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Mike
No, we’re not
upping sticks and heading to Corfu to become beach bums (though that doesn’t
sound a bad idea), I’m merely moving my blog from its current home at Blogger
to new digs at WordPress. I’ve done this before, twice in fact, so it feels a
bit like re-marrying your ex-wife, divorcing her again, then marrying her for a
third time, which is certainly a case of optimism triumphing over experience.
When and why I
switched from Blogger to WordPress and back again isn’t important, and to tell
the truth, I barely remember when and the why was because they kept pissing me
off. Seems I was a bit excitable in my younger years. I have more equanimity
these days, and there are other mitigating factors that should make this move
permanent.
Mainly, I have all my other blogs there. Somehow, I managed to acquire a boondoggle of blogs (boondoggle is the collective noun for blogs) and all of them are with WordPress, so this is akin to re-marrying your ex for the second time, and then having a couple of kids to hold you together. Also, I know what I’m getting into. WordPress is shit, but having created and maintained other blogs with it, I am getting used to how shitty it is and have since made peace with it. And lastly, Blogger—which had a wonderfully intuitive interface and lots of nifty widgets—decided the WordPress method was better, and turned their interface to shit.
Even so, that,
in itself, did not tempt me to move. I was used to working with WordPress’s
shitty interface, so the WordPress-imitation shitty interface Blogger inflicted
on its users wasn’t much of a problem. It was the Feedburner. Feedburner is a
Google-based widget that allows fans of a blog to enter their email address
and, thereafter, receive new posts to their IN box, which is handy for
sporadically updated blogs like mine. It’s been working, and collecting emails,
for so long that I had forgotten all about it, until I received a notice from
Google the other day telling me they were going to “improve my experience” by stopping
the service. I hunted for a replacement, but there were none to be found. Oh,
there were plenty of similar products that touted a variety of bells and
whistles I didn't’ want or need—for a fee—so the doorway to that option closed,
especially when Blogger confirmed that they had no intention of replacing the
Google FeedBurner with one of their own.
So, there was
no point in keeping my blog at Blogger any longer, except for the 368 posts
dating back to 2006. That’s a lot of history, and I was loath to leave it
behind, but then I discovered you could export your blog and import it into
WordPress.
Pardon me for
being sceptical, but, yeah, right.
With that
thought in mind, and not much hope, I initiated the process. To my utter amazement,
it worked. All of my past posts, along with comments and photos, appeared in
the new WordPress blog. There were a few formatting issues with the old posts,
but I am more than willing to overlook that.
The final
niggle was the URL — pcfatp.com — which was initially bought via Blogger, who
was then taken over by Google, who then sub-contracted it out to GoDaddy,
meaning I had to spend half a day tracking down the URL and getting it released
to WordPress. Allegedly, this is done, and I’ve paid for it; I’m just waiting
for it to take effect, which should have happened by the time you read this.
This will allow anyone who accesses my blog via that URL to do nothing, and
still find my blog. As for those of you receiving updates by email, I’m afraid
you’ve got some admin ahead of you.
If you want to
continue receiving post via email, please do this:
That’s it. You
will continue to receive posts via email.
If, on the
other hand, you are someone who signed up long ago for reasons you don’t
remember and now wish you had not, just do nothing. The posts will soon stop
arriving in your IN Box.
 |
| In case you are interested: One of my moves to WordPress came about when I was advised that, if you wanted people to take you seriously, you had to have a WordPress blog--or, at least, not a Blogger blog. This was a good lessen in not listening to unsolicited advice from well-meaning people. The random example above shows the Archive widget. The one on the left is from the WordPress blog, which I pay a not insubstantial amount of dosh for and could not look less professional if I had cobbled it up myself. The elegant, easily navigated one on the right is from the FREE, unprofessional-looking Blogger blog. That said, WordPress does have good customer service. Although, that's probably because they need it. |
Last Friday I went
to my April Book Club meeting. I haven’t talked about Book Club on this blog
because, well, the first rule of Book Club…
Anyway, this
month was The Hearts Invisible Furies
by John Boyne, and if you haven’t read it, you should. I warn you, about
halfway through I was tempted to fling the book across the room because the
main character did something I couldn’t abide, and I lost all respect for him.
If that happens to you, I encourage you to persevere. You’ll thank me. If, on
the other hand, it doesn’t bother you at all, you’ll have to make your own
peace with that.
But that’s not
important. I want to talk about how I got there.
It was a
lovely, sunny day, and the pubs had recently begun serving again (outside only)
so we no longer had to meet over Zoom and were, instead, meeting at The Greet
Inn in Warnham, about two and a half miles from my flat, so I thought I’d walk.
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| A lovely day for a walk. |
The first half mile of the mini-trek—from my flat to the Nature Reserve—is the worst bit, so it was good to get it over with up front. The road is busy and getting busier and, if the Council has their way, will become busier yet. But it didn’t take me long to reach the relative quiet of the Nature Reserve and the peace and tranquillity of the golf course just beyond.
The golf course
was lovely, expansive, green and serene, with a path running along the
verge—well away from the danger of flying golf balls—near the bank of the Arun
River. The only niggle was the knowledge that the Council is planning to concrete
it over and cram it full of cheap, substandard housing, so they and their
cronies can line their pockets. The residents of the town are raising an
almighty hoo-hah over this proposal, but the Council has a history of ignoring
residential hoo-hahs, especially when there is money to be made.
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| What the golf course looks What it the Council wants it like now. to look like |
But those were thoughts for another day. I ushered them aside and concentrated on enjoying the nature that was there now. I followed the trail around a crystal lake (a big pond, really) and found myself on the trail to the underpass that would lead me to the other side of the ultra-busy A24, where Warnham was. The sun was very warm by now, the air was still, the birds were chirping, and it was ever so peaceful. I could just about—
“ARMED
POLICE!!!!”
 |
| Put your hands up and drop your liberal, bunny-hugger opinions! |
I’ve been watching a lot of Line of Duty so I know what that means. I was so shocked I didn’t even think to raise my hands, something that, in America, would have seen me shot on the spot. Instead, I looked behind me, expecting to see a dozen black-clad swat-cops leaping from the undergrowth, pointing laser-guided assault weapons at me. And I couldn’t imagine why.
Had I committed
some unknown offense? Perhaps I had crossed the golf course without having
donned the requisite style of clownish golf trousers. Or maybe they were
Government agents, sent to stop me from making any more cynical references to
the clown in Number 10. Or perhaps it was something closer to home, the Council
sensing that I was enjoying the golf course for what it was, instead of
gleefully imagining it covered in Soviet-style architecture.
 |
| Clownish Golfer Clownish Tosser |
Nothing, however, happened. Then there was the unmistakable sound of a door being bashed in and the yelling and shouting one generally associates with a forced entry (told you I’ve been watching too much Line of Duty). That’s when I realized it was my phone.
Somehow, my phone,
in my shirt pocket, had turned itself on, opened my news-feed, navigated to a
story about a police raid and started the video accompanying said article. I’m
not sure I could do that myself, so I can’t understand how my phone did it all
by itself.
I didn’t stop
to ponder this, I was just relieved I wasn’t being hustled into a police van.
The remainder
of the walk continued without incident. I wasn’t even mugged by a deer when I
followed the footpath through a deer park. And deer can be fairly cranky.
I arrived at
the pub and—after being indoctrinated on which door to enter by, leave by and
never, under any circumstances, touch, and where to sit and how to order and
what to do about the bill and the procedure for registering my visit with the
NHS Track and Trace System —was served a pint of beer. (Up until then, it never
occurred to me how much admin a pandemic requires.)
 |
| Nearly there. |
At my table, just at the edge of the outdoor seating area, the sun shone on my back, the birds chirped soothingly in the background and around me was the gentle hum of conversation. I lifted the pint of Harvey’s—the first I had enjoyed in many a month—and took a sip. It was soothing, satisfying, and serene.
But I checked
to make sure my phone was turned off, just in case.
 |
| Serenity at last. |
In 1980, I bought a paperback
version of 1984, figuring I should
read it before the fateful year arrived. Forty-one years later, I’m still
carrying that book around and I still have not read it. But this week, I
finally picked it up and managed to move beyond its famous opening line:
“It was a bright cold day in April
and the clocks were striking 13…”
I’m well into the narrative now and
I’m finding it unsettling. I think, if I had read it when I meant to, I might
have taken it as a warning of what the world might become. But reading it now, in
2021, I have to acknowledge that most of what Orwell predicted has already come
true. And the irony is, we didn’t need a malevolent government to force us into
doing those things, we are willingly, and with unbounded alacrity, doing them
to ourselves. The government couldn’t stop us if they tried.
The book was written when
television was in its infancy, yet Orwell imagined we would have huge screens
in our homes, broadcasting propaganda 24-7. It seemed fantastical, impossible,
even, but here we are, with 120-inch, Ultra HD Smart TVs in homes, tuned to Fox
News or CNN, so they can tell us what to think and to shout our opinions back
at us all day and all night.
And we don’t need the Government to
mandate the daily Two-Minute Hate, we do that to ourselves—for hours a
day—doom-scrolling our Social Media information teat in order to keep our
indignation boiling.
In Orwell’s book, the big screen in
your home—in addition to telling you what to think—watches and listens to you,
and there are microphones hidden around in the outside world to further track
your movements and conversations. While most
TVs currently can’t hear what you are saying, Alexa, Echo, Siri and Google Home
can. And your phone keeps excellent tabs on you—and listens to your
conversations—even when you aren’t voluntarily broadcasting your location and
activities to the world at large, sometimes with tragic results.
Bill Gates doesn’t need to inject
you with a micro-chip so he can track you (spoiler alert: he isn’t), your
mobile phone is doing a much better job.
In Orwell’s dystopia, the
government forces all these intrusions on the population. In our current
society, we buy them ourselves and gleefully integrate them into our lives.
We don’t even need the Thought
Police, as we have an army of volunteers who continually patrol the borders of
their shattered self-esteem, looking for ways to become offended and, when they
find a Tweet or FaceBook post (might be current, but it could be something from
long ago) they start a Twit-Storm to make sure that the person who offended
them loses their job and is shamed off of social media. That’s as close to
being vaporized—the 1984 euphemism
for being totally erased from history and society—as you can get without
actually employing an army of IT hackers and Blackshirts.
And Winston’s job at the Ministry
of Truth wouldn’t be a paid position. Altering the past has become an avocation
for weekend culture-warriors. Pulling down statues, banning books, outlawing
toys and censoring people (via the aforementioned Twit-Storms) because of a
past they’d rather not acknowledge is accomplished by enthusiastic amateurs,
not government agents. Additionally, people have been known to alter past
writings to make it seem as if they had predicted something when they had not.
(I’m looking at you, Dominic Cummings.)
In 1984, the Government wanted you to believe 2+2=5. In 2017, the
government wanted you to believe that an inauguration crowd that wasn’t there,
did, in reality, exist. And we were encouraged to support this fantasy by
believing in “alternate facts.” And many did, voluntarily and without the
threat of incarceration. (I do wonder, however, how many people believed that
the President of the United States could change the course of a hurricane
simply by drawing lines with a Sharpie pen.)
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| Big Brother, 1984: 2+2=5 Big Brother, 2017: The crowd on the right is bigger |
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| As you can see, the hurricane is heading for Alabama... |
But, despite all this voluntary assistance, the government isn’t asleep at the wheel. They are working hard to curtail the right to protest, and are pushing laws through that make it possible to be arrested simply for holding an unpopular opinion. Not far-out-batshit-crazy opinions, either. All you have to do is say something—anything—that another person claims offends them, and you have broken the law. And critics of the new Scottish Hate-Crime Bill, fear it leaves the door open for people to be arrested merely for expressing unorthodox views even in the privacy of their own homes.
1984? It didn’t happen then, but
it’s here now.
Watch out for Room One-Oh-One.
No boot on face, but this is a
photo of Metropolitan City Police London violently restraining a woman at a
peaceful vigil, which was not a protest but a peaceful coming together of
women, to highlight violence against women and to mourn the death of Sarah Everard
who was kidnapped and murdered by a serving Metropolitan Police Officer,
occurring on the eve of a bill being introduced to Parliament that will
substantially increase the power of police to disperse (violently, one must
assume) pretty much anyone at any time for any reason, and you couldn’t fit more irony into
a sentence if you tried.
All of my working life, I had a
dream: when I retired, I was going to take up painting. It was a dream that
sustained me through many long years of gainful employment, thinking about what
I could accomplish once I no longer needed to earn a living.
And so, one happy day, I retired,
and my dream immediately foundered on the rocky shores of reality. Not only did
I lack the time, I also found myself bereft of talent, or any noticeable
desire. After all those years, it turns out I didn’t really want to paint a picture.
My feelings about art, instead, mirrored those of the many who say, “When I
retire, I’m going to write a novel,” which is to say, I wanted to have painted a picture.
Many happy years have come and gone
since then, and my determination to not paint has served me well. Painting
takes up space, and the more you do it, the more space it takes up. We might
live in a small flat, but no amount of writing is going to fill up my tiny
office the way even a casual interest in acrylics might.
However, shit—as they say—happens, which, in this case, takes the form of Lockdown Number Three. Being shut up inside for six weeks and counting (again) had me looking around for some additional diversion. For Christmas, my wife had given me, as a sort of joke, a dot-to-dot book for adults (not to be confused with Adult Dot-to-Dot; Google carefully) and I found that to be a soothing diversion. So, when I finished it, I looked around for something to fill the time it used to take up and, somehow, I came to the notion that there ought to be paint-by-number sets for adults (not to be confused with Adult Paint-by-Numbers; Google carefully) and, sure enough, there are. (Suggested motto: Paint-by-Numbers, because real art is hard.)
 |
| Be careful how you Google. |
Having memories of the paint-by-number sets of my youth, I was slightly skeptical, but these new, more mature sets, really tick the boxes. They are not, as I feared, the rigid,10x12 inch boards that I remember. These are 16x20 inch canvases that come rolled up, along with little plastic containers of the necessary paint, and three brushes. They take up little room and, when you are done, you can toss the whole thing in the bin.
That is the best bit. You don’t
have to worry about where you are going to hang your masterpiece because, when
you finish, you’re more likely to find that your efforts look less like the
Mona Lisa and more like someone tied paint brushes to a terror of toddlers
(that is the collective noun for toddlers, isn’t it?) and let them roll around
on the canvas. But the point isn’t the finished product, it’s the zen-time
spent dabbing paint on a brush and trying to stay inside the lines. You can do
that perfectly (spoiler alert: you won’t) and you’ll still end up with
something you really should hide away somewhere.
The problem is the way they are
made, which is also the great thing about them. The canvases are printed by a
computer program that scans a real painting, recognizes color and pattern and
translates it onto a canvas. As with many automated tasks, however, the outcome
is only as good as the software, and sometimes this translates to an overcast
sky you are instructed to paint lime-green, or distant objects that disappear.
The upside is, this makes these sets inexpensive enough that you won’t mind
chucking them out (or at least rolling them up and stuffing them behind a
bookcase) when you finish.
 |
| What the detail in the picture looks like what the detail on the canvas looks like |
Admittedly, my experience is limited. I’m only on my second picture and both have come from the same company. There may be others that have better software but, as I’ve noted above, that is hardly the point.
Even so, when I order more, I may
go with another, more expensive, company to see if there is an upgraded version
of the software that might render a picture more accurately. But until then,
I’m content painting my skies green, and doing what I can to fill in the gaps.
So if, like me, you find yourself
at a loose end this lockdown, you could do worse than try a paint-by-numbers
kit. Unless, of course, you are really working on that novel.
Hmm, I wonder if the world is ready for a novel-by-numbers kit.
I have decided that 2021 is the
year to put that bit of folk wisdom to the test. The challenge, however, is not
merely in the learning.
For example: on the first day, I
learned that scenes from the 1947 film Black Narcissus were filmed at
Leonardslee Gardens, which is just down the road from where we live. This gave
me unexpected delight and prompted me to begin this year-long odyssey.
The second day, I learned
something, then forgot what it was. Later, through great mental effort, I
managed to recall it. Then I forgot it again. So, that day, I learned that
I cannot rely on my short-term memory.
And this is what I believe the benefits of the exercise will be, the simple act of remaining open to new knowledge and experiences and committing them to memory (and then to a spreadsheet; I have no illusions about my ability to retain 365 tidbits of esoteric information for instant recall).
Over this year, I hope to gather a
mix of surprising facts along with learned skills. I do not count things I
simply found out, such as, “I just checked my Twitter feed, and it turns out
Jason is a right Muppet.” No, it would have to be a more uplifting bit of
actual knowledge, such as the fact that when you climb Mt. Everest, you are
required to return with a load of at least 30 pounds, consisting of your shit,
anyone else’s shit you run across, and other miscellany you find strewn about. This
is to help with the effort to keep Everest shit-free and de-cluttered. If you
fail to do this, you forfeit your $4,000 deposit. I feel I’m a better person
for knowing that.
The trick to this, as well as the
benefit, is simply remembering what you did learn. Many lessons come to us
every day, but they are often lost in the maelstrom of daily life, so I find
being continually on the lookout for something that may enriched my knowledge
base helps me look forward to the day. And on that note, I originally thought
that 2021 might be the worst year to attempt such a thing, seeing as how there
is very little stimulation at the moment, but then I realized this is the
optimum time, because it not only helps you appreciate the slower pace of life,
but it reaffirms the notion that you are always learning, no matter what else might
(or might not) be going on.
Such as: despite common belief,
only 4% of the content on the Internet is porn. Don’t ask me how I know this.
I do wish I had more skills on the list, such as “Learned to play Edelweiss on the piano” (alas, I have not) but, so far, all I can claim to have learned is that, if I just stuff my jeans into the socks I wear with my wellies, it feels fine.( I had been neatly wrapping my jeans around my ankles and carefully pulling the socks over them. This took time and the result always caused a pressure point on my ankle. Just pulling them on saves time and doesn’t end up annoying me on the walk.) It’s a little thing, but it does add to my quality of life.
Not everything does, however. I
also learned that there is such a thing as a Vampire Finch. It’s a variety of finch
(duh) that lives on a remote volcanic island. They are too small to get off (they
likely got there on the winds of a storm) and there is nothing for them to eat
so they survive by drinking the blood of the other sea birds there. The strangest
thing is, the sea birds don’t seem to mind. This still gives me nightmares.
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| The Vampire Finch, the stuff of nightmares. |
Although this has enhanced my knowledge, it is not as beneficial as this nugget: When one computer in your home is used to buy something, or even browse something, all other Internet-connected devices in your home—phones, laptops, tablets, the microwave—will get ads for that item in their FB feed or on Google. This is because all of them share the same IP address, which is associated with the router, not the individual devices. And that really is handy to know. (See the 4% item above.)
Some items are multi-faceted,
allowing you to learn several things at once. Such as this historical oddity:
The unique typeface of Dove press, after an acrimonious court battle, was
destroyed by one of the owners (Thomas Cobden-Sanders) who secretly threw the
punches into the Thames over the course of several months, in late 1916 and
early 1917. (The reason this took so long is that the total weight of the
punches was 2,600 lbs—this wasn't digital type.) 100 years later, Robert Green,
who was working on a project to recreate the typeface, hunted for, and located
150 pieces.
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| Some of the recovered Dove Typeface. |
This is fascinating, not only from the archaeological angle, but the fact that anyone cares enough about a typeface to go through all that, and that, back in the day, a typeface was not to be taken lightly (see what I did there?). They were carved and moulded and cast in metal and were worth enough that it caused the two men who developed this one to fall out over the money.
While admittedly enlightening, the
above is not as potentially useful as the fact that it is perfectly legal to
buy and possess a flamethrower in forty-nine of the fifty states (Maryland is
the only state where you cannot).
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| The photo was stolen from an article titled: You can buy a flamethrower online, and it's legal |
My most recent acquisition, however, has proved to be—thus far—the most useful, because it put to rest something that has been on my mind of late.
I’m over here, gathering my
information about world events through my media of choice. I think they are
good choices, I think they tell me enough of the truth to allow me to make my
mind up about what I believe. And I think I’m right. But there are others, who
have their own information streams and who also think they are right. They
think they are right as strongly as I do. So, who is right? I truly did wonder
about this, but then I discovered a way to tell: If you are unsure about which
side you're on, next time you are at a gathering of your group, look around. Do
you see Nazis? If so, then you are on the wrong side.
The final benefit of this
undertaking is: despite all that is going on in the world, I am looking forward
to finding out what each new day can teach me. It’s a good way to get through
the year, even if I never do learn to play Edelweiss on the piano.
