I’ve Been Tagged …

I’ve been tagged by Violet Ravette in her The Gothic aspiring Writer mode. When I read the questions, I felt bound to try and answer them, as they are quite to the point and “about blogging”, aspects of which I often talk about. However, I’m going to be skipping up and down these questions, several need more thought than I’m prepared to give them right now.

Q1 … How did you come up with your blog name? I could laugh, or I could cry from tooth-gnashing frustration about the URL up there in the address bar. Probably laughing is the better response. For me, my blog name was to be a temporary placeholder thingie while I learned the ropes of setting up a blog in privacy.

I fully expected to be able to change it to something much more appropriate but it was not to be. When I started blogging I did not know the differences between an URL, a domain, a website and website host, and a blog. To my mind, all of them were parts of the same thing and that idea has caused me untold stress.

WordPress terminology/jargon and its concepts are NOT and NEVER clear or translucent, not crystal clear, crystalline, glassy, or unclouded. Concepts are nearly always opaque and cloudy and nearly always need six or ten readings with a glossary at hand before understanding glimmers in the distance. Then I need to try and nail it down before it escapes. Like, rewrite it in my own words.

And I say this from the point of view of a person who learned HTLM (I started with its fourth iteration, back in 2003) and could get a blank screened monitor with a C/- prompt in the top left hand corner to do as it was told.

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As I was with WordPress for a short time when it first began–so that it already knew me or still knew me when I returned after a long stint with Blogger and then G+. My name and number were still in the system. And by hook or by crook WordPress did not make it possible for me to change my new prospective blog name.

They offered me a whole new URL, meaning a second blog, to be paid for as well. Don’t ask me to explain, it became an immovable barrier, I decided to leave it in the road and walk around it. Mind you, I don’t mind the name so much, it is after all the handle I mostly go by. It’s the number. — 385131918. I mean, what can you do with that? Don’t try, I’ve already looked at it in 55 different ways.

That left me the tag-line to do glorious things with. 3 realities. The everyday consensual. The Eleven Islands. The future. I don’t now recommend specifying a place in a tag-line. The blog will change in flavor and suddenly the tag-line is dated. But … Lodestar is primarily set in the Eleven Islands and therefore the tag-line is still current. Still, expect to say a change up there one day soon.

Q5 … Is there anything more you wish you had, or would like to learn as a blogger? I must confess I laughed when I read this question. Who invented this tag? This looks so much like market research. There are always more ways I would like to learn to make my blog more interesting. But I figure that since I am mainly talking to other bloggers, anything new I learn other people might be interested in learning too. Or they might be interested to read that the way they did it, was better.

And then there is the concept of learning by doing. So I’m in the process of learning the intricacies of making and embedding video clips which efforts can be seen in the Cat Diary, as well as the ongoing process of turning an image-rich document into a pdf, as will one day soon be seen in the Bosley’s Builders series.

Every so often I go through the WordPress Blocks Catalogue, and see if anything tickles my fancy. I’ve been thinking I should learn how to do a quote block soon. Should be pretty easy, but in my experience as soon as you say that, something hard will trip me up. In my family, I’m famous for making easy things hard, and seeing problems that no one else has even noticed.

Q6 … Do you have a specific style of blogging? Mmm, a specific style? Well, I usually try to have at least one image, and that is usually centered. Off-set images are easy to do, I know, but lol don’t suit my style somehow. I’ve noticed I’ve started to use a few colloquialisms and Australian and American slang. That’s a style thing. and I try to write in a conversation manner.

Back in the days of a ‘young’ internet, slang and colloquial expressions were frowned upon, due to the fact that many internet users didn’t/don’t speak English as their first language and would misunderstand. Back in the day there were websites where you could learn all the best ways to get your message across. Useage.net doesn’t appear to exist anymore. It was good, very plain spoken, but very useful. Learnt a lot there.

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Interestingly, the three questions I have answered today are about form while the three to come are about content. I often compare ‘form’ to a fishing net and ‘content’ to the fish I’m trying to catch. So whenever I write ‘About Blogging’ I’m knotting the net–or repairing it–to go out fishing with it.

Pretty good image. My prompt was “Woman throwing out a fishing net”. Asking the resident AI to generate this image was a decision by me designed to escape copyright problems on the one hand, and paying iStock on the other.

Apparently, this pic is one of 18 chances I have at generating an AI image. 18 chances for the year? For ever? Thank the Universe that the color scheme still has the AI signature and it can’t be mistaken for an actual someone. Hopefully.

WP, where is the hang up?

I’ve probably spent about an hour trying to comment on people’s websites–my apologies to the people who missed out–and then, to top it all off, had half an hour trying to get back to my own blog!

I had three passwords turned down, one of them the one I just put in. Then I linked with a service I do have a strong connection with, and was turned down the minute I tried to input using them.

Of course it may not be the fault of the platform we all love, or why keep coming back?

I’ve written before about the immense chain of connections necessary to be able communicate in this manner. And that is not even considering things things like power supply, labor strikes and the weather.

Correct me anywhere where I go wrong listing the stages necessary to make blogging possible.

Me on my laptop or using my mobile > by way of Jetpack or WP classical > my internet link > signals to the nearest telecommunication tower > [I’m a bit hazy on the next step. Is it up to space to a communication satellite?] > to the next tower and hopping to where an undersea cable takes the signal to the next country?

Well, I can see I need to do a bit of research.

‘Pee Dee Effing’

Lol, that doesn’t look so good for a couple of reasons. But the turning-a-document-into-a-pdf process should have its own verb by now, it’s such a common operation. Of course, there could already be one and I have missed it. Let me know?

When I first started blogging, I’d laboriously do the formatting off-line, then when I copied and pasted into the blog … flit! All the formatting was lost and I’d have to start again. So for me, turning something into a pdf is nearly always about preserving formatting, especially when I started posting up Bosley’s Builders.

The hold-up had two prongs. One, I needed a word processor other than MS Word for the operation. MS Word have lost my custom. Not at all important in their scheme of things, I’m sure. But say a million of us decide not to fork out either the monthly or the yearly cost? They’ll sit up and take notice then. When I saw that they don’t sell copies outright anymore, I was gone.

So, Scrivener is it. I’ve been using Scrivener for a good few years for preliminary drafts. Their latest version has the possibility to save documents into pdf mode. They haven’t put their prices up and they don’t profiteer by forcing people into a perpetual loan situation.

The second prong of the hold-up has been me coming to grips with writing and formatting Bosley’s mob into Scrivener in the first place.

‘A Scanner Darkly’

By Phillip Dick, an SF Masterwork published in 1999, original from 1977

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Scanner_Darkly

Wrote this post three years ago:

“She risked her masked-up health and went into her new favorite library, St Vinnies—an Op Shop, charity or opportunity store—and “borrowed” eight old-fashioned print books. This because the local library was shut for Christmas-and-New-Year and the local virtual library not listening to her passwords, library id or pins.

“On arriving home, she began reading Phillip K Dick’s A Scanner Darkly. Not wanting to stop for lunch she got a bottle of water, and a jar of Pano dark choc bits. Ate the latter and drank the former while continuing to read. Round about 4.30 PM, she remembered the not-getting-sick parameter, and drank more water before making and eating a peanut butter sandwich with blueberries.

“Though the read was not all that gripping, she’d decided to read it, so read it she would. If that makes sense. The title, which an FB friend was attracted to after the crone posted a pic of a bag full of reading matter, sounds like a take on ‘through a glass darkly’ … let me just check that …

“OMG! yourbibleversedaily dot com tells her: “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. – 1 Corinthians 13:12. Paul’s famously poetic statement about the difficulty of knowing God in this life says a lot more than at first meets the eye.”

“Well, it tells her it’s definitely worth it to check references, sometimes only vaguely known. What she has read so far of Through a Scanner Darkly … Yep, yep, definitely shaping up … to Augustine’s interpretation: “For Augustine, we see the image of ourselves clearly, but, as a reflection of God, the image is an imperfect way of gazing upon God.”

“All she can think is, that poor sap. (Thinking about A Scanner Darkly’s MC now.) He thinks he’s on top of what he’s trying to do but of course he will come a cropper. I wouldn’t be surprised, she thinks, if there’s a proper death at the end, not just the split-brain drug-addled undeath.
So. She’ll keep reading. [Posted 22 Dec 2021]

This is me, here and now, two and a half years on. Apparently I did blog this at the time but I can’t somehow deliver the image. As you’ll have noticed this isn’t a book review but another post about blogging. What a supposed ‘seamless transfer’ looks like on the ground. When advertising gurus talk about seamless transfers they don’t take into account the oceanic number of input/output skills out there/here or the infinite gradations of computer use competence.

I know that though I’ve been using computers for 28+/- years, my skill set is highly idiosyncratic, as is that of everyone else who was self-taught. And I believe the majority of us are, aren’t we?

I had three options of delivering that pic and none worked so far. My Media Library has about 800 images in it, but not apparently the cover of the novel I was writing about. I did a Search and got a virtual copy. The result of that maneuver is at the top. No image that I can see. And if it does appear in the post between the time I hit the Publish button and you read it, it’ll be the old pic. Not the Blue green and yellow version gracing the Masterwork.

Or I could take a photo of the print version I have, email it to myself and download it. That hasn’t worked either. So far. Google for some reason has retrieved an email address I left in the dust six years ago.

My Google ID is my next job.

Blogging: ‘On the Edge’

This is the post where I learn to embed a video clip …

I started with a sentence intro’ing my post. ‘Stumbled across this video clip entirely serendipitously just after realizing I’m no longer living on a knife edge between two dramas.’

Intended to embed without a drama. The instructions are clear, can I follow directions finally?

I followed the directions and pasted a link to the content I wanted to embed. I clicked on the button EMBED. It tells me to paste an URL. Huh? Where? Like, the box where is filled with the link?

I click on ‘Learn more about embeds’ and I’m told everything I already know and that I have already done.

No. Wait … scrolling further down I learn that I need to paste in the URL which acts as a link. Never mind FB telling me to do it the other way round. I’ll give the WP way another go.

So I paste the URL.

I get a tell … ‘Sorry this content could not be embedded.’ And two blue boxes with ‘Try again.’ and ‘Convert to link.’

https://www.facebook.com/reel/2462779200599055

But. In actual fact. Checking the post I see that I have a LINK where I had expected an EMBED.

LOL, topping Everest!

Not the one I wanted of a couple of climbers negotiating an edge.

Back to the drawing board

User-Friendly

Part Two of Blog Usability

Having a good night’s sleep often helps me to ‘think’ things through, with that kind of thinking being done in the unconscious. So while sitting down for breakfast this morning and checking the weather and my mail, I also checked how my latest blog post appears to people reading it on the their mobiles/cell phones or tablets.

First there are the four lines below: Title, Author, Categories and Date & Reading Time

Then the BLOG CONTENT, arguably the meat of the meal. My stats page tells me 8/10ths of people read just the email and they have the opportunity to Comment and or Like. Eight tenths of the time I do the same. Most mornings I have time to read things, but not comment.

People who click through and read on the Reader interestingly get the Tags in a header at the top. Nobody else does. Clicking through and reading on the Blog gets you the following list of additional bits and pieces.

Share this and Likes, another important bit. Then, Related posts. Then Tags, I was surprised to see. Then, the Published by … and About Me paragraph, followed by Leave a Comment. Finally, one after the other, the three new widgets. First the Search Box, followed by the mashed up Categories list and, finally, Recent Posts.

A lot of superfluous stuff in that list that I doubt anyone will read. One thing I dislike about the internet in the last 3 or 5 years … the amount of bloat and padding a reader needs to negotiate their way through!

It’s as if since no one is accountable for the amount of web-space being used … like we have vast distances of free geography to fill up and never mind the amount of electricity needed for cooling towers … and 3000 words looks far more impressive then 1500 words … repetition and padding are the new normal.

I grew up when paper newspapers and magazines were the go, when every inch of print had to be paid for, and flab, repetition and padding were cut ruthlessly. It seems to me we need to renew that contract. To save on cooling towers and save readers.

So. This is what’s going to happen. Starting at the end of my list, Recent posts is gone, as they are more or less taken care of in the Related Posts item. The list of Categories is gone, as the categories pertaining to that post are covered in the third line of the title block, and they are more useful to me in their nested format in settings.

While the Search Box is useful, I don’t know how useful it’ll be where it is. Wait and see is the go with that item. Then there’s Leave a Comment. I’m leaving that where it is.

Then, Published by … and About Me is starting to look rather jaded. It’s up for a make-over. Tags are said to be important but I often suspect the post’s title and categories are doing the grunt work. I might be able streamline Tags … they are a work in progress. Related Posts, Share This and Likes are all to stay.

Blog Usability, Part 1

Blog appearance has changed and hopefully, as a result, usability has improved.

Not like these Lego stairs. This is Tim working on them, he needs to transform the treads from three-tiles-high to two-tiles-high to improve usability.

After studying all the themes available and making notes on just one possible, had another look at my present theme … Independent Publisher 2 by Raam Dev … and discovered that it allowed me to insert the three widgets I wanted. I thanked Raam Dev and my lucky stars.

Over the years and on the various different blogs I’ve been involved in, I have tried quite a few themes. This one is my favorite and so I was glad I could hang on to it.

I’ve tried to do things a little like Tim is doing to his staircase, in the example above, to make this blog more user-friendly. For instance, by adding a search box to help find installments of the novels, and for me being able to find quickly if I have already posted up such-and-such story. I looked for Amble and did not find him other than a mention in another story. But that’s all right, he’ll keep.

I’ve cleaned up Categories. And oh boy, the list was endless. It needed me seeing the list in total to realize how unwieldy it had become. But what I’ve just noticed is that the new list of categories has mixed and matched subcategories as though they all have the same value. I’ll rejig that sometime, maybe tomorrow. I’ll also need to clean up the list of tags. I have 34! pages of tags. Tomorrow is a better day for that job, too.

Last is the widget for the five last posts. I don’t know how useful that is. Let me what you think? maybe I’ll replace it with a tag cloud.