Turkish Dogs - particularly Anatolian Shepherd Dogs

Scanning my google updates last night, I noticed an alert for a blog about Otto, the Anatolian. And the same day, also got a comment from Otto's Mom!

Otto's Mom has some thought provoking Anatolian related musings inspired by Otto, the Anatolian. It's with both an amused sense of deja vu and some satisfaction that I reflect on Otto's Mom's sensible perspectives on her Anatolian experience with Otto. Granted, Otto is Otto, and many of us have quite different life experiences with our Anatolians and each new Anatolian in our lives always has something to teach us. Keeps us honest, don't cha think? :) Go check out Otto's blog! :)

BTW, just out of coincidence, I was checking to see where Ruya (code: ruya1) had migrated to on the Pedigree Dog Mosaic which I posted about previously, and what do you know, Otto (code that worked for me to recheck location: otto1) was located just a few squares away from Ruya around Pedigree Dog's left ear (see below). What a coincidence (or I would never have seen Otto!). Hey, ASD people... world domination can't be too far fetched a goal. Wuffs! ;)

World Domination begins now!

Labels: blogging

Meet Pasa! photo courtesy of Brandi's MySpace

Brandi owns Pasa and has a story on her blog about a rather serious experience that revealed Pasa's sensitive and caring nature. What a wonderful, sensitive puppy! The same site not only hosts her blog but her new website as well. See the list of links in the column at that page. Go, enjoy!

Alternatively, if you've got a MySpace account, go here to see the collection of puppy photos of Pasa and her other Anatolian pals who live over at Brandi's Mystic Anatolians. If you're not a MySpace member, you can still check out Brandi's MySpace page and see slideshows and a movie of her other ASDs without joining MySpace.

Labels: ASD_Pics, blogging

Pikachu Wallpaper (image source)

I still know next to nothing about Pokemon, but years ago I remember buying a box of Kellogg's Pop Tarts merely because the packaging promised a Pokemon toy surprise inside. Okay, roll your eyes. I'm not a fan of Pop Tarts but for some reason I gave in to the impulse, and I wasn't even sure what Pokemon was anyway. So help me, maybe Pop Tarts were on sale that day too.

The wonderful prize that was in the box was the cutest little yellow 3D plastic pencil topper. Something you slide over the eraser end as a decoration. I quickly learned that the charming, tubby little yellow critter with the black tipped ears was Pikachu. I had often used the same pencil as a hair stick and after adding Pikachu over the eraser end, I was absolutely tickled. I wore that pencil a lot more. I have long hair, so twisting it into a bun and sticking my Pikachu pencil through it made for a instant fashion of questionable taste, but hey, it did the job and kept hair out of the way. If I needed something with which to write, all I had to do was let my hair loose. ha!

Anyway, Kath sent me this link on eBay several days ago which featured a hilarious story about the mysterious appearance of a package of Pokemon cards in a mom's shopping cart. Fun read! If the eBay link expires, see her blog post with links to related interviews or the story originally posted at eBay here. Oh, just go see her blog and subscribe! She is a very talented and funny writer whose children have obviously inspired a lot of creative mayhem. :)

Labels: blogging, ebay, humor

I'm slowly getting back into the swing of blog things and taking a look at what new Blogger tweaks and developments are available for Blogger Blogs such as mine hosted on private domains. Different tools (widgets) are available to those not using their own domain -- keeping their blog hosted on the Blogger or Google domain gives those advantages.

I like being able to label postings into different categories so one can click on a label such as 'Kids' and see all other postings related to kids on my blog. However FTP sites are not able to use the automated label widgets which are available to non-FTP blogs. Coding gurus have come up with various hacks (which depending on the hosting site) can be used to get certain approximating effects.

Yay! So after wading around in the Blogger help group for a bit, I found a link to an AJAX based javascript code for my current label sidebar (see shell pink LABEL box at left). The hosting site of the script is cute fashion blog at http://www.girlshandbook.com/. The script itself is quite nice for my purposes right now. :D

Link to the Hack
The Label Hack for FTP Blogs

Labels: blogging

The Anatolian Blogrolling feature which updates the entire blogroll when blogs are renewed (our blogrolling update icon) has not been working unless an individual site is pinged. This is due to Blogrolling being overwhelmed in recent months with splogs (spam blogs and their bots). Anyway, the new owner of Blogrolling is rolling out changes. Hopefully the wonkiness will all be worked out. :)

Go here and be sure to read the comments

Labels: blogging

I've decided to take the leap and move this blog over to the new version of Blogger. But first, a test, I created a test blog on my domain and the FTP was working just great for the brand new test blog.

With that vote of confidence that FTP to my host was working fine, I've moved this and my old testing blogs over to the new system. Once on the new Blogger system, you can't go back. Yikes... So, this is the first post. I'm having trouble with the FTP already. Hopefully that's transient and will go away. (If you are seeing this post, then it has started to work)

My posts won't look different from the old stuff. However, the new Blogger has some capabilities, one of which is adding 'labels' so that groups of related posts with the same label, can be viewed together. These labels can be added to older posts to make related posts easier to find.

Labels: blogging

We've gotten some new Bloggers who are now members of the Anatolian blogroll! Our blogroll currently features the little icon on the left that activates when pages have been updated. They are now listed anywhere that the blogroll is featured (like on the sidebar of several Anatolian blogrolls) so you can check out the latest updates.

Huri Anatolian Shepherd Dogs - in UK who currently has a litter available. Check out their beautiful dogs.

Hisar Anatolian Shepherd Dogs - also in UK. I've blogged some pictures of Hazine (Jazzy) and her small human pal. Now her human slave can blog about Hazine's antics. Check out their site too!

Last and not least is Kiramet anatolianpaimenkoirat - Where Semavi Kale Kadim (name meaning: celestial ancient fortress) rules from his side of the world. He is a littermate brother to my Ruya who watches everything on this blog, from the lower left corner.

She's stealing all MY ;) good pictures of Kadim! So here's one recent pic of this handsome prince, then you must GO and check out all the critters that live or have lived with Kadim's human slave in Finland. She's mentioned that he has had a recent role in a Finnish TV broadcast about the conservation efforts which use LGDs, or something like that. It hasn't been aired yet, but when it does I hope we get to see some pics or something from the show!



Links:
Huri Anatolian Shepherd Dogs - UK
Hisar Anatolian Shepherd Dogs - UK.
Kiramet anatolianpaimenkoirat - Finland

Labels: blogging

I've been playing with a "blog roller" which lets the reader know at a glance when listed blogs are updated. I have set up an Anatolian Blogroll and have been experimenting with implementing it to help our Anatolian Shepherd Dog community grow.

The script for the one I chose allows me to add a little attention getting icon to the list of blogs which will show up whenever blogs on the listing have been updated within the past two days. A few blogging engines may not activate the icon properly but for the most part it works great. It's got some familiar (to me) faces on it, three of my dogs (Zor, Ruya & Boone) and Shaman's Ten Bears, who is the familar mascot for our Anatolian Ring as well.

If all the servers are working right, you'll see the icon in action anywhere someone is using the Anatolian Blogroll code. It can be inserted into sidebars, regular webpages, examples are in my sidebar and page. The code involves javascript so I couldn't put it on a blog posting itself, although I'm attempting to embed it as an object here. You'd be able to see it in Firefox browser, and it works just fine in a sidebar or regular web page. My current sidebar uses a version of this blogroll in a transparent iframe.

Blogrolling Code for Anatolian Shepherd Dog Blogroll


Copy the code (Ctrl+C) and paste it (Ctrl+V) into your Blogger sidebar or webpage.

If other members of the Anatolian Shepherd Dog community have a blog that at least occasionally features Anatolian related postings, let me know, and I'll add you to the blogroll. A comment on my blog with a link to your blog is perfect as other visitors can see your comment and link as well. I can then visit and see your blog at work.

Labels: blogging

Peter's (aka Enviroman) blog called Blogger for Dummies is part of what inspired me to start this post (the other reason is more doggie related, mentioned below). Blogger for Dummies answers Blogger related questions and offers tips for the Blogger user. You can read a template tutorial, learn to put a photo into your profile, how to edit links in your sidebar or make tidy clickable links (hyperlinks) in your postings. Even back up your blog.

Blogging can be made as simple or as challenging as you want. It can grow with you (heehee, hi Ron!) and provides one way to have your own free web page! If you decide to make the leap and start blogging, there are many different blogging hosts other than Blogger with assorted benefits. Some are free, some are not and some offer more options for the blog user. People usually start with the basics and learn as they go, so the more people using the same tool, the easier it can be to find help for basic questions.

I'm familiar with Blogger since this is the service with which I started last year so I'm most familiar with Blogger resources. (When I started this blog, it wasn't because I wanted to be a Blogger either, but that's another story!)

Blogger (same as Blogspot.com) is a good place to start since it is a huge resource (owned by Google). There are many newbies with initially similar needs and questions, and there are loads of experienced bloggers who have stayed with the system for years from whom to learn - even if only by studying what they've done with their blogs.

It's easy to get signed up and get started in just a few minutes! Much of this blogging information may make little sense til you have your tiger blog by the tail. Once you get started, you'll go through more or fewer of the processes involved in getting your blog where you want it to be, as your goals for your blog may morph with your imagination and needs.

A great place to get your blogging questions answered is of course at Blogger's own extensive help pages which proved invaluable in helping me to get started. Blogger for Dummies is now another great place which has arrived recently and is much more dynamic with interesting ideas posted from time to time. Not nearly as much for newbies, there's also Freshblog, especially its Blogger Hacks that may be of interest. Surf around.

After you get your ball blog rolling, if you have more questions, there's a Blogger forum hosted on Google.

Some people like to have a unique look to their blog and a search on Google for blogger templates can be helpful. Finalsense.com also offers different services and beautiful and unique blogger templates as well. Here's another bookmark I've had for templates at Eris' Template Generator. Remember that once you start getting into fiddling with your template, always save a copy as a backup. Do incremental backups as you go along (use notepad, not Word for this!), since sometimes you may want to back up several notches to do a repair. Blogger doesn't back up your template changes for you although it does maintain your posting database until you delete the files. Sometimes there are system hiccups and you may find that you need to find your template backup. oops!

When I can find time, I'll do a couple more (sporadic) posts about blogging because one of the goals of this blog has been to try and help the members of the Anatolian Shepherd Dog community reach out and help each other.

If you're thinking of blogging maybe some of this info will help you get started. Do have fun blogging!

Labels: blogging

See Homestead Security Anatolians
Another Anatolian blog to add to our growing group of Anatolian bloggers! :)

Labels: blogging

Shaman Anatolians now has a blog! Go and check it out - Tales of Anatolian Shepherds : A Turkish Dog

Labels: blogging

A new Anatolian blog located at Shepherds Rest Farm. Be sure to visit their homepage too!

Labels: blogging

I've syndicated this blog (syndication links on the left). I've also added a link to an Anatolian Shepherd related blogs search - see link on the left under Other Anatolian Blogs.

Syndication permits a blog to be searchable. It also enables a blog so that it can be conveniently read from various aggregators such as a personalized "My Yahoo" page whenever the page is updated.

UPDATE: 1 Dec 2005 -- I fixed a few issues for so that my search toolbar works for the older posts. Yay :)

UPDATE: 23 Dec 2005 -- I found an excellent link that helps explain how to use Firefox's Live Bookmarks here. Firefox users, check it out! :)

Labels: blogging