Rumblings from Nifty Galoot

In the last few days I’ve been exploring the web and learning about comments and plugins for WordPress. What have I learned? I’ve learned that the default for most blogs is to have nofollow set for an author’s website, or links in comments.

There were a quite a bunch of plugins I found to remove nofollow from comments.  The ones mentioned most often were:  LinkLove, DoFollow, and NoFollow Free.

They all looked like good choices, with DoFollow the simplest if someone wants to remove nofollow from all links in comments. Just install it, activate the plugin, and you’re done.

By default, LinkLove leaves the nofollow set until a comment author reaches 10 posts. That could be a good choice for some folks. There are instructions for how to change the number of posts to something other than 10, if a different number is desired.

I decided to use NoFollow Free. It takes a tiny bit more time setting up, since you’ll likely go to the options page and customize the settings, but you have options for whose posts you want to remove nofollow from, and the number of posts before it will do so. It also allows removing nofollow from a author’s website, links in comment contents, or both. Plus… There’s a built in option to put back nofollow if blacklist words are matched.

CommentLuv is a plugin that will go to a comment author’s website (if they fill it in) and posts a link to their last post at the time of the comment. A fun way to share a little luv by making it easy for readers to check out a commenter’s site. It may also encourage folks to comment on your site.

And lastly…  You may have wondered about the… U Comment – I Follow design:

You can find one for your blog in a number of colors or a css version  from Randa Clay Design.

A friend mentioned she was going to do Tuesdays Topic (traveling) on her Blog, that got me to thinking about traveling. I have some fond memories related to travel.

My Grandpa lived with us when I was a kid, way back when. He loved to travel. He’d get the 60 days for 60 dollars bus passes and travel all over the country. I have a scrapbook filled with postcards sent from all the places he stopped. Grandpa was a neat guy to send me so many postcards.

Even when he wasn’t traveling, he still loved travel. In those days, the Minneapolis public library had a movie theater and would show a travelog film on Wednesdays. Sometimes he’d take me along, we’d catch a bus and go downtown, it was so cool. The library also had a museum in the basement, what a fun place to explore. It was always a great day to go downtown with Grandpa.

More thoughts of travel, caused me to dig out a photo album and look through it…

I found a photo of me with my first bicycle, it was brand new to me, a freshly repainted 20 incher.

1964 was a good year…  Cowboy boots and shirt plus a bicycle!  Oh…  The good memories.  I did lots of traveling and put many miles on that bicycle!

Thank you Jen for bringing up Tuesdays Topic and giving me a smile with fond memories!

I helped a neighbor split a tractor yesterday. The clutch was bad and in order to be able to repair it, the tractor needed to be split right behind the motor. The first picture is a before shot, with the hood removed, but not much else.

You can click on the pictures for a larger view.

On this side we needed to remove the air cleaner, exhaust pipe and muffler, oil filter bracket and filter, throttle linkage, fuel shut-off linkage and a few wires. Underneath the tractor, the shields and drive shaft for the front wheels needs to be disconnected and removed.

John is just getting started figuring out what all has to be disconnected. We didn’t have a book or manual so had to figure things out as we went along. The air filter is sitting on top of the fuel tank at the front of the tractor.

Moving on, the tractor’s still in one piece with some stuff disconnected. On the left side, we needed to disconnect the steering arm, remove the starter, battery, oil cooler, and disconnect some hydraulic pipes.

Close up of where the split is going to happen. A jack is under the front half. It will be split right in the middle of the picture with back half on the left side and the motor and front half on the right side of the picture.

Now to get the hoist into position and support the back half. Then we’ll be ready to remove the last few bolts and split the tractor.

The tractor is split. The back half of the tractor is hanging from the hoist. The area right above the bucket shows the shafts going into the transmission where two clutch bearing are located. One bearing for the transmission clutch and one for the PTO. (Power Take Off – that’s a shaft that comes out the back of the tractor that can provide power to equipment the tractor pulls.)

The back of the tractor where the bearings have to come out of, on the left side of the picture. The motor and front of the tractor is on the right side. The clutch is on the back of the motor.

Front of the tractor. You can see the clutch on the back of it. The back of the tractor is on the right side of the picture. You can see it hanging from the chain.

The tractor after it’s been split with the back half hanging from the hoist. There’s room enough in the middle to easily work between the front and back parts.

The clutch parts are off of the motor. the disk on the floor under the front half needs to be replaced.

Made a ‘World’s Best Mother-in-law’ design for NiftyWares shop:

Best Mother-in-law

There are lots of great Mother-in-laws and Valentine’s day is a good time to let them know it.  So…  The heart design seemed like a nice way to do it.  The design is on adult shirts and gifts.

I also blogged the design at Nifty Wares Shop News.

Another photo of Monday’s sunset.  This one captured more of the sky and some of the snow in the field was cropped.  I’m often amazed at the colors during sunset.

This photo was take just off of the south field so the dead grass along the edge of the field is in the foreground.  Clouds in the sky changed colors and shape from moment to moment.  Made for some interesting pics.

There were pretty colors in the sky at sunset on Monday, so…  I took the camera out into the south field and snapped some pictures.  Here’s one:

I stepped out the door Friday morning and snapped a few pictures just before sunrise of the moon and a star in the sky.

Shortly after that, a neighbor stopped and picked me up for a trip out towards the Red river valley.  He had bought a tractor and was going to pick it up, asked if I’d like to ride along.  It was a nice change of pace and a good trip, I hadn’t been that way in quite a while.

Seems kinda strange bypassing Bemidji on the new highway and not going by the statue of Paul Bunyan and Babe the blue ox.

We came back a different route and passed by Itasca state park, where the headwaters of the Mississippi river is.  Crossed a bridge near there where the river isn’t much more than a creek in size, quite a bit smaller than where it flows by my house.

Got home just before sunset.

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year filled with joy and good cheer!

Here’s a photo showing the dawn of the new year. It was 3 degrees below zero and I didn’t spend too much time taking the photo of the sunrise across the Mississippi river.

May you all enjoy the coming year as much as Raven (my dog) and I enjoyed the dawn of the new year!