blogging Archives - Page 19 of 22

Blogspot, Why Hast Thou Confoundeth Me?

One of the great things about these blog sites is supposed to be that it should be EASY.

A couple of days ago, I needed to post something on a Blogger website. And it was time-sensitive. So I go there and insert the info that I needed to do. I could save the post, but I could not publish it to save my life. I hit the Publish button and it sat there, disinterested.

I went to one of my colleagues, who had the exact same problem with the site on Internet Explorer, but no such difficulty using Firefox. So, I downloaded Firefox, and voila, success. And just in time.

Jaquandor was having the same problem. He discovered this fix:

Go into your blog’s settings, and then, in the “Basic Settings” tab (the left-most tab, should be the one that comes up first when you click into your Settings), scroll down to near the bottom, where you can choose which version of the Blogger editor you’re using. If the radio button for “Old Editor” is selected, change this to the “Updated Editor” or whatever it’s called. Publishing will then work.

Subsequently, I did that as well, just to cover my bases.

I also seemed to have trouble leaving comments on certain Blogger websites lately, including, as it turns out, Jaquandor’s. SOMETIMES, the fix was, when asked if you wanted Blogger to remember you, is to NOT click that button.

Then there’s this weird issue in which Blogger (or Google, the same thing) wants me to empty my cache before it recognizes me when I visit certain other Blogger sites; I did it, but I don’t GET it.

One of the great things about these blog sites is supposed to be that it should be EASY. I don’t want to know how the light bulb works, I just want to not trip when I walk into a dark room.

But blogging is taking ever so much longer, and it’s not writer’s block, it’s mechanics. Mechanics I have little capacity for, and moreover bore me. I want easy, Blogspot. OK?

The It Gets Better sermon by one of our co-pastors this week.

Ultracrepidarian.

No, I won’t blog about THAT

if you choose not to participate, YOU ARE NOT HURTING MY FEELINGS. REALLY.

Almost everyone I know is aware of the fact that I blog. This doesn’t mean everyone READS my blogs, only the fact that they’re aware of them, or at least one of them. The local folk knows because my Times Union blog gets excerpted in the print “Best of the Blogs” section of the newspaper. It happened at least thrice in April.There is this situation that involves someone, not in my family, that is pretty dire; can’t tell you more than that. And when I had to blow off choir rehearsal one night because of said situation, someone said, “Well, I guess you can blog about it.” And the thing is: no, I can’t.

I think the problem is that because I’ll blog about EVERYTHING, topicwise, if it interests me, the thought is that I’ll blog about ANYTHING. And I guess I got a little irritable about that, I suppose.

But then again, it’s a great cover. If they think your life is an open book, they won’t snoop for secrets they are convinced don’t exist.
***
Incidentally, recently I accidentally invited a whole bunch of people in one of my electronic address books to join LinkedIn – sorry about that – and a few people took me up on it. I expected a couple of people to be irritated, but no; they were apologetic that they just don’t do that online thing, that they’re just not working anymore so they don’t need to, or that they have no idea what LinkedIn is.

Let me say this about anything you might get from me from LinkedIn or Facebook or whatever; if you choose not to participate, YOU ARE NOT HURTING MY FEELINGS. REALLY. I’m on Facebook and I ignore stuff, or delete it as unread, all of the time, just as I do with certain e-mail. Especially Farmville-type stuff, which I have actually figured out how to block. Nothing personal, I’m just not interested. Whatever I send to you, intentionally, or possibly by accident, please ignore if it doesn’t suit you.

Picture from Flickr

Six years

Sometime before the end of the year, I’ll be on a two-week trip. My Internet connectivity will be sporadic. Even if I were to be that many days ahead, I find that writing is a function of inertia; the longer I’m off, the harder it is to get restarted, my February experience notwithstanding.

One must be dedicated, or demented, to blog every day for six years – your call.

It helps a lot that one can post ahead of time. I might write a couple of blog pieces on a Thursday night or a Saturday afternoon, which makes up for those days that I don’t get a chance to blog at all. This is why I almost never post more than once a day. It is better to blog daily than thrice in a day, then not at all for three days, it seems to me.

I may have said this last year at this time, but I find it difficult to see me posting every day this coming year. I managed to get through the first 11 days of my sojourn to Charlotte, NC around my mother’s death writing only three blog posts, and two of those being my mom’s obit and funeral program, because I was actually about 10 posts ahead; a cold January helped. Then, the night before we were going to take the train home, I wrote five posts while trying to stay awake to make my wife, daughter, and driver/sister were awake in time to catch a 2 a.m. train back to Albany.

Finding content to write about has seldom been an issue. Time, though, can be a beast. Generally, during the week, I write between whenever I wake up (5 a.m., optimally) and the time I have to get the daughter up (6:30 a.m), with detours to check my e-mail and visit other blogs. The latter is especially true on (ABC) Wednesday morning.

One of the great emotional points I’ve gotten to is that I don’t worry anymore about the number of hits I get in a day. If I did, I’d be a whole lot better promoting my posts on Twitter and Facebook, which I do currently only when it happens to occur to me.

Another factor is the fact, while this is my first love, blog-wise, I probably should spend more time and effort with my other blogs. I did get encouraging news on that front, BTW, when Pew Research, in this article, under Sites and Sources, linked to one of my other blogs! A bit of a coup, that, so I suppose I should keep it up.

Well, as the great philosopher Doris Day once said, “The future’s not ours to see.”

Hemby is 58

There’s a semiannual comic book show I go to in Albany, and one of the primary reasons is to see Fred and his wife Lynn

I always mention the birthday of Fred Hembeck on this blog, not just because he’s my friend, but because he very specifically got me into blogging. When I discovered his blog in October 2004, not only did I read it, I went back and read everything on his site, going back to its inception on New Years Day 2003. Subsequently, I gave him an idea or two for his blog, then I decided, “Hey, maybe I should do my OWN blog.” Whether that’s worked out is for you to judge.

Moreover, he promoted my blog several times in the first several months. Not only that, he had a boatload of links to check out, so I did. I would comment on someone’s blog, that person would check out my blog, and directly or indirectly, most of my blogging buddies are a result of Fred’s roster.

Fred is still blogging regularly, though not daily, as he was in the beginning. He does have a separate section where he talks about films, Hey, Did I Tell You About That MOVIE I Saw Recently? which is my favorite current feature. He also shows some of his cards and his classic cover redos, some of which you could buy on eBay. Or you could commission Fred to do a drawing for you, as Mike Sterling did.

Of course, there’s THE NEARLY COMPLETE ESSENTIAL HEMBECK ARCHIVES OMNIBUS, featuring 912 (!) pages of material written and drawn by Fred.

Some interesting, and in the case of the first one, peculiar Hembeck-related links:
Fred Hembeck interviews Wonder Woman for World Of Strange
Sketch Maven Comic Artist Profiles: Fred Hembeck – fairly short
Anthony Vukojevich covers Fantastic Four Roast 1
Anthony Vukojevich repanels Fantastic Four Roast
Anthony Vukojevich repanels Dateline
Anthony Vukojevich repanels The Hembeck Files

There’s a semiannual comic book show in Albany (actually Colonie) that I attend almost every time, and one of the primary reasons is to see Fred and his wife Lynn Moss. Our family used to visit them in the summer, but due to conflicts, we didn’t in the last couple of years (and won’t in 2011 either). Maybe next year.

Anyway, happy birthday, Fred. tell me how being 58 is; I’ll be there myself soon enough.

The Quick 2010 Fandom Meme

“If St Elsewhere exists only within Tommy Westphall’s mind, then so does every other series set within the same fictional sphere.”

Since I’ve found myself unable to create any Best Of for the year, I guess I’ll force myself to do this meme from Sunday Stealing instead. Only requires one response per question required.

1. Your main fandom of the year: tossup between the perennial Beatles and visiting the folks at ABC Wednesday.

2. Your favorite Film this year: The King’s Speech, though I was mighty fond of Toy Story 3. And BTW, I went with my wife, not my daughter; the conveyor belt scene would have freaked her out, I’m guessing.

3. Your favorite Book read this year: well, haven’t read it as such, but I am thoroughly picking out stories and descriptions from Finishing the Hat by Stephen Sondheim.

4. Your favorite Album or Song this year: probably National Ransom by Elvis Costello.

5. Your favorite meme site of the year: other than ABC Wednesday, that’d be Rock ‘n’ Roll Fridays, I guess.

6. Your Fandom that you haven’t tried Yet, but want to: not applicable

7. Your best new Fandom Discovery of the Year: also n/a

8. Your biggest Fandom Disappointment of the Year: too many 3-D movies that don’t warrant the technology, and the added ticket price. Ken Levine talked about this recently, and Roger Ebert is virulently anti-3D.

9. Your TV Boyfriend of the year: n/a

10. Your TV Girlfriend of the year: I suppose it’s Lauren Graham, whose presence in the show Parenthood got me to watch it occasionally.

11. Your most Missed Old Fandom: don’t know if I miss it as much as it has nostalgic resonance, but a lot of online fandom was stuff that USED to happen by mail. I did a little of that re the BEATLES maybe 20 years ago.

12. Your Biggest Anticipations of the New Year: that 3-D movies as a selling point will crash and burn.

13. Your favorite post (of yours) of the year: difficult to choose. Probably an ABC Wednesday post. I’ll pick L is for Loving Day because it generated lots of comments.

14.Your favorite new blog (to you) of the year: Peripheral Perceptions. Don’t always agree with Lisa, but I do respect her opinion.

15.Your favorite new website of the year: Well, it’s new to me – Tommy Westphall’s Mind: “If St Elsewhere exists only within Tommy Westphall’s mind, then so does every other series set within the same fictional sphere.”

16. Your favorite news story of the year: the Chilean miners’ rescue.

17. Your favorite actor of the year: Colin Firth. I liked him in the last two movies I’ve seen him in, The King’s Speech and A Single Man.

18. Your favorite drama TV show of the year: Based on the time from recording to the time I watch it, it must be The Closer.

19. Your favorite comedy TV Show this year: Using the same criterion, Modern Family.

20. Your favorite cartoon of the year: Pearls Before Swine newspaper strip.