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.

…………………………………..

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.

…………………………………..

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. 

…………………………………..

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.

…………………………………..

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.

…………………………………..

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.

…………………………………..

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. 

Oil, Environment and Us

NASA image of the Gulf of Mexico oil slick off the Mississippi delta, gathered on 24th May. 

 

(This image is from the NASA Goddard photo and video photostream at Flickr.  Please visit to see the image at full size and full resolution). 

I do hope President Obama has now stopped referring to BP as ‘British Petroleum’?  We have become a little sensitive about this over on this side of The Pond.  If not, can someone please remind him that British Petroleum merged with American company Amoco in 1998.  The rig in question was leased from Transocean (a predominantly Swiss-owned company, who allegedly have a less than stellar safety record) and the workers on the rig were mostly Americans who presumably worked to American standards and followed American law.   

Let’s stop the finger-pointing.  We’re all to blame for this and I do mean all.  It is our collective need for this precious resource that has led to this.  And precious it is.  Those of us around, awake and actually paying attention in the 1970s clearly remember being told that ‘oil reserves will run out before the end of the century’.  So what did we do?  Invest heavily in alternative forms of energy?  Certainly not that I’ve witnessed.  It is only on the back of  the recent evangelical Johnny-Come-Lately environmental bandwagon that we, and therefore our governments, have begun to look seriously at this and other environmental issues. 

Image: National Geographic

As BP desperately try to cap the well and do what they can with a clean up operation, I just wonder why it was that no one had a plan for this worst case scenario.  In my imaginary Utopian world, to be truly environmentally attuned you need to think the unthinkable and plan ahead.   Again, we can’t let BP stand alone in the stocks however, as no other company, with similar deep drilling rigs has come forward with the technology they designed to deal with just such a nightmare scenario.  

So, I’m letting BP off the hook to some extent here and spreading the blame to us all and I’m hoping that this will make us reassess our dependance on this ‘black gold’.   (Although being a realist, I sadly somehow doubt that will happen).   

What I can’t forgive are the ill-advised words of BP’s Chief Executive.  When under pressure we all say and do stupid things but this must rank as one of the stupidest things I’ve heard in a long, long time: 

“The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume.” 

~  Tony Heyward, Chief Executive, BP, 14 May 2010 

Tell that to the birds, fish and other wildlife now coated and suffocating in oil and to all those who will lose their livelihood from this. 

Image: National Geographic

Wildlife images shown here are from National Geographic