Geek in Heels - Page 106

Feb 2, 2011 • In Entertainment, Geek, Infographics

Transformers: Cars to Autobots Infographic

Carinsurance.org has created an infographic which illustrates the cars behind the Autobots. I didn’t watch Transformers much as a kid (I preferred the likes of Thundercats and Masters of the Universe), but J tells me that it was one of his favorite cartoon shows while growing up…and had the toys to prove it!

He probably could have authored this infographic himself, but I know that he — and other fans of the original show from the eighties — would still get a kick out of it. Enjoy!

I wonder if a Decepticon version is in works…?

Via Bit Rebels.

WordPress for the Everyday Blogger: Prelude

I promised to write about making your WordPress blog look the way you want…if there was enough interest, and sure enough, there was!

This post is the first in a series called “WordPress for the Everyday Blogger.” Why the Prelude before jumping into Part 1? Because this post will deal with those who are making the transition to WordPress from another blogging platform. I myself had a heckuva time transporting my blog from Squarespace to WordPress (mostly because I had over 1,000 posts!) and wanted to document the transition for others who wanted to do the same. I also know that this post will benefit at least three blogger friends of mine — Bien Living Design, OMG I’m a Mom, and Two Wishes — who are about to, or in the process of making the transition to WordPress.

This will also probably be the longest post in my “WordPress for the Everyday Blogger” series, so please bear with me!

1. Export your old blog posts.

If you are making the switch to WP from another blogging platform, rest assured that practically every blogging platform allows you to export your posts so that you can import the entries to your new blog.

If you are not sure how to export your blog data, go check your blogging platform’s FAQs.

For Squarespace, go to Structure Editing Mode, then click on “configure this page” and scroll down to the “Data Export” section. You should end up with a text document that looks similar to this:

That was easy enough, right? Wrong! Because the file you have downloaded has the URL paths to your media (ie, all the photos you have uploaded) but not the files themselves.

The good news is that most of the time, you can easily download the files via FTP. (My favorite FTP client is Cyberduck. It is easy to use and the yellow duck icon looks mighty cute in my dock. However, its Windows version is still in beta so if you’re a Windows user who prefers a more stable version, I recommend FileZilla. Not sure what FTP is? Go check out FTP for Beginners.) I suggest that you keep your media in their folders and upload them the same exact way so that you do not need to change the URL paths in your existing blog posts.

The bad news is that not all blogging platforms support FTP. This was the case with Squarespace, with whom I had been hosting my blog.

Luckily, I have a lifetime account with Squarespace so I chose to keep my old files there and just change the paths to those files (more on that later). If you choose not to do this, you will need to download all your files one-by-one. Not fun.

2. Edit your exported blog data accordingly.

You can choose to keep your old URL structure and everything will be easy-peasy. For example, my Squarespace blog was at https://www.geekinheels.com/blog/ so I could’ve installed my new WordPress blog at that directory too.

However, I wanted my new blog’s URL structure to omit the “/blog” portion — in other words, I wanted my WordPress blog to be at my domain’s root directory.

So I performed a search and replace on the blog data file I had exported, replacing all instances of:

geekinheels.com/blog/

with:

geekinheels.com/

And because I was keeping my old photos at Squarespace, I replaced the existing URL paths to my media to the new Squarespace URL. In this case, because all my media were stored in the /storage directory, I replaced all instances of:

/storage/

with:

https://www.geekinheels.com/wp-content/uploads/old/

If you have a good text editor (I use TextWrangler), you can use the find and replace function to even get rid of additional image formatting, extra line spacing…practically anything you want! Note that TextWrangler supports Grep patterns in their “Find” function, which I found highly useful in this step. (I will not get into Grep patterns here but if you want to use it and are confused, just let me know and I will try my best to help.)

3. Upload your old blog data & files to your new blog.

I am now going to assume that you have installed WordPress (if you’re not sure how, go check out Installing WordPress). Once you are logged into the Dashboard, click on the “Tools” menu on the left and select “Import.” Follow the instructions and voilà — all your old posts should now be imported.

If you have media you need to upload, upload them to your new host using the same exact folder structure. If you do not, all your images will show up as broken links.

4. Redirect your old blog URL to the new URL (if needed).

Caution: be very, very careful when doing this step!

As mentioned above, my old blog URL was https://www.geekinheels.com/blog/ and I wanted my new blog’s URL to be rid of the “/blog/” part.

But since all my old posts begin with https://www.geekinheels.com/blog/...., I needed to create a 301 redirect — which tells the internet that the URL has moved permanently — to have all my old URLs redirect to my new one.

To do this I had to edit my website’s .htaccess file. Many FTP clients won’t show the .htaccess file by default, so using Cyberduck, I navigated to my domain’s root directory, went to “View” in the menu and selected “Show Hidden Files.”

Even when you download the .htaccess file you may not be able to see it on your computer. So I downloaded it using the “Download As” option and saved it as 1.htaccess.

I opened the file using a text editor (such as TextWrangler) and added the following line to the bottom of the file:

redirect 301 "/blog/" https://www.geekinheels.com/

This essentially tells the internet that everytime someone tries to visit

https://www.geekinheels.com/blog/....

they should be redirected to:

https://www.geekinheels.com/....

So for example, if you type in:

https://www.geekinheels.com/blog/2010/12/29/the-beauty-of-pixar.html

you will automatically be redirected to:

https://www.geekinheels.com/2010/12/29/the-beauty-of-pixar.html

After adding the line to the 1.htaccess file I uploaded it to my root directory, and renamed it to .htaccess which replaced my old .htaccess file.

5. Change your permalink structure to match your old blog’s.

Again, this is to ensure that all the visitors who are coming to your blog through another website — including Google, since you don’t know when it will crawl your blog next — will not end up at a 404 Error (not found) page.

After logging into your WordPress Dashboard, go to “Settings” on the left menu and click on “Permalinks.” Examine your old blog’s URL structure and copy it into the “Custom Structure” field.

In my case, my old Squarespace URL structure looked like this:

https://www.geekinheels.com/blog/year/month/day/post-name.html

Very similar to WordPress’ “Day and name” option, but the Squarespace URL has a .html at the end.

So I changed my WordPress installation’s URL structure to this:

https://www.geekinheels.com/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%.html

I did not worry about the “/blog/” in the middle of the URL since I took care of that in the previous step.

Note that in the field above, you only need to type in /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%.html

6. Double-check everything.

Even if you have performed multiple find and replace commands, even if you tried your best to keep all the URLs the same, it is likely that your new blog still contains some broken URLs, images that are not showing up, etc.

I have found that the best way to combat this is through the use of two plugins: Broken Link Checker and Redirection.

Broken Link Checker does exactly what its title implies. It goes through all the links in your WordPress installation (including images) and gives you a list of what is not working. Its nifty interface lets you ignore the broken link, correct it, or remove the link right from its Dashboard page.

What if you don’t want to correct a broken link, but you want to re-route it instead? What if you want to make sure that every time someone tries to go to a certain URL in your domain, they will be re-routed to another URL? That’s where the Redirection plugin comes in handy. Instead of messing with .htaccess files to create URL redirects for every broken link, this plugin lets you do that via an easy-to-use interface.

I recommend that you keep these two plugins activated even after the successful transfer of your blog. When you have as many posts as I do (and links!), there are bound to be new broken links on a regular (in my case, daily) basis.

Using the steps above, I was able to transfer my Squarespace blog (with over 1,000 posts) to WordPress in just one night. But importing your old blog is just the first step. Starting with the next part in this series, I will show you how I made my WordPress theme!

‘Little Golden Book’-Style Movie Scene Illustrations

I am loving these Little Golden Book-style illustrations by Josh Cooley. Some of them are a bit morbid and definitely not appropriate for children, but seeing these famous movie scenes done in a whimsical, youthful way breathes new life into familiar performances. Here are some of my favs:

Individual prints are $50 each (limited runs of 100, signed and numbered by the artist), or you can purchase a book with all of them here.

Via Laughing Squid.

I’m Not Fat; I Just Have a Big Head

Last week we took Claire in for her 4-month checkup. Our pediatrician declared the baby perfectly normal and healthy for her age…but voiced her concern at Claire’s weight gain.

When Claire was born, she weighed 6.7 lbs (23rd percentile) and was 19 inches long (33rd percentile).

Currently, Claire weighs 14.6 lbs and is 22.75 inches long. While her height remains at about the same percentile range, her weight is now over the 90th percentile!

Our doc asked us how much the baby was eating and how often, and told us not to worry about it too much. However, if Claire cries to be fed again within 2 hours of finishing a 6 oz bottle, we were to try giving her 3 oz of water instead.

I know that Claire is just a baby and that she will probably grow into her weight when she becomes more mobile. But as someone who has struggled with weight almost her entire life (I have more curves than the average Asian and am actually considered overweight in Asia), I couldn’t help but be a bit worried, especially since they say that formula-fed babies are more likely to become overweight as they get older.

J and I puzzled over Claire’s weight the entire way home from the doctor’s office. “How could she be over the 90th percentile?” we asked ourselves. “Look at her — she has some baby fat rolls but no more so than the average baby!”

Then we figured it out. It’s because of her giant noggin!

What’s that you say? You think I have a big head?

Why don’t I distract you by taking off my diaper instead…

No? That’s okay — I’m a shy little girl!

(And before you start judging me for what I’m about to write below, remember that I am Korean. We have a tendency to obsess over head sizes.)

I have always been self-conscious of my giant head. If you think that I’m exaggerating, I can tell you with confidence that my head is larger than anyone else I know…and I only stand at 5’1″. If you’re curious, my head circumference is 60cm. That’s almost 24 inches!

As such, ever since I got pregnant I had been hoping for a baby with a small, or even an average-sized head. Not only because it will be easier to give birth, but so that my children will not have to grow up with the teasing that I had endured.

I breathed a sigh of relief when the nurse first informed us of Claire’s stats right after giving birth, because her head circumference was 34 cm, or the 31st percentile.

But as she grew, so did her head. Today, while Claire’s height remains below 2/3 of babies her age, her weight and head circumference are both above the 90th percentile.

And as you can see in the pictures above, Claire is not a fat baby. She has a slight tummy, but that’s most likely due to the fact that she had finished a 6 oz bottle mere minutes before these photos were taken. So the only likely culprit for her above-average weight is her above-average head size.

And before the “How can you criticize your daughter? She’s just a baby!” comments start pouring in, let me say that I am NOT criticizing her. I am making an observation, or at least trying to think of a reason why her weight seems to be so high for her height when she does not look fat.

J and I actually think her big head is adorable. We are also well-aware that babies’ body parts grow at different rates, so her head may very well be average-sized, or even below the average size a year from now.

And if she grows up to have a big head just like her mommy? Eh, I don’t like that I have a big head but the teasing eventually stopped and I’ve learned to live with it. Besides, my mother tells me that I had a bigger head when I was Claire’s age.

Know Your Nuts and Bolts

I have a tendency to keep all the extra screws, nuts, and bolts that come with electronics, toys, furniture, etc just in case we have a malfunction in the middle of the night and ohmigosh this thingamajig just fell apart because it’s missing ONE screw but Home Depot isn’t open! So as you can probably imagine, our toolbox carries a giant mess of various fasteners in all shapes and sizes.

I could never really tell the difference between each nut or bolt, or even what they’re called.

Enter Bolt Depot’s interactive guide to fasteners.

Not only does it describe the different nuts, bolts, washers, etc, it also tells you what each should be used for and offers a downloadable PDF for offline viewing.

For instance, did you know that there exists a category of bolts called sex bolts? And that they function exactly how you would think they would (minus the naughty bits)? Well, now you do!

Go download your PDF now. I, for one, immediately saved it in my computer for those just in case moments.

Via Lifehacker.

Post-Partum Hair Loss

A couple of weeks ago I noticed an unusual amount of hair lying around the house.

Note that I am always “shedding” a lot of hair — one of my ex-boyfriends used to say that he could always tell which rooms I have been in just by looking at the hair on the ground — so imagine just how much more hair there must be for me to become concerned.

My post-partum hair loss had started.

I had read that some women’s hair can fall out in clumps, and that’s exactly what has been happening to me. Chunks of matted hair on my pillow. A mangled mess in the bathroom drain. And hair everywhere on the floor.

I keep my hair up in a tight bun when I am home and there is still hair everywhere. It has gotten to a point where I vacuum twice a day because the amount of hair on the floor and on the couch disgusts me.

I have found that the hair loss isn’t quite as bothersome if I blow-dry my hair right after showering. This way, I can get out the majority of the hair in one go — whereas if I let my hair air-dry, which I used to do before this debacle, my hair will fall out gradually all over the house.

And for those who may be thinking, ‘It can’t be THAT bad. She must be exaggerating,’ here’s a picture of the amount of hair that was on the floor this morning after blow-drying my hair (and I didn’t even use a brush!):

My friend Kelly wrote about a product that has helped her with her post-partum hair loss — the Redken Extremé Anti-Snap leave-in treatment. I usually don’t like using products in my hair but I may have to get a bottle to avoid going bald. I also plan to start taking prenatal vitamins again because my nails have been a complete mess too.

I always tell my friends that the only thing I miss about being pregnant is being able to feel my baby move inside of me. Now I have two others to add to the list: thick, luscious hair and strong, healthy nails.

You may have noticed that I have gone back to my old blog design. After a couple of weeks with the new design, I decided that it just wasn’t me and found myself missing my old layout.

Although I’ve been comfortable working with WordPress in the past, I have learned a lot re-creating my old Squarespace design as a WordPress theme. As such, I am thinking of doing a series of posts on WordPress theme design and development…in simple layman terms and using lots of screenshots. However, I know that this would be VERY time-consuming, so I would only do it if there is enough interest.

Would any of my readers benefit from my writing some tutorial posts on how to get certain things to look the way you want in WordPress?

Sleep Regression

Ever since Claire hit 15 weeks of age (she is now 17 weeks old), she has been becoming increasingly difficult to deal with each passing day. I had read about the dreaded 4-month sleep regression and realized that our child was a classic case: instead of waking up only once or twice in the night, she was suddenly screaming awake 4-6 times a night!

What most non-parents don’t realize is that (good) sleep begets more sleep. In other words, an overtired baby will have more difficulty going to sleep and staying asleep. So with a baby who is getting less sleep through the night, we were bound to have trouble with naps also.

We must’ve hit our low point yesterday. The omfg the baby will NOT sleep at ALL and will only fuss and cry no matter what we do kind. The kind that made me burst into tears at the end of the day and apologize to J on the baby’s behalf for ruining his birthday.

I have been reading up on baby sleep books and websites, and have come to the conclusion that we are in the unlucky 15-20% of families who have extra-fussy babies with difficult temperaments. She’s been through colic between 5-9 weeks of age, and now her sleep regression is making for a very tense atmosphere in our household.

We get about 10 minutes of these happy moments every 3-4 hours.
But still, these moments make the bad times seem worthwhile.

The prescription for extra-fussy babies is a sleep schedule. Previously, I had not believed in a sleep schedule but I now realize that Claire’s temperament calls for it, for our health and sanity’s sake.

I will also start putting her to bed earlier — at 6:15~6:30pm as opposed to our usual 7:00~7:30pm. The main reason for her original bedtime was so that J could spend some time with her when he comes home from work (he usually gets home at around 7pm). Now with the new schedule, he may not see her at night at all, but it may give him an incentive to go to bed earlier himself and wake up early to spend time with his daughter.

Even my mother remarks that Claire is a difficult, “intense” baby, and tsk tsks over the constant dark circles under my eyes. (The one good thing about having a difficult baby is that my post-partum weight loss has come swift and easy. Even after a 50-lb pregnancy weight gain, I am now just a couple of pounds away from my pre-pregnancy weight without even trying!) Being a mother is a difficult job in itself, but it is especially hard with a fussy baby. It makes me really question whether I will ever want another baby — as much as I love Claire, I don’t think I can go through this again.

Bon Anniversaire!

My favorite person in the whole wide world turns 33 today. Happy birthday to a wonderful husband, father and friend!

(Today also marks another special day for us. Exactly one year ago, I found out that I was pregnant with Claire. J’s reaction? “The baby’s not even born yet and it’s already stealing my thunder!” )

Laughing Baby

We’re not exactly sure why Claire was in such a good mood today (if only she were like this every day!), but we didn’t dare jinx it by even questioning why. We took it all in stride, enjoying every last minute, and when she went into a 3- minute long laughing frenzy, J scrambled for his phone to record a short video.

The quality isn’t great — there is some lagging, and the lighting is horrible — but we hope you enjoy it! (Because we sure can’t stop watching it!)

When we were preparing our baby registry, a friend suggested that we add a Flip video camera (or something similar) to the list — “There are so many moments that can only be captured on video,” she said. We did not heed this advice and I am regretting it to this day. I know that our phones can record video, but the quality is pretty bad especially because the lighting in our condo is pretty dim.

For this reason, I have added a Flip UltraHD to the top of my “save money for” list and wholly recommend that all expectant mothers add a small video camera to their registries if they don’t already own one!