A Kindness of Bloggers....and a Fix for Blogger

Image via CrunchBase

In the relatively short time I have been blogging, since April 2009, I have noticed that the overwhelming number of bloggers with whom I have come into contact have been distinguished by their kindness and their respect for other peoples' views.

I have learned a great deal from them.
They have given me new interests, have opened my eyes to photography and styles of music I would never have turned on by choice - have even changed my mind, whose nature normally resembles that of a army pack mule.

Ayak, whose blog about her life in Turkey was one of the first I found, has singlehandedly turned me from someone convinced that if I pressed something the entire contents of the computer would disappear down the plughole to someone that can now copy and paste without having a nervous breakdown.

Phil, whose wonderful Blogitandscarper is in abeyance at the moment, opened my eyes to what could be done with images.

Owen, whose Magic Lantern Show made me use my eyes when out and about.

The Diary of Amy Rigby, which opened up worlds of music which had passed me by, not to speak of an introduction to living in the U.S.A.

Mark, at Views from the Bikeshed, who offered sound advice on layout and whose blog continually makes me think and assess.

I am currently indebted to Perpetua, who has not only kindly offered to lead me through the weird world of Wordpress but who has also signalled a fix for the latest Blogger problem.

If you have been affected by the roll out of assigning your blog URL to a country suffix rather than to the old blogspot.com, with subsequent loss of the easy change tools on your dashboard, then she has the answer here.
She has suggested that everyone passes the fix on, as we all have differing circles of readers, to give maximum help to as many as possible.

Steve at Bloggertropolis has been posting recently about the changes in blogging...the growing commercialism...and I'm sure that this change in Blogger is to enable Google to attract more advertisers by using the blogging community to better effect.

He has also noticed that a number of blogs he followed have died off, or even out, and I've noticed the same phenomenon.
Is it because people now don't have the same time for blogging...are too busy running to stand still trying to make a living, so that unless their blog attracts money it's not worth pursuing?

I blog less these days...partly as a consequence of my husband enjoying much better health.
Blogging was something that occupied the long night hours of waiting and watching, pushing worry away by concentrating on something else.
Now, I frequently think
'Oh, I'd like to blog about that...' but find that life is too full to make the time and the moment has passed.

I get rather put off by the 'big' blogs....the product reviews, the puffs for restaurants, fashions, etc...
There doesn't seem to be the contact with the blogger that you find on the smaller ones, which is what I value.
The exception to that being The Slog, imprinted as it is with the character of its author and on its way to be being a monster blog.


It is not to say that everything in the blogging world is lovely.....

Some of the 'living the dreamers' react with virulence to any explicit or implicit criticism of their beloved France, as if they had been poked in the eye with a sharp stick.

Some of the 'mummy bloggers' make you think yourself grateful not to be within reach of their backbiting and eye scratching.

But, in my part of the blogging world at least, things are civilised.

Thank you fellow bloggers!