Blog Platform Wars and other Musings and Reflections

At Christmas time I had an enquiry about using one of my photos in a book.  A book people!  How excited was I?  (Very, actually).  I’ve had enquiries before – from a hotel who wanted to use an image … and then shied away when they heard I expected payment, and two enquiries from magazines which similarly came to nought, for reasons I know not.  I wanted to get it absolutely right this time, so I contacted a photographer friend of mine (who has been in print) and asked for the low-down on what I should be charging, how I should handle things etc.  For the print run described she suggested a figure and I then promptly divided her fee by about a gazillion, because I don’t think the photo in question is really that good, and right now I’m just interested primarily in getting the ball rolling on someone/anyone using my work.  (Just so you know, the fee I quoted was about the same price as a hamburger …so hardly a mind-boggling amount).   Well then.  What happened next?  Nada.  Zippo.  Zilch.  It looks like yet another non-starter.  It’s frustrating, this selling-your-wares business.

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I’ve just been served with a Summons to appear for jury duty.  I am the only person I know that this has ever happened to and this is now the second time that I have been called.  I’m clearly on computer somewhere, noted as a good, up-standing citizen, of strong moral fibre (hehe, little do they know).  The first time around, to be perfectly honest, I kind of squirreled out of my civic responsibilities by saying that I had a young child and no one to look after her while I was away.  The bit about the young child was the absolute truth but the second part was maybe a leetle bit of an embellishment of the truth.  In reality, I just didn’t want to leave my baby to others to look after for days and days on end.  Over the years I’ve actually regretted shrugging off this once in a lifetime opportunity and as trial by jury is a cornerstone of our legal system, if the truth be known, I’ve even been a little ashamed of myself.  Well, it’s come back to bite me on the ankles.

With this current Summons, the length of time I will be needed and the way it is described make it sound like it could be an interesting criminal case.  The writer in me – because I am (in my imagination at least) a budding/wannabe P.D. James or Linda La Plante – wants desperately to attend.  How fascinating it will be – think how it might inspire new storyline ideas, think of the insight into how these things work and just consider what a profoundly important task this is – someone, somewhere right now is bricking it because he/she has to face a jury of ’twelve good men and true’ (including one squirrely woman). 

Royal Square – judicial buildings over on the right

The reality?  I’m not sure I can do it.  Going from memory, I believe there are granite steps up to the Court and I fear these may be a problem for me.  Lunch, which I obviously have to take with other jurors, entails a walk of 500 yards to a local hotel (I have a disabled parking disc which is only handed to those who cannot walk more than 75 yards…you do the maths) and parking is not generally provided.  If I was lucky enough to get a parking permit, it would be for the car park about a mile away, up a 1 : 4 hill.  I think I’m sunk. 

Moral of story: When presented with a once-in-a lifetime opportunity – grab it.

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I’ve said this before but I have a theory that WordPress and Blogger are at loggerheads for Blogland supremacy and that a certain amount of industrial espionage goes on.  (Don’t sue me anyone – it’s just my paranoid-tendency brain at work again).  For the record – yet again: I hate Blogger.  When trying out blogging formats I played with Blogger, Typepad and WordPress and found WordPress to be the most elegant and intuitive kiddo on the block.  Typepad was  just well beyond my poor monkey brain, Blogger was tired, portly, slow and stubborn but WordPress?  Ah WordPress!  It was the iPhone of blogs.  (A silly analogy but work with me here, I’m on a creative roll…). 

With the backing of Google it’s no surprise that most people head to Blogger first and as most people’s brains are wired differently to mine, most people stay with their first love of Blogger.  Q.E.D., the majority of blogs I read will be on Blogger.  Here’s the rub though: sitting here, on the outside, Blogger hates non Blogger people and really puts them through the wringer each time they visit:

‘Name?  … Don’t recognise you.  ::   Name?  …Don’t recognise you (rinse and repeat ad nauseam).  ::   Not going to show you word verification today …don’t feel like it.  ::   Oooh, look at that – you didn’t type that in correctly.  Feel like deciphering yet more completely illegible text?  ::  Oh dearie me, I cut you off there now didn’t I?  …And I’ve just gone and lost your carefully crafted comment.  Oh well.  Wanna try again?  …DO YOU FEEL LUCKY PUNK?!’

Rest assured, dear reader, that if you are on Blogger and you are aware of my presence / comments / friendship then I must really love you to be putting up with this malarkey.  Just lately, in particular, I reckon the knives are really out between Blogger and WordPress, meaning that I have aborted attempts to comment at friends’ sites after [no kidding here] a good half-dozen or more tries at form filling and/or word verification.  Sometimes you just have to admit defeat and move on.  If I appear to be ignoring you therefore, please know that I am not.  Me and Blogger are just going through a particularly rough patch in our relationship.

Before any Bloggerphiles suggest it -  sorry, using Mozilla/Firefox makes absolutely no difference.  Been there, done that. 

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Oh and Disqus Comments?  Pretty much ditto the above, but with the added rigmarole of having to sign in on a system that often doesn’t like people signing in.  I really dislike you Disqus, but then you knew that already, didn’t you?  I have one friend currently using Disqus (yes you over there, you know who you are) and seriously, it is an indication of how much I love you that I persevere.

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Why mention the Blogger and Disqus things all over again?  I’ll tell you for why: It’s because they are definitely an element in my current lack of enthusiasm for Blogland in general.  I can’t help feeling that life is just too short and precious for all this nonsense and faff.  Endless form filling and the fruitless re-loading of pages is time-wasting twaddle.  Sorry.

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I am no use at all at styling / product shots, as evidenced by these poor showings. 

Zig Zags…

….and Granny Squares

I did however think that you might like to see what has so fixated me for the past 6-8 weeks.  I’m not sure about the  colour combo on the zig-zag blanket but hey, it’s done and it was fun.  The cats have adopted it with gusto however…along with our expensive chair (while I sit on the end of our cheap sofa ..am I stupid, or what)? 

The granny squares blanket has been a bit of a surprise. 

All-in-all, I’m pleased with how it turned out.  Remember how it started from this inauspicious beginning?

I bought pretty coloured wool and a couple of patterns for new projects whilst in Florida but it seems I may have left said patterns on the coffee table in Naples.  Ooops.  Either that or I’m going to discover them, hidden down the back of the settee here once I have cracked open the wool and am half way through crocheting something else.

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I came across this lady and this video yesterday.  I’m open-minded, very hippy dippy some might say because I’m willing to explore the possibilities of all kinds of things that might seem totally ludicrous to others.  Just because we don’t understand something right now, or it is beyond our current knowledge and experience, does not mean that it should be automatically dismissed or ridiculed.  

Little Grandmother’s basic message is a good one but I have to admit that she did start to lose me part way through this.  I find her fascinating and strangely compelling though. Hypnotic almost.  I’ve Googled her and let’s just say that from what I read, that all may not be quite as it seems with regard to some of her background claims.  She is, however, an orator and skilled wordsmith, using some scientific fact in other videos and plucking at the heartstrings to deliver messages that many people are hungry to hear right now.  

Has anyone here come across her before?  I’d be interested to hear your thoughts. 

Bugbear 1 (who knows, there could be a series of these)

I’ve just got back from a mission into town to deliver a package to our town museum, one thatI didn’t want to trust to the post.  I tried to do the same yesterday but had to give up.  I have a disabled parking permit so I’d thought that it wouldn’t be a problem – I’d just park outside as I have always done and drop off my package.  I need the permit and I need these parking spaces.  The issue with me is less to do with distances involved (although that is still an issue), more to do with getting in and out of the car.  In the good old U.S. of A., a.k.a. ‘The Land of Plenty’, the regular car parking spaces are the size of a planet.  Over here, a.k.a. ‘Munchkinland’, the car parking spaces are so tight that if you’re unfortunate enough to end up parked next to a behemoth you find it hard to get in and out of your car.  So hard in fact that you have to perform a weird and unusual snaking limbo along the side of the vehicle and ooze, like jelly, into the driver’s seat.  (There are, by the way, lots of behemoths here.  All are driven by blondes with their sunglasses on the top of their heads, worn like Alice bands to hold back that perfectly bleached coiffed hair, and they are all so doll-like, and the vehicle so huge, that they can barely see over the steering wheel).  I can’t do that snake limbo any more.  Post stroke I have to effectively get into the car like Lady Diana:  open door wide, park posterior onto car seat, swing both legs into foot well (knees together if you’re a lady).  I need the space of the disabled bays in order to do that.

Well, yesterday, there I was, heading down to the waterfront and I tried to turn into the road that runs in front of the museum, the way I have been able to do since time immemorial.  Except I can’t any more. There is now a line of pretty bollards in the way.   I knew that the area had been re-developed and a lot of it paved over with cobbles.  What I hadn’t realised is that it had all been given that treatment.  Not one to be put off, I drove the mile circuit (because it’s all the town planner’s dream of one-way systems around here) and I tried again, this time entering the cobbled area from the other side and driving to the front of the museum.  I was quite sure that in any reasonable community the disabled spaces would still exist.  Wrong!  Silly me.  The closest spaces are now some distance away and having gone around the one-way system four more times I gave up – they were full and no one was leaving.  By the way, that’s another thing here – there are no fines for parking in disabled spaces so able but lazy people do it all the time. (Selfish bastards ….Oops, did I say that out loud)?

I phoned the museum this morning and asked where the closest disabled parking was.  Answer: Most of it is up the [1:3 gradient] hill which runs behind the building, with access to the building being down a steep set of granite steps.  Er…Do you think we’re misunderstanding something here?  Anyway, to cut this long story short, today I got into town early enough to park in the spaces I’d seen yesterday.  I reckon the walk to the museum and back was probably 300 to 400 yards and I was creased by the end of it.  One of the questions on the application form for a disabled permit is: Can you walk 75 yards?  I think you can see where I’m going with this.  The sad fact is that disabled spaces are being moved further and further away from shops and attractions as town planners pave over everything in sight.  I can’t tell you how much this frustrates me and as one of the fighters in life I’m left feeling quite helpless.  I know that any representation I might make to the authorities would fall on deaf ears because I’ve tried before and the attitude is that they simply don’t want to know.  …Doesn’t affect them, so why worry?  It’s no consolation but I know that one day these very same people will know exactly what people like me were so bothered about.  In fact, if they’re as unlucky as me, it may be a whole lot sooner than they think.  By then, of course, it will be too late.