Yesterday, Apple released iOS version 11. Having both an iPhone 6 and an (older) iPad, I began my process of upgrading. My phone was first, and the process took a while, but was pretty much seamless. My iPad, unfortunately, can’t take the iOS 11 upgrade, so I’ll just be talking about the phone.

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I decided it was past time to get my resume up to date. So as part of it, I also redid the infographic that I made as part of it.

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I’m using the WordPress 2010 Weaver theme here and wondering if it’s showing a bit of its age. There’s the Twenty Thirteen theme, which might be interesting.

I put MAMP on my laptop and tossed WordPress on there so I could play a bit without messing up the current format. Experiment with formatting, maybe a bit of revision of the gallery, change up a few things. (Keeping the header and the color scheme, though.)

But I feel the urge to redecorate a little. It’s nice that I can test without anyone getting bothered by it, then show it off when it’s done. Makes it easier to play a bit, feeling I’m not going to break everything.

thinking about adding a facebook ‘like’-style button here, just for some feedback. Just randomly pondering.

just to note, today I set up the Disqus commenting system on here. So if you want to leave a message, that should make things a bit easier.

(sorry, not all philosophy and thoughtful things, sometimes just a tech update.)

I decided to invest a bit in my future, which (if all goes well) involves computers and graphics. Here’s what I did:

First: joined the National Association for Photoshop Professionals. A lot of tutorials, a lot of information, a lot of contacts, and, due to when I joined, a free copy of [amazon_link id=”0321823745″ target=”_blank” ]The Adobe Photoshop CS6 Book for Digital Photographers[/amazon_link].

Second: I received some gift cards from friends, so Amazon also brought me [amazon_link id=”0240525922″ target=”_blank” ]How to Cheat in Photoshop CS6[/amazon_link] and [amazon_link id=”0321823761″ target=”_blank” ]The Hidden Power of Blend Modes in Adobe Photoshop[/amazon_link].

Third: use my subscription to lynda.com so I can get up to speed on some tools in Photoshop I don’t use much, but may end up doing so (the pen tool, man, I need to understand the pen tool).

Fourth: practice. practice, practice, practice.

Then practice some more.

Also… I just saw I made an HTML error. Not good… have to remember to proofread better.

“Business Artificer”.

I think it works.

New temporary header image put in place. There may be changes later. (The logo, the G-in-a-gear, may need to go. Way too MST3K. Ideas happening, though.)

Twitter Tools is one of the top plugins for a WordPress install that wants to interoperate well with Twitter. It includes a widget you can put into a space on your WordPress site, the ability to have posts you make auto-notify Twitter, the ability to send tweets right from the WordPress Dashboard, the ability to auto-create the tweets with hashtags, the ability to choose only specific tags and categories to be automatically tweeted… a very powerful tool for social networking.

It can also be a little confusing to someone trying to set it up for the first time.

With that in mind, and making some mistakes along the way, I wrote this walkthrough for people who may want a more guided setup from someone who’s made the mistakes.

The walkthrough can be downloaded (as a PDF) from here: the Twitter Tools Walkthrough.

I’m working on one for Wordbooker, an interconnector plugin for WordPress and Facebook, and hopefully that should be up soon as well.

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My great thanks to my friends Vivian Withnail and Matthew Wagner for their gracious and kind reviews of my writing, and especially to Ms. Withnail (who can be found bibliophiling at Withnail And Books for formatting assistance to make it look considerably better.

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If you find this helpful, and want to toss me a little bit of money to offset my hosting costs, here’s a little something to use: