jmgoyder

wings and things

Aug 22

Blogging IS writing!

by jmgoyder

Last November I began this blog because I wanted to catapult myself into writing again. That was my simple, initial reason. Since then I haven’t missed a single day; in fact I have overdone it on some days with too many posts. But what the hell – blogging got me writing again. Not only that, I actually accumulated a few friends (that was totally unexpected!) and discovered a fascinating community. When I began the blog I wasn’t looking for friends or a community or anything really; I just wanted to write so that is what I think I am doing here – writing.

It took me awhile to realize that blogging is a reciprocal thing. I didn’t understand what ‘likes’ and ‘comments’ were to begin with. Then, when I began to explore other people’s blogs I was amazed, touched, and fascinated by all of this wonderful writing that I didn’t know was there. In the last few months I have learned more about photography, art, music, history, geography, poetry, illness, health, inspiration, pain and friendship than I ever learned at university!

But back to my point; I have noticed that some bloggers differentiate between their blogging and their writing. I tried to do this but failed – ie. I tried to plonk my love story into a separate blog because in my mind I thought that would be my writing blog and this would be my blogging blog. It didn’t take me long to realize that any blogging IS writing.

 

blogging

91 Comments »
Aug 11

Not getting notifications

by jmgoyder

Hi to any bloggers I subscribe to. I am not getting your blog posts via email for some reason, so, if I usually comment and haven’t done, that’s why. Perhaps the wordpress happiness engineers are doing something exciting? I will probably be excommunicated for saying that. Hopefully the glitch will be fixed soon so I can keep better contact. On the other hand it has been rather relaxing not reading all those blogs – ha! Julie

blogging

30 Comments »
Jul 30

Blog suggestions appreciated!

by jmgoyder

I don’t know why but I am, once again, receiving all of the comments made on the blogs I subscribe to, so I have contacted the WordPress help people to stop this because the inundation of email notifications has been overwhelming and in the end I had to keep deleting so please forgive me if I accidentally deleted you blog post.

But, in the interests of not wanting to waste a post on blogging glitches, I do have a couple of questions for more seasoned bloggers:

1. I would like to ‘reblog’ three of my previous posts to give a bit of historical context to what is happening now. Is that an okay thing to do?

2. My spam often contains ‘trackbacks’ – are these the same as ‘pingbacks’ and should I accept both? Also, can anyone tell me what both of these things mean? This would also be useful for novice bloggers.

3. Sorry, I can’t remember what my last question was!

blogging

50 Comments »
Jul 12

A ‘Happiness Engineer’

by jmgoyder

Due to my ongoing WordPress glitches, I finally resorted to contacting WP and have been in email conversations with Bryan, one of WordPress’s Happiness Engineer,  for a few days. With his guidance, I eventually discovered that all WP notifications had somehow ended up in my email spam list (not my WP spam list), so I retrieved all of them and then nearly fainted when my inbox filled with over 1,000 emails. But I decided not to faint and, instead, to face my incredible popularity head-on before discovering that many of the emails were notifications of comments on your blogs – yes, your blogs, fellow WordPressers, not mine!

So once Bryan and I have figured this latest problem out, I will probably re-unsubscribe in order to re-subscribe in order to go insane, and then I will probably go back to doing what I have been trying to do over the last few days which is to keep up with the blogs I have re-subscribed to, which all went into my gmail spam, by reading them via the Blogs/Follow option (easier than the Reader), after which I will re-contact Bryan to see if his happiness engineering prowess covers life issues as well. You never know. I just hope my relationship with Bryan doesn’t deteriorate in the way my relationship with Godfrey has.

Are you following?

blogging

46 Comments »
Jul 10

Can a post repost itself?

by jmgoyder

How odd!

I couldn’t understand why I was getting comments about a post I wrote a while ago – the dreamchild one – so I went to look and there is was again.

I know I am still having wordpress problems but this seems very strange.

blogging

25 Comments »
Jul 4

Still have problems with WordPress

by jmgoyder

That’s all I have to say today because I don’t want to swear in public!

For those bloggers I subscribe to, I will try to keep up as I am still not receiving email notifications – sorry!

blogging

13 Comments »
May 25

Two more Hot Potato Award winners!

by jmgoyder

I didn’t want to cram any more winners into the previous Hot Potato Award post and I would really like to give these two amazing bloggers (who also happen to be people!) the HPA. Once again, this is not an award that has any obligations attached to it – you just take it and copy/paste it to your blog, or not.

The first blogger is a daughter who cares for her mother who has Parkinson’s Disease. She does this with a mixture of glee, energy and humour, but she is also very honest about how hard this can be.

http://camsgranny.wordpress.com/

The second blogger is a sister who cares for, and lives with, her brother who has Parkinson’s Disease. Her daily blog of the ups and downs of this journey is both heart-breaking and inspiring.

http://terry1954.wordpress.com/

Jo and Terry are both wonderful examples of selfless heroism. I take my hat off to them and hope they will accept this award!

blogging Friendship

9 Comments »
Mar 21

WordPressing problems

by jmgoyder

I don’t really want to a blog about blogging, when I want to blog about other stuff, however there are certain things about the way WordPress works which may need attention. I’m not complaining, just responding to the problems I feel need to be ‘fixed’. I will try to outline my suggestions as entertainingly as possible.

  • A relative just emailed me, distressed because she thought one of the posts I reblogged (and I don’t do this often) was me talking, not the original blogger, so she thought I was going to get a divorce! This misunderstanding is because the reblogger’s comment (mine) came at the end, rather than at the beginning, of the reblogged post (the brilliant writer who is not me!)
  • Along the same lines, everything is backwards in time; i.e you have to read your comments backwards and your ‘followers’ have to read your posts backwards. So, every time you subscribe to a blog, or vice versa, it’s a bit difficult to get to the beginning first and read through subsequent posts in an orderly fashion (you know, February to March, rather than March to February).
  • I find the term ‘follower’ a little strange because, for me (yes it’s just me and probably everyone will disagree) connotes with either  ‘disciple’ or ‘stalker’.
  • Also, when someone ‘likes’ my post, I am also told by WordPress that they think it is “awesome” (and again, vice versa). Okay, I quite like my cute little nose but I don’t think it’s awesome.

I hope this doesn’t sound too cynical or rebellious; WordPress is awesome!

I’m ducking for cover now – hehe!

blogging Uncategorized

30 Comments »
Mar 16

Hold your head up high

by jmgoyder

Geese have a natural ability to hold their heads up high. You’ve all seen pictures of Godfrey doing this, but the younger ones are getting good at it too. Diamond, on the left, is getting particularly good at it, whereas Seli still doesn’t have it down to a fine art.

The following photo is of my wonderful, unusual, brilliant friend, Nathalie Collins who, amongst other things, has enhanced my neck-stretching abilities by showing me how to hold my head up high. She herself (not that I am comparing her to a goose!) has a very natural ability to do so which, before I met her, I lacked. You can find Nathalie here and it’s definitely worth a gander (sorry that is a really bad play on words but I couldn’t help myself!)

http://theinfinitegame.org/cv/

Nathalie got me into blogging in the first place and set me up with WordPress when I didn’t even really know what blogging was. In fact, I am such a technophobe that I only just discovered that, after all these months, I wasn’t even properly signed up to her own blog (this is quite embarrassing and I hope she will forgive me!)

This is what Nathalie had to say about the picture:

“These “angel wing” crystal earrings were purchased in the USA, but the fashion has since migrated south to Australia. Silver and gold feathers are “in” at the moment and were part of my outfit in the “wear a hat to work day” I recently experienced.

 By the way, the hat was an original, Summer White House Press Hat from the Clinton Administration, given to me by a friend who covered the that president during his summer in Martha’s Vinyard. Now matter how the vote went no one else at work had a hat that cool

The hat that won the vote? A straw hat with peacock feathers! I was devastated.

The thing about the earrings is that they remind me of Julie…the bird bit mainly, but also the sparkly bit. In her own way, Julie is as bright and shiny (and cheerful) as the crystals in my earrings.”

Nathalie is my Diamond and I am her Seli. Some friendships are definitely worth feathering….

Friendship Wings

6 Comments »
Dec 15

Wait a second – don’t delete me (yet!)

by jmgoyder

This is my 70th post and it has nothing to do with birds, not really. It has more to do with belly laughing at myself, which is what I’ve been doing for several minutes. Why?

Well, I was on the phone with a good friend (just before the belly laughing attack) and it was when she said, “Thank you for all the emails,” that I realised she thought that I was doing the email bombardment thing.

So I am using this opportunity to explain to those friends and family who were kind enough to subscribe to my blog, that it is NOT ME sending you these emails; the blog system that I belong to (WordPress) sends them to you every time I write a ‘post’ (for me this entails a mini-article with a picture or two). This means that if I am in a particularly wordy mood, you poor subscribers might get two, sometimes three, emails per day.

Again, IT’S NOT ME. Okay, I am doing the writing, but the emails just happen automatically unless you unsubscribe. Unfortunately, if you are unitiated in the world of blogging (and, remember, I am only newly initiated) you might not know how to unsubscribe in which case my blog posts will continued to crowd your email’s inbox.

I hope this explanation is not going to mean I lose half my audience!

Oh, and because this is a blog that is primarily about birds (okay, so it’s evolved into something a bit more maybe) the picture above is of our two Aracauna hens who are supposed to be laying blue eggs.

We haven’t seen a blue egg yet!

Uncategorized

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