Take the Shot When It Presents Itself

Egret Walking by Pond

I had an enjoyable weekend, spending time with family, outside, enjoying nature and city life both. Saturday I was at a park with family, taking pictures of the Easter egg hunt. Later, while walking around, camera in hand, there was an egret. Just sitting there, basking in the late afternoon sun. So I just sat down and starting taking pictures.

Egret Preening

As I sit down, the egret decides to pose for me, and preen itself. What? Not fly away? What they usually do. But not this time.

Egret Posing

I take several shots. Great lighting, model, and backdrop all provided by nature. That egret looks pretty good once it’s fluffed out its feathers.

Fluffy Egret

You might be saying “Okay Heidi, you had fun taking those photos, showing them off. But what is the lesson here?”

  • Be prepared. If I did not have my camera with me, charged batteries, space on memory card, I could not have taking those photos. What you you and your business, projects, etc. Are you prepared for success?
  • Keep your eyes open There are opportunities all around us. Keep your eyes peeled and you will find them, some have your name on them and others are for someone else. Those your pass on to others and you’ll be amazed at how much comes back to you.
  • When the shot appears, take it!

Living Your Dreams

daffodill glow

No, I’m not dead, my computer did crash, not dead either, up and running, more on that later.

Spring break and Easter weekend. Spending some down time with the family, offline, beautiful outside, everything is in bloom. My husband isn’t sure that is a good thing as he suffers from allergies and my car has a yellow film on it from pollen.

But before I log off for the week I wanted to share a video I ran into online several months back, which is one of the best examples you will ever see about living your dreams and enabling others to live theirs.

Randy Pausch Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

A must watch! This Easter season, as we talk about life, remember part of life is living your life, living your dreams, enabling others to live theirs.

Why Have Your Own Favicon?

favicons in favoritesFirst for those of you who want to know what the heck is a favicon?

I didn’t know either. I did know that some companies brand their business very well. Look at your bookmark sites. Some urls really stand out and are easy to find. Did you bookmark blogger, facebook, your favorite YouTube video? Easy to find are they not? Your eyes quickly scan looking for the icon.

Those little icons bugged me. Was this some secret the big companies with the big bucks knew how to do, an option not available to small business owners? But if they can do it, surely there is a way we can make one too. Not knowing the answer I decided to ask my son who working on his software engineering degree. “Those are called Favicons” he told me. Makes sense. Little Icons that show up when you add to your list of favorites.

Curious person that I am, I had to find more information on favicons. I wanted one on my sites. So I asked Google.
I found a few tips and how to sites. First, you save a 16 pixels bpy 16 pixels image as an ico file. I use Gimp, so I checked what files it supported, and did a little happy dance when I found .ico as one of my choices. Just had to test, so I pulled up a 16 by 16 blank image screen, and quickly drew a little purple flower, saved as favicon.ico. Uploaded following directions. Then checked out my website.

To my surprise, there was now a little purple flower in the address bar (at least it does in Firefox), tabs, bookmarks. So nice when something works the first time you use it.

Why Have Your Own Favicon?

  • Brands your business with a visual image.
  • Increases your professional image. Puts your website up there with the big boys.
  • Makes it easy to be found in favorites and bookmarked lists.
  • It’s is cool to have your own favicon.

If you’d like an easy way to make your own, check out my “How to Create Your Own Favicon Easily” post.

How to Create Your Own Favicon Easily

Favicons, those cool little icons you see in your browser window, in the address bar, in your bookmarks, can be created easily.

I thought it was cool when I learned I could make favicons using Gimp. In fact I started to make a tutorial how to do such. Then I found a cool favicon website where you just upload the image you want to use and it spits out your favicon.

http://www.html-kit.com/favicon/

I took a logo:

Inventing Women Logo

and cut out the orange flower, saved it, uploaded it to the favicon maker.

And it gave me back a favicon.
Inventing women favicon

Cool! Then I uploaded the ico file to the domain’s directory, more detailed instructions on their website.

The logo was created by my daughter Jessica Sellers of Chrysalis Logos.

Update:
I learn something new everyday. Some of you see the favicon and others of you are getting the dreaded red x. Evidently Firefox will show favicon’s in blog posts, but Internet Explorer will not.
So here is a jpg version for all you IE folks.

Favicon example

Baby Boomer Divas

Baby Boomer Diva’s

Some of you may be wondering what that little sidebar thingie is? who are the cool ladies behind those blogs? Why are they on my website? Others readers know exactly who this group is and what they are all about.

I belong to various groups online, make new friends, share ideas, learn from each other, give each other referrals, networking at its best. One of the most productive groups I belong too is the Baby Boomer Diva’s, started by Beverly Mahone. So much talent within one group, and you won’t meet a more caring group of professionals. Many of which you’ll see pop up in my comment section from time to time. Baby Boomer Diva’s Blogs are a hot topic.

Because of the support that I receive from the group, that many links I receive from others, it is my small way of repaying their kindness. (Have a selfish reason too, makes an easy way for me to visit other’s blogs.)