Google Account Issues

I apologize for the extreme lack of posting recently... I've had major technological issues. Mainly logging out of my real-person, school/work Gmail account and into this one in order to post. But I finally got in... I've written some entries that I haven't posted and at some point, I'll try to get those up here. But does anyone know what the deal with Gmail is recently? We've had the two major Gmail crashes and then I've had lingering issues... anyone know what's up? (Beyond the "official statements" and promises that everything is back to normal...)

I continue to post to Tumblr and some on Twitter though...

Cool Stuff for the Blog...

(If only she could figure out how to blog without getting out of the blankets, Bella would have a MUCH more active blog than I ever could...)

Recently I've had some down time between getting manuscripts and drafts and papers and research out... so I've been exploring various blog-related tools and am desperately hoping you guys have some thoughts and opinions about your favorites and some suggestions. Here's what I've tried AND liked (complete with links)-

• Link Within - those little boxes at the end of each entry with thumbnails and titles; basically it's a widget that helps readers find old posts they might like after reading the current post (so your old entries get some love AND your blog looks prettier). Super-easy to do, takes less than a minute and no account necessary!
• Blog Catalog - a sort of directory for blogs. While I wasn't sure where to put my blog and I may not have my full privileges in the community yet, it's already helped me discover new and interesting blogs AND I've found lots of 2osbs on there!
• JS Kit Comments - required when you get the listing on the Blog Catalog, this is sort of like Google Analytics or StatCounter for your comments.
• Kaboodle - lets you make lots of wishlists and shopping lists that can be divided up by section. You can connect to friends, make collages of items, and store items with prices and information about them so you can find them later...
• Playlist - lets you make lots and lots of playlists and post them to your blog without forcing you to find the song and upload it and deal with lots of legal things.
• Young Professionals Blog Aggregator (or YP Blogs) - like Blog Catalog and 20sb, a directory of young professionals and their blogs.
• Be Funky - sort of like the special effects used in PhotoBooth on recent Macs, it lets you Warholize, Cartoonize, Inkify, Charcoalize your photos and more... very easy and totally free!

So what are your favorite networks, directories, aggregators, comment services, list making tools, utilities, photo art and storage sites, group blogs...?

Twitter has eaten my brain... and spit out the seeds.

I feel bad not blogging recently because I was finally doing well and getting my act together, but somehow I actually have become one of those obnoxious people who seems to have given up on the beauty of the written word and now I just microblog, or Twitter. And since I put my feed up here, I feel like it's somehow okay because it's a sort of update on my life. Even though I usually blog about completely different things from those that I tweet about. I blog about events and how I react to them and feel about them. I tweet what I'm watching on TV or my mood, sans reason. Any of you guys fall into this trap?

Beautifying the Blog

Just wanted to apologize for messing with the blog if any of you reading this (all two of you) had issues with your readers or reading entries here because I was messing around with the blog and going through a number of different layouts. I'm going to have to stop playing with it for a bit or I'll drive myself crazy.

Also, at some point soon I'll put up a real bloglist/blogroll and while I actually subscribe to more blogs than those listed here, let me know (via comment or email to meldoesgradschool@gmail.com) if you want to be listed there and hadn't been. And don't take it personally, I've just lost a lot and let things slip through the cracks when I've edited everything...

The First Blogger Post!

So I've had a blog over at WordPress for a long time and just gotten super-frustrated with the lack of design options there, so I've been trying out different services. I tried using Blogger a million years ago, but it looks like some things have changed...

Anyways, this is more or less an experiment before I even consider begging my blogging friends to switch over their links. So if you want to go check out the old blog, click here!

We'll see how it goes... how the design option shake out and what posts full of lyrics, complaints, ruminations, cool links, new ideas, etc. look on here!