Tag: Life

Posted on

How to smile on a sad day?

Thomas woke up and immediately felt something. This wasn’t his day. He couldn’t explain exactly why, but this was a grey day, even if the sun was shining. 

He felt frustrated, he felt annoyed, and he didn’t have his typical good mood and uplifted spirit. Now, this might be okay if you live alone in the forest, but Thomas doesn’t live alone. He meets people all the day, and he is frequently having family around him. What should he do? Is there a method Thomas can use to get in a better mood on one of those bad-hair-days?

Fighting bad mood
Thomas has a bad mood – Source: Pixabay

Thomas wants to get in a better mood

As Thomas wants to get in a better mood, he has to think of what normally makes him happy. He gets a lot of ideas, and maybe some of them will inspire you as well.

Five methods that might cheer Thomas up on a bad day

  1. Thomas finds a chocolate and something good to drink
    This is a method that might work, sometimes. But, it might have exactly the opposite effect, all depending on his mood. Eating chocolate might make him happy, but it might also pull him down, making him feel crappier than ever. On this specific day, Thomas starts it all with some diet-Coke and a Daim chocolate. It feels good, but Thomas can’t stop there.
  2. Hey-hey-hey – Biiiiiitcooooooonnnneeeecccccttttt
    There are some legendary movies on YouTube, and Thomas has some special clips that he loves to watch. One example is the Carlos Matos video, a guy totally crazy about BitConnect, one of the biggest scams in the cryptocurrency history. It is a sad story, but Thomas cannot watch this video without smiling and laughing. So, time to watch some Carlos Matos!
  3. What, chlamydia in Norway?
    Thomas has one stand-up comedian that he likes a lot, and that is John Oliver. He has spoken about lots of topics, like cryptocurrencies, religion, politics, and all there is. It is enough to watch John Oliver to watch Thomas smile, but since he loves the nature of the country of Norway, he has a special favorite (at the moment), and that is the story of Norwegian Chlamydia ads. It is impossible to watch this without laughing (hard).
  4. Time to move the body a bit
    There are several ways to interpret what it means to move the body. Thomas can think of several ways to move his body. He can, for example, turn on music and start dancing around in the room. Why is that so fun? Thomas cannot dance. He was born without any talent when it comes to moving his body to music, so anyone who would watch Thomas dance would think he belongs in some sort of house for insane people.
    Instead of dancing, Thomas could go out in the garden to do some work there, or go for a run. Moving the body often gives you a better mood and attitude, simply because you know that you do something useful. This has a great effect on your body, and that is often reflected by a better mood as well!
  5. Thomas finds the source of his bad mood
    Throughout the years, Thomas has discovered that bad mood often originates from some sort of inner trouble. Maybe he is worried about something, or maybe something is irritating him. Sometimes he feels bad if he knows there is work to be done, but instead of doing it, he just forgets about it. Maybe there are problems in the family, or financial trouble… and solving these might solve his bad-mood problem.

These are some of the methods Thomas use to cheer himself up on a bad day. The methods don’t work all the time, but often he will find himself cheered up by one or more of these methods.

Did you wake up with bad mood today? How do you get rid of that bad mood? Have you got some method, strategy, or a good idea that Thomas can use the next time he wakes up feeling like crap?

Posted on

How to include a Medium feed in your WordPress blog?

Thomas has published quite a lot of articles on Medium in the last weeks. Many of the articles are copies of the articles published on www.thethomastories.com, but some of them are original content, written for Medium only.

thethomasstories on medium

Thomas would like to give more attention to the Medium articles, and therefore he wants to add a “latest posts on Medium” widget on his WordPress blog. How can that be done? He has been looking for a good plugin, but he didn’t really find one that satisfied him. So, what can Thomas do to include the latest posts from his Medium blog in a widget on his website?

There are a couple of solutions that do the job, and here Thomas will list some of them.

How to show the latest Medium posts in a WordPress blog!

First of all, the most important thing is to know the address of your Medium feed. Your feed is not the same as your Medium profile, but it is somewhat different. The address to your Medium feed is:

www.medium.com/feed/@profilename

For Thomas, the link to his Medium feed is: http://www.medium.com/feed/@thethomasstorie

Now that Thomas knows the address of his Medium feed, he copies this link, or stores it in an easily accessible place.

Include the Medium feed in WordPress

The next thing Thomas does is to enter the Widget settings under Appearance in WordPress. There is a basic widget there named RSS. But, unfortunately, RSS did not work with the Medium feed, it only gave him an error message. It said: “feed could not be found at https://medium.com/feed/@thethomasstorie. A feed with an invalid mime type may fall victim to this error, or SimplePie was unable to auto-discover it. Use force_feed() if you are certain this URL is a real feed.”

Instead of trying to understand this, Thomas went on and tried another plugin. He downloaded Feedzy RSS Feeds Lite, and activated the plugin.

Once again he entered the widgets menu, and he added Feedzy RSS to his widget bar. He added the Medium feed address, set the number of posts to show, and set the image size to 40. He then pressed save, and then what happened? The latest three Medium posts could be seen in the widget area of his WordPress blog.

Visitors can now see a widget presenting the latest Medium posts on Thomas' WordPress blog
Visitors can now see a widget presenting the latest Medium posts on Thomas’ WordPress blog

Thomas has fixed yet another problem, and he is very happy about it. Hopefully, he has been able to help you as well.

Should you have further comments or questions, use the comment field.

Want to read more interesting articles from Thomas? Make sure to follow him on Steemit, on Facebook, on Medium, on Twitter, on YouTube, and do not forget to visit www.thethomasstories.com.

Posted on

Windows is upside-down – What can Thomas do?

Thomas was working with a little explainer video when Windows suddenly turned into something that he calls “upside-down” mode. Everything went upside down, and the menu bar suddenly was on the top of the screen.

Thomas has been through a lot, but this was incredibly annoying. Not long ago Thomas had to fix it when Windows turn black and white, and now this… Maybe he should starting using a Mac instead, or Ubuntu? No, that cannot happen, as Thomas is too much of a Windows guy. But, this was really annoying, and Thomas had to fix the upside-down mode quickly because he was unable to do anything at the moment.

How to fix Windows turning upside-down?
How to fix Windows turning upside-down?

Take a look at the screenshot above. Thomas was sitting there and working on a video explainer, and suddenly his screen moved everything and he had to keep his head in 90 degrees to the right to read anything. Later he discovered that it could just as well have moved in the other direction, or totally upside down, but he didn’t care, all Thomas needed was to find a solution.

How did Thomas make the upside-down mode in Windows disappear?

It wasn’t much that needed to be done to fix the problem. In fact, all he needed to do was to press three buttons at the same time, and the problem was fixed. So, what did Thomas press?

The solution to the problem was to press the following buttons on the keyboard:

Control (CTRL) + ALT + UP (arrow key)

As Thomas pressed these three buttons at the same time, Windows at once jumped back to normal mode, and he could keep on working. For fun, Thomas tried clicking the same combination with the different arrow directions afterward and doing so, Thomas was able to make Windows turn right, turn left, and of course, upside down. But, he quickly returned to the normal Windows mode afterward!

Did the solution Thomas found help you as well? He certainly hopes so!

Want to read more interesting articles from Thomas? Make sure to follow him on Steemit, on Facebook, on Medium, on Twitter, on YouTube, and do not forget to visit www.thethomasstories.com.

Posted on

Windows turned black and white? How to get the colors back?

Thomas was writing an article when an incredible thing happened. He was just about to copy and paste a text when Windows suddenly went into a black and white mode. Thomas has no clue how it happened, and he has no clue how to fix the problem either.

windows went into black and white mode
Windows suddenly turned black and white. What can Thomas do to make the colors return?

Thomas had to look around the Internet to find a solution, and luckily he didn’t have to search for a very long time in order to find a solution to his problem. There is something about black and white pictures that make them look nice. But, Thomas was very annoyed when Windows went black and white, so he wanted to fix the problem at once.

The solution to his problem was a very easy one. You can take a look at the short YouTube video beneath to see the solution, or just keep reading the article beneath the video.

How Thomas got the Windows colors back?

To get the colors back to Windows, Thomas had to do a very simple thing. You probably know that the copy shortcut in Windows is Control-C. And, if you want to switch back and forth between color-mode and black/white-mode in Windows, you need to press Control-WindowsButton-C. So, they are very close to one another, but they have a very different function.

Get Windows colors back = Control+WindowsButton+C

Are you happy? Thomas is really happy the colors have returned, and he can gladly keep up writing his planned article.

Want to read more interesting articles from Thomas? Make sure to follow him on Steemit, on Facebook, on Medium, on Twitter, on YouTube, and do not forget to visit www.thethomasstories.com.

If you have more trouble getting the Windows colors back, or just want to say thank you to Thomas, use the comment field beneath, give the article a clap or an upvote, or share it with your friends online!

Posted on

Thomas wants Google to Index his content NOW!

Thomas is writing his stories at www.thethomasstories.com, but it can take Google weeks to index his content. What can he do to make those lazy bots index his articles faster?

Thomas is a quite patient guy, at least if he gets what he wants right now. He never wants anything for Christmas, because at the moment he discovers that he is in need of something, he has already ordered it from Amazon, eBay, or AliExpress. He is a guy that gets things done, but he isn’t always understanding when other people delay his work… like Google does when they do not index his articles at once!

Thomas is extremely fed up with Google

Can you imagine? Thomas wrote an article about an event that took place a few days after the article was written. He came up with information about the event, where to park your car, ticket prices and more. But, nobody visited the article at all. Thomas felt like he had wasted his time, and he quickly understood why… Google hadn’t indexed the site, and it was impossible to find it in the search engine. What is the solution for Thomas?

In his despair, Thomas has found a solution! This is what he has done to make Google index his articles (normally) in a few minutes.

What Thomas does to make Google index his articles

  • Thomas has registered his website in the Google Search Console.
  • He has added a sitemap of his website in the Search Console.
  • Now he finds the URL of the article he wants Google to index.
  • He clicks on “Crawl” and then “Fetch as Google.”
  • He adds the URL of the article he wants Google to Index and presses “Fetch.”
  • He now clicks “Request Indexing” and follows the instructions.
  • The article should be indexed by Google within a few minutes/hours.

Thomas has found out that this works almost always. But, there is one exception. Thomas started to doubt this method as he noticed that several articles didn’t get indexed at once, and it could take days, even when he used the method.

index by google
What to press to make Google index your articles quickly!

But, Thomas believes that he understands what the keyword is… quality content!

Google indexing and quality

The times when it has taken Google days to index his content is when the quality of the content has been very similar to other websites online. The articles didn’t say anything that hasn’t been said before, and for that reason, the Google bot made a decision to put the article on hold for some days, as those looking for information can find all the information of the given article in other articles online anyway.

Now Thomas is ready to publish this article. He has worked a lot on it, and he has even prepared a little YouTube video with the instructions. After publishing, he will follow his very own instructions from this article, and then he will update this article to tell you how long it took Google to index the article.

Time from publishing to indexing by Google: 2 minutes

Have you found this article useful? Please share it with others.

Have you still got questions? Use the comment field!

Posted on

Thomas wants to change his secondary Hotmail address

Thomas sat down in front of his computer. He wanted to check some of his email addresses, and it all went smoothly until he discovered that one of his addresses doesn’t work anymore. The entire website has been deleted, and the owners say it will never again work. That is quite a disaster, especially considering how Thomas is using this as a “security” email for several activities, including his Hotmail account.

Thomas is wondering what he should do. Since has can no longer access his secondary email, he cannot change the password of his Hotmail account, and he isn’t really able to make any serious changes.

What does Thomas do to change his secondary Hotmail address?

Thomas visits Hotmail.com and logs into his email account. Then he clicks his own image and goes to “View Account”. He is then sent on to a Microsoft website where he can watch and edit information related to his account.

He now presses “Update Security Info.”

update security info

There he has to add his login credentials again. After this, he is able to decide if he wants to add a new Secondary email or if he wants to add a mobile phone number as his back up. Here he is able to change his secondary email address, even if he cannot open and access his current secondary email address.

As Thomas finishes the process, he is told that it will take one month for this process to happen. That is to make sure that nobody can abuse it to gain access to someone else’s email address. He is told about the change in a new email, and he gets a warning the next time he logs onto Hotmail.

Now all Thomas has to do is wait for one month, and his Hotmail account will be registered with a new secondary email address.

Posted on

How to find out when you are tagged on Steemit?

Thomas is getting popular on Steemit, and people mention him in articles and comments here and there. But, Thomas doesn’t get notified when he is mentioned on Steemit. What can he do?

He is looking around for different solutions, and luckily Thomas managed to find two. Since then he has discovered even more Steemit tools that will help him find out if he has been mentioned somewhere, but these are still his favorite tools at the moment.

Now Thomas will find out if you mention him on Steemit

  1. Thomas is using Busy.org
    This is a Steemit platform that has a different layout, and it includes several new tools. One of the most important is the notifications window in which you can see if you have been mentioned/tagged, and also if someone re-steem your posts.

    Notifications on Busy.org
    Notifications on Busy.org
  2. Thomas is using SteemWorld.org
    Here he can simply add his username and he will get notifications whenever someone follows him, mentions him, and lots of other stuff.

    Get Steemit notifications at SteemWorld
    Get Steemit notifications at SteemWorld

     

  3. Thomas is using Partiko on his mobile
    Besides these, there is an application named Partiko that can be used on mobile devices which does the job in a very good way.

Now Thomas is happy. Whenever someone mentions him on Steemit he gets a notification, and he can easily cope with all the comments and articles mentioning him.