No, I have not abandoned this blog…

…but I have been embroiled in moving.

I firmly believe that old dogs can learn new technology tricks, but moving is a young man’s sport–and even this young man found it challenging.

Regular posts to resume soon. 

Why I’m working for free–and why you might want to

Switching gears a bit with this post:  I’ve had to take a break from my excursion into the land of photography (which you can read about here and here and here) because I’ve had actual work to do.  Meaning:  Work for someone else.

It’s not work for money, but I’m getting paid all the same.  As I explained on the About page, I’ve set a goal to pick up skills I need to be a player in the world of digital communication.  I am not sure what I want to do in that world, or how my work life might change, but I know I want to do more than dabble.

When opportunity knocks, answer the door

Within days of making that decision, a great opportunity came my way:  VoiceCatcher, a local non-profit literary organization, posted their need for a resources coordinator to take a lead role in building a more dynamic web presence.  Specifically, they want to revamp their web site and begin using social media tools.

Do I have the skills to revamp a web site?  Not exactly.

Have I used social media tools to build a community?  Nope.

Did I respond to the call for help?  Absolutely.

Why?  It never hurts to ask–and sometimes (like, this time!) it pays off in great ways.

Short story really short:  I got the gig.

Because the organization is a non-profit and the position is volunteer, they are willing to take a chance on someone (me) who might not have every necessary skill but who has enough to get started and a willingness to learn.  In exchange, I’m going to get:

• An opportunity to pick up new skills
• A chance to build my personal network
• Work that is personally meaningful
• Concrete samples of work that I can show to someone else down the road who might want to pay me money

How did I get this opportunity?

1.  I emphasized transferable skills that are of value to the organization. 

While I’d really like to be in charge of the website overhaul, I don’t know if I’m ready for that.  But I’ve got the skills to find and build a team who can do this work.  As an instructional coach and staff developer, my day job is all about bringing together groups of people and helping them develop their skills and practice.  I’m going to transfer that from an educational setting to the setting I’m interested in moving to.  I might not be ready for the website overhaul now, but I know that my simply getting myself into this kind of setting, I’m going to learn things and be in the way of opportunities that will move me further down the road I want to travel.

2.  I did what I could on my own first. 

When I talked with the organization’s outreach coordinator, she mentioned that she’d read my blog and like it.  I started blogging a little more than a year ago because I just wanted to learn what blogging was all about.  My other blog is a personal one, about my efforts to live a better (for me) life.  It’s not a professional work sample, but it did show her a few things:  a) some digital communication skills; b) my writing skills; c) a bit about who I am.   All three things convinced her to take a chance on me.

Don’t wait for someone else to give you an opportunity to do what you want to do.  Just start.

3.  I was honest about what I know and don’t know, and what I hope to get from the experience. 

I’ve come to believe there isn’t much inherent good/bad about any person or situation.  It’s all about fit.  Do the organization’s needs and mine complement each other? Do our personalities?  If the answer is yes, this is going to be a win-win.  If not, it’s a losing proposition.  It doesn’t matter how great an opportunity might be.  If it’s not a fit, it won’t be.

4.  I used my network. 

The president of the organization is an acquaintance from a writing group that both of us used to belong to.  We’d only met a few times, but that was enough for both of us to know that we’d like to take a chance on each other.

How’s it going so far?

Great.  I’ve completed my first assignment, and–as I’d hoped–it required me to do some stretching and learn something new.  More about that in tomorrow’s post.

The Take-Aways

1.  Compensation doesn’t always take the form of money.

2.  Education doesn’t always happen in classrooms.

3.  Don’t be afraid to ask.  (What’s the worst that can happen?  Right:  Nothing.)

4.  Maximize the benefits.  I took this position not just because it’s web-connected work.  It’s web-connected work for a cause I care about, working with people I like.

5.  Be honest.  It really is the best policy, for lots of reasons.

Learning how to learn about photography

Umm, yes: Need to work on framing.

After jumping into the photography pool the past week, I’ve realized a few things:

1.  There’s a TON of things one might know about photography.

2.  There’s a lot of information online about photography.

3.  Because there’s so much one might know/learn/say/do, the idea of learning/teaching about photography feels overwhelming.

While I’m finding lots of online tutorials and forums that deal with the technical aspects of taking photos (filled with terminology I don’t yet understand and hardly know how to decipher), I haven’t found much in terms of an approach to learning.

I don’t know photography, but I do know teaching/learning–and that’s what’s going to keep me from drowning.  From my initial messing around (and my years of experience as a teacher), I’m developing a learning process that’s working for me and keeping those too-much-to-take-in-can’t-really-breathe feelings at bay:

1.  Set objectives/learning targets.

This is Teaching 101:  You’ve got to be clear about what you want students to learn before you can decide what they need to do.  I couldn’t really set objectives without first getting a little wet, but now I’ve got some good ideas about what I want to accomplish.

My big picture goal?  I want to be able to take pictures that will look good on my blogs.  I want to take pictures of my family, friends, and experiences that capture what’s special about them.  I do not want to be a professional photographer.  I am not aiming to produce photographic art.

Knowing that’s my long-term objective, I can set a few short-term targets:

• Learn how to take photos that are neither too dark or too light, in a variety of conditions.
• Learn how to frame shots.

2.  Focus in on one thing at a time.

At my last practice session, I started out experimenting with different Tv (shutter speed) settings.  I also messed around with white balance, and then Cane showed me something called the exposure index, and we talked about ISO, too.  When I start playing around with a whole bunch of variables, it’s harder for me (so far at least) to know which variable is really making a difference in the shots I’m getting.

Consider these 3:

The first one has a shutter speed (Tv) of 1/125 and the last one has a speed of 1/250.  Makes sense:  1/125 is a slower speed, which means more light.  But the middle image isn’t a speed in the middle; it’s got a shutter speed of 1/350.  Huh?  Shouldn’t it be the darkest?

Obviously, I was fiddling with some other element as well–probably white balance.  But, I don’t really know, so these shots aren’t very helpful for my learning.

Compare that set to this one:

In these, Cane changed only one element, the exposure index.  I can see clearly what the different settings did to images that were the same in every other way.

I think I need to really learn and understand one variable at a time, and take sets like the one of Cane’s you see above.

3.  Short, frequent practice sessions are my best bet for making progress.

Thanks to a great tip from edgnarly in response to my last photography post, I’m no longer taking notes by hand to see what settings I used for a particular image.  In iPhoto, I can select Show Extended Photo Info in the Photos menu, and it shows me almost all the settings.  (It is not showing white balance, which is really puzzling.  Something I need to look into further.)

When I take a small set of photos, then look at them right away, I learn a lot more than if I take a ton and wait to look at them.  Too much time goes by, and I can’t remember what I did as well.  And, the whole thing becomes blurry in my mind.  I’m hoping that tomorrow I might do another short session focused just on Tv again, so I can play around with it and build on what I learned in my last session.

4.  Reflection and feedback are essential.

One of the biggest reasons I’m blogging about all of this is that it forces me to process and reflect on what I’m doing.  Writing forces me to clarify my thinking.  It helps me realize when I’ve got a gap in my understanding.  It often sparks new thoughts and questions, which help me know what the next step is.

Feedback and input from others are essential, too.  After my first session with Cane, I was able to do some fooling around on my own, but then I got to a place where I needed another practice session with him.  I needed some questions answered, and I needed someone who knows more than me to watch what I was doing and help me understand why I was getting the results I was.  I need a coach to help me take my practice forward.

5.  When I pick up the camera, I need to be clear about my purpose. 

Am I trying to get good photos, or am I trying to learn?  Sometimes, I pick up the camera and my only purpose is to further my learning.  But sometimes I’m really wanting to get good pictures.  I can do both things in the same time/place, but I need to be aware of my purpose every time I shoot.

That was the case a few days ago.  I was playing around with the camera to learn, but I also hoped I’d get some good shots to remember a nice afternoon on the beach.  I think taking a few short sets like the ones above, in which I change only one variable, will be great for the first objective.  But then, I can make other kinds of changes to up my chances of getting lucky and having some sweet images to remember a good time.

So, did I get lucky?

Not a whole lot, but I did get a few shots that I like quite a bit:

And my favorite:

If you’re like me and have always wanted to learn how to take better pictures but were afraid there was too much to learn, I’ve got only one thing to say:

Come on in.  The water’s fine.

What I did on my summer vacation

Sure, I've been looking about as active as Ginger on the outside. Inside has been a whole different story...

For the last 5 days, I’ve been mostly alone, responsible to no one but me (and 3 dogs).

I have a list of things I “need” to do, and some of them I’ve done–the things that have an immediate deadline.  However, I’ve given myself a pass on the others, and I’ve used the week to mess around, to explore, to dream.  I rarely get one full day to fully indulge my learning whims, much less five.  I decided not to squander the rare treat of time served up on my plate.

Chowing down

So, for the last 5 days I’ve done a lot of this:

Reading blogs–all kinds of blogs.  Blogs about finding your passion.  Blogs about entrepreneurship.  Blogs about photography and other kinds of creative work.

Reading craisglist ads.  I’m reading lots of ads, mostly for jobs I’m not (yet) qualified for but find interesting.  I’m reading them to see what I’d have to do to become qualified for them, and I’m reading them to learn the names of companies who do the kind of work I might like to do.

Working on my blogs.  I’ve got the one you’re reading, my gratitude-focused blog, and a new one I’m creating with Cane that we haven’t quite rolled out yet.  Through working on the blogs, I’m learning a lot about what I want to learn about.

Remember when so much of the world was fascinating? Engagement is just a window away.

Taking photos.  Taking photos is fun.  It gets me off the couch and away from the computer screen.  As much as I love words and know they are my truest medium, I also love that much of the (to me) most relevant/interesting work being produced now has a visual element.  I want to learn how to get the visions in my head out of there and into a safer place.

Imagining.  For a long time I’ve been less than satisfied with my work life.  While there are parts of it I love, it’s never been an easy relationship.  I rarely achieve a flow state at work, where much of my time is spent interacting with others.  I’m an introvert.  I love creating things.  Creating–that’s when time melts like ice cream in August, into a sweet, sticky puddle of goodness.  I want more flow in my work.  I want a better fit.  Now, I don’t know what it is I need to do or how to get that, but I know that imagining is the first step to figuring that out.

Going to keep eating

Thanks to the economy and the educational budget cuts that have come with it, I’ve got more minutes coming my way when school starts in September.  26% more, to be exact.  What that means can be expressed mathematically:

26% less time = 26% less money

Now 26% less money could equal 100% panic/anxiety–and maybe it should?–but it’s not.

When my principal told me that my position was being cut 20% (one day a week; the other 6% comes from furlough days), he offered me in-building sub time.  I could spend all of my cut days subbing for other teachers.  While I appreciated the offer, I’m hoping I’ll be able to turn it down.

I’d rather be driven by the hope of sweet treats than the fear of no bread.  Subbing would feel like more of the same-old same old that’s kept me in a place that’s almost-but-not-quite right.  (And I learned this winter that almost-right is still, when you get right down to it, wrong.)

I don’t know what right is, yet, but I’m going to use the time to figure that out, to build skills I’ve long wished I had, to make connections that will enrich my life no matter what I’m doing to put food on the table.  I’m going to invest in my education, my network, my dreams.  That’s going to feed me (and my family) far longer than whatever I might make doing whatever I can to fill in some budget gaps.

What did I do on my summer vacation?

Started a journey that will last long after the leaves have fallen and we’ve tucked in for the winter.

What are you going to do on yours?

 

Lollipop girl by  D Sharon Pruitt;  you can see the original here.

Wanting to get more than lucky

Since last week’s first photography lesson, I’ve been snapping pics all over the place:  the pool, Portland’s Japanese Garden, Lolo Pass, my parents’ yard, Pt. Townsend.

And I’ve gotten a few shots I like pretty well.  They weren’t necessarily great when I downloaded them, but I was able to get something I liked after editing them in iPhoto (which is one of my immediate goals):

Taken at the Japanese Garden, in a small sitting area. I love the light in this one.

Also taken at the Japanese Garden. Again, it's the light I like--and the line of the railing.

Lolo Pass at almost-sunset. Had to lighten the shadows in this one a bit and the sky's too bright--but the scoot looks gorgeous, doesn't it? And I like the curvy line of the road.

I know shots like this are a cliche. I don't care; I like it anyway. Mostly because I love lupines, which is mostly because of Barbara Cooney's picture book Miss Rumphius.

The swing at my parents' place. We used to sit on this all the time when the kids were small.

I really like the texture in these plants, and the contrast between red and green.

Problem is, I have no idea how I really got these.  Which means I can’t replicate them, and there really wasn’t any skill involved.  I just got lucky.

Need a new method for my madness

I want to be more than lucky.  I want to know what I’m doing.

As I took all the pictures that resulted in the shots you see above, I was playing around with all the elements that Cane showed me.  I tried different Tv settings.  I sometimes set it manually, and sometimes put the camera on P, which let the camera set it.  I tried different white balance settings.  Doing all that resulted in sets of images that look like this:

I have no idea what settings I used for any of these.  What made Cane 1 so much lighter than Cane 2?  What caused the slight difference between Cane 1 and Cane 3?  I dunno.

I took 107 shots on my trip to the Japanese Garden.  I’ve read many times that the key to getting great photos is to take a lot of them.  But my goal here wasn’t getting really great photos; it was learning how to take them. After taking 107 photos, what I’d done for any of them was a big fat blur.  (The kind you get when taking fast moving images with a slow shutter speed.  Hah!  I have learned something anyway…)

In my next few sessions I tried to be more aware of what I was doing when I took a shot, and I took fewer of them–but I still couldn’t remember what I’d done when I looked at them later.

A new tactic

Yesterday I decided that I was going to take fewer shots, and I was going to take notes.  I bought a handy little spiral notebook and took off for Pt. Townsend with camera and notebook in hand.

I took only 5 shots, so I would be better able to remember what I’d done.

They all stunk:

Even iPhoto couldn’t save this one.  Or any of the others.  My notes weren’t of much use.  I could see that there wasn’t enough variation in what I’d tried.  Resulting in 5 slightly different kinds of too dark.

A happy medium

Today I rode the ferry to Edmonds to meet my cousin for lunch.  I decided to try a little bit of both approaches.  I did want to get some good shots (if possible), but I also wanted to see if I could learn some things.

I took some shots just for learning, and with those I did take notes in my handy-dandy notebook:

The notes below the line are those I took after viewing the shots I took on the ferry on the way over.  Thanks to my ferry time on the way back, I was able to look at the first set before shooting the next.  Which, it suddenly occurred to me, was a great way to avoid the 107-shot overload I experienced at the Japanese Garden.

So I took some more shots, taking notes as I went.  After taking a few sets of pictures, I looked at them and added more notes, recording what I was realizing about the settings I’d used:

Grand conclusions?

Umm, none.

On my first set of shots, I used the P setting (in which the camera decides the Tv setting).  Those were too dark.  I set Tv manually on my best shot, so I decided to experiment more with that in the second set.

In the second set, there’s no clear way the shots were better or worse.  For some the P setting was better.  For others, it wasn’t.

I think I’m ready for another lesson with Cane.  I’m not sure how P is different from Auto, and I have no idea why I got such mixed results.  I’m hoping I can show him the shots and my notes and he can help me understand more.

The Take-Aways

Taking lots of shots is important.  (Cane said so, as did Malcom Gladwell–sorta–though I hope I can get better at this before I spend 10,000 hours on it.)  But, just taking lots of random shots isn’t going to help me a whole lot.

Some system that lets me know what I was doing when I took a shot is going to help me learn more.  While I wasn’t able to figure out much from my practice sessions, I know what I need to ask more about, and I’ve got some examples I can talk about with Cane.

Stopping to look at my shots periodically throughout a practice session will be more effective than taking a whole bunch and looking at them when I’m all done.  I can try new things based on what I’m seeing, so that my variations are purposeful.

Learning how to take pictures is hard work. Luckily I found some sustenance.

Photography Lesson #1: Tv and Av

The ghost of lessons past

In high school, math class was my own personal torture chamber.

Mrs. Ferris, a woman with almost-infinite patience, spent hours dragging me through Algebra II (the last class I took).  I tried to hang on and stumble along behind her, until the moment I still remember vividly (31 years later).

“But I don’t understand why we do it this way,” I said.

“You don’t need to know why.  Just memorize the formula and put the numbers in.”

“I think I need to know why.  I can’t just put the numbers in.”

“Just memorize the formula,” she said, sighing.  “It’s easier that way.”

And that’s when I let go.

I knew that’s all I was going to get from her, and I didn’t know why that wasn’t going to be enough for me but I knew it wasn’t.  It wasn’t easier that way.

After becoming a teacher myself, I came to understand that some learners (like me) need to know why.  If I don’t know why, I’m never going to be able to do what or how.  I’ve tried to be different, to will my way through things, but I just don’t seem able to.

So it is with photography.

Getting to Why

A few years back, when Cane upgraded his camera, I bought his old one.  I was sure I’d be able to take great pictures with a good instrument.  Several times since, he’s shown me how to do various things with it.  The lessons have never stuck.

I could do some things when he was right there with me, telling me exactly what to do, but the next time I picked up the camera I couldn’t remember any of them.  I’d go right back to taking my too-dark (or too washed-out) blurry shots.

Like this:

And this:

As opposed to his, which always look more like this:

Obviously, it’s about more than the instrument.

When I told him last week that I wanted to really learn how to use the camera, that I’ve embarked on this project to learn things I’ve long wanted to know, he agreed to help.  When I picked up the camera at the start of our first lesson, he said, “You don’t need that yet.  First we need paper and pencil.”

“Why?”

“I’ve got to explain some things to you, so you’ll understand how the camera works.  You can’t really use it if you don’t know why it takes pictures the way it does.”

And then I flashed back to math and realized that Cane was not going to be another Mrs. Ferris.

Finally, the right teacher for me.

What I learned in lesson 1:  It’s all about light

My pictures are invariably too dark or too light.  Shadows that don’t show what I want showing, or washed out faces or bright spots that I can’t dim.  I can sort of fix some things with iPhoto, but many of my shots have been too far gone to fix.

Like this:

The best I could get those lovely washed-out, over-exposed faces to look (by adjusting the shadow and exposure in iPhoto) is this:

They look like ghouls.  It doesn’t matter how well I capture a moment or frame a scene if I can’t get the light right.  And I now know that getting the light right is all about the aperture (which lets in light) and shutter speed (which determines how long the aperture stays open).

Cane showed me the aperture in the lens, which opens according to the settings I indicate for two values:

Time value (Tv on the camera)–which is how long the aperture stays open (shutter speed)

Aperture value (Av on the camera)–which is how wide the aperture opens

There are knobs to turn to let me set both of these things.  I can, of course, set the camera to auto mode–but that’s what I usually do with the less-than-fabulous results you see above.  Cane explained that some kinds of light can be tricky for auto mode:  bright sunlight and shade, for example.

How it works

It seems to be mostly about balance between Tv and Av:  If I’ve got a big opening (Av) and a slow shutter speed (Tv), I’m going to have lots of light.  (Lots of light = washed out photo.)  If my opening is small and my shutter speed is fast, I can’t get enough light.  (Little light = dark photo.)

As Cane explained it, it’s like a hose filling a bucket, and the water is light.  I can have a big, wide hose (Av) with a trickle of water (Tv) and it will probably fill the bucket as fast as a small hose with a lot of water going through it.  (Umm, this isn’t seeming as crystal clear or profound as I’m writing it, but it really worked for me when he was explaining it.)

The equivalent of small Av and fast Tv

The equivalent of big Av and slow Tv

Here’s the part where it gets tricky/frustrating for a sometimes really concrete thinker:

The number to indicate Av gets smaller as the opening gets bigger.  I could feel my math anxiety welling:  Why wouldn’t the damn number get bigger if the whole is getting bigger?  Because (as Cane patiently explained), the number is really a fraction.  And fractions get bigger as the number gets smaller.  That put me back to 4th grade frustration with math–about the time I began the hate/hate part of my math relationship.

But, OK.  I get that.  1/4 of a pie is a much bigger piece than 1/12 of a pie. Smaller number = bigger piece of light.  Or, bigger hose.

Shutter speed (Tv) is a number that gets bigger (faster) as the time gets shorter.  Because it’s indicating how fast the shutter is moving, not how long it’s open.

On my camera, I can choose to adjust either the Tv or the Av.  When I start fiddling with one, the other adjusts automatically.  He recommended manually setting Tv and letting the camera take care of Av.  (Why?  I don’t remember.  Something to ask about in next lesson.)

How does knowing this help?

This lesson came about because I wanted to take some pictures of my daughter (Grace) at the pool.  I wanted to take action shots in bright sun, which I knew would probably suck if I took them the way I usually do.  Cane explained that shutter speed is key to getting action shots that aren’t blurry.

Slow shutter speeds with moving objects = blur.

If I’m taking a picture of a still object, I can have a slower shutter speed, to let in more light.  With action, I need the camera to capture the image before the object changes (moves), so I need a fast shutter speed.  Which means I need a lot of light–to take an action shot in a dark place, I need a wider aperture opening, because it won’t be open for long.  (Think of the hose.)

Cane recommended that for action shots, I probably need a Tv of at least 500.  (And, he said that I can’t go below a Tv of 60 without using a tripod.  Hands cannot hold the camera steady enough for the length of time the shutter is open–which is another way of creating blurry shots.)

A Tv of 500 would probably be OK for my pool shots because they’d be taken in bright sun.  Bright sun = OK for high shutter speed (because there is already lots of light).

But that doesn’t mean great shots in sun are easy…

Final part of lesson #1:  Position of sun and white balance

The thing about sun is, it creates shadow.  So we talked a bit also about how to manage that.  His easy advice was:

Take the shot with the sun behind you and facing your subject.  Like this:

That shot’s not great (still a fair amount of shadow under his chin and from his glasses on his face), but it’s a lot better than this one taken with the sun at his side, where half his face is in shadow (as well as much of the background):

Cane also showed me how to adjust the white balance, using the function button.  I can set my white balance to adjust for various lighting situations, such as shade, sunlight, florescent lights, etc.

And that’s about as far as we went, because I was starting to get overloaded.  Just like this post is.  So, I’m going to bring it to a close, just as we brought the first lesson to its close at this point.

Putting it into practice

Aside from knowing the why, the other thing I have to do to learn how to do things is put it into practice immediately.  So, right after the demonstration/information session, I went to the pool with Grace.

I’ll talk more about what I learned from that (and a few other practice sessions) in another post.  Until then, here are a few teasers, some good and some not-so-good:

These two shots could be pretty good, but you can see that I’m having trouble managing shadow…

…and shutter speed:

In the next two, I did manage to take mostly non-blurry action shots (yay!), but I could use some work with framing…

…and (again, grrr….) shadow:

And some many were just pretty sucky/terrible:

But I did end up with this sweet shot, which makes it easy to dump all the terrible ones–and gives me motivation to keep learning/trying:

The Take-Aways

1.  I’ve got to know the why.  When I know the why, I understand the how better.  Knowing that what I’m really doing when I adjust Av and Tv is controlling the flow of light makes it easier for me to think through how I might adjust the numbers.

2.  Controlling the flow of light is what the Av and Tv settings are about.

3.  I need a Tv of at least 60 if I don’t want to use a tripod.  I need a Tv of around 500 for action shots.

4.  I need to take shots in the sun with the sun behind me.

5.  I get to white balance through the function button.

6.  I’ve got to take a lot of shots to get a good one.

What about you?

Any great tips/ideas/resources for dealing with sunlight and action?  Please, share your wealth with me! 

Image credits:

Small hose

Big hose

Blurry beach shot:  Cane Prevost

This is so cool… (I know, I’m not. Because I think this is so cool and I didn’t know about it before. So what?)

I promised in my last post that I was going to post again soon about my first day trip into the land of photography.

It hasn’t been soon, and this post isn’t about photography.

I’ve got that one drafted, but it’s not ready to go yet.  And in the meantime, I wanted to create another page, which is how I learned the really cool thing I’m going to write about here.  I warned you that this journey would not be linear…

Poking around

On the new page I want a series of lists, but I don’t want one long, skinny list of lists.  I want something more like columns of lists.  I started poking around on my WordPress toolbar, and I came up with nada.  Well, nada that I could see any way to make use of.

As a last resort I clicked on the question mark icon (the Help button) at the end of the second row of icons:

(Don’t see two rows of icons at the top of the box you’re composing in?  First, be sure you’re not in full-screen mode.  Then, click on the icon at the end of the row of icons you do see:

That will reveal your kitchen sink, a second row of icons that let you do stuff.)

A help box popped up.  I tried the Basics tab, but the information there didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.  What to do?

Dive deeper.

I clicked on the Advanced tab, which throws around the letters HTML as if readers know what to do with them.  Anything referencing HTML tends to give me flashbacks to my high school math anxiety, but luckily I pressed through it and read until I got to this in the last two lines:

Pasting content from another application, like Word or Excel, is best done with the Paste from Word button on the second row, or in HTML mode.

I never knew there was a a Paste from Word button!

So that I could, like, you know, paste stuff from Word.  Like a table–which I do know how to create.  (I have copied and pasted text from Word before–without the button–and had trouble.  Nice to learn that there’s a different way.)

Going for a test run

Before investing a whole lot of time to make a table out of my lists, I knocked out a quick tester table and posted it into the page I was creating.  It looked like this:

;adlkfdj	A;dlkfj	A;ldkfj	A;dlkfj	;adlkjf

Yeah, baby–that’s my table, created in Word and imported with the Paste from Word button.  Which I’m planning to use as soon as I finish this post to make that page I was working on.

Bad news and good news

The bad news is that it will not import my formatting.  My Word version of this table has cool fonts and colors that you aren’t seeing here.  That’s because I don’t know jack about HTML and can’t make use of the information under either help tab to make it look cooler.  (Not today, anyway.  Perhaps soon…)

The good news is that I was able to use that information under the same Advanced tab to fix a problem I quickly created.  I pasted my two tester tables onto my page, but then I wanted to get rid of them.  Could get rid of the text in the table, but could not make the table itself disappear.

As I said, I don’t really know jack about HTML, but I decided to switch from the Visual editor to the HTML editor to see if I could figure out how to make it go away–because, under that same Advanced help tab, I’d read this:

When you want to include HTML elements that cannot be generated with the toolbar buttons, you must enter it by hand in the HTML editor.

If you can enter things with the HTML editor, could you not, perhaps, delete them with it?

Hell, yeah.

I switched to HTML, and there I saw this bunch of code where my table should be:

<table border=”1″ cellspacing=”0″ cellpadding=”0″>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td valign=”top” width=”89″>;adlkfdj</td>
<td valign=”top” width=”89″>A;dlkfj</td>
<td valign=”top” width=”89″>A;ldkfj</td>
<td valign=”top” width=”89″>A;dlkfj</td>
<td valign=”top” width=”89″>;adlkjf</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign=”top” width=”89″>&nbsp;</td>
<td valign=”top” width=”89″>&nbsp;</td>
<td valign=”top” width=”89″>&nbsp;</td>
<td valign=”top” width=”89″>&nbsp;</td>
<td valign=”top” width=”89″>&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

I  don’t know how that makes a table, but I know it makes a table, so if I want the table to go away, I need all that coding to go away.

Easy peasy:  Select the code.  Hit the space bar.  Table gone.

To switch from Visual to HTML, click on the tabs at the top of the composing box.  They look like this:

The Take-Aways

About working in WordPress:

• The Paste from Word icon (in the kitchen sink) will allow you to paste tables from Word.
• Pasting a table from Word will not keep the formatting unless you change code in the HTML editor.  (You can make formatting changes with the Visual editor though.)
• The HTML editor tab can be used to easily delete things you can’t seem to get rid of in the Visual editor.

About learning how to use a technological tool:

• Use the help icon.
• Keep reading, even if what you’re seeing doesn’t make a whole lot of sense and even if it doesn’t immediately seem directly applicable to the problem.
• You don’t have to know/understand everything to figure out something.

Not bad for 15 minutes of screwing around.

(Note:  I know my screen shot graphics here look a little funky and would be better if I could draw on them to highlight the particular icons/tabs I’m referring to, but I don’t know how to make better ones.  Yet.)

Off to find the bright places where the Boom Bands are playing

As I explain on the About page, this blog is a chronicle of my adventure to learn new things.  What kind of new things?

All kinds, but generally things that will help me better create and communicate in today’s world (as opposed to the one I grew up in).

Which leads to an obvious question: 

Where to start?

And another: 

How to proceed?

Here’s where I could get into some real trouble before I even really begin:  I could easily get lost in the planning of this learning project.  I could lose days (weeks, months) trying to learn what it is I need to learn.  Make lists of goals, plot my hoped-for conquest of them on calendars.  Get overwhelmed and frustrated by all that I don’t know and want to know and how little time there is to learn.

Not gonna do it.

Time to get lost

I recently read a post in Zen Habits that I found intriguing:  The best goal is no goal.  One of blogger Babauta’s arguments for no goals is that the lack of them (or a plan, which he says is really a goal in different form) is that we are more likely to go to interesting places we might otherwise never have discovered:

…you have to open your mind to going places you never expected to go. If you live without goals, you’ll explore new territory. You’ll learn some unexpected things. You’ll end up in surprising places.

I want a whole lotta that.  I want to end up in surprising places.

Setting off on foot

Seems to me I can look at this adventure as travel.  I know the country I want to go to–the land of digital communication.  I could spend months planning my journey, but instead I’m going to hop on a plane, no itinerary in hand.  No hotel, no rental car, no tour guide waiting for me.  I know the general landscape, but none of the particular treasures within it.  Going to set off on foot, so I can travel slowly.  No real plan so that I can let one interesting place take me to the next.  I want to wander.

To borrow an idea from another blogger I admire, I’m going to get lost.

What’s on the immediate horizon?

I’ve wanted to learn about photography since high school.  I didn’t take the photography class because my schedule was too loaded with sensible college-prep courses, and I didn’t own a camera, and–frankly–I was intimidated by the technical nature of it.

Well, I’m way past high school now, and “sensible” hasn’t exactly been the defining word for the past few years of my life.

Hopeful?  Exploratory?  Risky?  Yes.

Sensible? Not so much.

Lucky for me, I’ve got a live-in teacher who’s willing to get me past my fears and technology blocks:

That’s Cane, who teaches photography to high school kids more confident and creative than I ever was at their age.  I’m ready to suck up everything he can teach me about a camera and how to use it.

Stay tuned for my forays into the land of creating photos that match the images in my mind.

Here’s a sneak peak at a few souvenirs from my first stop:

Working in full sun at the local pool

Fooling around at Portland's Japanese Garden

Speaking of boom bands, had to get this shot just for the t-shirt.

Image credit for boy with map.

All other images by me.