A Professional Dilettante

So. I've always had a small problem with the typefaces that some Bujold list messages had been coming in, but I'd always thought it was a problem that couldn't be fixed. But I decided to ask why, on a supposedly plain mail email list I was getting different fonts from different people. Well, it turned out it was an easy fix.

So here I am to ask the DW and LJ equivalent. Ever since the last LJ "upgrade," everything is printed in Arial. I find sans serif fonts a real abomination to read. Is there a way to easily change *just* the typeface and nothing else?

If you have an easy answer, I genuinely want to know how to fix it. If it's more complicated, then consider it rhetorical [g].

About the only thing that doesn't come through in Arial is my actual composition of a post, which shows up in Courier. Go figure.

I do believe Google has hit my particular camel's back with its last straw.

Suffice to say that in less than a month, the perfectly good Blogger interface that works with my browser will be going completely away, rendering my Blogger blog uninhabitable by me.

I have excellent reasons for wanting to switch blog providers rather than screw with my existing software setup (including switching browsers -- which browser to use is my choice to make, not Blogger's), which I won't go into here, even if asked [wry g].

So I am looking to migrate my blog.

People keep talking about Wordpress. However, I notice that there are two versions, one where I have to host the blog myself, and one that works like Blogger. I am not particularly enamored of the idea of hosting the blog myself, because right now the rest of my website is hosted on the space included in my ISP contract, and I have absolutely no clue how to (or if there's enough space to) host my blog software there as well. And that's a learning curve I'd really rather not climb right now.

Is the Blogger-style version of Wordpress okay? Good? Bad? Excellent? Is there a better place to have host my blog that won't pull a Blogger interface switch on me?

Please, remember I read Dummies books on this sort of subject, not technical ones (I have one on hold at the library, but I don't know if it'll get here in time).

Thanks!

ETA: After poking around Wordpress.com's website for an hour or so, I'm not all that impressed. The theme search pages don't load properly (and not at all till after refreshed several times) and the filters to search the themes don't work at all. Is this typical of Wordpress? And if so, why are people so impressed with it?

An interesting meme, from madwriter:

This is the National Trust's list of 50 Things To Do Before You're 11 3/4. I'm bold-facing the ones I've done, and not cheating by including things I did after that age (though I will post notes on a few).

1. Climb a tree. Oh, yes. We had great climbing trees in our backyard.

2. Roll down a really big hill There was one in the city park where we had our Camp Fire powwows.

3. Camp out in the wild Many, many times.

4. Build a den

5. Skim a stone

6. Run around in the rain

7. Fly a kite - My sister taught me.

8. Catch a fish with a net -- After catching it on a hook, yes.

9. Eat an apple straight from a tree

10. Play conkers - No, as I'd never heard of the game before this list came out.

11. Throw some snow -- More difficult than it looks, as we lived in Southern California.

12. Hunt for treasure on the beach

13. Make a mud pie

14. Dam a stream

15. Go sledging

16. Bury someone in the sand

17. Set up a snail race - I did, however, race sowbugs.

18. Balance on a fallen tree - Preferably over a stream.

19. Swing on a rope swing - Preferably swinging into water.

20. Make a mud slide

21. Eat blackberries growing in the wild

22. Take a look inside a tree

23. Visit an island -- Catalina and Vancouver are two I remember.

24. Feel like you’re flying in the wind

25. Make a grass trumpet -- I'm not sure what this is.

26. Hunt for fossils and bones

27. Watch the sun wake up -- Yes, while looking for beavers in Rocky Mountain National Park.

28. Climb a huge hill

29. Get behind a waterfall

30. Feed a bird from your hand -- Does my sister's parakeet count?

31. Hunt for bugs -- The aforementioned sowbugs [g].

32. Find some frogspawn

33. Catch a butterfly in a net

34. Track wild animals - Oh, yes.

35. Discover what’s in a pond

36. Call an owl

37. Check out the crazy creatures in a rock pool

38. Bring up a butterfly

39. Catch a crab

40. Go on a nature walk at night

41. Plant it, grow it, eat it

42. Go wild swimming -- Define wild swimming. I swam in the Pacific Ocean when I was little, so I'm going to count it.

43. Go rafting

44. Light a fire without matches

45. Find your way with a map and compass -- With a map, but not a compass.

46. Try bouldering -- Does falling into the river and getting my mouth full of rocks at Kings Canyon National Park count? Or scrambling on the boulders at Joshua Tree National Monument (it wasn't yet a park back then)?

47. Cook on a campfire

48. Try abseiling

49. Find a geocache (use GPS and other navigational aides to locate hidden containers.) - I predate retail GPS by several decades, I'm afraid.

50. Canoe down a river

28. Not bad. I had a privileged childhood, though -- we had visited and hiked in most of the western national parks by the time I was twelve. And my father loved to garden, which affection he passed on to me.

And I was especially entertained by the little conversation at the end where they normally put the teaser for next week's episode. Even if it did mean that we're not getting a new episode until week after next.

So, what else do Tony Stark and Richard Castle have in common???

So. Three days ago I had twelve chapters complete and revised. As of today I have fourteen.

I think that's the fastest I've ever finished revising a chapter in my life.

Kathleen Ernst, who writes historical fiction (including some of the American Girl books) and who used to do living history performances for a living, is hosting me on her blog:

http://sitesandstories.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/meet-meg-justus/

This one's about the Job Carr Cabin Museum and quilting in public [g].

I got home from work tonight and printed out my boarding passes. Then I turned on the news.

Now I'm on hold with American Airlines, trying to find out if I can reschedule my flights tomorrow for some other date. Any other date. You see, I'm supposed to connect through Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. Which got hit by several tornadoes this afternoon. I'm not holding out much hope -- the website gave me a flat no -- but I'm trying.

I've been on hold for over half an hour so far without having gotten to a real human being yet... I suspect I'll be on hold for quite some time.

ETA: After well over an hour on hold, I gave up on contacting the airline tonight. 30 of the 110 planes damaged at DFW were American Eagle planes, which is the carrier I fly from DFW to Tyler. So I will get up early and check to see what my flights' status is, and go from there. If I don't go, wish me luck trying to get my flights rescheduled after the fact.

I don't mean to sound ungrateful. My almost 88-year-old mother, who lives two hours east of Dallas, barely got any wind, a fair amount of rain, and some pea-sized hail. She didn't lose electricity, even. She's fine. Which is an enormous relief.

Also, there were no deaths in the tornadoes. Which is rather amazingly wonderful. And I've never seen tractor-trailers flying through the air before.

But whichever one it is I am pleased no end.

Either

1) We have incredible insulation between the units in my condo building.

Or

2) My next-door neighbors have the world's quietest baby (he turned six months old in March).

I have yet to hear anything coming from next door that sounds remotely like a baby, or, actually anything at all.

He's adorable, the few times I've seen him, but seriously? This is the best of both worlds.

Okay. You can plug your Kindle into the USB port on your desktop computer, go to Amazon.com on the desktop, buy books, and have them delivered directly to your Kindle, sans wifi. I know, because I just did it [g].

And Calibre makes very lovely .mobi (Kindle) files out of just about anything you like, including .rtf files of the Miles books, and .pdfs of books acquired in the past from various and sundry places. Well, except for the DRM'd ones I got from Carina Press a while back. Oh, well [g]. Then you click one button and it sends the files to my Kindle. I know, because I just did that, too [g].

This is so cool I could just about pop, but then I am a) always astonished when new gadgets work just how they're supposed to right out of the box, and b) very easily amused.

Happy birthday to me! (a bit early, my birthday is April 8 -- yes, Easter Sunday -- but I was told by the giver to open upon arrival)

I haz a Kindle! Of my very own!

Of course, I don't have WiFi at home, so I'll have to stop at the library tomorrow and activate it...

I don't want to have WiFi at home, because then I'd be able to get online with my netbook at home, and my netbook is my writing computer, and I don't want the distraction (believe me, if I can get online when I should be writing, I will -- willpower does not work in this situation). But apparently I can buy ebooks through Amazon on my computer and then transfer them via the USB cord once I get the thing registered. I hope so.

Any suggestions on how to deal with a Kindle without handy WiFi would be most appreciated.