Work at Home Online Gadgets

Been a bit subdued today, so work-wise I was mainly 'playing' aka 'researching' ...trying out new things and gathering bits and pieces 'for later'. My main 'finds' of the day were a couple of Firefox add-ons and the new AVG Free download...


Quickly resize/edit screen shots or images

My Baby on a Budget eBay Affiliate Store

picnik is a web-based image editor with some nifty features for resizing or quick editing on the fly - great if you are a blogger!

I tried it out with a screen shot from my latest 'eBay affiliate store' (built using the super-brilliant Build a Niche Store software!).

Normally, I'd have to take a screen shot, save to the PC, edit in Paint Shop Pro (which takes an age to open up in my Vista), crop it, jpg optimise it, save it and then re-upload it.

With Picnik I used the right click menu to send the page over to Picnik, cropped, resized and added the nifty 'drop shadow' effect.

I tried a few ways to get it into Blogger - you can send it to Picasa WebAlbums, or email it direct to Blogger, but I found the best way for the way I work was to save to my computer and upload (I had more control over size that way).

Easily Copy Link Plus Text in HTML Format


CoLT has come in quite handy tonight. At first I didn't realise the usefulness of what this add-on did, and didn't bother installing it...but while writing this post I realised exactly what it was for and went back to look for it! Again it's a nifty timesaver ... for those times when you want to insert a link - instead of right mousing and copying link location, then either copying or typing out your text...this add-on will copy BOTH link and text, in HTML format, ready to paste into your document.

Free Web Page Safety Check & Anti-Virus

The latest version of AVG Free is not only great virus software, it also shows you if web pages are safe to visit from within your search results.

You might think that this is only relevant if you're searching for the unsavoury...but I got a surprise when I did a search on 'ventriculomegaly' (baby's brain problem).

A perfectly plausible page could have given me a Trojan, and I would have probably gone to it without the warning!

Baby-wise

Fetal MRI scan on Tara's brain tomorrow...

Ultimate Test of Being a Web Wahm!

I haven't worked on this site for 6 months, I haven't been up to it.

The short version is I am expecting another baby, but sadly the father is not around any more.

It has been an horrendously difficult few months, and I've just had one of the worst periods of depression ever, but luckily my sites kept working in the background and I still got my monthly payments from Google.

I've had the luxury of being able to take the time I needed to get myself together, and only now I'm starting to feel like getting back to being productive work-wise.

Yay for working at home online!!

Depression Sucks the Life Out of You

I'm not entirely comfortable talking about this because of the negativity and lack of understanding about a person's ability to 'snap out of it' - even from me, before I started with it! - but it is probably the main reason I am an internet-based WAHM...

I am constantly amazed at the difference from day to day - somewhere between going to sleep and waking up your brain decides that "today you're gonna be non-functional my dear!"

The past few days have been like wading through mud for me, yet today...fine! In fact, raring to go again and bemused at why on earth I felt so crappy the last couple of days.

This is what I call 'physical' depression, because it just 'happens'...it's just there when I wake up. I feel so very, very different inside, physically different.

All the positive thinking in the world doesn't seem to let me 'snap out of it' so I've come to realise that maybe I just have to let it ride and it will go of it's own accord, eventually. It's when it takes 'too long' that it becomes a problem.

WAHM life suits me for this very reason - it allows me to have these unpredictable ups and downs. Yeah I don't work as much, but I don't have to stress about time off work or not being able to concentrate on my job etc.