Family Update and Blog recommendation

I'm sorry for being so quiet lately. It was my intention to be here at least a few times a week, but Real Life seems to be jealous and has been stamping her foot while demanding my attention in a very loud voice.

As you know I have Mr Oh at home, along with Miss Oh, and that has made the workload a little bit on the heavy side. Please don't run your fingers along the tops of any surfaces before you leave, okay? I promise the dusting will be done some time. Maybe before my daughter enrolls in primary school. Maybe not.

Anyway, Mr Oh is progressing well. We are still very cautious about what he can and cannot do. One of the hardest cannots is picking up and carrying Miss Oh. :(
Which means I get to do all of the fetching, carrying, settling, moving and general womanhandling that a baby requires. This leaves me a little bit tired at the end of most days. And in the middle of most days too, if truth were to be told.

While Real Life's back is turned I manage to read a couple of blog entries every so often, so if I haven't visited lately and left comments, it's just that I am a slave to RL and her minions, Housework and Childcare.

One of the little gems that I have discovered in my sneaky visits to the internet is a wonderful blog that I added to my "try them out" RSS feeds a month or so ago. I must recommend it to anyone who loves food. I have been drooling over the pictures and recipes for some time now, and have several earmarked for trial here in the Oh Waily kitchen. If you have a moment, take a stroll over to Food Blogga's blog and enjoy a wander through some stunning food.

Here's a sample of what I mean:

• Ricotta Hotcakes or Tom Brady


• Biscotti and My Mother-in-Law


• Strawberries and Rhubarb; So Good, They're a National Holiday

Don't drool on the keyboard, just add the RSS feed to your reader and enjoy.

A New Waily Blog

Like I don't have enough trouble keeping this blog in some degree of reasonable updatedness, there I go thinking a new blog would be a good idea.
Well it is actually a good idea.

I have been having great fun photographing Miss Oh Waily, and I really don't want to flood this blog with image after image of the little one. But I would like to be able to show multiple photographs and perhaps get some feedback on what I can do to improve my composition, technical skills, etc. See my Photography Challenge for details on this.

It is also in keeping with my stated goals for 2008. It will encourage me to blog regularly as I will want to constantly share my photographs, and it will also keep me focused on an aspect of my creativity that has so far been ignored.

Here are some examples of what I will be putting up over at t'other blog:



And:



Maybe even:


And of course I will be including other family members too:


If these few examples haven't totally put you off, then drop by at OWW Photography from this week onwards and I will try to continue sharing and learning. I look forward to seeing you there.

A New Year and a New Look

The look for 2008 will be Digg 3.

It is my first foray into a three column layout, so bear with me as I get to grips with the options this presents.
At the moment I appear to be locked out of changing widgets on Oh Waily, and I'm not sure when or if I will be able to get at them. This will mean a completely default layout until I can figure out what has happened. Once I get on top of the widgets, the place should begin to look and feel like home again.

Happy New Year to you all !!

For Cat Lovers and Bloggers Everywhere

Are you a cat lover?
Are you a blogger?

If so, this guest post by Tony Clark over at Lorelle on Wordpress should bring a smile to your face on a Monday morning.

Oh Waily is primarily a House CAT, with the odd foray into being a CAT-alyst. Hopefully it's not too much of a CAT scan though.

I've also come up with some other CAT-agories for you to consider:

CAT-o-nine-tails: a blog that deserves a flogging for terrible writing.
CAT-amount: wild and fierce, blogs that rant.
CAT-erpillar: slow starter, but blossoms into a great read.
CAT-aphract: an armoured blog that doesn't let you get to know the blogger behind the writing.
CAT-ullus: a romantic and poetical blog.
CAT-o: the political blog.

What Kind of Cat are You?

My First Award

and I am so proud of it too. :)



Thank you to Andie for nominating me. I'm glad that you enjoy reading my blog.
Now for the hard part... who to nominate. This always gets me. But at least this time I have managed to move on and read more than one or two blogs. I'm not confident of managing to nominate ten other bloggers, but I will give this a go.

1. Bruce at Bioneural. He was my inspiration to start blogging and I always enjoy the travel pieces and occasional rant.


2. Solnushka at Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things. Only the second online blog that I subscribed to and still enjoy.


3. Around My Kitchen Table. This is a new blog that I have been trying on for size lately, and am enjoying the sense of humour immensely. I have yet to make comment there, so this award will probably come as a surprise.


4. Michelle at Scribbit. Another new blog on my list. I have been enjoying the food, crafts and family stories over the past month and am slowly working my way through the archives. Great ideas to be had here, and definitely smiles too. Also likely to be a surprise award.

Okay, so that's all I can muster at the moment, at least it is an improvement over the last meme where I could only muster a whopping two blogs. It must be a sign that I need to get out and mingle on the internet more. At least that's the excuse I'm going to use for sitting at the computer for the next little while, studiously ignoring the unpacked piles of boxes directly behind my chair.

Once again - thanks Andie. :D

Blog Value

Do I feel cheap or what?

I was catching up on extremely overdue blog reading tonight when I read through Lorelle's One Year Anniversary Review: Blogging and Blogging Tips and was pointed to this creative use of Technorati.

It turns out that my poor old blog is only worth a measly US$ 1,129.08. Geez am I a cheap read or what?!

If taking a look at these sorts of cute (and informative) applets are something you like to do, take a wander across and enter your blog's URL and see how you do.

My blog is worth $1,129.08.
How much is your blog worth?



Update: Just a quick note that since posting this nifty little thing my blog has appreciated in value. It is now worth a whopping $ 2258.16 as of 19 July 2007.
If only my bank account was able to jump that much, that fast, I'd be a very happy person. :)

Update 2: Checking out my assets today and it turns out that my blog has appreciated in value again.

My blog is worth $3,387.24.
How much is your blog worth?

A Change of Clothing

Do you feel like you've opened the wrong blog this morning?
Maybe you haven't had your first cup of [insert beverage of choice] for the day, and you are wondering if your eyes have actually opened the whole way.

Nah. I'm just playing with you. On my Sunday spring clean day I decided that the old theme was just not me anymore. So it was out with the old and in with the new.

Choosing a new set of clothing for the old girl was fairly straightforward as it turned out. Wordpress.com have their set choices, and if I want to have pages, then just like Cluedo I just eliminate the non-contenders. No dagger in the library for this Miss Scarlet.

I like minimalistic websites and blogs as I have mentioned before, so Light turned out to be my only real alternative. But I am happy with the change so far. Only time will tell if I get fed up looking at this too. But since the lovely Wordpress team seem to be rolling out improvements regularly, including adding new themes, I'm sure I will not be waiting long should I want to fiddle with things.

Got an opinion on the change? Feel free to leave a comment.

Blogs of Note: First Inspirations

As I am so new to the whole blogosphere thing and keeping a blog of my own, I've spent a bit of time recently reading other people's blogs.
My goal: get some fresh ideas, investigate blog styles, and see what works for me as a reader.

As a rule I don't immediately add every blog that sounds interesting to my Newsfox Feedreader. I bookmark them, read through their back entries from blog-start to current. That way I get a feel for the way the blog has developed and grown, and it gives me a good idea if I am going to be able to relate as a "regular" reader. If I can't get past a couple of entries, I'm out of there.

What I have discovered: there is a huge range of choice (no surprise there!), and there is great diversity in quality.

I have browsed my way through poorly written, visually overwhelming, gaudy and just plain exclusionary blogs. They were consigned to the delete button.

Then there are those that have made it to Newsfox.
There haven't been many, I have to say. And I am beginning to see a pattern.

Visually the blogs are clean, normally minimalist, and not full of flashing advertisements. Don't get me wrong, I understand that if you are paying for server space then you need to make some money to meet the costs, just don't poke me in the face - I'm here for your content, not your revenue building.

Writing style is pretty distinctive too. If the blog has a purpose, then the tone is usually friendly and informative; or sometimes passionate when in rant mode, but never truly obnoxious. If the blog is primarily about personal experiences or opinions, then they tend to be direct, are often quirky and display a hint of self-and-others-mockery.

And content, even those writing on personal experience, tends to the creative. This includes technologically, artistically and literally creative.
And before you say "writing a blog is a creative action", I would suggest that while you may be technically correct, in actuality some of the blogs I have bumped into over the past couple of months are simply places to gossip or to spew forth vitriol in lieu of seeking counselling.

I have enjoyed reading these blogs and it occurred to me that they deserve more note than simply being added to my sidebar Blogroll. In the first few months of writing this blog I have gained valuable ideas and inspiration from reading each of them, so I thought it was overdue to give them a little bit of proper recognition. So here they are.

On the technologically and literally creative front I would recommend that you visit Lorelle on WordPress and browse through her work. I have found it to be a good source of thought-provocation and useful tips on both Blogging and WordPress. The visuals have been through a recent revamp after the WordPress announcement about upgrading to Custom CSS, as Lorelle is undoubtedly testing it out for future articles.

Still on technology, especially things Mac and Internet but with gadgets and photography thrown in for good measure, I would also recommend visiting Bioneural.net. I like to keep up with the photography articles and images as I find it's good for boosting my creative inspiration and also the Internet articles gives me an easy-to-understand window into what I might be able to do one day. Also the person to thank for my migration to WordPress.

In the personal observations and experience category, I can recommend a blog that has a relatively short history (a couple of months) that I have greatly enjoyed because of the sense of humour and observations. You may be surprised to note, with my minimalist tendencies, that this blog is called Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things, but the title says it all really. :)

I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Postscript: I am currently making my way through another few blogs that are meeting my criteria for a creative, informative and inspirational read. They will no doubt be added to both the Blogroll and a Blogs of Note entry shortly. I am open to new reading recommendations - just leave a note for me.