As if I didn't have enough blogs...

At the moment I have 13 active blogs. That's ridiculous. Rambles from my Chair is my main blog where you can follow what I am up to and all the random thoughts and interests I have. One can then discount two blogs set up for Jo's business and one that I contribute to on a joint basis. That leaves nine. Nine green bottles, standing on the wall...

Project 355 is a photo a day blog which I also try to do on a regular (if not quite daily) basis.

My book review blog is kept up-to-date even if I am sometimes a bit late in blogging about a book I have read or a bit brief in reviewing it. At least it records – principally for my benefit – all the books I've read since November 2007.

Words, word, words (and phrases) started out as a daily blog with the origins or interesting notes about a different word each day. Like many of my enthusiasms it tends to come in fits and starts. One of the books I'm currently reading on the Kindle (Mrs Braddon's 'Birds of Prey') has lots of interesting words and phrases in it so I shall hopefully resurrect the blog shortly.

The next 'active' one is Salamagundi, a recipe one, which, again, is as much for my own benefit as for readers though hopefully some folk will find it of use.

I have a Hebridean Blog and an Exeter Blog for when I take holidays there, availing myself of family hospitality.

Considering natural history and photography are my principal interests outdoors it is surprising that I have not made better use of my wildlife blog. I think I am overwhelmed by the amount of photos I could put on if I were so inclined. So far it has mainly been used to show the occasional new species of creature or plant that I have recorded. “Must try harder!” is the teacher's comment on my report.

The blog for our Wirral garden tends to depend on the weather and the plants that are flowering. Spring and Summer time are the times when this is most active.

Memories are made of this is a family history blog and, like my wildlife one, it needs more effort putting into it.

Now, as if that were not enough, I've decided to have a blog on WordPress called Once a Librarian. It will be about librarianship but not in any academic sense, purely as a fun look at all things related to libraries from the chained books in Hereford Cathedral library to the wickedness of our local councillors in trying to turn our local libraries into 'One Stop Shops' and dispense with library assistants in favour of receptionists.

There will be cartoons, a bit of art and the occasional biography of folk who you may not have realised were librarians. Because it is on WordPress it doesn't have a 'followers' list in the Google sense but it does have a button you can click on to be notified by e-mail when I publish a post.

I hope I'll see you there occasionally.

Why do we read blogs?

Lots of people write the occasional posting to justify why they write their blogs. Not that they need a justification. If we enjoy writing blogs why not admit we do it simply for that reason?

But why do we read blogs? I suspect that one of the reasons (among many) is to see how similar are our thoughts and actions wherever in the world we may live. I delight in finding that someone has not cleaned behind their cooker fir three years. On the other hand, if you are obsessively keen to wheel it out and clean behind it every week you probably read different blogs and find fellow enthusiasts.

So much of our history and so many jingoistic people endeavour to tell us how different (and usually superior) we are to folk in other countries. It is as though this divisiveness has been a satisfactory excuse for fighting, trade wars and attempts ro wipe out those of other religions or points of view.


Never before have we had the opportunity to learn about the day to day lives of the ordinary people in other countries. Not the celebrities or the politicians but folk who do the day to day work and keep the wheels of the world turning. I find it great that I can visit the blog of a Mum of three in Utah, a teacher in California or a librarian in Australia and discover they have similar thoughts and similar day to day actions to my own.

Another reason for reading people's blogs came to mind when I read DeeDee's yesterday. She had told the story of festivities at Providence, Rhode Island. Where else would I have ever known about what went on in a city on the other side of the world. Our international news only tells of murders, political scandals, war and famine (and even the latter rarely makes it to our screens since it is much better to brush it under the carpet and pretend it doesn't exist.) When people use their blogs to tell about the beauty and the art and the cultural events in their small area it once again shows us how much good there is in the world.


A further motive for reading blogs is that so many of them make me smile. In a world with so much pain and grief it never ceases to amaze me how folk suffering adversity of one form or another can nevertheless treat it with humour. I haven't been able to find the origin of the saying "You've got to laugh", but it seems to me that my fellow bloggers have got the art off to a T. Many is the morning that I have not felt 100% but have been cheered by reading the antics of a fellow blogger. They either make me realise that there are those worse off than me or give me a giggle by allowing the world to laugh with them rather than at them. The day seems better after that.

Never before have we been able to appreciate that despite differences of culture, religion, economic situation or climate a lot of us are very much alike in how we view the world.

Douglas Adams reckoned the answer to question 'What is the meaning of life ?' was 42. I reckon it could be blogging!
 

Rambling around blogs.

I'm slowly catching up with what has gone on in the worlds of my fellow bloggers and must mention one humungous event - Mother and bride got married and there is a picture of the happy couple on her blog. One of the ways in which their wedding was different was they decided not to have an official photographer but to invite anyone to take photos and to give out disposable cameras to the children. If this is a sample of the result it was a brilliant decision!

I notice that I have acquired two new followers in the last day or so. One of them is Linda Higgins, a mother and grandmother from St George in Utah - that's the hot end of Utah! It's sandstone and desert and heat. The scenery looks fantastic but I'm very glad I'm in cool green England (or cooler green Scotland as it will be on a week or so). I like the subtitle of Linda's blog which includes the word - "The making of new memories...".

I can't work out who the other new follower is . Everyone else is familiar so I can only conclude it is someone I have been visiting who has now formalised their following. Hint to Blogspot - how about some way of dating when people start following you? Spellchecker (known to GB and I as Spillchucker) stopped at Blogspot and suggested Bloodsport. It seems a bit like that sometimes.

This is one of the disadvantages of the sidebar. When things change in it there is no way of going back and seeing what it was like before. So, for example, quotes, followers, pictures, and lists come and go in people's blogs. Another hint for Blogspot - how about a way of freezing the sidebar when you download the page for storage.

One of the problems about blog-reading is that there are always more recipes floating around than there is time to try them. Neverthless, Nan's watercress, leek and potato soup sounds a must.



One of Shabby Girl's recent postings was babies you don't often see. How about these two for delightful pictures.

Catching up with the doings of the Archduchess is always a pleasure - even if she does have Swine Flu at the moment... Or perhaps its 'just' a cute bronchitis!

Beth has been one of my favourite bloggers since I first started roaming Blogland and today I discovered she had Startrekked herself into a Romulan. I had to give it a try. So here I am - as a Vulcan...


The tips for creating one's trekker identity suggested there should be no hair on face (not shaving off a twenty five year old beard for anyone!); no glasses (couldn't see what picture I was uploading); eyes open (why are mine always closed in photos?); and mouth closed (see opposite of eyes comment...). Nevertheless the outcome was quite satisfactory. I like me as a Vulcan.

I have no cause to learn or practise French any more (and have forgotten most of what I once knew) but I do like visiting the French Word-a-day site. If you are prospective visitor to France or are studying French I can strongly recommend it. There is nothing like an up-to-date colloquial blog for learning a language.

Well, that's all my rambling around blogs for today... Must get back to the real world!
 

Art and Photography - Instruction and Inspiration

Over the last forty years or so I have occasionally read books on art techniques to help me with my painting (not that I have done much for a decade) and have read a few photography technique books. (Does anyone remember all those black and white – with a red cover – booklets on photography from Focal Press in the fifties?) Few of the former helped me much and of the latter only Heather Angel and a North American whose name I’ve forgotten (but who Helen may recall) inspired me at all.
However, over the last year or so I have learned an enormous amount and been truly inspired by fellow bloggers.

Digital photography concentrates less on skill (or lack of it) with exposure settings and focussing but those skills are still there and knowing how to alter them and use your camera to the maximum remains an important part of getting a really good shot.

What digital photography seems to have done is inspire people to find that better angle or that more unusual subject. Since so many people have good photos on their sites it seems invidious to single any out but I’ll do it any way –Sandi at Pixel Queen Photography, Lisa alias Bluestalking, Cloudscome , and Jen. (And I’ve mentioned my Finnish friends a few times).

For some real skill with a brush see Jeannette St Germain and Frances.

There is always someone awake...

There must be a finite number of blogs that one can follow – even during a damp and dismal winter when I’m virtually confined to the house by health and the absence of a car. And yet the list of blogs that I find interesting just continues to grow....

No matter what time of day I am on my computer there is at least one of my blogging friends or acquaintances up and about, blogging or commenting. As another new posting appears in the side column of my blog I often try to work out roughly what time it is in that person’s world. Are they a morning blogger or an evening blogger. Or even, are they insomniacs like me, blogging in the middle of the night. For my own amusement, I have an Excel chart showing where people live – perhaps I could extend that to include a + or – hours column.

The one disadvantage of the spread of fellow bloggers (USA, Canada, UK, Finland, South Africa, New Zealand) is that if I go away from the computer for a while - perhaps to do something weird like sleep or read or converse with real people – the unread blog postings pile up. Worst of all, if I’m poorly for a day I come back to find the world hasn’t stopped while I’ve been away and it can take me ages to catch up with what people have been doing.

It is lovely to wander around the world. But, when the Spring comes, walking, gardening, downloading photos and sorting them will complicate the equation. I may have to manufacture some time. Does anyone have the formula for doing that???

 

A Saturday Sally or Rambles Away from my Chair !

Sally: a brief journey; an excursion or trip.


Every now and then Nan posts a Saturday Sally. The title came about as a result of her thinking back to her childhood trips out in the car to visit people. “The word, sally, popped into my mind. I looked it up to be sure it meant what I thought, and I was happy to see it did. I love the way the two words flow together, Saturday Sally. And sally is such a cheerful sound, a cheerful word. You don't hear it much anymore as a child's name but I find it delightful. Sally. It sounds like sunshine.”

Nowadays in blog terms Nan has used it to suggest three blogs that she has visited which she would recommend others to call in at. “I am going to post a link to words I've read or photos I've seen that I found wise or funny or interesting or moving. I'm going to limit myself to three each time I post a Saturday Sally.”

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery so I am imitating Nan and I shall be posting the occasional Saturday Sally or, as Nan herself suggested, Rambles Away from my Chair!

I shall begin this first one with Ian Buchan’s fascinating blog The Runagate’s Club (http://sir-edward-leithen.blogspot.com/) which, inter alia, delves into his past life. The blog title and address are themselves hints of Ian’s nature – A runagate was a vagabond and Sir Edward Leithen was a character in several of John Buchan’s novels!

The second, appropriately enough, is Nan’s own blog, Letters from a Hill Farm, which is a miscellany of her life in northern New England. It would be hard to say what I find so interesting about it but I just love the style and range of subjects.

My third one for this first sally is Welsh Hills Again. Written by ElizabethM, an accountant, it is the story of life on the side of a hill near Bodfari with a huge wild garden, veg, fruit, cats and chickens.

I hope you enjoy visiting these three blogs.

Magdalene

Four blogs in one day! Well, I'm doing my little piggy act and going off to market tomorrow and may not get the chance to blog...

One of the great things about blogging is finding other enjoyable blogs and I like to keep up to date with that of Magdalene - A Little Blog of Courage For those days when your favourite marble really does go down the drain. (Perhaps she, in turn, read my blog for 28th September!)
A Little Blog of Courage: Priorities

Word Imp

I love http://wordimperfect.blogspot.com/It is currently my favourite “favourite” and it is the only blog outside those of my family that I visit it every day.

Every day Word Imp chooses an obscure word from the dictionary and asks her readers to invent a wacky meaning. There is then a poll to see who came up with the best meaning – or the most popular (mine is obviously always the best but has yet to win!) No prizes, just lots of fun.

Word Imp is a children’s author from New Zealand and among her current interests is anything about the Erebus disaster. Not having a clue what the Erebus disaster was I looked it up and discovered it was an aircraft accident that occurred on Mount Erebus New Zealand's biggest single tragedy, with one more death than in the 1931 Napier Earthquake. A total of 257 were killed (237 passengers and 20 crew) on 28th November when Flight 901 from Auckland Airport crashed on a round trip to Antarctica. More about the Erebus disaster can be seen on http://library.christchurch.org.nz/kids/nzdisasters/erebus.asp

Blogging

My Brother asked me how I managed to do all the blogging I do – what with this Google Blog, my StumbleUpon and my Pensby Natural History Blog .
I replied that it is my way of keeping sane in an insane world. Or if the world is sane it is my way of keeping insane. Whichever, it keeps me content with life when there is little else to do so.
On a more practical level I do it by keeping a notepad of the odd things I come across during my computing or reading and then, when I go on to check my emails and things, I turn some of the notepad ideas into little snippets for the blogs. You can probably tell how well I’m feeling (I suffer from various long-term illnesses I won’t bore you with) by whether I miss a day or simply insert a few bits of useless information.
I have had my notepad for years and called it “Factoids” thinking I had invented quite a good word. However, I heard the word used on television the other day and realised that I hadn’t invented it – or, if I had, it was co-incidentally created by someone else as well. I decided to look it up on Google and it has two meanings -
- a brief (usually one sentence and usually trivial) news item
- something resembling a fact; unverified (often invented) information that is given credibility because it appeared in print
I meant to use it as the first definition. If my notepad ever runs out I’ll have to start thinking in earnest – and then my Blogs will really suffer.

Why is life full of questions?

And why do computers and technology misbehave? Everyone says Blogger / Blogspot is easy to use and yet what happens when I first try to upload a new post into my new blog – this:-

The front page says there are two posts and yet only one appears and the second one I did has vanished into cyberspace. We will see if this post works.
Another question - why does the Blog say I have posted the entry at a totally different time to GMT - it seems to be about 8 hours out. (Sorted this now...)

Anyone who looks at my profile will notice that I have used a photo from the mid 1980s. It was taken by the Liverpool Echo photographer as I sat at my desk just after hearing that Knowsley had been granted a reprieve by the Boundary Commission and was not to be added to Liverpool. I was so relieved and so pleased that all our hard work had paid off that I forget to be self-conscious. So I use the excuse that it is a ‘natural’ photo of me and forget the vanity of liking a picture that has twenty years’ fewer facial lines and twenty years’ more hair on it.