This is a test and you should just ignore it, unless you don’t wish to do so.
I’m trying to see how photos appear if I just click in places and add an image from the library. And then I’m going to leave it up in order to collect your ridicule and your scorn.
(Or your tomato recipes. See further below.)
I really just want to see how it looks, so what follows are heaping slatherings of thought drool to accompany random photos I find in the DK Image Library.
(In other exciting news, I’ve also decided to test the “Schedule for later” feature while I’m at it. 8PM Pacific/11PM Eastern seemed a less intrusive time for a test.)
Changing Tires
As a teenager, I was building my body up from some years in which I was often either in bed for months, wearing incredibly ugly leg braces with clodhopper shoes (every adolescent’s dream outfit), or otherwise unable to stand or balance well.
During that time I was useful as a school tutor and classroom assistant during a few summers at a small private school, but that was an internship-type activity. I couldn’t do the things other kids could do, such as deliver papers, or mow lawns, so I gave it away for free.
By 15 I was out of those woods and working on coordination and balance and such. I was eager to prove myself, to move and use my body, and I needed money. Donna Summer and Hall and Oates records didn’t just buy themselves for me.
I would make money doing odd jobs, from mowing lawns (I had the hardest time starting the engine, I would pull and pull that cord, sputtering failure after sputtering failure, so embarrassing) to picking strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries to chopping wood (at which I became surprisingly accurate, although I often expected that ax to come right down and split my own shin-bones for several years there—terrifying visualizations can be motivating, too) to changing people’s batteries, oil, or tires (putting winter tires on the rims, or replacing bald tires with new ones).
(I also became a beekeeper because I was afraid of bees. Through this I also discovered that I’m apparently afraid of making money or profits from beekeeping. Very expensive endeavor, although it was a very good way to meet interesting old men, as it turned out, and to learn about the ways of the past. Those three beehives widened my scope of history more than one would imagine insects could possibly do.)
At first, I was terrible at this tire activity and it took forever to do each tire, so being paid piecemeal resulted in an unprofitable endeavor for me in the beginning, but I can look back and see now that this was an important part of improving my gross and fine motor skills and a motivator for me to build strength, and improve my visual acuity as you check to see if the tire is sealed properly using water to check for tiny air bubbles...
And the ridicule of older males kept me going through it all. I’m not crediting or excusing their behavior, but only to recognize that their stench did add flavor to this stew.
I did get much faster and even prospered a bit as a tire-changer. I always hated this job, though, and my memories of that particular corner of the garage where I worked are hampered by the memory. This kid (in that photo way, way up there) is already miles ahead of me at any age in the tire-changing game.
Onto the photo of the dog who could be a nice coffee table, or a Buick.
Test photo two—the dog.
I feel like one could limbo under this dog.
First, Zsa Zsa is not ugly. Let’s dispense with that nonsense immediately. She may be award winning ugly, but she’s not really ugly.
You could wheel under this dog like you’re a mechanic checking the exhaust system of an old Buick, though.
(Both of these activities could, of course, result in death, but I suspect this one’s a cuddle pumpkin, so it would probably be death from drowning in a puddle of drool.)
Has anyone had a dog like this?
I feel like I’d always be on edge, have to be prepared, like we were always just about to get into a formal wrestling match any moment.
(Does this dog come with it’s own ref? Who decides who won the match?)
A Walk Through The Trees
The third test photo is the narrow lane through the trees. I would love to mosey down that lane.
With two noisy bodyguards banging drums because I’m afraid of bears.
Which would be so peaceful, right?
So, rather than discuss bears and trees and bodyguards who would definitely carry me out screaming and not just toss me to the bear to help their own getaways, let’s discuss how this is looking so far.
This layout is not the one I was hoping for, although it seems workable.
Now…..
One could be expressive with this format...
If I stretch out the paragraphs….
…. In order to match the photos...
Placing a text right next to a photo this way...
But…..
One thing I do want to ask, if anyone can definitively clarify this for me.
(I couldn’t find the definitive answer thus far in the help/information posts, although I’m sure it’s there somewhere. I thought I’d just dive in and experiment. And then ask, and risk getting delicious tomato recipes thrown at me for the faux pas.)
How does one do one of those nice photo diaries then that I see? (Or that I think I’ve seen? Since I can’t find one now.)
Text in paragraphs, and then a photo across the whole page with an informative caption, followed by another full paragraph of text? Rather than running up and down the edge, or half-page, the way these photos here are turning out?
Am I only imaginining that format exists?
Or do we have a way to control the photo placement?
Are there buttons I’m failing to understand right here in front of me that provide the secret keys to finding Bigfoot?
The Reason I’m Asking Is….
My reason is that I have ideas for posts and how I write them is going to be determined by how closely I could present photos embedded into the text.
One idea, just to provide an example: I would like to present a series of social media posts by people presenting certain points of view about their experiences with specific disability accessibility issues. (If I get proper permissions, of course, which I don’t want to ask for unless I figure out this can be done.) Then I would like to write the text of my article/post in between these photos. I wish to use their own expressiveness to convey certain frustrations about the issues I’m writing about as I believe they bring home the points with tremendous clarity.
(So a photo embedded right here between these two paragraphs is what I desire to create.)
And in other posts I’ve thought it would be helpful to include photographs that illustrate certain points.
I am intending at some point to write about accessibility issues related to technological interfaces, for example, and showing photographs—as any hardware reviewer may do, would be helpful in conveying the experience. I may share schematics of the internal workings of touchscreens, or possibly-maybe photos of certain types of kiosks. And so on.
Or I may wish to include (again, with permissions), photos of particular assistive technology devices, including the Emma Watch, which mitigates tremor motion to help Emma use her tablet, and so on.
Key is embedding the photos nearer the text to use them as visual aides to quickly, clearly illustrate my points.
So, does anybody know: Can you write paragraphs, share a full-wide photograph, and then write another paragraph directly below it?
Or have I imagined seeing this?
In which case, be kind, for it is hope that makes me misremember, and despair that makes me harbor such hopes. There is so much to convey about these experiences, in order to illustrate policy solutions, or help people understand how they could help mitigate these accessibility issues, and well positioned pictures would be worthy accompanyments to each and every one of my own thousand words.
What path must I walk down to find that layout? Wait? Is that a bear up ahead?
Why don’t you go check?
The Fourth Wall
The fourth test has, of course, been your patience, which, I guess we’ll see in the comments how that turns out. I could use recipes for interesting things to do with tomatoes, though.
My tomato plant, while besieged by ants that have come up from a hole in the wall of my apartment building, and while it’s ravaged by this heat and many hours of daily exposure to the Los Angeles Sun, is producing right now, and it’s possible that soon I’ll have many tomatoes all at once.
I have one recipe in mind, but if you’d like to throw tomato recipes at me while I’m here on this stage, that could be productive groundlings mockfoolery, I’d say, for daring to waste your time this way with this simple test of writing text so that it ends just below the photo caption, or maybe wraps beneath it just a bit.
In the end, I am just publishing to see what this looks like. I’ve been experimenting with polls lately, and I guess that was the gateway drug to this now. I can’t wait until I learn how to embed Excel spreadsheets, as I believe I’ll be able to disprove Einstein’s theory of….
No.
I won’t be able to disprove Einstein’s theory of anything.
One final note: I know I let you down by not including any pictures of bodyguards as I teased in the headline. (And I swear there IS a bear in the woods photo! Don’t you see that? Go check. I’ll wait here with the drums.)