Blog housekeeping
Item one: I mention this in the comments occasionally but the message is failing to percolate and furthermore people forget. Hey! Forgetting is my job! I don’t read or answer comments from the front end, at the bottoms of their entries, but in one long combined list at the back end of site admin. This is faster for me to deal with and I’m afraid it’s all about faster. I don’t have time to answer comments as it is, I just enjoy it.* But from there I can’t easily track back to previous comments on a thread; you’re supposed to be able to click through to ‘view all’ but it doesn’t work–and I don’t have time to hunt around. Therefore would you please copy and paste some hint what we’re talking about if you’re continuing a conversation? (Even if it’s a conversation with someone else . . . It’s a public blog, and I like to eavesdrop.)
Item two: please remember that I haven’t a clue about site running, maintenance, adjustment, blah. I can barely copy and paste entries, load photos** and answer comments. All such remarks and queries should go to Blogmom. Something like the counter clock it makes sense to ask me because I might not want one for some reason . . . but generally speaking please feel free to leave me out of the tech loop. I occasionally get emails from people who want to make helpful suggestions and I sit there staring at this stuff thinking ‘you have mistaken me for someone who runs her own blog. Permit me to disillusion you’.
Item three: It really bothers me that Anonymous is still putting in so regular an appearance in the comments. I’m aware that there’s some wrinkle in WordPress that means this happens more easily than it should, and again, people forget or are away from home or on a new computer.*** There are still far too many anonymice. This may be a bit deranged, but anonymous to me is anti-community, and this is, for better or sillier, a community.† Please feel free to create an alternative personality with a name borrowed from your favourite novel–as long as you read books and are nice to the rest of us you’re welcome here. While the Robin McKinley you see here is certainly familiar to anyone who knows me in three dimensions, I would be the first to declare she’s had a certain amount of spin put on her.†† And I don’t care if you belong officially or not: but if WordPress isn’t providing you with a name automagically please think of a unique identifying glob of symbols that suits/amuses you and sign it at the bottom.
Item four: And, speaking of the iniquities of WordPress, it eats comments occasionally. I’ve written maybe half a dozen that simply never appeared. Sometimes I get that confounded ‘slow down, you’re posting too fast’ message. Sometimes a comment . . . just doesn’t appear. What happens a good deal oftener is that something I’ve unscreened rescreens itself again. I do take a quick troll through and look for these, but inevitably I’m not catching all of them. If you’ve posted something, ahem, innocuous, and it’s never materialised . . . send it again. The only ones I delete are . . . um . . . rude. Or hilariously over-personal.††† But remember also that I usually only burn through here and do the unscreening once a day. If you posted just as I was checking out the night/morning before, you’ll have twenty-four hours till it emerges blinking into the computer ether.
PS: I was reading the summer issue of BRITISH HORSE over supper. There was a review of a book on riding that ended like this: Would I advise you to buy it? Yes and no. Yes, because . . . it would be a useful book for the newcomer to riding . . . and a worthwhile read for the student instructor. No because it’s an e-book–I do like a book I can pull off the shelf and refer to at a moment’s notice. Perhaps the author can be persuaded to publish the book in a more traditional form?
Hmmm.
And has anyone been to Baen’s Bar recently? Several of you–including Ithilien in her magisterial post on e-books–have mentioned it as an example of what on line bookishness can do, so I tried to go investigate. The opening page says they’ve moved the furniture and everyone has to re-login. I’m new anyway, so I created an account, dutifully responded to the official email . . . and it wouldn’t let me in. It denied the password I had been told I could choose, and reenter to confirm . . . and when I gave up and asked them to send it to me‡, it was one of those automated-gibberish collections of letters and numbers. . . and it wouldn’t accept that one either. Whereupon the noise level around here increased abruptly.
Right. I’m going back to a nice paper book right now.
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* Mostly. Occasionally, at 2 am . . .
** And this rarely does not involve screaming
*** I hadn’t realised that I hadn’t checked in here from my newest littlest cutest knapsackiest computer and I was using it at the mews while the usual mews laptop was at the Computer Spa having mudpacks and saunas, and I signed on and it wouldn’t let me in. Paaaaanic.
† I know I’ve said this before, but I’ll probably say it again. I was so not expecting this when I took this blog schtick on. Community? On line? With a bunch of people you’ve never met? Come on. I am not a character in funny font in a Douglas Coupland novel.
†† Sometimes I can hear fairy laughter echoing through the ether when I post.
††† Do you really think I’m going to list everyone I’ve been to bed with, ages, genders, and success levels? I was laughing for days after that one. –It might be worth noting that obtrusiveness about my private life will mostly make me laugh. Obtrusiveness about my books . . . it’s a rare reader who truly gets alongside the author of a book. This is the source of my answer to the question ‘What single thing would improve the quality of your life most?’ which is ‘That readers would learn the difference between ‘this book didn’t work for me’ and ‘this book sucks dead bears’. ’ This is in the Imaginary Interview on the old web site, and will no doubt reappear on the new one.
‡ I know I’m middle-aged, crumbly, and forgetful, but even I would find it challenging to forget the password I had only just chosen ten seconds ago
blogmom: subscribe by email, part deux
If you are having problems with Feedburner Email, there isn’t anything I can do to troubleshoot but I can offer some tips that may help you figure it out yourself. Read more
Blogmom: subscribe via email
More bloggy goodness courtesy of your Blogmom. You can now choose to receive Robin’s blog posts via email. Any day there are new posts, you will receive an email via Feedburner Email. If you change your mind later, every email has an unsubscribe link at the bottom. Look for the Subscribe via Email box in the left-hand column of the homepage or simply click this link: Subscribe to Robin McKinley’s Blog by Email
Silly hellhounds, editorial muted shrieks
So, is everyone seeing them side by side with the right-hand text column bang through the right-hand one? I loaded them to follow each other, and when I tried to move them around just now, nothing happens back here at the edit window, but when I click back through to what’s showing on the blog of course they’ve climbed on top of each other. So I dragged them back. I hope. Whimper. Blogmom, help. . . . There has got to be a way, but the $64K question is can I learn it?
More Peter’s garden. Maybe. I hope.
Okay, we’re going to try this one more time. And then I’m going to go throw myself into the ocean* because of course it’s not going to work. Except that apparently it did work last time and I didn’t know it because it wasn’t working for me. I tried to post two more photos of Peter’s garden in–such cheek–one entry, plus a little text. I mean, really, what was I thinking of? What am I thinking of now? So last night I did this** and clicked ‘publish’ and . . . both photos and the text were sitting on top of one another. The photos were sort of run together and you could see edges of words sticking out like a fringe. Arrrrrgh. So I went back and forth for a while–behind the scenes it looked fine–and when nothing I did changed the way it looked live I deleted the beggar. And then got a message from jmeadows saying that a perfectly good post where nothing was sitting on anything else had disappeared while she was looking at it. . . . Whimper.
Okay, no we’re not going to try it again. The first photo appears to have loaded the way it should and maybe we’ll just put the second photo in its own entry. . . .
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* I think we had this conversation a few days ago. My standard self-immolation threat for many years was that I was going to throw myself into the ocean which, from Maine, Manhattan and Boston, had a certain ring to it. From inland Hampshire . . . not so much. But I’m getting very frustrated with the Photo Situation and I don’t want to use flickr! I want to click to robinmckinleysblog and see beautiful^ pictures of roses and gardens (and hellhounds) shining out at me!
^ Or possibly merely odd. See below. Or above. Or tomorrow.
** The text said that I wished to point out only slightly disgruntledly that all three of these photos of Peter’s garden are from the highest of high summer last year. This is a garden in full hurrah mode, not a late spring garden working up to it.