Pre Covid blog world

 

I hadn't published on this blog since 2016. I thought I was moving it. I was wrong. My life changed, the world changed, everything changed and then it changed again and here I am , back on my Blogger blog. I have been on Blogger since March 2004. This was my first blog so I have quite an attachment to it. Nothing rammed it home better, how much the world had changed, than when I came back and looked at the blogs I had linked here. Some had not been published to for years. I couldn't talk. I had had a gap of 6 years. My blog was still here. There was traffic but not like before. 

I went down my blog list and checked links. Some had been hijacked. Some had been removed, a few were still active, others had had a gap, like I had , but were still there. The world before Covid, where we blogged and shared so many ideas. We shared information, opinions, inspiration. It was a place to learn a lot and get thinking. It was also a place to laugh. 

It feels very quiet here. Before , there was always a buzz. You could feel it. The internet is strange like that. You can't see people but you can feel the activity of the net. 

There are so many other social media platforms now and I belong to some of them. Blogs are still important , though, for exploring ideas, sharing knowledge and offering opinions. 

I have culled the blogs and have revamped my site so it represents the renewal. I do have to upgrade and update this. I am looking forward to it. There is so much varied content on this blog and we need to get back to that : varied content. We must be worn out by now. We must be baffled by a world full of things which are hard to deal with. The only way out of it is to reframe it with our thoughts and ideas. I am grateful for the pre Covid bloggers and how they put such good thoughts my way. I shall be looking for new blogs to share and am looking forward to finding them. 

Blog is moving back!!

I shifted this blog over to WordPress because I thought it would be easier. Not so. I lost the traffic, didn’t make it up and then life took a massive turn and here I am. I have been brought back to Blogger by a series of interesting turns and am now speaking to an empty room. I plan to change that obviously . It will be a learning curve. Life has changed and even though some think we can be normal, as we were pre covid, we can’t be. We have had the coronavirus demands and challenges plus whatever else our life had brought us. Life has to be lived on life’s terms. I shan’t be who I was when I started this blog but am looking forward to developing it. First, I shall be shifting the posts I did put up on WordPress but, at the same time, there has to be current content because there is plenty to talk about right now  in Adelaide . 

This blog has moved

My Talk of the Town blog has now moved to its new address : The Talk of the Town. This was my first blog and I am very grateful for Blogger getting me up and running with what is now very much a part of my life. I have 3 blogs at Wordpress and so have now shifted my Blogger blogs so all my blogs are in one place. It is just easier for me that way now. I have been appreciative of the fact that Blogger and WordPress could work so well together . If you want to know how I did it please read this post: Shifting blog from Blogger to Wordpress.com . I hope you will continue to follow this blog in its new home. 

Header headed off

 

Blogger Titles Falling!

My talk of the town header is gone.It's dropped off my blog and won't come back. It won't republish and it is there in the editing section of the layout. Where is it? Why won't it come back? Now I am nameless and pictureless. Header challenged and header deprived. An unentitled, insignificant, vague , non specific, identity free piece of cyberspace. Blogger, what is going on? Surely I do not deserve to be relegated to the rank of non event?? I am monumentally unimpressed.

Naked Blogging Part 2

Well, this has been quite the little adventure and it's why I love blogging. It forces me to change, it forces me to think and it forces me to learn. It is also so reassuring to know there is a supportive network around which doesn't do the work for you, but they provide a lot of tips, hints and clues. I am not clueless, I can work things out for myself and I hate being patronised...so the dicovery learning with a little help from the blogosphere works well for me. The naked blogging (as per naked DSL - blogging unplugged) is going pretty well. It has given me a chance to discover the delights of the draft Blogger dashboard and now I know to push the compose button, everything I need is there and more! It was a sheer delight to find there is a justify button which actually works. There was one on ScribeFire which worked within the programme but not when the text was posted. I just love justification. Thanks to StatCounter which is just one of those really helpful sites, I have worked out I can put HTML and Java Script into a gadget box. I think I need to take the labels off, but I'll play with that later. This is a fantastic discovery because it means my blog is now completely portable to a new layout if I want one . I shan't have to fiddle with code. I am no tech head but the odd bit of code fiddling amuses me no end and I feel quite proud of myself when I have sorted it out. Blogger is really helpful with the hints so I have learned quite a bit....and I can post my pictures again! What a relief. I can say that naked blogging has brought back my variety and number of visitors. My top 5 countries are now Australia US,Malaysia and  Hong Kong . France normally features pretty well but that has dropped off again but I have picked up a lot more hits form Slovenia.This is what makes blogging so interesting. So I am off on today's adventures and expect to learn more. I have kept Zemanta on another blog I have and it is working well on that blog. The best thing is the refurbishment into the new blog layout has really freshened things up and brought different people onto my site. It has all been worth it.

Blog Swamp

I am still not entirely happy with my stats since I changed to the new , improved blogger format and the updated Firefox which took out my lovely Blog It. Even though I have recuperated the numbers from the nosedive of the second two weeks where the drop in numbers was really noticeable, I can have the odd good day and then it's back to dribbling visits and that hasn't really been a feature of this blog. My numbers are fairly constant and then I get some big weeks and days. This has been consistent. Things have changed on the Net and you can see it and feel it and there are now portals which are lassoing blog posts, but I should not have thought that the infopreneurial sites would be affecting what I am doing. I don't seem to be getting the searches so they must be going elsewhere and then my regular visitors have changed. In addition with Scribe Fire , my Firefox extension spell checker doesn't pick up all the mistakes on the post whereas it does with Blogger. I am no keyboard ace.Yes, it is about managing change, so I have concocted a little plan and am currently trialling it for a month.I need to narrow the field a bit to hone in on the actual problems!

Yoda off the rails

I like Yoda. Bit of a character really who inspires me. So I was really stoked to find a Yoda app in the Blogger gadgets choices for the new improved layout. So trying to guess what the quotation is is really annoying me. Yoda is off centre, my sidebar is not wide enough and I am thinking this is so unfair because I just want my Yoda app to be in the right place at the right time quoting away. The sidebar on this template is too narrow for most apps because they end up with scroll bars which REALLY annoys me. Looks a trifle kitsch. Yoda's off the rails and I'm up the spout on this one.