After a recent update the blog does not properly display the profile picture with each blog post. I've been trouble shooting it for days, with some help from others, with no success. Fortunately the images within each post continue to work okay, you just don't get to see what I want you to think I look like.
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When I was a teenager my dad once showed me how to change the thermostat in a car. I had no experience with cars and probably would have forgotten soon after. Over the years I learned a lot about repairing cars by necessity. I have also learned a lot about many things. I can install telephones, do plumbing, paint houses, program computers, and do graphic design. Accounting and tax preparation are others areas of expertise. Over a lifetime I've accumulated many skills, and some credentials to go with some of them. But skill collecting is not all there is to life.
I've also seen or heard many people compare their life accomplishments in terms or possessions and the power and status that goes with it. While possessions help insure some degree of continuity in living, the possessions in excess of our needs are not really worth much. In fact, the more you try to USE all of the possessions at your disposable, the more time it takes away from you, the more life it takes away from you.
But when my dad helped me changed that thermostat, he was also taking time with me. It was part of a relationship. Much of life is built on relationship. Even with the most amazing accomplishments, there's not much satisfaction if you don't have someone to share it with. Many relationships are built early in life within your family. Others are created at school, work, church, or randomly as you go about your business.
Relationships are cool, but the most important relationship you can have is with God. Yes, you can have a relationship with God. As a Christian you can know the presence of God. It won't be face to face, but as you grow in it, you can know when he is talking and what he is saying. It's even more exciting when you see him work things out in your life. Then, as you build relationships with others who also know God's presence, you become even closer to Him. It's a life worth living no matter how old you are when you start.
]]>The guide says you should attach the image where you want it, but it doesn't include the file in the page markup and instead includes a tag that identifies the image. The logic presented in the on-line forums is that you can adjust the stylesheet and php to apply uniformly to all images. You can put the image in different sections (teaser, cover, in-line) of the post and it supposedly is more efficient that way.
Although you have multiple options for placement (vertically) in a post, if it's an in-line image you can't see it in the editor. Instead you see . Additionally you can't modify the formatting of the image. That's where the problems resides. If b2evolution included the code in-line (like it used to) I could modify the HTML/CSS to format the image.
Emulating a print publication, I like to wrap text around some images, and like adjusting the size to make it look more balanced. Well, there is a way to include the markup, but it's not intuitive.
I've discovered after inserting all my images that there is a viable workaround to get the code into the post, something that used to be an option in the editor in past versions.
1. Go to the b2e Back-office and select Files > Browse and upload the images for the post. I prefer to put them in the root collection folder, not the quick-uploads.
2. From the post, attach any image to the post (ideally an inline). The easiest way is to select Attach existing files and select one. You won't be including that in the post, but you will be using that image to get to other files you would like to insert. If an image tag is inserted into the post you can delete it if you want.
3. Position your cursor at the point in your post where you want to include one of your uploaded images.
4. Go to the attached image in the Images and Attachments section and click on the Locate file icon (bull's eye).
5. When the Attach files dialog box is displayed find the file you really want. You may have to change folders to find it. Again, I prefer to use images in the root collection folder.
6. Check the box for the file to select it. Don't press Attach.
7. Finally, at the bottom, with selected files: change the option to Insert IMG/link into post and press Go.
The main reason I want the code in the post is so I can customize the image. In order to do that switch to Markup view and find the image's code. It'll begin with something like
<div class="image_block"><a href="..">
Two of the modifications that I generally make are to position the image and resize the image to look good in the post. By positioning, I generally float it left or right.
In markup, find the image markup as noted above and change the div to add
style="float:right"
so it looks like this
<div class="image_block" style="float:right"><a href="..">
If you are floating, it might also be necessary to adjust the margins by changing it to
style="float:right; margin-left:20px"
The image should show the actual size in the img tag and would look something like this.
width="431" height="56" />
If the size is not appropriate for the post, I simply change the width to a percentage and drop the height so it would look something like this
width="35" />
I have used b2evolution for many years, and find it useful for multiple blogs, but I guess these kinds of challenges are one reason it is not so popular as a blogging platform.
]]>The newer versions of Hoot include the Combination search that allows user to search from several options and limit that search by beginning or ending letters and the number of letters. You can also filter the search to only show words containing certain letters. Some of the options are important in Scrabble™ word study and include anagrams and anagram-related searches(subanagrams, superanagrams, blank anagrams), prefixes/suffixes, extensions, etc. Also in Combination are the occasionally used but often unremarkable options to search for misspells and transpositions. Although all of these searches are useful, there are a few other options that are downright "cool", at least to me.
Within the combination search you can now search for compound words. A compound word is a word made up of two other words. Experienced players realize that most words have other words within it. For example, ELEVATOR contains AT, EL, OR, TO, LEV, TOR, VAT, LEVA, and LEVATOR. You would find these with a Subwords search. A compound word in Hoot, on the other hand, is a word that is make up of two words of equal or almost equal length.
Searching for compound words is as simple as selecting the word length and pressing Search. The results can be displayed with the two words separated by a bullet, such as HIGH•WAYS, HIGH•TOPS, and HILL•TOPS. You can search for words of any length longer than 3 letters. You can even search for 14 letter words composed of two seven-letter words. COUNTER•MEASURE is one of them. Incidentally, the word COUNTER-COUNTER-MEASURE is composed of three seven-letter words. That would be a fun sequence of plays in Superscrabble. Of course you can limit the search based on prefix/suffix also.
This is an option designed for French lexicons. A similar option may be added for inflexions of words in English but it would not be as nearly useful.To conduct this search use a French lexicon like ODS5 (you won't get much from an English lexicon), and enter a regular verb in the search field. Searching will return all the valid conjugations of that verb. For example, using CHERCHER (French for to search) the list will show 36 words including
CHERCHA
CHERCHE
CHERCHAI
CHERCHAS
CHERCHAT
CHERCHEE
CHERCHER
CHERCHES
CHERCHEZ
..
CHERCHASSIONS
Conjugate is also an option in slide shows so you could study a whole collection of verbs. Simply
search for words ending in ER, RE, or IR, view in slide show, and select the Conjugate subsearch.
Actually, the slide show subsearches are pretty cool in themselves, but they've been there for a while and it's not a new thing to word study. Lexpert inspired me to include it; in fact, that was the inspiration to start developing Hoot in the first place.
Another search in Combination is the pattern search. This is pretty easy to use for basic searches. E* would find words beginning with the letter E. ???? would show all of the four letter words. In Hoot, you can even use c, v, or numbers for letter sets. The lowercase c stands for consonant, the lowercase v for vowel, and numbers for the letter value. cc* would find words beginning with two consonants. ???8 would find four letter words ending in a 8 point letter (APEX, HADJ). Of course, you could build your own letter set. ???[WYZ] would find four letter words ending in W, Y, or Z. *(Y|ER) would find all words ending in Y or ER. The Hoot documentation has more specifics if you wish them.
But there are also some "cool" searches you can do with the more advanced features of regular expressions. First, including letters in parentheses creates a group, and you can refer to that group later with a \ and the group number. Here's how you might use it.
Words that end in a double letter:
*(c)\1 lists all the words that end in a consonant doubled, including OFF, BILL, BIRR, BOSS, BRRR and over a hundred others. You could limit that to four letter words with ??(c)\1.
Words containing several of the same letter:
*(?)*\1*\1*\1* lists all the words that contain four or more of the same letter, such as ASSESS, BEEBEE, HOOPOO, and MACADAMIA.
A repeating sequence:
*(???)*\1* lists all the words that have a three character sequence repeated in the word, such as ATLATL, RINGING, TARTARS, GUITGUIT, and INSULINS.
In a different search window (Front and Back) there are options to search for hooks and extensions, with front and back displayed in separate lists. The cool option in this search window is the Parallel search. This will simply show words that can be played parallel to the word entered. This could be most used following a high probability play with common (1 point) letters.
For the word IODATES, there are 57 words that can be played in front, and 7 in the back. The parallel play calculates based on overlapping all or all but one letter. Of course, shorter words could also overlap part of the initial play. Being able to follow up an initial bingo with another bingo that overlaps would really be cool.
One of the search projects that is still in development is letter studies. This window shows searches for a selected letter or custom set of letters. It begins with a list of words containing the letter
and displays them in multiple lists. Shorts, High Fours, High Fives, High Prob Sevens and Eights, and Prefix/Suffix searches.
One of the lists displayed that's cool is the list of words that begin with an odd second letter, that is, that few words have. Here's an explanation. The letter H is commonly followed by a vowel. For the letter H, the odd second letters would be M or W, and include the words
HM, HMM, HWAN
For M, the list of words with odd second letters includes
MM, MHO, MBIRA, MNEMONIC, MRIDANGA
For J, JNANA is one of the words.
There is also a Custom list in Letter Studies, where you can select one of the searches to execute. One of the options is "Is Unique Hook", where words are displayed that include the letter as the ONLY hook. For the J, there is
IMMY
NANAS
ARGONS
OCULARLY
When it comes to playing serious Scrabble™, Words with Friends™, and other word games, players must learn to master their language in many different ways. These are just some of the cool options available in Hoot.
]]>Webmasters that have been developing websites for a long time will remember the times when Google changed their ranking algorithms. In some cases the results were catastrophic, but the best managed to recover. Google's algorithms have always been kept from the public and webmasters have had to determine how to regain their positions themselves, but given some principles, it was possible. Last month Google began implementing another change in their algorithms, but unlike the other changes we know precisely what is changing. On April 21, they began giving higher ratings to websites that are mobile-friendly. According to https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/6196932?hl=en, the change only affects results returned from mobile searches, but considering the number of devices of all sizes, it's still a good idea to verify the results.
Google has even provided tools to help webmasters see what needs to be changed. The first tool is the mobile-friendly test page at
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/, which I assume is a key parameter in their new algorithm. Webmasters can use the tool simply to tell if your website is mobile-friendly. The other tool is the PageSpeed Insights at https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/. This page will give you some tips for improving your site's performance, even if it is mobile-friendly.
Many webmasters will wonder if it's worth the trouble. One question is how to tell how many visitors use mobile devices. One article in 2013, estimated 13% of all traffic was mobile; higher for shopping. Google analytics also has a tool for just that purpose, but if you are like me and rely on your host's stats page, you may still be able to estimate the mobile-concentration of your visitors. In awstats, the standard stats page on cPanel systems, you can drill down to get an idea. After displaying the Summary page, select Operating Systems > Versions. It will list operating systems and include Android as a subset of Linux. There is also a list for iOS (iPhone and iPad), and Others which may also include mobile devices.
If you want to modify you site to make it more mobile-friendly, and Google search friendly, here are a few things you can do.
In the head section of the webpage, add
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
This may be the only change you need to make to get the mobile-friendly badge, but you should verify with a mobile device that it is indeed mobile-friendly.
One of the issues with desktop pages is that links can be defined and selected easily with a mouse. On a mobile device, the contact area of the finger is larger, so links can be too close to each other. Often this can be fixed by adding spacing (margin) around the element.
Often developers use lists to display and format menus. Most of the time they are displayed horizontally. Since the normal orientation of a mobile device is portrait, you may want to change those list to display vertically, and make necessary changes to the style to make it aesthetically appealing.
Javascript that displays popup information can be annoying on a mobile device, particularly when sized improperly. Use JavaScript judiciously. Of course, you may not be able, or may not choose to. One of my pages, for tax volunteers, relies on Javascript to function as it does. The filter can hide much of the page and mouseovers display large windows of additional information. The size has been modified so that it is manageable on a mobile device. The user experience is more important that mobile-friendly rules.
The font size is an important characteristic. Stylesheets often define sizes for each tag, and these sizes may not be suitable for mobile use. First thing to consider is the use of ems instead of points, or percentages. Using ems enables you to define sizes proportionately to other tags. An extra for mobile websites would be a page font size adjustment script.
Websites that are built around divs may need some adjustments, particularly when there are more than two divs horizontally. An easy fix for content that is squeezed on the page is to stack divs that were initially side by side. In some cases, you may discover that the smartest way to handle a content block is to eliminate it, and provide a link to the same resource.
Make it easy on yourself. When designing any website, keep the html structure and inheritance in mind. With inheritance, you may not have to define as many elements and changes would be simpler.
Since most of the changes needed to make a site mobile-friendly can be made in a stylesheet, it is often easiest to use responsive head links. There are differences in opinion regarding what width to use for mobile devices, so at the time you read this the recommendation may change. The best test is to try it on the devices that are popular. The viewport will help the device considerably, so it is not as critical as it once was. The pixel values here should be taken into consideration when designing the mobile site. You probably wouldn't want to try to display pictures wider than the min-device-width.
<link href="css/main.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link href="css/desktop.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="only screen and (min-device-width: 479px)"/>
<link href="css/mobile.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="only screen and (max-device-width: 480px)" />
Some developers may prefer to have only two css files, one for desktop, one for mobile. Since most styles remain the same, I generally use three, with desktop.css and mobile.css having only the styles that change.
Switched Keys uses the content management system b2evolution, so changes generally can't be made directly to a source html. Instead, changes have to be made to the php, or to the CSS file of the skin. Following are the changes I made:
Instead of adding the meta tag mentioned above, viewport was changed by adding the "responsive" parameter to the function skin_include() that includes _html_header.inc.php. Find the function in index.main.php and change it from
skin_include( '_html_header.inc.php', array() );
to
skin_include( '_html_header.inc.php', array(
'viewport_tag' => '#responsive#',
) );
It's possible to change the actual meta tag in _html_header.inc.php, but it's not necessary in this case.
Once that is done all of the other changes would be made to the cascading stylesheet, in this case, style.css. On Switched Keys some items had fixed widths which I had to modify. Some were min-widths smaller than my phone. In development it would be better to define widths as percentages of the window or a div. I also had to change sizes, some fixed pixels. Viewport actually changes the display of fonts to correspond with the device, so css pixels are not the same as actual pixels.
I chose a skin that had a side panel listing the categories, but for the mobile variety. I hid it and added an option to the menu to show categories. Hiding extras is often as simple as defining that element with display:none. Images are proportional to the viewport, though in many cases, designers may feel the need to further adjust them, or eliminate them altoghether. In my site, I thought the mug shot was unnecessarily large, so I reduced it.
In short, I only changed a few things to get it functional, and tweaked it to my personality. It's not hard, but if you want to be friendly to your mobile users, taking these few steps will go a long way.
]]>One of the issues that came up twice during the first evening of tax prep had to do with married filing separately. It appears to be common for paid preparers to prepare such returns as if the taxpayer were single, or taking the separate income of the taxpayer when filing. With Texas as a community property state, spouses filing separately must include half of each partner's income when filing.
Besides, it will almost always be more beneficial filing joint anyway. Even if living separately, partners could make an agreement to split the refund. If certain conditions are met separate taxpayers may be able to file head of household, but only if there is a child involved. Just being separated does not allow you to file as single. I have not read or heard of IRS involvement in such cases but it is still not correct and taxpayers will be liable for any taxes, penalties, and interest.
The Affordable Care Act adds to the confusion on the issue of dependent's income. When a child has some of their own income some think that parents must include that in their income. Normally, that is not true. One example is when a parent receives social security payments for the child. Publication 17 talks about this scenario specifically. In those cases the child's social security is the child's, not the parents, even though the check may be addressed to the parent. If that is the only income of the child taxability is based on 50% of that amount and it's unlikely that he will need to file a return.
One exception to the rule of including a child's income is referred to as the Kiddie Tax. That comes into play when a child's unearned income exceeds a certain level. In those cases, the income might be taxable at the parent's rates. Alternately, the parents have the option of including that income on their own return.
The confusion that the ACA adds is that form 8962 asks for household income (MAGI) in calculating the Premium Tax Credit. The income of all dependents is included in this amount. That doesn't mean it is included on the 1040.
The third issue discussed during the evening session related to taxpayers with an ITIN that received their social security card. When a taxpayer receives their SSN they can amend prior year returns to get credits (EITC) that they were previously disallowed due to the ITIN, if they otherwise qualify. However, taxpayers should also notify the IRS of their receiving a SSN, so that the IRS can merge the ITIN returns with their SSN. The sooner this is done the better.
The following is from http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/Additional-ITIN-Information
What do I do when I am assigned a social security number (SSN)?
Once you receive a SSN, you must use that number for tax purposes and discontinue using your ITIN. It is improper to use both the ITIN and the SSN assigned to the same person to file tax returns. It is your responsibility to notify the IRS so we can combine all of your tax records under one identification number. If you do not notify the IRS when you are assigned a SSN, you may not receive credit for all wages paid and taxes withheld which could reduce the amount of any refund due. You can visit a local IRS office or write a letter explaining that you have now been assigned a SSN and want your tax records combined. Include your complete name, mailing address, and ITIN along with a copy of your social security card and a copy of the CP 565, Notice of ITIN Assignment, if available. The IRS will void the ITIN and associate all prior tax information filed under the ITIN with the SSN. Send your letter to:
Internal Revenue Service
Austin, TX 73301-0057
I've searched and could not find a specific IRS procedure for amending prior year returns for such individuals, but have read advice that says amended returns are filed by simply using the SSN (not the ITIN) of the taxpayer, and would include the ITIN information in the explanations for the 1040X. The notation might read "Amending return with SSN to claim EITC. Prior return used ITIN ###-##-####." If the ITIN and SSN records have been merged it will be even easier for them to reconcile. The important thing is to meet the deadline for amended returns.
I'm looking forward to tackling other issues this season, although there are many, such as IRAs and conversions, that I won't see much of while preparing taxes in the VITA. Still, this is a valuable experience and a useful service to the public, a service that could use more volunteer participation.
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