How to Get the Most Out of These Posts

Finding only what interests you: 

When you arrive at this site by clicking on a search engine topic, such as Habitat or Homeless Vets, you will likely be taken to a single post specific to that topic.   To find other posts by Oldtimer on that topic, you can click on the categories of “Oldtimer’s Wisdom” and choose a topic.  The numbers in (parenthesis) are the number of posts that contain those word as tags. 

For example, let’s say you came to look at a  Homeless Veterans article by me.   Click on the categories pull-down window and select “Homeless Vets” and you will then be displayed all the posts in that category, currently more than 85 topics.    These categories are actually tags of interest.  if you stick with mainline topics, such as homeless vets, or homeless youth for the categories you select, you will find what you need.

There also more than 35 topics on homeless youth.

And 16 informative posts on our Habitat for Humanity build this year, now completed.

You can also click on ”Oldtimer’s Tag Cloud” which displays larger text for those topics that have more posts.    If you click on the tag cloud word  ”homeless” you will get more than 114 articles.

To make a topic a favorite: If you then link to the address in the address bar and make it a favorite, you will always get all the Homeless Veterans articles (or whatever your chosen tag) anytime you click on that link.   If you want to send someone a link to only the Homeless Vets articles, click on the tag “homeless vets”, then use that link.

To find out what others are writing about the same topic in a blog, you can click on the topic in the tag list at the bottom of the post.   If you came here looking for Habitat for Humanity, click on that topic.   This will bring up my articles and anyone else writing here.

To find out what the news services are writing about either the homeless or homeless vets, check out the “blogroll” in the right hand column, the ones labeled news.   This will bring up a search engine optimized for that topic.  

To add me to your feed:   What does that mean?   This post is fed into an automatic system that collects the posts each day.  If you click on the “Add Oldtimer to your feed” you will be shown a sample feed first and then given an option to continue and add  an automated system that will then deliver them to your browser.  Nothing will show up in your mailbox or force its way into your computer or onto your screen.  

What happens is that you will get a link added to the top of your favorites bar under the category “feeds”.   If you decide to check on my work, simply click on feed instead of favorites and you will see “Oldtimer Speaks Out”.    You can opt out at anytime.  Try it.

Click on that and you will see the posts you have not read yet and a link back to this website.   That’s all.  It is generally a day behind unless you click on the refresh symbol which brings it up to date.  The first day you will get a lot of them, those you have not seen in the feed before.  After that, you will only see the new ones added since you last looked.

To reach the home page from anywhere in my site:   Two choices,  the first is the “Front Page” link above the Oldtimer Speaks Out banner.  The other is the top item in the Blogroll, “Oldtimer’s Home Page”.

To see older stuff   The front page shows the last 10 posts.  Anything older than 10 posts within the current month on a particular topic can be seen by clicking on the “Previous Entries” link at the bottom of the page.   You can also select previous months from the archives or from the link at the base of the calendar.

To find and copy any picture.  There are two types of pictures on this site.  Those that I took personally and those that are imported from some other source, such as a on-line newspaper or from an on-line image collection.    If you want to know how to get to a picture that does not mention the author, simply right click the image and then look at the properties.  The name of the site and the particular picture will be shown in in the URL.

If it is something that I uploaded to a page on this site, the location URL will start with “oldtimer files” and the copy is right there on the page.  You can copy or link to it.

Pictures shown as a slide show are located in Flickr, such as the ones on the Habitat posts.   Click on the slide-show and when it displays, you have a couple of ways to get to the images if you want to download one.   The first option is to let the slide-show run.  If you see a picture that you like, you can click on the picture and then the slide-show will pause and you will see an option to resume or to open the picture in a new window.  If you open in a new window, you will see a little magnifying glass icon that says “all sizes”.  Click on that and you have options to download 5 different sizes, from thumbnail to full page.  All free stuff.  You don’t even have to register.

The other way to get to the slide show images is to click on the link above the top left of the slide-show.    There you will see a montage of all the photos in the slide show and you can click on the one you want.  Again you will find an “all sizes” icon above the upper left corner of the photo.   You can look at other sets by clicking on the word “sets” wherever you see it.

If you see something wrong:   Typo, error, bad grammar, bad fact, just make a comment.

Hope you find everthing suitable.  I’m open to comments!

Enjoy!