"My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence." — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
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September 18, 2021

Some stuff & maybe a few cohensive thoughts

girl with umbrella in the rain with ducks
'Follow the rain home'
Just some stuff that may or may not be worrying me. The above art had nothing to do with anything I said below. I just happened to redo it and I thought I share it.

01 | Email subscriptions for this blog is... still unknown.
I still can't decide which service to use so I decided to not decide, at least for now.
    I was going to go with mailchimp but they needed a mailing/physical address for reasons I can't understand. I'm not comfortable sharing my address with a company or any company that I might not like it enough to keep using it. It's always a pain to have your account deleted and I had a lot frustrated experiences with that.
    If you have email subscription for your blog, which service did you use? Do share.

02 | One of these days, I might switch to Wordpress or some other blogging format because these days  I find Blogger to be less friendly, less likable and more likely to frustrate me. Here are things that are currently on my 'stop annoying me' list:
    (a) Why did they removed the edit tools for the gadgets on a blog's front end? I don't know but I'm certain it's a dumb move. Now whenever I want to edit one of the gadgets I have to go to the Dashboard and under Layout. It's not a terribly hard thing to do but why did this change this at all? What was the point?
    (b) Don't know if it's just some glitch or the fact that google had updated FeedBurner and shut down email subscriptions for all blogs that makes some blog link list on people's sidebar not updating or not showing the recent post. I have noticed a few blogs where they have my blog on their link list and it's not showing any updates. Technically, I started this blog after July so it may had an effect, I don't know. I just thought I bring it up to see if anyone's else blog is like that.
    (c) Why aren't we allow to turn off autosave? Technically, autosave is good because it saves the post we are working on but sometimes it's bad. Last week, I lost an entire post because autosave saved a blank post before I could close the post. This rarely happened to me but when it does, it usually happened when I have time constrain or when I'm at the most annoyed.

03 | Finally Strand Books "announced" the winner to the tote bag design which I had entered in July. I put quotes on the word announced because as much as I tried to find out who the winner was after the contest is over, there wasn't any type of notice on any of their social media. Only this month, I found out who the winner is in an subscription email (I subscribe to their newsletter or whatever they are called these days.)
    The winning illustration is by Luke Wohlgemuth. (I thought one of the rules was to use four Pantone colors but clearly this seems like they had used full colors which is a completely different process but whatever, I guess they can just change the rules.) Wohlgemuth's art does have charm but it's not what I would have chosen. I guess I have different taste than most people or maybe I have no clue what people likes. So what do you think of this art? Worthy of being printed on a tote bag that one carries around?
illustration of girl reading book with eyes
Photo source: Luke Wohlgemuth

04 | Passwords are annoying sometimes. One week, (I forgot which week but I'm pretty sure it wasn't yesterday), I forgot my computer's password and I sort of freaked out. I had set my computer to start without having to sign in so I never had to use my password. So one day, when I needed to use it, I completely blanked out.
    I searched for ways to recover the password and there are ways but they all seemed a bit complicated. Then I look through my various accounts and one of them reminded me of the password. So I suppose I should set my computer so that I have to sign in so that I can use the password every day so that I can remember it, right? Did I do that? No. Because it's a hassle to sign in and because I shut my computer down every time I used it and not because I want to save energy (which it kind of does), I just know if my computer is on all the time, I would be using it all the time.
    I really wish there are no such thing as passwords for gadgets - every single gadget you own (computers, phones, etc.) has password protection - yes, it's good that it has it but it's bad for those of us who doesn't even use it. Plus, if someone stole your phone, for example, I'm pretty certain they can get pass the password without any problems. So what these passwords protection is mostly used for is against their users.

The Cursed Princess and the Land of Happiness
05 | I'm hoping to finish The Cursed Princess and the Land of Happiness before the end of the year.
I still would like readers to choose one of the options or give their opinion/feedback to continue the story. I've already completed the second part which means you now have the choice to choose what happens in the third part. It really is more fun if more people are participating. Here's the link to the two parts so far.

How is your September going?

15 comments:

  1. I agree with you about blogger. I am still frustrated about their 'improvements' to the reading list.
    Passwords? Sigh. Big sigh.
    That tote bag is ok I suppose, but that image wouldn't tempt me to buy it.
    I haven't yet made a decision on the follow by email conundrum. Which I suppose in itself is a decision.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Elephant's Child: I'm sure you still have time to decide eon the email subscription thing- there's no hurry.

      Thank you for coming by. Have a lovely day

      Delete
  2. Mailchimp just got bought by Intuit...hope it won't mean any changes, they said no but...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Christine: I had not heard that but I hope they won't change anything for those using it.

      Thank you for coming by. Have a lovely day.

      Delete
  3. I do not follow blogs via e-mail, but if your blog does not update on other people's (my) sidebar it's some setting in your end that's the problem. It says when I add it that your blog is missing -- whatever it was, so that it won't show updates (yours and a couple of others have given me this notice). Try asking in Blogger community, or searching through their archives -- I totally forgot where and how it was. And yes Blogger is frustrating etc etc, but I tried WP (and a couple of other) and it was worse! I messed (exchange with bad word) up everything, and just ended deleting all the posts I wrote, after I think 8 tries where it never turned out how I wanted it.
    Passwords are a PITA big time. Sigh. I agree they protect my gadgets against me using them mostly ;) I try to deactivate them wherever posiible. Yes I know, stupid, but then I back up often (on a harddisk placed in my bag), and do not own a Smartphone.
    Tote bag, no, don't like. It's kinda ... meh ... old boring childrens' book illustration.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Re. your blog not updating in people's sidebars. I just looked:
      Under settings, scroll down (far down) to Feed. Click Allow Blogfeed, and put a mark in the bullet next to "Full". If you have already enabled this, I have no idea.
      PS. the wording might be a bit different, as I'm translating from my Danish blog settings.

      Delete
    2. Lissa? Did you do anything? Because now it works!

      Delete
    3. Charlotte: About two weeks ago or perhaps a week ago, I don't remember, I saw that the feed (for my blog) wasn't updating on your blog's sidebar so I turned off feed, wait a few seconds, and then turned it back on. That's all I did. I always chose 'allow full feed'.

      Thank you for coming by. Have a lovely day.

      Delete
  4. I started using Follow.it, I feel it is the best one to use, because it is pretty much free and doesn't require you to give out your address. I wish you the best of luck in finding a email subscription service. :D

    I tried using WP a while ago, with an experiment blog, but it annoyed me because you have to pay to use HTML and you can't upload videos to your blog directly (without paying either). This is one of the reasons I prefer blogger over Wordpress, but I definitely understand your annoyance with them removing the editing tools on the sidebar of the blog. I am annoyed about that too.

    Also, I can't wait to read the second part of The Cursed Princess and the Land of Happiness .
    -Quinley

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. sorry correction I mean't CSS not HTML.

      Delete
    2. Quinley: I have heard of Follow.it but I also heard bad things about it but I don't know.

      Wordpress can be challenging, I had tried it also. And yes indeed you have to pay to edit your blog's template. And also if you use the free version, there are advertisements. If you're signed into your blog, you can't see the ads.

      Honestly, I wouldn't actually switch to Wordpress because I really don't like it. I'll probably stick to Blogger since I really do prefer it even if they can be a bit troublesome but they are free so...

      Thank you for coming by. Have a lovely day.

      Delete
  5. I'm the same- I couldn't decide (and didn't want to investigate too hard, honestly) so I didn't decide either!

    I'm having issues with Blogger too. Changing fonts on me, format issues... it's such a pain now.

    I have the same issues with passwords. Honestly there are times I wish I could just turn them all off.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Greg: I think there are very few people who use email subscriptions for blogs but maybe I'm wrong but lots of people are using feed readers so...

      Blogger - if they don't exist, I guess none of us would be here but sometimes it's nice to share my complaints with other Blogger users.

      I think for some gadgets, maybe portable ones that might get lost, you have to keep the passwords on but I don't know. I rarely lose my gadgets but I seem to lose other thing.

      Thank you for coming by. Have a lovely day.

      Delete
  6. "I was going to go with mailchimp but they needed a mailing/physical address for reasons I can't understand."
    I believe Jen has updated her post about email subscription since she first published it:
    https://www.jenryland.com/best-free-services-for-email-blog-subscriptions/
    I'm using MailerLite without an address...(see post above).

    "Now whenever I want to edit one of the gadgets I have to go to the Dashboard and under Layout."
    Uh. I hadn't noticed it before. Another improvement...🙄

    "So what do you think of this art? Worthy of being printed on a tote bag that one carries around?"
    Um...very basic...and boring. Honestly, you are in a totally different league 👍.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Roberta: I must have read and re-read that blog post several times with and without updates but I still couldn't decide which service to use. MailerLite sounded good but I don't know.

      Some Blogger improvements just boggles me because I can't understand why they would remove useful tools.

      That art by Luke Wohlgemuth, I think certain people like that style but I guess I didn't. And thank you for your kind words.

      Thank you for coming by. Have a lovely day.

      Delete

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