Hearting Valentine Times in 2025

 

I missed putting out a Valentine item in February. March roared in like a lion. I'm beating April Fool's Day with my Valentine-theme video and article. Inspiration started with kin's visit on February 14.

The relatives brought flowers. I'd baked Valentine theme cookies made from Red Velvet and Strawberry cake mixes. I searched for kiddie Valentine cards and found one card, no envelope. A few days later, after they'd left, I found a stack hiding in plain sight.

My journey in creating the Valentine blog theme started out small, but became gargantuan when I collected hearty items to group together, created kid-like artsy photographable items, and integrated videos in my mix. The journey was quite an adventure in inspiration, organization, and implementation.

Heart Use as a Verb

Hearting is an obscure but increasingly creeping use of heart as a verb. Creeping, as in slowly moving, not creepy as nervousness inducing. Consider "I heart NY" and "I heart radio", which seem normal in use of heart as verb. As a thought, maybe "I heart [something]" can seem less tension than the "L" wprd.

Indoor Shots

My video includes indoor images and also outdoor images. I got in touch with my inner creative child for cutouts, punches, arrangements. I also rustled up images for Valentine cookies that I'd baked occasionally over many years. BTW, cake mix amounts in boxes have downsized over the years that cookie dough dollops were less mannerly this time around.

Outdoor Shots

I mentioned creeping use of heart as verb. A piece of my video shows a hybrid of Halloween creep and hearty Valentine approach. Numerous other outdoorsy shots include archives of heart-shaped prickly pear plants from February 2010 and also February 2025. Eh, the 2010 ones were more plentiful and cuter; the more recent environment wasn't as, uh, fruitful. For my non-prickly pear plant shot, the red bud tree with a heart-shaped bloom had caught my eye.

Related:

• "A Convenient Cake Mix Cooky Batch"
• "Heart 2 Heart"

5 Years of Continuous Blogging, Part 4

This article is the fourth (and final) one in my series about having blogged continuously for five years. I discuss the process of collecting my blogging data and reporting them in tables and graphs, but this time, the process differs from the quartile methodology that I cover in Part 2. That article emphasizes spread of word counts, and this article emphasizes high/low word counts and distribution over 10 word-count intervals.

The top pixstrip shows a table with the basic information that I put in Excel for creating the column graph. In the table, the first column lists the word count divisions, and the second column lists the number of articles for each word count category. In the graph, the word count divisions are in the x axis, and the numbers of articles are in the y axis, represented by the blue 3D columns.

The distribution and percentages of articles show that the largest group of my articles ranged from 400 to 499 words—27, a smidge more than 20%. Combined with the other three largest groups (range from 400 to 799 words), my articles totaled 82, 63.1% of the 130 articles over five years time, from September 2009 through August 2014.

In the three previous articles that I wrote about blogging for five years, I listed various steps for collecting information and generating visual results. For bloggers and other interested parties who might want to create your own similar info, the basic steps are as follows (also noted in Part 3 of my series):

1. In Excel, log the article titles.
2. Open each article, and copy/paste verbiage into MS Word, noting the word count at Word's lower left corner.
3. In Excel, copy the word count number into the cell adjacent the appropriate article title.

You might want to insert empty rows to separate significant time periods. You might even copy the set to another spot before putting in separators.

The following pixstrip shows the Excel window for sorting, and the partial image of the Period A sorted table. The Excel window opens after clicking Data tab > Sort and clicking Add Level for obtaining a second sort criterion. At the table, I added reddish outlines at the highest and lowest word counts.

The following image shows high and low word counts for periods A through E, with red outlines at the absolute lowest and highest word count numbers.

It might seem odd that I place the graphing process pixstrip before the other images. Usually, my images are sequential. For this article, the results image is more eye-catching at the very top. FYI, my tools in my series have been Excel, MS Word, Windows 7 Snipping Tool, and my ancient PaintShopPro 7.04.

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Links to the series

1. 5 Years of Continuous Blogging, Part 1
   Focus on single- and five-year views for total articles, articles with images, and recipe articles.
2. 5 Years of Continuous Blogging, Part 2
   Focus on numbers of words in articles and graphical representations.
3. 5 Years of Continuous Blogging, Part 3
   More details on collecting the data.
4. 5 Years of Continuous Blogging, Part 4
   Emphasis on data sorting and distribution of word count groupings.

5 Years of Continuous Blogging, Part 1

I initially started blogging to create writing samples in addition to samples I have for my technical writing portfolio. Every month for the past 5 years, starting in September 2009, I have published something. My monthly count has been as few as one and as many as five. I know the quantity does not come anywhere close to many prolific bloggers, but I know of many bloggers who were sporadic or stopped.

For me, a motivator for publishing was imposing a schedule for myself. Initially,I posted three times a month. During one contract writing/editing job, I cut the posting to once a month throughout 2011. Since then, except for a 16-episode of weekly century plant posts in 2013, I have posted twice a month.

Not sure I'd return to more often if and when I again exit the working world. In any case, when I publish, the motions remind me of the clock reset (countdown timer) in the Lost TV show.

My graphs reflect the stats for the 5 periods for September through August (2009 through 2014). Wanting to generate stats, formulas, and graphs sent me scurrying to some Excel how-to Google searches. (I hardly ever use Excel.) Was I rusty! Couldn't remember how to assign repeating rows, create a formula, or generate a graph! Conveniently, during my research over my 130 articles, I ran across my SurveyMonkey article, which I had foresight to list some Excel formulas.

A couple of handy Excel-info webpages:

• How to Add Header Row in Excel
• How to Create a Graph in Excel

The images show 5 years for total posts, posts with images, and recipe posts. Although the 3D graph is cute for the depth looks, I feel the line graph actually shows better contrasts among year-to-year and also type-to-type trends.

I had a bit of fun playing with Excel in creating the tables and graphs, then playing with them in my ancient PaintShopPro 7.04. In Excel, I became reacquainted with inserting some basic formulas and creating graphs. I rediscovered graphing options for type (bar, line), inserting numbers and titles, and moving numbers. In PSP, I further played with moving pieces, cropping areas, and combining the charts.

Related posts, besides the one about SurveyMonkey and using Excel:

• My Blog Article Methodology Inception2finish
• Pixstrips in Blog Articles

For "5 Years Continuous Blogging, Part 2", I will focus on word counts and number spreads.

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October 31, 2014: Links to the series

1. 5 Years of Continuous Blogging, Part 1
   Focus on single- and five-year views for total articles, articles with images, and recipe articles.
2. 5 Years of Continuous Blogging, Part 2
   Focus on numbers of words in articles and graphical representations.
3. 5 Years of Continuous Blogging, Part 3
   More details on collecting the data.
4. 5 Years of Continuous Blogging, Part 4
   Emphasis on data sorting and distribution of word count groupings.

Century Plant Triplets--16th & Final Week, 3 2 1 0

Gone. Gone. Gone. No Lefty left anymore. From three century plants to none, it's been an interesting mission to photograph the plants weekly and publish weekly articles. The five images illustrate my article's title.

In composing this last article, I decided I'd go take one more set of pix to compare June 17 and publish day of today—October 27. The pixstrip shows a bit of difference in plant looks from then to today, although not so much for the agaves. Weirdly, when I stepped up to the plants yesterday for a look-see, I was surprised to see no evidence of stalks having been cut. The centers were tightly wound, each coming to sharp points.

The only plan I originally had was taking pictures from one spot, all on Mondays around the same time except for one Tuesday session, and coming up with thoughts for that day. Oh, some of the thoughts might have come a day later. Most obvious "tweak" is the one for June 17's shoot.

It didn't take many weeks to consider taking additional pictures at other angles. I took several from across the street. Unfortunately, other nearby foliage tended to obscure the century plants, so I omitted most of them from the series of articles.

I buddied up more with my PaintShopPro tool (very old at version 7.04) over the months:

• Played with shapes for outlines and backgrounds.
• Cropped images by way of canvas size and window selections.
• Placed images on same canvases.
• Resized pixstrips by percentages.
• Made slight image rotations, aligning poles to working grids.

In placing previous and current week images next to each other, it was interesting to see changes for comparisons. I found my own way to format the articles for a certain consistency. If you like the series, please spread the word. Thanks!

My thoughts of the pix for that day:

Over the weekend, the lone century plant was still there. Had fingers crossed that it might still be there today when I made my weekly lunchtime pilgrimage to photograph it, as I had been since early March. Nope. These pix no longer have any majestic stalks. I did decide to attach pix from March 4 (start of spotting the upcomers, published July 14), April 22 (approximately midpoint, published September 1), and today. For the most recent of the last standing plant, look to June 10 (published October 20).

Index to my agave posts, from the time I first spotted the set of triplets in early March to mid-June, about 3 1/2 months.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16

2025 Slide-show version of the triplets saga-"Revisiting Century Plant Triplets, Weekly Shots Over 16 Weeks" (video | article)

Related: Agave articles search results

Heart 2 Heart

My theme today is hearts, the iconic symbol for the day. I've written about it in the context of things nearest and dearest that pop into my brain for this article.

Valentine's Day! It seems to have sneaked up on me very quickly this year! Last year, I had plenty of time to publish my convenient cooky recipe for making heart-shaped, red cookies using two flavors of cake mix. If you feel you have time to run to the store to get the ingredients and bake them, go for it! OTOH, you can just stretch the Valentine celebration (observation) for the whole week and wait until the weekend to bake them.

The pixstrip at the top of the article is an assemblage of some pictures I took at my most previous visit to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center These prickly pear cacti caught my eye because of heart shapes. At that time, I knew I'd want to write something up and include cropped pictures of them.

Another heart theme item I'm including in this article is info about PaintShopPro's picture tube feature, specifically hearts. (PaintShopPro is a graphics editing tool.) The associated pixstrip is a screen capture with the Picture Tube icon, icon label, my "spray" of hearts, and the Tool Options dialog box with option selections. My version of PaintShopPro is very old, so the interface does not resemble the ones from a webpage that discusses PSP picture tubes.

If you use PSP and want to download picture tube images, visit Corel's Paint Shop Picture Tubes webpage

This year, I myself am skipping making the cookies. I think I had been making them annually for about five years straight, sometimes for two to three different groups of people I'd see. Several conditions have converged to nudge me to forego the activity. Although I had re-entered the working world back in July after a 17-month hiatus, my perception of decreased discretionary time seems to have settled in only right after the new year started. Even towards the end of 2010, I managed to adhere to my self-imposed goal of publishing an article three times a month, one for every 10-day division. So far, I've managed to post only one last month and this one this month. Not sure if I will manage another article before February ends.

Here's a thought if you have enough fortitude to resist the psychological exertion to DO SOMETHING TODAY. Wait till tomorrow. I'm looking forward to tomorrow (Tuesday). That's the day the stores and drugstores knock off 50% for the cookies and candies. The meal? Just offsetting it a day. For an article that provides a different view of Valentine;s Day, read the New York Times' "When Love Outgrows Gifts on Valentine’s Day"

If you feel you must DO SOMETHING TODAY, here's a list of last minute suggestions for the day. Pick any, some, or all:

• Card
• Candy
• Stuffed animal
• Trinket, gadget, or bauble
• Heart-shaped cookies
• Favor coupons that you create
• Meal out
• Meal in
• Other thing(s) that come to mind

Have a happy day, whatever you do!

Create Monthly Calendars for the Year

Did you get a 2010 calendar recently? Get one for a Christmas gift? Buy one for yourself? Bank give you one? Some other business give you one? Calendars used to be assumed freebies, which seemed to be in short supply this season. The other day, I asked a bank teller about calendars. She pointed out a small stack of pocketbook-sized ones. Well, it’s adequate for viewing month to month, but the cells measure only 1.2" wide by 1" high.

I decided to visit an online calendar utility for viewing and creating custom calendars. I wound up creating and printing out all 12 months for the year in landscape orientation, double-side printing them onto six sheets. This type of calendar is good for scribbling short notes on a month-to-month basis. I myself like the days-of-week column arrangement to reinforce weekly occurrences.

For making the calendar, I used a Firefox browser with PaintShopPro7 (PSP) graphics editor, and selected options at http://www.timeanddate.com/calendar. (The default view shows a 3-row by 4-column setup for an entire year, tweakable for preferences.) I experimented with the browser screen sizes for graphics capture, then previewed and tweaked the page setup in PSP for printing maximum cell sizes.

If you want to make your own monthly calendar, start at http://www.timeanddate.com/calendar and click Advanced customization. At the new screen, the critical selections are as follows:

• Calendar period=1 month
• Format=[your preference]
• Add space for notes=[some vertical spacing per cell]
• Main template=[your preference]

When done with selections, click Show calendar. For the rest of the procedure to set up and print the first month, YMMV. To prepare the browser to capture screens, I set my browser for maximum size; i.e., clicked the Maximize button (restored to full screen). To obtain more vertical viewing space, I turned off the navigation and status bars (browser view menu), and pulled down the task windowshade to close it.

To set my graphics editor to capture screens, I opened PSP and set it to use a cursor for dragging and defining a capture window.

An alternative to setting the browser for maximum and setting the graphics editor for windowing the area: Resize the browser so only the calendar appears, then set the graphics editor for Object capture. This setting enables capturing only the object inside the window.

To prepare the application to print, I set up page settings to Landscape and Fit to page. I then tweaked settings by unchecking Fit to page, and accepting the new default margins.

I created the rest of the months for the year by doing the following:

1. Scrolled the browser upward until I saw the links for previous/next month.
2. Clicked the next month.
3. Scrolled the browser downward until I got the full view of the month.
4. Captured and printed the months as I did for January.

Yup, I'm set up for the rest of the year now.