Really Random Tuesday #73: Book Winners, Blogger Layout Issues, and a Few Fall Quotes

Uno, dos, tres!  I have three lucky winners to announce today.  Stacie, Carol M, and Gina D have each won a copy of The Last Camellia by Sarah Jio.  Congratulations!  I'll send those books out to you as soon as I get your mailing addresses.  It sounds like quite a captivating book and I hope to read my own copy of the book, (relatively) soon. If you didn't win this time, please take a look at the other book giveaways in my blog's sidebar.  I know, the book covers in my giveaway list are larger than usual; more about that next.

******************

Suko's Notebook  ·  Layout

 

Is anyone else having layout problems in Blogger?  I've mentioned this already to a few of you, so please excuse any repetitiveness on my part if you've heard it before.  Specifically, I'm having a hard time with the Configure Image Gadget in Layout, which used to work easily and perfectly.  Now, suddenly, I'm getting a message that I need to include a title ("required field must not be left blank") when I try to save images, and the size of images is larger than it used to be, so the book covers are not of uniform size.  I've figured out how to bypass adding a title and will continue to do this if I absolutely need to, but it used to work without this hassle.  As a courtesy to my readers, I list book giveaways in my right sidebar, and that's what's being affected by this.  I'm not sure if Blogger made some permanent changes (I hope not!), or if this is just a temporary glitch of some sort.  Sometimes, these issues resolve themselves within a few days, and I'm hoping that will be the case with this, because it's been a pain to contend with.  Thank you for letting me vent about this!  Is anyone else having similar problems?  I hope someone at Blogger reads this and that it will work the way it used to soon.

 ******************

Autumn officially started on September 22.  In my neck of the woods, Southern California, we had one day of cool fall weather, autumn's "opening day", but yesterday was hot.  It should be a bit cooler today, though, thankfully.  Regardless of the actual weather, it is fall, so I'm posting a few quotes from authors about this time of the year to help put us all in the mood for the days ahead.

"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower."
~ Albert Camus

"Delicious autumn!  My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns."
~ George Eliot 

“Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn--that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness--that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.”
~ Jane Austen, Persuasion

******************

Appearing on random Tuesdays, Really Random Tuesday is a way to post odds and ends--announcements, musings, quotes, photos--any blogging and book-related matters you can think of.  I often announce book winners in these posts.  If you have miscellaneous book news to gather up and are inspired by this idea, "grab" the button for use on your own blog, then add your link to the "master" Mister Linky on the Really Random Tuesday page. 

As always, thanks for reading! 

Blogger Glitches

I've been having some blogging difficulties lately.  Are these glitches due to changes or "improvements" made by Blogger?  Everything was working very well until the beginning of this week.

First of all, the quick edit icons are suddenly missing from my blog, even though the quick edit boxes are checked.   I can still edit and change things on my blog,  but this now requires additional steps (and a bit of savvy).  I'd like the little icons to return, the sooner the better.  

Missing! 

Also missing are Labels below my posts. They are no longer visible, yet I did nothing to make them disappear. I've painstakingly typed them in over the past years, so I'm upset that they're gone!

My blog list of "Bodacious Blogs" was emptied. This may or may not be related to the fact that I changed to a custom domain a few days ago through Blogger. I had to add the blogs I formerly had listed to my list (and I found that I could not rename them). If the old list reappears, then I will need to get rid of duplicates.

I'm trying to be patient with Blogger, but it's been frustrating to me because I do not have a lot of "extra" time to spend trying to figure out what worked so well before (if it ain't broke, don't fix it!).  Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!