Five Years! No Way.

Well I’ll be jiggered. I received a notification from WordPress yesterday telling me that it was the fifth anniversary of my signing up to WordPress. I could hardly believe it. I suppose it does not seem this long since I only actively started blogging about one and a half years ago. Initially a blog with no plan, okay that hasn’t changed much, I only rarely posted, and by rarely I mean much more rarely than now, if you can believe that.

I am sure that all of us have different reasons to be appreciative of WordPress, be that the opportunity to express our views, promote our work, meet new people, etc. For me, I have the ultimate reason to be grateful to WordPress as it is through WordPress that I met the love of my life, Ionia Martin, as most of you know. In fact, that moment feels more like the time that I first started blogging, hence my amazement at the fifth anniversary notification.

So it appears that I have made it to five years. Will I still be here in another five? Well, that remains to be seen.

154th Post

Just having posted my last ‘Collection Book of the Week’ post I noticed that I had completely missed my 150th post. Fuck! I was looking for that opportunity to mention this monumental landmark in my blogging adventure. I guess I must have missed it with my erratic posting schedule, and of course the excitement of WordPress informing of my four years of blogging. That however now seems a little sad that I have only just managed over 150 posts in that four years plus.

So a mini, very mini post here to mention the leaping of that 150th post hurdle. Long may it continue and I look forward to the 200th post.

Four Years of WordPress

So the other day I received an email from WordPress informing me that I had registered with them four years ago.

Shit, I thought, that seems a long time, four years. No way! I looked and am only just coming up to my 150^th post. What the fuck have I been doing all this time? 150 posts in four years. That is less than 40 a year on average. Yes, I am quite sure most of you could have done that insanely, complex piece of  mathematics yourself, but I have been used to living in a nanny state, where spoon feeding everyone has become the norm. So why so long, and why so few posts? When you take into account that nigh on 130 of those posts have been made this year, you may ask yourself why I even had a blog in those days. You and me both, believe me.

This blog was started, in the main, as a vehicle for work. My original intent was to use it to write about current hot topics in environmental chemistry and analysis. This would then be used to drive traffic to the company website, in much the same way I envisaged twitter working for us. That turned out to be so boring and uninspiring that I almost never posted, and certainly not on topic. Over time, the blog morphed to become a little more personal and then I made one of the most important decisions of my life. That decision was to start to blog on a more regular basis, and on something I actually cared about, books and literature, although as you all know, I am also partial to the occasional lewd comment.

It has been amazing having somewhere to share my thoughts regarding the things that I am passionate about. Literature, books, and reading, in particular. Having somewhere that there are other people willing, and able, to discuss those passions has been so immensely rewarding.

I have met many wonderful people here since making this change and I would like to thank everyone that has made blogging such an enjoyable experience. I hope that readers of this blog occasionally find some value in my posts. Of course, I never expected to find love through blogging, but that happened too. Like I said, it was a pivotal moment in my life, when I started blogging again, although I didn’t know this at the time.

So here is to another four years. Who knows what I will be doing with this blog then, or indeed if it will even exist. Thank you once again, to one and all, for being part of my extremely enjoyable WordPress experience.

Comments, especially lewd ones, (see the tagline above), are appreciated, as always.

Pictures Whilst Absent from WordPress

I have been mostly absent from WordPress for the last week and will not be back properly for a little while yet. I thought I would just post a few photographs to remind people that I am still alive. Also my collection book of the week post should appear tomorrow, at some point, assuming I have scheduled it properly. Enjoy the photographs.

I hope you enjoyed the photographs. Just to whet your appetites and leave you with a sense of anticipation for tomorrow, the collection book of the week this week will be another Enid Blyton book, from the Secret Seven Series this time.

I Like You

I imagine that the topic of the like button (or icon, or call it what you will), has been covered before, probably many times, but I don’t remember seeing anything, so I am going to discuss this and ask some questions.

What are you doing when you click like on a blog post? What exactly is it that you are liking?

So by liking a post are you providing support to the poster, are you saying that you like the message of the post, or that you think it is well written? I guess that it can mean different things on different occasions. It is a multipurpose like button. It can mean different things to different people and different things in different contexts. Surely I am not getting philosophical about the like button on blog posts, whatever next? Am I just over thinking this?

I know that I sometimes find myself feeling strangely guilty when I click like on a post where someone has revealed something bad or personal about themselves, or that they are sick. I know I am doing it as a means of showing them my support, but I always have that strange nagging feeling of guilt in the back of my mind that I am saying that I like the fact that they are sick.

Another related thought I was having was about how real is the number of likes that we receive for a particular blog post? How many people just go to a post and click like in support of the person that has written it, rather than actually having read the post? How many people go to blogs and click like with the expectation that the blogger will return and visit their own blog? Strange the thoughts that run through your mind at work, where incidentally WordPress never seems to work properly.

I wonder what other buttons I can pick on, or press. What is it with me and buttons, and particularly with pressing buttons? I seem to vaguely remember a post I did not so long again regarding the reblog button, or was that just about reblogging rather than the button itself, I forget. I do hope I haven’t developed a WordPress button obsession, that would be kind of sad. I prefer my fetishes to be a little more exotic than that.

So how do you view the like button, and in particular your use of it? Should I say ‘How do you like the like button?’, or is that altogether too many likes in one place? When do you click like? Do you always click like if you go to a post?  I must like questions – Is there a button for that?

Perhaps there should be some alternatives, maybe I support you or I’m thinking of you buttons.

Oh, and remember, you can always leave me a comment or click my like button.

Another Complaint

I received another complaint about my blog yesterday from Ionia. This has begun to become rather a common place occurrence. Sadly it is another legitimate comment, as usual. This one was regarding the tagline associated with my blog. Essentially I have been far too lazy to have ever bothered to change it from the default of ‘JUST ANOTHER WORDPRESS.COM WEBLOG’.

This led me to thinking about what I could change it to that would be more descriptive of either the content of my blog or of me in general. I had a few ideas, but I am really quite undecided about what to change it to. I thought that I would get the opinion of you guys to help me out. I have put a few suggestions below and would like to get your comments on which you think would be the best line to use. Feel free to suggest alternatives in the comments also.

So a few crap suggestions from me, I do hope you can come up with something better:

 

My Reading Experiences

This, that and the other

The F!*?ing Englishman

The Ravings of a Madman

 

Please help me!

Strange WordPress Behaviour

Ever think that you are being got at by technology? Sometimes I feel that WordPress is doing some strange things, behaving weirdly. For some time I have been getting comments from a blog that I have not signed up for and do not really want. Odd. Then I have been sitting here thinking that this person, or that person, hasn’t posted for a while. I go and check their blog and find that they have been posting and I have just not been receiving emails when they do post. I investigate further and find that for some reason I am no longer following them. How can this be. I have not unfollowed anyone that I have started following. So unless multiple people are somehow blocking me or stopping me from following them, which is certainly possible, but since I have now refollowed them ok, seems unlikely, then something very strange is going on.

In addition, a couple of weeks ago my twitter account became disconnected from my blog. For no apparent reason.

If it seems like I have only just started following you, when in truth it has been a while, I apologise. I didn’t unfollow you, please believe me.

Is it just me or has anyone else experienced odd behaviour from WordPress? Please comment and set my mind at rest that is not just some spiteful trick that WordPress is playing on me personally?