Sabrina gave a great session at CreativeCamp Kilkenny last weekend on how to blog like a boy - or in other words how to make your blog look great and be user-friendly.

Her slides are available here, with her talking points in the comments of each.

One of the points that she raised was about blogrolls - they need to be relevant and up-to-date. A while back I got sick of constantly updating mine manually, so I found a better way to do it.

*If you use Google Reader then you can use it to track your blogroll automatically*

I mentioned it at the session and Will chased me today for details, so I thought I’d lay it out in a post, step by step.

Firstly, you need to decide what blogs you want to display in your blogroll and then in Google Reader you need to place all of these in the same folder or tag them with the same tag. Next step is to go into the “Settings” for Google Reader and access the “Tags” tab.

On the “Tags” tab you will see an option to make each tag public/private. Make the one you want to share *public*.

A new option will appear to the right of that tag, allowing you to “add a blogroll to your site” - click this.

You will get a pop-up where you can choose the colour of your blogroll and then you can copy and paste the HTML code anywhere you fancy. If you are using WordPress and a widget ready theme, then simply add a new text widget and paste the HTML code into that!

The great thing about using this to manage your blogroll is that it will update automatically as you add/remove blogs from that folder in Google Reader, which is much quicker and easier than modifying your blogroll manually.

Have you been asked the question “What is Twitter?” or “Why would I join Twitter?”

Several people have said it to me, including grannymar.

So here’s your answer in a nice video format - Twitter in Plain English:

Seeing that Google Maps now allows open collaboration, I’ve started a European Travel Map that allows anyone to add to it.

View Larger Map

Feel free to add in any useful info you can think of:
Hotels to avoid, ones that are good
Memorable restaurants
The best pubs & clubs
Engaging museums or art exhibits

I would envisage that in the future, a collaborative knowledge map could be a great resource when planning a trip away - combining hotel reviews and restaurant recommendations with a visual reference to the city - making it easy to find out what fun things there are to do in the area you’re in.

Nokia have announced a battery recall for some BL-5C phone batteries manufactured between Dec 2005 and Nov 2006. In very rare cases the affected batteries could potentially experience over heating initiated by a short circuit while charging, causing the battery to dislodge.

Since so many people carry Nokia phones, I though it might help to post the link below which provides you details on how to check if your battery comes from the affected batch. Remember to look closely to spot the difference between ‘zeroes’ and the capital letter O – it can be hard to tell. Also think of sending the link on to anyone you know that uses Nokia phones.

Nokia Battery Replacement Check Website

If you’re a geek like me, you’re always being called upon to fix computers and explain new websites and concepts to your friends and family.

A while ago a short video did the rounds on blogs and email, explaining RSS in plain English. It was quite popular and now Lee LeFever is back with another couple of videos explaining Social Networking and Wikis.

Check them out and forward to your non-geek friends!

Social Networking

Click To Play

Wikis

Click To Play

And in case you missed it first time round: RSS

Click To Play

Now that you know what RSS is, you can grab Lee’s video RSS feed from here and will be automatically notified when the next video in the series comes out!

Update 11th Dec: Donncha has a great post about “Blogs in Plain English“, check it out!

Oh God, I’ve been meaning and promising to post this for ages, and now that the wedding is out of the way I no longer have an excuse!

Our wedding was originally planned for 120 people, but as a lot of them were from overseas we ended up with 85 at the ceremony and meal. But anyhow, it was still kept to under €10k, which in today’s world is something of a miracle. I can’t guarantee that you can do the same for your wedding, but here are a few tips that might help (and a few geek notes along the way…)

Firstly, find out who in your friends and family you can tap for expertise. Send out a general call to all you know asking for advice, recommendations and suggestions for service providers. To that end, here are my top ten money saving tips!

1. I was able to ask my mother (grannymar) who is an excellent seamstress to make my wedding outfit, and as you can see - she did me proud!
2. My cousin, RichardM, is a wedding photographer. I didn’t want too many formal shots or any ’staged funny’ shots, so going to someone I was comfortable with was a great help, I could be completely clear with him. Most important advice here, have a clear list of any family/friends shots you really want and make sure they know they are needed. Give a copy of this list to the photographer, bestman and chief bridesmaid so that they can locate people in advance and therefore avoid stress for yourself.
3. My aunt is a florist so I was able to get my bouquet from her. Research in advance what styles and colours you would like and have an idea about the size - I went for side plate size (photos will follow soon), but what I hadn’t realised was just how heavy the bouquet would be by the end of holding it for an hour of photos.
4. Ask around and see if anyone knows a D.J. or band and compare rates. Try to see the band/D.J. at a previous gig if possible and give them any requests at least two weeks in advance. Having both a D.J. and band will push the costs up to well over €1000, we went with D.J. only and it was €350 for the night - a massive saving. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the music and the floor was crowded all night.
5. Make your own invitations. We went with plain card and designed and decorated our own, but you can also buy packs that come with invite, menu, placecards etc. Try and find out if anyone you know does calligraphy, always looks best on the placecards.
6. Take the headache out of doing your seating plan and managing your RSVP by using simpleseating.com it automatically takes people who you mark as not coming off the table assignment and displays everything in a nice visual manner. Also makes it easy to share your seating plan with your wedding planner / mother / groom wherever you are.
7. Check our the corkage charges at the reception venue. We found that it was cheaper to bring our own wine and let them open as many bottles as needed. I actually went to Lidl during one of their wine sales and picked up 24 white and 24 red and they went down a storm. Even if it doesn’t save you any money, it gives you more flexibility in your wine choice. We also brought soft drinks for the children and non-drinkers, hotels will normally not charge corkage on these.
8. Serve your wedding cake as your dessert. We cut the cake before dinner and then it was plated and served to the guests as dessert, which resulted in a saving of €1.50 per person to us! It may seem small, but all the little savings soon add up!
9. Decorate with helium ballons instead of flowers. Part of our hotel reception package included them putting flowers on all the tables, but I wasn’t sure about them fitting in with my colour scheme. I contacted a local party equipment firm (and availed of my work discount of 10%) and they decorated the function room for me for €250. This included a bunch of 4 on each of the tables, a small double arch over the cake table and a large twisty arch (solid ballons, no gaps) with flowers and netting behind the top table. I then completed the look by printing up my own menus, and designing my own favours (tall, solid bottomed shot glasses with little wedding themed stickers on them, filled with mini-eggs - because I hate sugared almonds!) and scattering little hearts in purple & silver over the tables (these were my colours).
10. Our biggest saving overall for the reception was doing buffet food instead of serving to the tables. We saved over €20 per person by doing this and no-one complained at all, in fact some people were seen to head up for second and even third helpings! People were able to pick and choose what they wanted from the hot and cold food selections, and they still served the top table so that the parents didn’t need to get up.

Get wedding insurance! Due to illness in George’s family, we were considering having to move the wedding date (luckily we didn’t have to). In the case of anything going wrong you’ll be incredibly glad that you bought the insurance. Shop around online and you can pick up coverage for a €20k wedding for as little as €200.Now for the geeky stuff as promised!

We used WeddingWishlist.ie to put together a nice little wedding website with the ceremony and reception info, accommodation, maps and our wedding registry. The choice of shops to choose from for the wedding is limited, but the cool thing is that you can also set up ‘Couple Funds’ which your guests can contribute to. We did this for our honeymoon hotels, grand prix tickets and our ‘new flooring funds’ for our new house.

Finally, on my blog I used a nice little applet from whenismywedding.com to count down the days to the wedding date - handy so that you can keep a track of just how many days you have left to panic!

I hope that this info is of use to some of you out there, and if you have any questions then just leave them in the comments and I’ll try to answer them!

Interesting Argument About Global Warming - Watch more free videos

I’ve had various drafts of this post floating around my head for a while, but I was pushed into action this week by a post by Flirtysomething (which has since been removed) - she linked to an article in the Sindo and asked if it was similar to one of her blog posts. Well, yes, it’s a bit similar, but the fact is if you talk to anyone about weddings in this country then those are the points and stories that are going to be told…

Flirty’s original post on the subject can be found here, and like all writing and commentary on the topic of weddings, tends to make me cringe. ‘The average cost of an Irish wedding is 25k’, ‘Couples going into debt’, ‘Competitive Wedding Syndrome’, etc, etc… Each and every bridal magazine we pick up is exhorting that we should have the best of the best at our weddings, hotels push their expensive packages and bridal gowns are getting more dramatic and more expensive every time I look.

I can’t believe the amount of money that people are spending on weddings these days. I can’t for the life of me consider in any way spending 25 or 30k on one day of my life… Why would you want to put yourself or your parents into debt for the sake of that? In planning my wedding this year, I’ve been focusing on three things:

1. Don’t turn into a bridezilla
2. Find a way to invite everyone that I & the hubbie want there on the day.
3. Keep the cost of the wedding to under 10k.

Not becoming bridezilla is a difficult one, everyone wants to have input into the planning process, guest list etc. The key thing to remember here is that the person paying for the wedding pretty much gets final say, so if you’re the sort of people that run to your parents for money, then you’ve all but given them carte blanche to control the proceedings. In my case, it was myself and my hubbie that were paying for the majority, so we’ve been the ones to make the decisions.

Another key point is to ask the two sets of parents to provide the names of the people they would like to see on the guest list, ONCE. i.e. they can give you one list of names and that’s their last chance at it. They will be worried about leaving people off, so will think longer and harder about it. Make it clear to them that the guest list is at your discretion and the names they suggest may or may not be rejected. An alternative is to suggest that they pay for the dinner/drinks of anyone additional that they wish to invite, this keeps you within your original budget.

Finding a way to invite everyone that the bride and groom want there is harder than it seems. You will often prefer one set of cousins to another, but it’s hard to declare that by sending invites to one set and none to others. The tradition in my family is to invite aunts & uncles to the full day and cousins to the evening. I made exceptions in two cases - my favourite cousin will be one of my bridesmaids and her sister is traveling over from the UK, so there’s no point in her only coming for the evening. Most of the rest of my cousins are a lot closer geographically speaking, so it will be easier for them.
As for the final point - how to keep a wedding for 120 people to under €10k in cost - well it’s a whole other story in itself, so I’ll keep that for a future post or two… Plenty of tips and tricks on the way soon!