a certain disease we all get when we arrive in Dominica: Caribbean Hoarding Syndrome. 

Caribbean Hoarding Syndrome
Definition: What occurs when foil and ziploc bags come at a premium and you own only a few pieces of tupperware.
Causes: lack of products available, gauging prices, student loans, possibly something in the water
Symptoms: reusing foil, washing and saving ziploc bags, cleaning salsa jars for reuse, saving butter or whipped cream tubs to use instead of tupperware, taking home your To-Go coffee cup to reuse the next morning, saving plastic bags, reusing one-time-use foil baking dishes
Diagnosis: To diagnosis CHS, open the drawer where your paper and plastic products are kept. If it looks similar to the photo below, chances are you have CHS.  

Treatment: CHS usually gets better on its own once the person showing symptoms moves back to the United States.  Relapse can occur as the patient ages and/or comes in contact with others with CHS.

Be honest, do you have CHS?

Camtasia (like Fangtasia.. only better)

For my EdTech program, we had to download a free trial of Camtasia and learn how to use it to create a screencast project.  Using Camtasia was easier than I expected and also a lot more fun!  At it's most simple level, the program lets you video tape what is happening on your computer's screen while also including any talking you do while recording.  The program seemed quite intuitive, and somewhat mirrored the setup of Apple's iMovie.  Before beginning my project, I visited TechSmith's Learning Center and watched the Getting Started tutorials.  From there, recording and creating my own screencast was fairly straightforward.  I can see the potential for using Camtasia as a classroom tool for creating demonstrations and project instructions for my students or as a fun way to show how to do things on my blog!

So, here is my screencast on how to create a favicon and upload it to Google Sites.  This video is best viewed in fullscreen mode.  

For anyone would like to add a favicon to your personal website or blog, after you import your image you would choose "Publish under an open license" and create a free account with favicon.cc.  Once logged in, you would select your created favicon and follow the instructions at the bottom of the page to add the html script to your website or blog.  

RSS

The truth is, I've been entirely too busy reading blogs to post in my own.  There is this thing called RSS: Really Simple Syndicate.  I've always wondered what that funny symbol was, but never cared enough to find out.  It turns out that when you click the RSS button, it's kinda of like subscribing to that blog.  Then if you go to Google Reader (which if you have gmail, you already have) all your "subscriptions" are there waiting for you.  And if you use Blogspot already, all the blogs that you "follow" on Blogspot are already set up, ready to go!  So then, instead of going to check 15 different people's blogs everyday all I have to do is go to G-Reader and voila!  All the updates are there waiting for me.  What an awesome system, and a time saver!

Google Reader

More Info
Google Reader is called an aggregator which basically means a sorter for the RSS feeds.  You can also download aggregators like NetNewsWire which works on your computer, iPhone, or iPad or try a browser-based one like Bloglines or Feedlooks. 

NetNewsWire

There are things I like about G-Reader and NetNewsWire.  At first both were a little overwhelming, but once you catch up on reading what you've missed it's rather easy to stay on top of it all.  I like that I can categorize things with both programs, and I like that you can save an article to read later, or tag it in case you want to find it again.  You can also easily switch between just looking through one blog at a time to reading updates from all the blogs you follow at once.  If you are a blogger like me, you should definitely try it out!