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Can You Share My Posts Now?

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

Happy puppy open mouth | LuvBat

Ragnar the Happy Puppy, once a business associate of Byron the Quokka, has found that the “301 Whatsit Permanently Moved” message that used to scuttle my Facebook posts is now gone as mysteriously as it came; and also the little “share” buttons now have numbers in them again (WordPress blames that glitch on Facebook).

I would like to know, now, if my readers are able to share my posts with others on Facebook. I’m sure some of you have given up trying.  But the only way I’ll know if it’s working is for readers to share my posts. The more it gets shared, the higher the little number in the button. Sorry, but that’s about as hi-tech as my language gets.

For that matter, yes, I do know that many of us have learned to despise Facebook, and for good reason. But for the time being, that’s what I have and that’s what I must use.

Meanwhile, I’m short 100 views a day, or more–still haven’t solved that mystery. But if a bunch of you each share two or three posts, at least I’ll know it.

P.S.–Since I wrote this, all the little numbers in the blue buttons have disappeared again. You could just scream.

Meanwhile, Re-Farmer has reported that she was able to share my posts on Facebook if she visited the blog through Google Chrome instead of Firefox.

So you might want to try that.

If I Was a Business, I’d Be Out of Business

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

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The numbers are in. Calloo, callay, oh frabjous day.

Compared with the first six months of this year, our blog has lost 100 views a day, these past three months. Do I know why? Nope. Do I even suspect why? Nope.

This is the year the locust has eaten down to the ground.

Well, two hymn requests have come in this morning, and I think I’ll post them. Why not?

I’m Already Tired

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

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Ha, ha, ha. It makes for such funny video, when the goofy cat gets her head stuck in a bag.

But it’s not so funny when it happens in four in the morning.

I was awakened in the dark by a sound of frantic rattling. Believe it or not, I knew instantly what it was: one of our cats had gotten her head stuck in the handles of a shopping bag and was running all over the bedroom in a panic. Shamble out of bed, turn lights on so you can extricate the cat. Only now she’s gone. Lights out, try to go back to sleep because I’m desperately tired. But the cat had only paused to draw her breath. Now she’s running all around the room again. Lights on. Stumble. Ah! Got her. C’mon, let Daddy help… and I got the bag off and am free to continue my hopeless pursuit of a decent night’s sleep.

Oh. And she managed to break a plate, too. Ha, ha, ha.

‘An Unintelligible Message’ (2016)

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I still don’t know what a minified exception is, or why it was necessary to warn me that one had occurred.

What is the blooming point of any message that sounds like Constable Chumley wrote it?

An Unintelligible Message

We have more communications devices and less communication than ever before in human history. Have you tried to talk to anyone who’s always up to his eyebrows in text messages? “Use the non-minified dev environment…” Gee, thanks for that advice!

What is our civilization’s chief problem? No, it’s not “systemic racism”!

It’s systemic idiocy–and good luck trying to solve it!

To My Fellow Christian Bloggers

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Mourning Dove Identification, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology

I have for years enjoyed sharing, with my readers, posts by other Christian bloggers. It pleased me to think I was widening their audience, and you all seemed very happy about it.

But now I can’t share your posts, and it’s not my fault.

First WordPress took away my Reblog function. Something about “you’re on a business plan, you’re not allowed reblog.” Then I discovered the “Share” button, that little symbol that looks like this >, and as long as I was sharing Christian posts that appeared on my Reader, it was just as good as a reblog.

But yesterday I was told I don’t have “Share” anymore–because the hoozit isn’t shebangled with the booscus and a hay-na-nonny and a ha-cha-cha. Oh, they’d let me have “Share” if I used their brand-new totally-impossible-to-understand “Block Editor.” I’ve seen it. I couldn’t use that if my life depended on it.

I have tried to explain to the WP Happiness Engineers. “This is your technology, not mine. I am just a passenger–and you don’t ask the passenger to come out of the plane and do maintenance on the jet engine. You need to be more user-friendly!” They say they’ll see what they can do, to allow me to Share even if I’m using the standard editing format that I’ve used for years. Betcha if their boss told them to find a way or else, they’d find one. But I’ll be very much surprised if they actually solve my problem for me.

So, guys, that’s why I’m not sharing your posts anymore: I want to, but I can’t. They won’t let me.

All I can do is keep pestering WordPress about it.

The Art of Reading

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

The Original Art of Narnia (article and pictures) Pauline Baynes (illustrator) | Las cronicas de narnia, Ilustraciones de cuentos, Narnia

“I only read non-fiction.”

“I only read comics.”

“I don’t read at all.”

The story-teller’s art is as old as humanity itself; and since the invention of the printing press, the story-teller’s audience has grown by leaps and bounds. Until now.

If you love a movie or a TV show, be it known that somebody had to write it before anyone could film it. And someone had to read it. But fewer and people are reading. Fewer and fewer are getting the stories.

Reading is one of those things you get better at, the more you do it. I can tell you that as a person trained to teach developmental reading. Even without someone to coach you, if you keep at it, reading will come easier and easier to you. And for a good reader, with the right kind of book, it’s like having a movie playing in your mind.

How much the poorer I would be, without reading! Never to have stepped through the wardrobe into Narnia, never to have watched Lord Peter Wimsey solve a mystery, never to have roamed the dead sea bottoms of Barsoom, nor visited The Shire, nor explored the ocean’s depths with Captain Nemo–oh, but I could go on all day!

Just to show you I’m not trying to trick you with a stealth commercial, let me say it out in the open: yeah, you ought to read my Bell Mountain books.

Now, what good does it do to fill our heads with stories that are not true? Always bearing in mind that the parables of Our Lord Jesus Christ were not about real people, real events, and so, strictly speaking, “untrue.”

For one thing, these fictional stories do contain abundant truth. They can serve as parables. They can teach moral truths.

For another, stories, like sleep, can knit the raveled sleeve of care (borrowing a line from Shakespeare). When your life begins to look like the lyrics of the Car 54, Where Are You? theme song, you can escape into your favorite books–or into new stories altogether, to see what you might discover.

The more you read, the more you’ll retain; and the more of your reading you retain, the better you’ll be at expressing your own thoughts. I realize that applies to all reading, not just reading fiction. But it certainly doesn’t not apply to reading fiction.

Reading is good for you! Period. Civilization would never have gotten anywhere without it.

 

Not a Great Start to a Great Day

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

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I feel like going back to bed. Or just sitting on a lily-pad all day.

My allergies have decided to drop in and kill me for a while, and my knee still isn’t right.

Democrats are bragging about how they’re gonna wipe out our republic, and nobody does anything about it. Attorney General Barr acts like he’s got all the time in the world to see to this. But we all know he’s almost out of time.

I pick up new followers every day; and yet every day my blog readership shrinks a little more. Or a lot more. The numbers are back where they were in 2016. This is disheartening. Work hard, be creative, try to give the readers what they want–none of it has any effect at all. If I were a business, I’d be going under.

The virus panic and *The Great Quarantine Of Healthy People* has gotten to me, I guess–and gotten, I don’t doubt, to hundreds of my readers. If I still have hundreds left. We feel so blaaaaah! And it doesn’t help our morale knowing that mail-in vote fraud is going to do to us what Hitler and Tojo couldn’t do. Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne and all his Hessian mercenaries couldn’t do what mail-in voter fraud can do. And once they’re back in power, they’ll make sure we can never vote them out. One way or another, they’ll make sure.

Did I mention that something or someone has removed all my Facebook shares going back years into the archives? I guess they’re really, really mad at me for not begging for a ticket on the transgender express. You’re not allowed to have that opinion anymore.

I want a nice soft lily-pad.

Is Our Facebook Back to Work?

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

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It looks like that nagging “301 Moved Permanently” message has been removed and no longer blocks you from sharing our Facebook posts. (If you hadn’t noticed, the posts go up in Patty’s Facebook page.)

The only way I can be sure is if some of you try to share today’s FB posts, or yesterday’s, and then let me know whether you were able to do it.

Meanwhile, I heard from WordPress yesterday that the loss of my “Share” function is a bug at their end and they’re trying to fix it. It’s their technology, they ought to be able to fix it without too much trouble. Unless their technology has been added to, taken from, and played with to the point where they themselves don’t understand it anymore.

So try sharing a post or two, please, and let me know how you make out.

Two Hot Flashes from Byron the Quokka!

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

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I don’t know who wrote that “hot flashes” headline! It should have been “hot news flashes! It should also have been three hot news flashes.

First, there are only 146 comments to go, to reach 65,000 and have a winner in our current comment contest. And this time the grand prize (there he goes again–there’s only one prize) will either be an autographed copy of His Mercy Endureth Forever (first edition, collectors’ item, etc.) or an autographed fli-back paddle ball toy.

Second, I don’t know how, but suddenly that annoying “301 error” message has disappeared from our Facebook posts on Patty’s Facebook page. We’re glad to see it go.

Third–now what was it?–oh, yeah! Quokka University will offer a course on how to read this blog. This is because we’re afraid people are missing special features like Joe Collidge and Oy, Rodney by not backing up a day or two and reading them. You don’t have to read them on the same day they were posted. We’ll also go into the wonderful treasure-trove of the blog archives, going all the way back to late 2011. Do you realize there are literally thousands of blog posts you could read? I’d never do it myself, but it’s all there if you want it.

To attend Quokka University, all you have to do is come to Rottnest Island. There is a rumor that if you close your eyes, click your heels together three times, and bellow out our Latin motto, “Ipso loquitur mannimota,” you will be instantly transported to our campus. I can’t test that because I’m already here. If you can make it work, please let us know! Make sure you tell us where you get transported to.

Patty’s Return to the Supermarket

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

Stop & Shop, union seek 'extended first responder' designation - Connecticut Post

My wife has COPD, which puts her in a very high-risk group for the Chinese Communist coronavirus. Consequently, it’s been six months since she’d been inside anywhere but our own apartment. That’s a long time to be cooped up, and it was getting to her.

So yesterday I urged her to shop with me today. “You need a change,” I said. “You need to see the interior of some place other than just this apartment. So come to the store with me. Wear your mask under your nose, so you can breathe, and your face shield, and come into the store and push a cart around–even if only for a few minutes. You can put all your stuff in my cart for checkout, so you won’t have to stand in line. It’ll do you good! After all, all those clerks have been there every day since March and none of them have gotten sick.”

And for once I was right. “I enjoyed that!” she admitted. “The other night I dreamed I went shopping again: that tells you how much I’ve missed it. I’m so glad I did this, and I’ll do it again on Monday!” Yeah, I think it pumped her up.

Getting back to normal life ought to be at the top of America’s to-do list.