Cat Chit Chat

Wednesday, 3 June 2009

Submit a Blogger Sitemap to Windows Live

I find that the search results for Google, Yahoo and Windows Live search are very different. Google is by far the most important taking about 60% of all search traffic but it is sensible obviously to maximize the possibilities of being found by Yahoo and Bing, Windows Live search engine. One way to do this with Bing is to submit a sitemap. Here is how you submit a Blogger sitemap to Windows Live:

Navigate to the Bing (beta) Webmaster Center . Sign in.
{You will need a Windows Live account to sign in to use the tools. As MSN are improving their performance lately I think it a good idea to get involved. There are some good things coming out of Microsoft these days. When you create a new account you will be asked to confirm your email}
You are taken to a page where you enter the URL of your Blogger site and if you have a sitemap on your blog (unlikely) you can also enter the URL of that. A sitemap is a webpage that contains the ideally all the pages on your blog plus links to those pages.
You add your email address too in the box below.
Then go to the next page where you have a choice to verify that you are the webmaster. The second choice is the one to chose. Copy the code shown (paint it in and press Ctrl C) and place it in the head section of your blog. You can do that by following these steps:

Navigate to the Edit Html tab of your blog by going to Dashboard>Layout>Edit Html.
Bring up the search box by typing Ctrl F.
Enter this code in the search box: <head>
Just below the tag <head> paste the code that you copied from the Bing Webmaster page (at 5 above).
Save the template. You will see no change.

That is it. I do not know if it will change things for you or me but it probably will over time. We need to do all these things to maximise the chances of being seen. It will take time to see changes, however. On my Pictures of Cats org website (which is a SiteSell site) all the major search engines are pinged automatically by SiteSell.

In my opinion you don’t need to ping Google as a Blogger site is one of theirs and it will be found in due course.

Rational Self Interest

The concept of rational self interest means pursuing what is best for us individually based on a reasoned argument. We pretty much all adopt this approach to life whether we know it or not and whether we use good arguments or not. But how does the tiger and the wildcats fit into this?

I think we have to look wide and ask whether we are generally able to exercise rational thought into pursuing self interest. I say this because we pursue things that are meant to benefit us on a short term basis. We suffer from acute short-termism. We are unable to wait for things or think of the long term benefits. Perhaps we are unable to think long term because it is much more difficult to calculate what is going to happen in the long term so we fall back on what we can see in the near future, which translates to grab it now.

This mentality or lack of rational thought (or is it just plain laziness) has had a severely detrimental impact on our lives or will have in the not to distant future. Here are some examples:

The big car manufacturers in the USA are bankrupt (insolvent is the better word) pursuing near goals only and failing to adjust to the bigger issues of global warming and decreasing oil stocks. They had their heads in the sand right up to the time they went bust and these companies are run by very well paid executives who, it seems work for themselves while failing to employ rational self interest.
Over fishing which will result in there being no, yes no fish in the oceans and seas by 2040, if we continue at the present rate. We just don’t get it. We just are not able to think rationally and collectively over the long term. It is too painful for us to do this. Much easier now to just carry on until we really feel the pain. We like to “mortgage the future”.
Global warming. Once again we have to almost hit the buffers before we actually do something. People and countries think short term. To think long term means things being harder now and we avoid that – too painful. In other words we tend to live beyond our means to make life more bearable now but doing that indefinitely results in all the hardship coming at the end, when things get really bad.

Wildcats. Yes, I got around to my area of interest. This I think is a bit different though. There is certainly a lot of short termism and irrational self interest here. What I mean is we destroy the wildcat’s habitat wantonly, so the wildcat’s demise is a by-product of wider problems of, for example, uncontrolled human population growth and the logging of whole forests that take away habitat (e.g. Clouded Leopard and Bornean Bay Cat but there are many other examples).

In respect of the wildcats our lack of rational self interest indirectly results in gradual extirpation of all wildcats on this planet (in the wild). The tiger is almost extinct in the world (the world’s favourite animal). The truth is we either don’t care enough for the wild cats in the wild or we are plain frightened of them. We cannot live in harmony with them. As a consequence we prefer to have them enclosed and controlled in zoos or reserves. We need to manage them, to get them out of the way while we use up the world’s natural reserves for our short term irrational self interest.

Rational self interest should surely include group interests and national interests and of course world interests but we tend to think of rational self-interest as doing things that benefit us directly and immediately rather than gaining benefit indirectly in the long term as everyone else gains as well. We have difficulty cooperating to produce global benefits.

Until we, as world people, are able to genuinely work in harmony on a global scale, we are never going to work towards true benefits individually and the wild creatures that we arrogantly push to one side or, worse, use as a commercial resource, will simply fade away just as all nature’s reserves are gradually being used up by a totally irrational human race.

Tuesday, 2 June 2009

Gothic Background Image

For all those goths (is that spelled correctly?) I think I know of a site where the best gothic background images can be found. Or at least the best gothic wallpaper. That said I am not all together sure what that means! This is the site: DinPattern. The patterns are very sophisticated and I think there is a strong gothic influence. They form a perfect wallpapered background.

Here are some examples:

Don’t use this image, but go to the website and download as they are inch perfect and need to be so that fit together to form a perfect wallpaper image.

This one is called “bones”. Very gothic I think. These are top notch background images. Please go to the site and leave a comment to thank the person who made these and leave a small donation if you want to. One last one as an example:

Called “Dark”

From Gothic background Images to Home Page

Maine Coon Cat Health in Europe

This is a post about Maine Coon cat health in Europe and is based on an email from a concerned Maine Coon cat breeder in Italy, Max. This is his email. One or two bits have been amendeed as his email was written in English and Max is Italian. I therefore tidied it up a bit. He writes pretty good English though.

…..Hi I am Massimo (Max). I run a Maine Coon cattery in Italy. It is called Trillo Team (new window). We are first and foremost 'cat-lovers' and then breeders. We also have two rescue cats who were condemned to death and we had bottle feed them to complete their weaning. If you look at our website, which is unfortunately only in Italian (sorry), you'll find lots of information relating to the health of the Maine Coon.

We are currently fighting a tough battle against many Italian breeders to isolate and eliminate the HCM gene from our breeding lines, but unfortunately the situation between breeders in Italy and in Europe is very serious, especially for what I reluctantly consider to be their irresponsible behaviour, that I'll try to explain below. I am sorry to say this but I feel that I must. In Italy there are breeders who continue to reproduce cats that HCM test for p / p (homozygous) and more so cats that test for n / p (heterozygous) not caring to only breed with cats that test negative n / n. But in doing so, in a litter, for example, of 6 puppies, 20% of the pups could be n / p, and therefore bearers of HCM.

I consider this irresponsible behaviour, because thinking about the reproductive life of a cat of at least 5 years with 2 litters per year, for an average of 6 pups at a time, this means that a cat that is n / p, gives the world at least 20 baby carriers of HCM ... Can you tell me, if you know, how the breeders in the U.S.A. are doing? Is it the same? We, as a breeder, unfortunately in these 4 years of activity, took cats from other breeders with the assurance that the examinations had resulted in negative HCM testing resulting in n / n. But the re-test on these cats indicated that they were n / p. I think it is irresponsible behavior. There are only 3-4 breeders in Italy who breed Maine Coon cats under rigorous testing and removing carriers of HCM from the reproductive cycle.

So we are looking the U.K. for instance to see if we can find a guaranteed cat, n / n, from a line that is not present in Italy, for at least 6 generations. We would like to found a Quality Maine Coon Club, bringing together Italian and foreign breeders, that pursue a rigorous selection in its breeding.

Another problem has occurred in relation to laboratories in Italy that perform analytical testing of HCM. In Italy there is a laboratory at the University of Milan (Vetogene) running this test that is connected to the University of Michigan, where the gene was identified and isolated. Otherwise we turn to a laboratory in Germany (LaboKlin) or France (Antagene). But what has happened is that the same cat resulted in, n / n in Italy was found to be n / p in Germany. So we no longer know what to do.

I've read with interest the study of HCM made in Stockholm, Sweden, but I've seen that they didn't talk about HCM's genetic analysis. I think that there is a lot to do to in generating awareness in people about this problem. For me, it is really a nightmare to think of selling a kitten, that after 2 or 3 years is dead of HCM. A cat is not a computer or a radio, for example, so that I can say “this cat is under warranty and can be replaced with another puppy”. When a cat becomes part of the family he or she becomes the object of attention and love from all, and when he dies you can not replace this companion just like a broken TV ...

I would welcome any input or comments from breeders or concerned people who might be able to assist in eliminting the curse of HCM from Maine Coons in Italy.

Max.

From Maine Coon Cat Health in Europe to Maine Coon Cats

Monday, 1 June 2009

CSS Background Image

The CSS Background image is quite popular for Blogger users. There is a website dedicated to providing them as you might know. It is a successful website (I’m jealous!).

But if you want to put your own background image onto your Blogger blog it is easy to do and it will be all yours and of your making, which I think is better for you (achievement) and the visitors (more personal and unique, which is very important on the internet).

Blogger code is css code (cascading style sheets). Css code is code that dictates the look and feel of the whole website (usually) although it can be used to affect a single page (i.e. the code is on the page in question as opposed to on a separate sheet and then referred to).

This short post tells you how to put a background image into a Blogger blog. First prepare the image. I carelessly use a large rather “heavy” (large file size) image for a background that I use on my YouTube Home Page for example. I also use it for one or two pages of the main website but my main site is not written in css but straight Html.

By default the background image is placed in the top left corner of the page and then repeated vertically and horizontally. Small images will therefore create a kind of wallpaper effect and are generally recommended but a dramatic large image that fits the page well can look outstanding. Some of the best background images are ones that are formulated to knit together seamlessly. Perhaps the best website for this is: DINPATTERN . The patterns are extremely slick and elegant but a bit gothic and flock wallpaper like. Bottom line; try and produce your own image. A large image on a black background can work well but this is about taste!

These are the steps to take to add a css background image to your Blogger blog:

Get to the Edit HTML page of your blog. You can do that from Dashboard>Layout>Edit HTML tab
Make sure that you have an up to date downloaded copy of the template on your computer and if not simply click on “Download Full Template” at the top of the page. The small file that is downloaded (XML file) can be uploaded to renew the altered template if it all goes pear shaped. But if you review your work at each stage this shouldn’t be necessary.
Press Ctrl F and a search box comes up bottom left of the screen.
Copy this code (in red) into the search box: body { . It will find the code automatically and quickly painted in green.
Just below this line of code place the code highlighted in red below (over write what is already there which should be background:$bgcolor;). This is how it will look (note: the image URL in the example is not a real image URL but the code is correct. Just replace the URL with your own. Make sure all the code is in place.

body {
background-image:URL(http://www.pictures-of-cats.org/images/Maine-Coon-white.jpg);
margin:0;
color:$textcolor;
font:x-small Georgia Serif;
font-size/* */:/**/small;
font-size: /**/small;
text-align: center;
}

With the above code the image scrolls up and down with the website. I prefer it when the background stays still and the blog moves over it; it can look nice. This is the modified code to achieve a static background:

body {
background-image: url(http://www.pictures-of-cats.org/images/Maine-Coon-white.jpg); background-attachment: fixed; background-position: center;
margin:0;
color:$textcolor;
font:x-small Georgia Serif;
font-size/* */:/**/small;
font-size: /**/small;
text-align: center;
}

You can see how this looks on this site: 3 Stray Cats

How do you know what the URL of the image is to put into the block of css code? Well, you will need to upload an image of your own making to a server. It might be a server that hosts your other website (this is the case for me). If Blogger is your only website, you can upload your background image to various free servers:

Google Picasa Web Albums (as a Google member/subscriber you can open an account easily). This is my preference.
Photobucket
There are numerous image hosting sites
I see no reason why you can’t use Blogspot, the host for your Blogger blog. You can upload the image in the usual way in compose mode as if you are creating a new post and then go into Edit Html mode and dissect out the URL of the image. I explain this further below:

This is an example of the Blogger image code as uploaded:

It looks complicated because the image is linked to a page on which just the image is seen so the URL is mentioned twice. I have highlighted in red the URL of the image. Do this for your own image and then copy and paste it into the css background image code mentioned above.

Preview your work before saving and viewing the website. That is it…..

From css background image to Home Page

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