James McBeath\’s paddling blog

Our new friend Luke has added a new tool for us to play with… NextGen gallery tool. This tool allows us to post up galleries in our blog posts and on our sidebar etc. without using Flickr and other products. This is a first step to having full photo support for all of us to use… and it makes layout much nicer.

Here is an example gallery post… http://worldkayakblogs.com/jamesmcbeath/james-first-gallery/ … bear with me as I play with the features.  If you look to the right of my post here, you’ll see a NextGen widget that I use to display my gallery on the sidebar… the options are many, layouts, styles, effects etc.  Very cool tool.  We’ll be using this site-wide to create loads of visuals.

You should have a Gallery option at the very right of your admin menu now.  If not, go to the Plugins admin and ‘Activate’ the NextGen plug ins… both of them. 

james.

So the news from the Ottawa Valley is… its winter! 

After an early snowfall, we usually expect a melt, then real snow beginning and staying around by mid December.  Well, not so this year!  Our late November snowfall is still here.  Actually, its compounded with about a foot and a half of accumulation.  We’re not burried, but we have snow and its stayin’. 

So what next.  Well, Ken Whiting, myself and many others are scrambling to get our back yard rinks up.  Ken’s got this massive thing we play 2 vs 2 on, I’ve got a conservative 50 foot by 35 foot rink for the kiddies.  End result, winter is here and we Canadians must switch into the proper mode.

 What does it mean for kayaking?  Well … ice, bad.  We had a last paddle on the Ottawa last weekend, I heard Jennifer Kellerman (WK ambassador for the region) had a group out… funny thing, it was a great Garberator level!  Did about 5 surfs and then the chill hit… ug.  The bottom bays are freezing and becoming dangerous, so most of us are off the river and skiing… oh yeah, the hills are all open now.

OK.  So we just about to start launching some nifty toys for this blogspot.  First off, maybe we should look at what’s available right now.  Have a look at this layout, for example.  Check out the layout.  Did you know that you can choose how many columns you can have on your blogspot?  You can also choose what appears on your screen in each column!  Now you can choose the background color, fonts and much more. 

 So lets get started.  Stay tuned for a first in the series of articles on how I we use these blogs.

 James.