The memory tourist: some blogging retrospection

unpopular, 2023

To celebrate 17 years of blogging, here's the final post. Perhaps you think 17 years is a long time to be blogging but actually I counted the first 10 years as practice because it took me that long to be comfortable doing it. I still think I'm a newbie since I'm too lazy to learn some of the newer things.
    Thank you to those who stuck with me all these years (and through various blogs) and hopefully will continue to support me. Your visits and comments keeps me from quitting blogging although I'm sure there are other reasons but I just can't remember now. But it really is mostly you, lovely readers, because without readers, I would be talking to myself which would be fine but honestly, I just think blogging is more enjoyable if there are people talking to each other even through commenting. Thank you, lovely readers. (Title of this post is in reference to having briefly changed my blog name to The memory tourist a while ago.)
    Here are some things I took note of as a blogger and as a reader of blogs:

01 - Moving to new urls is my hobby — No, that's not true, not really but I have done it enough times that it seemed to be true and perhaps it made me look fickle which I probably am. I don't know why I do it but I guess I enjoy being in a new space, even a virtual one. There's something about starting over that kind of appeals to me. Maybe I got tired of the blog name. Maybe it's an excuse to create a new header but I do that anyway without moving to a new url. I don't want to think too much on it. Generally, I think if something makes you happy, you do it. Moving to new urls makes me happy, sort of.

02 - Don't visit blogs you've deleted — Once, I visited a few blogs that I deleted and found someone had used my text for their blog posts which made no sense and anyone could see it made no sense and yet, it's there. Even if they get my old readers to visit their blog, no one would bother with it since the text makes no sense. I think they got my old posts when they claimed my old ur because I had not deleted the posts when I deleted those blogs. They didn't use my images because I deleted them from my google/album/photo account but they probably don't get the images anyway. So now I delete posts before deleting a blog. And then there were some of my old blogs addresses being used for adult content so I don't recommend visiting your old blogs unless you know who had taken over.
    I didn't delete my The Memory of Rain blog and probably never will because I like to keep that around. I really love that blog's name which came from a poem I wrote. I ended up on this blog about four times now so perhaps I might go back there again if I found I need a change from this blog.
    The one reason I delete my blogs (I first delete the posts and then the images from the photo account as simply deleting the posts does not delete the images) is because of storage memory. Your google account and your Blogger account share the same memory storage so if your email or your Blogger exceeds the 15GB limit, you have to pay for more memory. Now 15GB is a lot of memory so it would takes years to exceed it but if you use images that are above 5MB a lot, you will quickly exceed that. I usually make my images under 1MB but these days, with everyone and their high definition screens (or whatever they are called), I'm not sure now. I think using high resolution images in blogs is nice but not so good since it takes up so much memory that we'll all end up paying for memory.

03 - Too much information? — I have noticed over the years bloggers shared quite a lot of intimate things. There were a few people who shared photos of their wounds sometimes without any type of dressing (which I hope people would stop doing). One blogger shared photos of their father's funeral or rather photos of him in his coffin which you see often in movies but it's still odd. There was a blogger who posted a photo of their child naked and wrapped in toilet papers which seemed too personal as anyone can clearly see where everything are. I just don't know what to think. Do you even need to respond or do you just pretend you haven't seen anything? But the one I do remember the most is where one blogger had lost their child and the post titled was 'Devastated but not destroyed' which stayed with me because it was very human and kind of life-affirming.
    Still, when it comes to sharing on the web, I prefer a little discretion or maybe the right word would should be restrain. I'm all for sharing but perhaps some things aren't meant to be shared.

04 - Rude or not? — There was an event (I don't want to be too specific here) and one of the rules was people had to read other people's post. Silly me, I followed the rules and then perhaps was a bit too honest when I said I didn't really want to read their post. And you know what the respond to such a simple comment was? Some rude remarks that I chose to forget but I do remember it was very rude and uncalled for. If you don't like someone's comment, ignore it, delete it out of its existence or simply pretend it never happened. Perhaps I shouldn't said I didn't really want to read that person's post but that's honest and I don't believe in lying. But it definitely didn't warrant such a rude respond. I would have deleted my comment but it was too late. But I decided to leave it at that and I didn't continue the conversation but it really kept me from enjoying the event.

05 - Too simple or not simple enough? — One commentator said he didn't know how to navigate my blog which is exactly how it looked now with one column, stuff at the footer/bottom. What direction one have to give in this instance to let this person know how to navigate my blog? I have no answers for this.
    This did make me think about how my blog is presented. I admit having no sidebar is bit too unconventional but even if I have a sidebar, I doubt it would make a difference. I don't see how to make it easier to navigate aside from changing all the links to something like, click here to read an intro, click here to see some artwork - that could work but that means dumbing down things and making a lot of unnecessary links and having extra long text everywhere which can make any blog look like a jungle.
    This person had a Blogger blog and seemed to have blogged for a long while but they do not how to navigate a one-column blog? Somehow, I didn't quite believe that but I don't know. I'm too familiar with my blog to know what the problem is. Of course now, it's more common to have one-column blogs so how many readers are having problems with such blogs these days?

06 - Blogger or Wordpress? — I have seen many Blogger users switching to Wordpress and their excuse is mostly because of Blogger didn't behave and it sounded like the most logical reason to move but I wonder if that's the only reason. But I think I found it rather strange that when a Blogger user moved their blog to Wordpress, they somehow stoped blogging. Then there were those Wordpress user that switched to Blogger which I have only witnessed two of and somehow, they too, seemed to either slow down or stop blogging. I have seen this too many times to dismiss and it's a curious phenomenon.
    I've read some articles on the web where they recommended new bloggers not use Blogger because it's too old a platform and that most people should use other platforms instead. I do think Blogger (or rather Google) must have put Blogger last on their list for any type of upgrades because they certainly take too long to make changes. But I still prefer Blogger after all these years because I still think they are quite easy to use but mostly because the issues other people have, I rarely have  but maybe I'm too familiar with the platform that I have unconsciously accepted their faults and not quite realized it? Who knows. I like Blogger and will continue to use it unless they discontinue it which probably will means I won't have any web presence. Until then, I'll keep blogging at Blogger.
    
07 - Other platforms I've tried — Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Wordpress, goodreads, bloglovin', Flickr and a few other platforms that I can't remember.
    I did enjoy Twitter a little but I was tired of writing it and I was too slow with posting so I gave it up and when I did thought of rejoining, they changed the rules (with people using more than 140 characters and being allowed to add images, videos), it's no longer the same. It was a bit interesting using Pinterest but you can never pinpoint where the original images came from which always bothered me. Instagram was just okay but kind of hard to interact with other people. Wordpress was not as user-friendly as I would like. Goodreads was fine but I only signed up to enter giveaways but I still find their book recommendation completely off and searching for books is a bit confusing since they don't combine the various book editions into one page. Bloglovin' was fine but I don't think it was all that useful. I think they use users' content to promote themselves but that's just a thought.
    Flickr was fine until I clicked on a link to someone's Flickr page who apparently enjoyed posting nothing but penis photos and of course I was disgusted and closed my browser window but then I turned off images (which you can do back then in Firefox), went back to that link and reported that person. I suppose Flickr didn't have time to evaluate every user but that was just so damm annoying. I'm sure for some people, they can forget seeing such things but for me, it's a shock that took a while to shake off, I had to look up cute kitten photos to keep calm.

08 - Having my own domain was briefly satisfying — I also tried having my own domain (for one blog) via Google and it was fine but I realized I can never have a domain because I can't stay in one url plus you have to keep paying or else your blog wouldn't work. Plus, every domain I wanted to use had been taken although those people just owned the domain, they don't use it and I think some of them offer to sell their domain which I don't know if that's legal.
    Having my own domain was kind of nice for a short period but honestly, it was more of a novelty kind of feeling that wore off after a while. I'm not against people using their own domains but I think it's a waste of money and most people don't bother looking at the address when they click on a link, well, I don't. I have seen a lot of lovely domains addresses but they just end up not being used.

09 - Blogrolls — I still have a blogroll (link is titled bookmarks under the header) - a list of blogs that I follow and I update the list now and then. I don't use feeds nor do I sign up for emails. I prefer to read blogs by going to the blogs. Bloggers work so hard to make their blog look good but if people are looking at them through feeds and emails, they don't see the hard work and besides that, you can't see the extra things on the sidebars or if they add anything new, you won't know. But that's my thinking.
    I have noticed most bloggers no longer have blogrolls any more, at least, one that is updated. I suppose most people uses feeds or get emails so there's no need for a blog list. It's just too bad because I actually found a lot of new blogs browsing other people's blogrolls.

10 - Some videos — I made some videos awhile back and kind of forgotten them but I want to share them today. The first two videos has no sounds because I didn't have the patience to stitch together songs to match the long length. I recommend playing some music (something fast) while watching the first two videos. The first two videos are made using Quicktime and screen recording which means it records everything you do on your computer screen. The chicky dance is done using the Animation tool in Adobe Photoshop and I made 14 drawings for it though it's only 15 seconds long. Miss dotdot came from an art piece which I titled Miss dot-dot of course. (you can check out that artwork under artworks, the link below the header).
    I made the first two for how I made my artworks and the other was for fun. Here are the original post links: Link 1, Link 2, Link 3.

Miss Wings Coloring Timelapse - Sped Up

Winter Bunny Drawing & Coloring Timelapse

chicky dance

If you're a blogger, share some memories of your blogging experience.