#32

I can't help but do one more post. I suggested we share songs and pictures and all that kind of stuff, so I thought I would take a minute to explain some of the techniques to do just that.

I'm sure you all have figured out how to do pictures since the program does it for you. But what if you want to make a picture that only pops up when you click on a certain word, like this one? It's easy. Once you've uploaded the image and that long strip of code shows up in your post, just delete the middle part—the second long string bracketed between greater-than and less-than signs. Then put the word you want to become a link right in between the remaining brackets, after the long one beginning "<a href" and before the short one that's just "</a>."

Or what if you want to make a word a link to some other website or article or song or something? Here's what you need to know:

To make a link, you have to encompass a word with two tags, one to start the link and one to close it. For the first one you type this:

<a href="http://www.coolwebaddress.com">

and fill the space in the quotation marks with whatever web address you want.
Then you write whatever words you want to be the link, and then you follow it with the closing tag: </a>. It's that easy, but you need to make sure you've made no mistakes or it won't work.

You can also add something to the first tag to make sure that the link opens in a new window when it's clicked. For this, type your link as follows:

<a href="http://www.somewhere.com" target="_blank">

Sharing music is a little more difficult because of copyright laws. Generally, the song needs to be available on the internet to listen to for free. You can't use tracks from CDs you own. But if you want to share a song from, say, Napster, all you need to do is find the link to the song itself (which can be found on the player in the little box that says "Email It." That address is the one you need to put in the tag for the link). Here is a song I would like to share with all of you. It's creepy and awesome.

If you want to know anything else, anything more complicated than that, drop me a line and I'll see what I can do.

And now, if there's nothing else, here is a list of things I wanted to share with you:

an A paper,
a song I just love,
a newspaper article that surprised me,
a crossword clue that look forward to solving,
a website that pleased me,
a new product everyone should try,
a sweet new recipe,
a compliment I received,
a tradition I am starting,
a crush I am managing,
a habit I am breaking,
a plan I am hatching,
a book I am devouring,

and for good measure, here's another song I totally dig. And one more.