Techie

This vacation, I've been trying out software and online services.

As I reported earlier, I've found Picasa useful and straightforward for improve and resizing digital images.

My new external DVD writer remains a source of anxiety: Habibi managed to convert one of my mini DV tapes to DVD without too much trouble. I also managed one, but not before wanting to scream and cry and throw everything out the window in the face of my apparent stupidity. Sigh. I shall try it again soon, because I still have six summer tapes, all last year's kabuki, and some entertaining Merry Wives backstage material to convert, and there will be more to come in our last months here. So I will learn how to do this calmly and efficiently.

A friend invited me to join Facebook, where we have a common interest group. I'm disinclined to launch personal info into cyberspace (says the blogger!) but I did my homework on Facebook's history and practices, and I'm happy to use it for sharing photos of groups and events with the other people involved. Previously I was emailing massive files that took time to go, and then might be rejected if sent to a work email account with an upper limit on file sizes. Useful. But I'm not going down the news and chat route.

I belong to a large family but you know what it's like when everyone's scattered all over the planet and busy with day-to-day life; and this year Mrs Organised here did not actually get around to posting all those really nice local Christmas cards she had written by December 5th to be sure of them getting to Europe by the 25th. Oh help. So I went looking for one of those private network websites I'd heard about, and found MyFamily.com the most appealing. I've taken advantage of the month's free trial to gauge interest, but in the meantime I've gone ahead and uploaded pics from family holidays and get-togethers over the past few years. I didn't resize them, so they've taken up a great deal of the allotted storage space, but this way I thought that everyone could download print quality files of their favourites, and then I'd have a cull in a few months, and resize the ones I leave up. That way there's plenty of room for everyone else's!

So far only one of my brothers has posted photos, but my sister and one of my sisters-in-law are up for it, and I'm hoping my dad's going to post some of his cache of black and whites and sepias. (Dad! Hint!) Mother has still not been persuaded to log on to my blog (or anything else) at the library, but I've sent her a MyFamily invite, and one of my brothers is going up for a visit this month, so you never know!

By the way, Google offers its own version of the family site, with the advantage of a direct link with Picasa so you can upload directly, but with my blog on Google's Blogger, and the fact that when I moved from the Beta version they made my Gmail account log-in my blog log-in, plus the appearance of sidebar links relating to the content of my gmails, I'm beginning to feel a bit antsy about Google. It's everywhere. Big Google is Watching Me.

Of course, with Armageddon and the End of Oil approaching, this will all soon be academic, so maybe I'd better just Print Everything, or else burn CD back-ups of everything, in the hope that, with the combined efforts of our future goat, house cow, chickens and ducks, and possibly pig, plus a little ingenuity, we can learn to run a computer on methane.












Oh yes, and I have sent my first e-cards. I used to think they were a feeble substitute for 'real' cards, until my friend Cathy started sending me totally wack singing ecards for my birthday and at Christmas. I just love them! I play them over and over! So I thought I'd try to make up for my Christmas card failure with some New Year e-cards. An 'ecard' search took me to the Cirque du Soleil website, of all places. They're here this month, doing Quidam, which I've seen on video, so I was curious. Fab. The only possible hitch is that they might not get past some spam filters. Hey ho, what to do?

Meanwhile, down in the engine room......

I thought I'd see if there was a comparative time zone table, so I'd know when PDT is, and stay away from the laptop for the duration of Blogger's planned maintenance.

There wasn't one, but they did have this log.

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Wow. Ok. So it hasn’t been Blogger’s weekend. Blogger was down for a little over three hours this evening, due to the near-simultaneous failure of a critical component and its backup. This outage also impacted the loading of many Blog*Spot blogs, which rely on Blogger for a CSS file.

We apologize profusely for this outage. Blogger should be working as normal now. The new version of Blogger in beta was not affected.

Posted by Pete at 20:23 PDT

Friday, October 20, 2006

We’ve been having a bit of slowness this morning. Technicians are on the scene. Update, 11:15: Most of the problems are resolved. Thanks for sticking with us through the maintenance. Blogger will be running a bit slower than normal for a short time (possibly for the rest of today) as we have a handful of servers out of commission. If you see any error pages, please just wait a sec and try again. Posted by Pete at 09:11 PDT

Thank you Pete (and Pal, who logged other jobs).

See, guys? They are doing their best, and they tell us what they're doing.
Don't you wish more companies would try this approach to customer service!

Bloody Hell!

Good grief! I don't know how I did it, but I certainly have done it. I thought it was bad in Firefox, but mein gott! Look at it in Internet Explorer - now that's how you kick out a sidebar.

I'd like to call this a learning curve, but all I've learnt is to be veeeeery wary of the font options!

I expect I'll get a nice new page in November, and I'll try not to break it......... :(

Firefox v Internet Explorer

Oooeee! (She's been on the coffee again...) Oi loiks Firefox, oi duz.

Part the First:
While she was working on my blog to make it more beautiful and practical (as per William Morris's dictum that everything in your home should be both.) NZM directed me to Firefox, as Blogger's recommended er... web-thingy....

Isn't it fast and crisp? It's also much more tolerant of my tendency to post stuff that's too wide for the field: where Internet Explorer shows the ghost of where the borders are supposed to be, Firefox does something clever that keeps everything tidily ghost-free. Yay!

What IE does better is hold onto the text. In an earlier entry, I wrote about Christmas and
'the whole carolsingingmassattendingpantomimecheering-roastgoosestuffingtreedecoratngfairylightpopping-stockingfillingcrackerpullingQueenupstanding-JamesBondwatchingDelboychortling- thing.'

IE coped once I put the hyphens in (after the original entry took up the whole screen! LOL!!) but in Firefox the line of text goes streaming across the screen.

So, time for an experiment. Let's see if this the latest entry, which will appear at the top of the page, will fit - or kick my sidebar down to the bottom of the page. I'm rather enjoying this!

Part the Second
And the result is: a draw!
Yes, Ladies and Gentleman, Firefox and Internet Explorer both carry the post, and leave the sidebar where it is. However, while IE is not as sharp, and (next time I break the border again) will show a ghost, it does contain the text. Firefox, on the other hand (crystalline) has the text skedaddling across the sidebar, like a stream of lemmings heading for the nearest cliff. Well, it makes me laugh.

OK. Back to the dollies. I'm having such fun with this, though I've learnt to upload my pics into drafts, for as long as Blogger.Photo's up and running, then come back later and post text. Much less frustrating than trying to do the lot at once, and sitting waiting to see whether it will, work, or do almost everything, or crash and take the lot with it.

BTW I lost a post last night as I was saving it.....Aaaaaarghhh!.....Noooooooo!!!! Not only did the entry disappear, but Blogger crashed completely. After a couple of days of Blogger-wrangling I had learnt NOT to let it get to me (Pain...... Gain..... It works.). When I could get back in again, the entry was not in the directory, so I clicked on Create New Post, and then on Recover Post. The prompt came up, and I clicked to continue since I had nothing to lose, but my temper. And lo! There appearethed on my screen the entire entry, fully formatted, with all pics in glorious colour.
ThankyouThankyouThankyouThankyouThankyou....whimper.... (Testing Firefox again....heeheehee...)

So, chums, remember Recover Post. And if you're familiar with Pacific Daylight Time, don't bother blogging at 2pm, because there's a Scheduled outage at 2PM PDT. Blogger's got a headache...

P.S. I do get frustrated with Blogger, but on the other hand (as I've mentioned elsewhere) I suspect that it's become a victim of its own success. How many millions of us use this facility at any given time? I don't know how many staff or computers they've got, but I don't see how it could ever be enough. Me, I'm a fan of Blogger, warts and all (No - not me! Blogger!) So I have no problems with a scheduled outage if it's going to improve the service that keeps me in touch with so many interesting people.

Part the Third.
Hmm. Back Again. Slight technical hitch with font size stuck in Large. Can't fix it in Firefox. Going to try in IE.

Less amusing than earlier. Is this Firefox's revenge for the wind-up? Hmph!

Part the Last
I think I've fixed it, by taking one para at a time, and going back to check. If this entry is still shouting at you, please accept my apologies. I didn't mean to push the formatting to critical mass...

Bookshelves 2

Thank you once again to NZM for rescuing me whenever my blog ambitions outstrip my understanding!

A couple of days ago I asked if anyone knew how to sort the links in a sidebar, or how to add books.

NZM came back with these results for me, so may I share them with you: (Elle, get a load of this!)

"You either do it manually or you can set up a semi-automatic list that can be generated from an Amazon Wishlist etc. Some can take referrals from any online links or eshops.But you can look at this site MyMediaList.com to see if it will help you. You just need to find website link URLs to the books, music, dvds that you wish to display and add them onto the list, as well as place Your Personal List html code into your blog template - this will be generated and sent to you in an email when you register for the free service. Another that can generate a list from an Amazon Wishlist is Blogfuel.com (you have to choose a version depending on whether you are using a Wishlist from the Amazon US or the UK site) or Edazzle.net.

"Here's another one that only does books: LibraryThing. You can see what it looks like on a Blogger blog here in the right column.

"Or!

"You can sign up to become an Amazon Associate and show an Amazon list like on the lower left hand side of Tainted's blog. In short, an Amazon Associate is a Web site owner who places links to the Amazon.com Web site on his or her site and earns referral fees through sales of Amazon.com products."

Wow! Now that's helping your fellow blogger! So, from hero (NZM) to zero (MamaD.), here's my experience:

I started with MyMediaList.com, which is a very user-friendly site. (All the links are above.) I set up an account, a profile and a list, and embedded the code in my template with no problem; but when I made a mistake in an entry, I could not work out how to correct it so in the end I removed it. (Also, the colour choices clashed something wicked with my template, and not everyone has a website whizz Habibi to fix it with Corel Photopaint and HTML!) I shall write and tell Zaeem Maqsood about this, because I can't be the only duffer out here! Please note, this reflects my limitations: I'm sure someone more experienced and confident could have worked things out. I do recommend the service.

Blogfuel provides an intimidating table which you have to do something with, but I'm blowed if I could figure out either how to complete it, or what to do with it if I accomplished that much. The Help link took me to definitions, not instructions. Sinking souffles! I need Delia Smith, not Raymond Blanc! Utterly cowed, away I slunk.

I Left LibraryThing til last, because I wanted to list music and movies too, but when I got there I thought it was great - the world's biggest book club! If you click on one of the book covers in my sidebar, it links to a hideous page of in-yer-face buzzwords, but the Amazon link and others (top left), will take you to pages with proper synopses and reviews.

There is much more to LibraryThing. If you love reading and discussing books, but don't have time or opportunity to join a reading club, I recommend you go to the Library Thing homepage: it's a good Thing!

So, I'm all set up. Thank you soooo much to NZM!

ITsyBITSy

I've been trying to work out how to split my blogroll into sections, e.g. Spanish links, local links, craft links. No can do. If anyone knows how, and can explain it for the non-HTML-minded, I would be very grateful.

Also, can anyone tell me how to do a book link? I've seen how book links take you straight to a seller, but haven't found any code or tags for myself.

Ta!

BTW: my venerable but battered Vaio laptop has just about had it. Either the mouse works, or I get Internet access. Actually, I had both for a while today but then the whole thing froze and hung, and the only way to switch it off was to pull out the plug and remove the battery. Every time..... It started this a couple of days ago, so I guess its remaining days are numbered. It would be nice to know the number. Honestly, just as I start enjoying a completely IT-dependent way of life, IT falls apart! Yeah, I know, time to upgrade...... cackle....

All files now on memory sticks. Just wait for me to lose them.

Counter balance

I am quite pathetically pleased with myself. I deleted my visitor panels a few weeks ago after they got squeezed out of the sidebar again, but I really like seeing where people have come from, so today I thought I'd go back to the Neoworx site and try again. I hadn't noticed that you can adjust the width of the panels. I took it down from 200 (mm) to 170, and hey presto! It fits! It's out of date, but that's ok- it's handsome and interesting. I may even remember some of the flags.

Aaand I changed the default colour on my desktop to silver, made a particularly fab photo of Habibi the new desktop image on my laptop and changed the font so that I could read it against the new background. Yay! There were a few hair-raising moments with large print and high contrast (Don't do it! Though it might be good for your Grandad, Trailing Spouse - a black background with monster white letters - Have you seen it?)

It may not be much to you clever people, but I think I might be getting almost competent. Yay again!

....and 30 seconds later...

- and now the sidebar's back to normal but the board's gone again! On the other hand, the 'now visiting' table's back: that wasn't there a minute ago. (Hello visitor from America!).

Double doh!

I give up!

Skewiff again

Buggerrit. Got the visitor board back, and screwed up the sidebar again. Doh!

Wifie gets WiFi

Yay! We applied for Internet access from my desk in the bedroom. That was last November*. You know when you keep trying to get something sorted, and it just doesn't happen?

So today, Habibi went out and bought a small technical doodad that means we can have both laptops online at the same time. I'm still not sure what WiFi is (which will come as no surprise if you've read any other entries regarding me and IT) but I do know that it means we don't have to take turns for Internet access any more, which is both convenient and cosy. I might finish my blog entries before bedtime, too!

*To be fair, the guy at the Jebel Ali Etisalat office did say there might be a delay......

OK. I give up. I'm just stupid.

I'm upset - I could cry. I'm not very good with IT, as you'll have realised if you've been reading regularly. Today my visitor counter that I had endless hassle installing has disappeared from my sidebar. The code's in the template, but the counter I was so happy with has gone! I dunno.

So there I was, having given up on hard stuff for today, searching for blogs to do with organic farming, keeping chickens, sutainable development - all that stuff for the happy-ever-after plan, and I found a 'live journal' that I liked, and wanted to link to, so I thought I'd say hi on Meredic's comments page.

Oh no. I don't think so. This outfit have got their members locked in and battened down so hard that I can't get in to leave a comment unless, it appears, I join up and start a journal with them.

This is where I was up to when I thought that I could use the "Anonymous" option, having sprained an ankle on their other hurdles:

'My God - scary OpenID - I just wanted let you know that I LIKE your blog and am going to link to you, but the fun's rather gone out of it now...... don't want a journal and can't work out where to start on OpenID. Don't like anonymous comments but can't work out alternative. If designed as unnatural selection process to intimidate bear of very little brain, IT WORKED!!!!!! Hoooooooowwwwwwwlll!!!!!! '

When, a little later, I tried to post, their bloody spam robot detectors wheeled into action, asking me to confirm that I was human below (uh...yeah..) then rejecting my 'anonymous' comment four times before informing me that "Your IP address (number given) is detected as an open proxy (a common source of spam) so comment access is denied. If you do not believe you're accessing the net through an open proxy, please contact your ISP or this site's tech support to help resolve the problem."

I've already looked at their Help page and there are so many FAQs and so forth that seem entirely for journal holders that - as a poor outsider who just wanted to be friendly - I am completely baffled and demoralised. The well-meaning architects of these cyber-forts should realise that the rogues and sad-hats who hack and spam will always get through anything they throw up; it's only harmless saps like me who can't get through.

Who needs this?

Can you hear me, Mother?

I'm very excited!

A couple of nights ago I was on the phone with Mother, 4,000 or so miles away. Mother has been deaf to every suggestion that she should get a PC. She's done enough typing in her time, thank you very much. So I am the envy of the staffroom, because my pigeon hole has fat, hand-written letters, all year round.

(I of course, have guilt, because while I phone fairly frequently, do I write? Do I @#%%#&*!
I could blame the pain-in-the-ass distribution and efficiency of post offices, heat, dust - oh yeah and they lost the presents I posted last Christmas and they lost my special Mother's Day je-ne-sais-quoi - et jamais bloody well will now by the look of things - from far-far-away Habibibaba. Aargh! *^$#$%^&!@#$&^%%$!!!!!!!!!! But no, I'm just lazy.)

No. Mother's not interested in a PC. Now I know where my technophobe streak comes from...

Yes, but Mother, you could get Internet access, and a Hotmail account, and send emails, and it's immediate. And get emails from Mama Duck, Big Brother, Dutch Uncle, French Leave, Darling Sister, Little Brother, Habibibaba and Omani Traveller, whenever something interesting comes up, and it's immediate. (Just made all those up! Did you get everyone? :) )And Mama Duck's got a blog now. And Dutch Auntie's webpage is full of gorgeous photos of gorgeous small Diamond, and you don't have to wait for the post.

See!

At last, proof that a Diamond is the way to a woman's heart. Didn't I tell you he was gorgeous? Takes after both parents!

Yes, Mother said that she's going to visit the Internet Suite at Central Library, and seek out a librarian to help her get online. I approve of this kind of service. How civilised.

And I said, come visit my blog, and check out grannyp and La Petite Anglaise for starters. (Yes I know I've tagged them before, but this is for a cause.)

OK Mother, click on their names and you can go straight to their blogs. Enjoy. If you get stuck or end up with a blank screen, don't worry: it's impossible to delete or change anything, and the library staff have helped plenty of nervous novices before you. And let me know you were here. Pleasepleaseplease click comments at the end and say hi. If I can do it, you definitely can! (Be brave!)

xxxxxxxxx tu patito amarillo

Ever-decreasing circles

My 'I like' blog of a few weeks ago started out as a parenthesis illustrating something else entirely, namely reasons for a two-decade aversion to PCs and the Internet. But I was having such a good time with my raindrops-on-roses party (subject: all the things the PC/Internet is not, does not and can not.) that I dumped the other stuff and kept going (something I'm pretty good at, as we know.)

Here's the aversion bit.

For years I have described myself as either technomoron or technophobe, depending on whether I was going for laughs or accuracy, but essentially, I DON'T LIKE COMPUTERS VERY MUCH, though I liked the concept of Elle's cute pink Legally Blonde Mac. (In practice, don't like Macs even more than I don't like PCs - horrible keyboard.)

Basically Habibi got his first computer in 1990, and installed it in the spare bedroom. From then on, he would retire upstairs most evenings, only emerging hours later, weary, dazed, and smiling sheepishly, to collapse into bed. I tried not to kick up about something that made Habibi happy, but ooh I resented that machine!

OK?

The next bit would have been wry reflection (Whaddya mean apoplectic rant? We're doing emotion reflected in tranquility' today, for which I would like to thank my English teacher Mr Richards, who first put university into my fluffy head, my parents, who paid for it, and William Wordsworth, nice man, pretty good poet.) - yes, wry reflection - on how time passed, Habibi got his modem working, and was finally liberated from the daily commute to the office, embarking on the USS Microsoft, with Mama Duck, Habibibaba and millions of other families, for New Lifestyle, eventually settling in Global Village, I.T., where he revelled in the freedom of flexible hours, and the convenience of 24/7 Information Access. Meanwhile Mama Duck, while admiring his dedication, and absolute brilliance, chafed at the slow realisation that working from home meant never leaving the office. Didn't Habibi deserve a better quality of life than this? And where did Mama Duck and Habibibaba fit into the equation?

Of course, these issues have been part of traditional family life for as long as the traditional family, with breadwinners and dependants, has functioned. Yet even with two breadwinners, since the 80s and the cosy Thatcher/Reagan double act, the psychological pressures to work harder, faster, longer have been exacerbated by the presence of at least one computer in every home. Just as Japan's famously company-orientated society began to loosen up, the West started heading in the other direction! Taking individual character and choices into account, it all seems a bit much. (Still doing reflection here!)

And I don't think computer games are so healthy either - if we're not working on our computers, we're playing on them. Surely our ability to deal with other people only comes with practice, so if you chicken out in favour of rescuing Lemmings for hours on end (I love them!), how are you going to get the hang of real people with no re-set, no hot-air balloon, no AK47 or ICBM, no - omigod - no cheats? So says she who spent most of her childhood with her nose in a book.................. but of course that's different!

So what of my new blog lifestyle? Here's the irony: I WAS RIGHT! Ever since April 6th, when Mama Duck went online, it seems I'm either writing or revising my blog, or checking for comments, or reading someone else's, or thinking about something I want to write. I even dreamt I was in a blog the other night, on the page like something out of an admonitory children's film - nice page, though... In short, total obsession. Not doing much else. It's a BAD THING!

On the other hand, instead of being stuck with my own company because it's too hot & humid outside, or Habibi's working, or I'm spent-up/too tired or lazy to do something or go out/can't drive and can't face the bus, I've been to see grannyp in the Canaries, another Englishwoman abroad who's given me plenty to think about; and la petite anglaise in Paris - a pleasure to spend time with, even at this remove; and whoever-that-is turning his cave in Andalucia into a home - no, go see, this is great!; and Karma in Mumbai, with her glorious colours and Sunday competition , which she suspended, just as I found it -Aargh! - and some Spanish language blogs that I can't read without my dictionary, but give me something to look forward to; and of course, Ayalguita in Madrid - now there's another fabulous woman getting on with things. And it's already working both ways, though how nzm ever finds time to write her blog, never mind read anyone else's, is remarkable: go see, as I do, what Dubai has to offer those who'll get off their asses and join in!

I'd follow her example, but I've got places to go in cyber-space.