Sharing photos, videos, vintage images I've discovered, and -- occasionally -- commentary and thoughts from retired life and travels.

blogging

Taking a step–or several–back.

May 24, 2011

The tagline for this blog says that the blog is about sharing photos and images along with occasional commentary.

Lately, there’s not been much of any of any of that.

I’ve selected and randomly sorted a large number of my photos and collected images – and I’m going to start posting them on a fairly regular basis, starting tomorrow.  Some of the pictures will have appeared here before; most, though, will be posted for the first time.

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Post image for Travel Journal and Travel Photos–Hope for better results.

Travel Journal and Travel Photos–Hope for better results.

March 11, 2011

IMGP3797I’ve always had the best intentions in the past for blogging about our trips, complete with descriptions and photos of some of what we have seen and done.  Unfortunately, with the seeing and doing, the blogging can’t keep up, I get further and further behind and end up not sharing all that I had hoped to share.

I  think on our next trip that I’ll take a different approach.  During the trip I’ll record what we do and see using the camera, a handwritten journal, and brochures from places we visit.

imageBlog posts will be developed sequentially from the journal entries and photos at some point when I have the time to sit down and write.  Sometimes a single day of our exploring, doing and seeing may play out over several daily blog posts.

Hopefully this will give me a plan for better sharing of our future trips.  I do intend to continue posting and sharing material from past trips that I have not yet shared or which has become “lost” over the years.

With my current employment situation, we won’t be doing as much traveling this year as we have in previous years, so my opportunities for trying this plan are going to be slim.

The photos on this post are from a 2007 weekend trip to Dallas, Texas.

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Spearfish leaves

March 10, 2011

Spearfish Falls, near Savoy, South Dakota

This image is from Spearfish Falls, near Savoy, South Dakota — the falls are the backdrop. It was taken on  August 26, 2007, and is from another of the lost Exit78 blog posts that I am recovering.

2007 08 26 341These falls were pretty neat.  However, the lighting was bad.  It was about 2 in the afternoon and the falls were already in almost complete shadow.

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Political Correctness.–Recovered blog post 01.

February 28, 2011

Give me a break!

I hear now the board that’s used in a classroom can’t be called a black board or a white board. From what I understand, it’s derogatory to blacks or to whites if you use that kind of descriptive words – it’s either chalk board or marker board.

I guess it’s a good thing that there’s not anyone that might be traumatized by the use of the words chalk or marker.

I don’t know what you would call the boards then.

Read the rest of this October 20, 2004 post (recovered February 26, 2011).

A few years back, when moving the blog location, I lost many of my older blog posts and images. Recently, while exploring the Internet Archive WayBackMachine, I discovered much of what I had lost.  I’ll be restoring the lost material and will share some of the better “recovered blog posts.”

 

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A reconstructed history of my general purpose blog(s).

February 26, 2011

imageToday, I found and recovered my very first blog post – and have posted it here on the date it was originally published, September 14, 2004.  It was recovered from the Internet Archive’s WayBackMachine.

As best as I can tell, I abandoned Skedaddle’s Log after only a very few blog posts.  During the next month, I established 3 niche  blogs and North Farnham Freeholder, with all but that very first post moved to it.

I had been trying to make some income online for a while. At the time there was no way to place ads on blogspot  (which was also known as blogger).  After looking at several different blogging platforms, I decided to self-host and use WordPress, moving North Farnham Freeholder to the web host I had been using for a while.

A couple of years later, Exit78 was established, with many of the old posts being moved to exit78.com/weblog.  Then, in early 2009, my blogging at Exit78 was moved to the root directory, exit78.com.  Unfortunately, I made a change that wouldn’t let me access the original Exit78 location and, when I tried to fix that, I ended up losing many of the older posts.

imageI’ve been able to recover quite a few over time and, yesterday, found that many that hadn’t been recovered were available on the Internet Archive WayBack Machine.  I’ll be recovering those, republishing them here on Exit78 at their original publish date.

Do remember when you first started blogging?

Do you still have or can you find your very first blog post?

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Blogging hidden–or in full view?

February 25, 2011

Anonymous by Suraj Shakya (mypresense on flickr)
Anonymous by mypresense – imageSome Rights Reserved

 

A lot of bloggers choose to blog anonymously, using a pseudonym or part of their name instead of their full name. Others choose to blog in full view, using their real names.

In Anonymous Blogging 101: a Quick and Dirty Primer – a  July 2010 guest post on Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger –  Treacle from The Lingerie Addict expounds on three reasons for anonymous blogging

  1. Privacy & Safety
  2. Honesty
  3. Personality and character

Treacle also also writes:

  • The only foolproof way to keep from being found out is to never blog at all. Therefore, you should start blogging under the assumption that you’ll be discovered one day. It’s depressing, I know, but it’s important to think about. One day, someone will recognize you and very possibly expose you. So, before blogging about anything, think about the potential consequences of that exposure. Whether it’s losing your jobs, losing your kids, or losing your freedom be prepared for the worst possible outcome.
  • Anonymous blogging is not a free pass to be an asshole. Aside from the possibility that you’ll eventually be found out (see above), you are what you blog. Nice, nasty, or in between the people you attract are going to reflect what you write.

    • When I first started blogging, way back in 2004, I did like many others, posting my blog anonymously.  Then, at some point, I decided to use my name instead.  I remember reading the pros and cons of anonymous blogging and came down on the side of blogging in full view.

    So far as my personality and what I’m willing to say online, I’ve found that there is very little difference in how I blog now compared to when I was blogging anonymous.

    I’d be interested in hearing the thoughts of others on anonymous blogging.

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    “Are you Larry?”–more about our accident–and the blogging link.

    December 28, 2010

    2010 12 27 003ed

    Our car

    (continued from Our accident)

    I remember Karen talking to one of the EMTs like she knew him.  It turned out she did – sort of.

    I think the encounter went something like this:

    Karen immediately recognized one of the EMTs when she saw him through the windshield as they were coming around the front of the car.

    As they started checking her over, she asked, “Are you Larry?”

    Somewhat surprised, he said that he was.  When Karen told him, “I know your wife, Vivian,” he asked how she knew her.

    Karen replied, “Blogging, email, quilting.”

    He responded with another question, “Are you C.J. or Karen?”

    Karen, C.J., and Vivian had been commenting on each others blogs for quite some time.  Last year, they met for lunch and had arranged to do it again this week – tomorrow, in fact.  Karen recognized Larry because Vivian had just posted a photo of him making Christmas breakfast.

    On her blog, Karen says, “– it felt really reassuring to me even though I had never met him.  It was like I knew I was in good hands.”

    ———-

    Karen is getting around a lot better today.  Her chest still hurts a lot and she has pains all over, kind of like the all over pains you get from the flu, except she doesn’t have the flu.

    Yesterday, I went to the wrecker yard and got all of our stuff out of the car.  It’s seven years old and I’d be very surprised if it could be fixed for the approximate $5,000 the car is worth on Kelly Blue Book.  Unfortunately, I don’t have any of the insurance information for the driver of the other car.  It’ll be in the police report, which my insurance company is supposed to obtain.  The other driver was cited by the police officer which establishes fault for the insurance purposes.

    This car was the one we towed behind our motor home, so if it’s totaled, we’ll have make sure to get a replacement that can be towed.

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    Limiting comment period on blog because of spam, spam, and more spam.

    December 18, 2010

    imageHave you been seeing a large increase in the amount of spam comments on your blog?

    I sure have…, and I’ve taken temporary action to limit it.

    imageI went to the discussion link under Settings on the WordPress dashboard.

    Once there, I enabled the  option  to automatically close comments and, for now, I’m setting the time period to 4 days.  After a post has been up for 4 days, comment will be closed.

    image

    I had had this option set for a long time to limit the amount of spam, but, for some reason, a few weeks back, I had disabled it.

    Hopefully, this surge of spam will fall to more normal levels and I will reset the period that comments are open to a somewhat longer duration.

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    What I’ve been working on

    November 30, 2010

    Most of the online work that I have been doing lately has been associated with my civil war blog, adding entries that will be posted at some point in the future.  The following is cross-posted from that blog.

    Introduction to some of the letter, journal and diary writers from 1860 and 1861 who will appear on the pages of Daily Observations from The Civil War.

    A major part of my approach to the war is to present observations made in letters, journals, and diaries by people living the war and its impacts. My hope is that this will often result in our being able to “see” the progress of events from a variety of perspectives.

    In most instances, I will be including all of what was included in the published versions of their writings, no matter how mundane. Some will have entries for almost every day while, with others, there will be long lapses without writing.

    I have a large number of posts already scheduled for future publication in “Daily Observations from The Civil War,” including material from the following writers:

    Dora Richards Miller, "War Diary of a Union Woman in the South"

    Mary Boykin Chesnut, "A Diary From Dixie"

    Lincoln Administration Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Wells, "Diary of Gideon Welles"

    Susan Bradford Eppes, "Through Some Eventful Years"

    Horatio King, Postmaster General at the end of the Buchanan administration

    Catherine Cowles Richards, "Village Life in America 1852 - 1872"

    The Woolseys of New York, "Letters of a Family During the War for the Union"

    DNC Chairman August Belmont, "A Few Letters and Speeches of the Late Civil War"

    John Beuchamp Jones, "A Rebel War Clerk's Diaray at the Confederate States Capital." (Image is from 1845 political cartoon)

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    Blogs and Diaries

    November 14, 2010

    I’ve been spend a bit of time working on the civil war blog, Daily Observations from The Civil War, and, as a result, have been missing from here for a bit.  However, since much of what will be posted in that blog is going to be time relevant, I want to get a good handle on it before things really start happening.

    It’s highly likely that I will be going back to work for another 6 month stint beginning in January which means that I’ll be working during the 150th anniversary of the run-up to and beginning of the civil war.  The amount of time that I’ll have for working on the blog will, thus, be limited – which is the reason for the effort now.

    imageI’m currently working with  “Village Life in America, 1852 – 1872,” by Caroline Cowles Richards.  I went ahead and back posted entries from the early days of her diary and am pre-posting entries after November 14, 1860 so each will be published on the applicable day.

    Things were going fine until I discovered the e-text I was using didn’t match the text in the pdf copy I was using to check spelling and wording against.  I had already run into missing text earlier, but had just assumed that an error had been made in electronic transcription.

    richards_catherine_cowlesBut, then, I ran into an instance where the entry in the pdf version for a particular date had a lot more information and detail.

    It turns out that the pdf version is a “new and enlarged” edition.

    In looking into it a little further, it turns out that it is at least the third published edition of Miss Richard’s diary and, probably, has entries included that were left out of the previous editions.

    So now I am going back and comparing editions and adding new posts where they were omitted.

    Of course, if I used the e-text and pdf for the same edition, there wouldn’t have been any discrepency to be found.

    I’ll be incorporating more diaries into the blog, but I’ll make sure that the text and pdf versions are from the same source document.

    2500I mentioned in an earlier post that I had joined with two others on The American Civil War page on facebook. That was 3 weeks ago and the “friend” count for the page was 1,385.  Today, it went over 2,500.

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