Tag Archives: new editor

Capitulation

It looks like I’m going to have to use some form of block editor whether I want to or not. I’m currently using the Classic Block. It isn’t as easy for me as using the old editor because I have to select something before starting and because I have various things floating round the scree as I try to type. I seem to have got rid of the small box of icons, but still have a small black box with a cross in it and a line that says “Start writing or type/to choose a block”.

None of this seems to be an improvement on the old one, and it certainly doesn’t seem intuitive, as they claim.

As a result, I went looking alternatives. There won’t be any sudden changes as I’m within days of paying for another year, but in the long term I can’t see myself staying with WordPress.

The inability to use large numbers of my photos is irksome, as I [pay what seems a lot of money each year for the storage of photos I cannot access. Ditto for the countless small glitches, particularly those that occur around the time of “improvements” – you will never persuade me these are anything other than faults caused by tinkering.

Finally, of course, we have the new editor. I don’t want it and I’m happy with the old one. I just need a basic package to write and add a few photos.

Having checked a few lists of top ten blogging sites I find that the only one where WordPress comes out on top is the list published by WordPress, the other two had it in at Number 4 and Number 5. This wasn’t the case when I started six years ago, but things seem to have changed.

Maybe it’s time I changed.

If I’m going to be forced into using a new editor I may as well use a whole new platform.

It’s done it again, a new pop up with a small selection of icons. Now my bar at the top with editing options has gone, it’s telling me to insert a featured image but I can’t see how and the side menu is not as good as it used to be.

I don’t need this.

Photos are from a walk I took yesterday in the wetland area behind the Mencap garden.

Oh look, instead of just starting to type again I have to select Classic Block again – what a great improvement.

Musings

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If a picture truly is worth a thousand words, I have just loaded 12,000 words from my photos to this post. The theme of my 12,000 words is, initially, that although WordPress can, it seems, develop a new improved editor, they cannot work out a system to allow me to access photos from old posts. They charge me for unlimited photo storage every year but I note, on an old post, that some photos have disappeared. I also note that if I want to access photos from old posts it gets progressively more difficult as I get back beyond a couple of weeks. Once past that the system starts to grind and lock up and flick back to newer photos. At that point it is easier to give up or to search out old posts and either link to them or recopy the photos. That is what I did with the last post.

It would have been a much more exciting post if I had been able to simply access the photos by scrolling down the media file.

Blue Iris

Iris at Mencap Gardens

Yellow flowers in need of identification

If I could access old photos easily, this post would be more interesting too. However, due to the clunky and ineffective scrolling system I can only really access photos from the last couple of weeks. They are nice enough photos but they lack a bit of variety, you have seen them all recently, and they are not necessarily my better flower photos.

Yellow Flag

Marigold at Mencap

French Marigolds

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

If I were developing a proper 12,000 word piece, I would then move on to muse on the mutability of life and how we change and improvement are not the same things. Life is simply a jerk progression, like the WP photo storage, where we jerk from one imperfection to the next. The final display is, like our lives, a poor reflection of the quality of material available, which has been severely limited by circumstances beyond our control. I think that makes sense, though it may just be self-absorbed twaddle. If that’s the case let’s agree to call it “deep”. That’s a useful neutral word to cover many eventualities.

Alpine Strawberries – Sherwood

A Bear in a Tree

A poppy, still crumpled from the bud

There are several things I could move on to discuss as an ending. Cooking with arthritis is a current topic of interest. As a condition, not as an ingredient. Despite the new medication my fingers are actually getting worse. More fingers are being affected and more joints within those fingers are being affected. The index finger on my right hand now has painful swellings in all three joints and I could probably find hand modelling work as something out of Lord of the Rings or for those appalling Versus Arthritis adverts we now have on TV.

It seems to me that the name Versus Arthritis was developed by an idiot and approved, probably at great cost, by a board of idiots. Same goes for the TV adverts they run. In fact, despite the advertising I have spent the last two years not seeking help from them because the adverts are so bad. Today is the first time I’ve actually been on their site, and though some of the stuff appears useful, I may not rush back.

I was amused to see that one of the organisations that merged to form Versus Arthritis was formed in 1947 as the British Rheumatic Association (BRA). Even in 1947 I’m sure bra was a well known term for women’s underwear. Assuming that the organisation wasn’t formed by 14-year-old boys, it looks like the pitiful naming tradition has continued over the years.

Cooking with arthritis used to mean that my fingers ached after kneading bread. Now it means I can’t grip a vegetable peeler properly, can’t (on bad days) cut through veg single-handed and can’t fetch and carry without using both hands, as my grip has gone.

Tonight’s tea is roasted veg with pasties, Yorkshire puddings and gravy. I may be arthritic, and dreading the new improved editor but I’m not malnourished.

Note on the Dominic Cummings cut-out I mentioned a few days back (though I can’t actually find the reference, so I may just have thought I mentioned it). It was taken down but my sister sent me a links after seeing something on Twitter. Here is a link if you want it. I find it amusing, even if the story is now dead and brushed under the carpet.

And at just over 700 words, I think there is just time to sign off, and take my tea, carefully, from the oven.

The New Editor

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I just clicked to use the new editor. In trying to get back to the old one I found that they are going to force me to use the new editor from 1st June whether I want to or not. In addition to that I have had to read a load of condescending drivel about the ease and power of the new system. This comes complete with “blocks”, which I don’t understand and have never needed, but seems to come without the buttons that will allow me to add photos and links.

I should have known something was going on because I’d been suffering minor glitches for a week or two and it’s usually a sign that some jiggery-pokery is in progress.

It took me 45 minutes, and many false starts, to get back to the classic editor and despite looking, I am still none the wiser about how to post photos or add links using the new editor. I would have thought that a new and improved editor would have made this easier, not harder. I also can’t find the word count on the new one.

As usual, the words new and improved are used as if they are interchangeable when in fact new is not the same thing as improved at all.

Mencap Garden, Wilford

French Marigolds

Foxglove

All in all, if we have to have a new editor, why can’t we have one with a decent set of instructions sent to us before the thing is rolled out. I know these things happen, because that’s what happens with websites – people keep tinkering with them and other people keep telling you about the new and improved version and how “people” have been asking for changes and giving positive feedback. It’s always “people” rather than actual names.

To be honest, I come on here to practice writing, to put my thoughts and frustrations out of my head, to look into the loves of other people and to have a general chat. I don’t need anything glitzy and high tech.

What I really need is the digital equivalent of a box of old-fashioned printer paper (remember the stuff with circular holes down the sides and perforations at the end of every sheet?) that I can write on continuously and add links and photos.

That is pretty much what I had until a few hours ago and I was happy. Now I can’t add links and photos.

Wood – impersonating a strange animal…

The Second Post

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I made the mistake of pressing the button to look at the new editor and now I can’t get out of it. As with the last attempt at a new editor I don’t see it as an improvement and I don’t know what a “block” is. I’m not keen and would much rather either (a) have a proper explanation or (b) only “improve” things that need it.

Anyway, back to work. This post is about what we did yesterday. As usual my writing lags considerably behind my life.

The Mencap garden was pleasantly sunny, though not quite as colourful as it has been in past years. I’ve noticed this in the garden at home too, where the marigolds seem to have disappeared. It might be neglect or it might be a dry spring, I’m honestly not sure. It might just be a case of it being a dull time of year. Some times of year just aren’t colourful.

I just looked to see how I was doing on the word count, but that doesn’t seem to be a feature of the new editor.

That’s 186. I know that because I counted it three times. Once I lost count myself. Then I lost count again, this time assisted by Julia. It was a fraught five minutes.

In the garden I sat down and watched as Julia started work. A couple of brown birds dropped in followed by another dozen squeaky companions. The long tails and the squeaking were diagnostic of long-tailed tits though, as usual, I couldn’t get a decent photo.

Julia working in the Mencap Garden

Bee on Chives

Marigold at Mencap

There were blue tits at the end of the garden, where they have a brood of youngsters in one of the nestboxes.

Apart from that it was the normal suspects – blackbird, kestrel, magpie, herring gull, As we lunched, Julia dropped part of her Scotch egg, so she broke the bits up and threw them onto the grass for the local magpie, which had been looking very blue as it posed in the sunlight. Before the magpie could get to it a crow swooped in and started clearing up. It’s amazing how quickly things can appear.

The breeze was quite brisk and the few butterflies we saw (mainly whites with a few peacocks) didn’t linger. I was able to try photographing a few pollinators, including a few cooperative bumblebees, but again, there weren’t that many about.

Crow again

Crow with Scotch Egg

Bumblebee on Chive

I am finding the new editor a trial to work with and have just returned to add photos and a link after transferring back to the old editor.

Quick Post

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We got stuck in traffic this morning and Number Two Son texted to say he’d seen us from the bus while he was on his way back from the night shift. Great use of technology!

Fourteen parcels to pack and a long slow queue at the post office. There was some light relief but I have no time to describe it.

A reasonable afternoon and some cooking.

A good talk at the Numismatic Society.

Chicken stew for tea. (Cooked earlier – good planning).

A fight with the new editor, which keeps throwing me out of the photographs.

Taking Number Two Son to work in the next few minutes.

I’m going to see what pictures it lets me use.

Crocuses

Change is Easy…

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I’m giving the new editor another try. I don’t particularly want to, but I do want to access some of my older photos and I can’t do that in the normal editor. Anyway, it’s time I started embracing new technology.

Julia has had an adventurous day, first cutting herself whilst trying a spot of woodcarving, then melting a hole in her fleece when she transferred her attention to pyrography. Well, I say “attention”, but if she’d been paying attention she wouldn’t actually have melted the fleece.

I’m now going to put some photos in, if I can. The new editor doesn’t seem keen. I’m already remembering why I switched it off and went back to the old one.

This, hopefully, is a selection of my favourite photos from the last year.

I’m not finding it as easy as the old editor because I’m having to load one large photo at a time.

Change is easy, as they say, but improvement is hard.

A Few More Thought on Numbers

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After yesterday’s discussion on numbers I had a look through the list of people I follow. I’m surprised by the number of them that haven’t posted for a year or more. I’m also surprised by how few of them I actually remember.

A quick survey of 18 people I follow indicates that a third of them haven’t posted for a year or more and quite a few of the others haven’t posted for over a month.

The sample is from the earlier days of my WP use, but if you allow for this it’s still likely that I’m following several hundred people who no longer exist as bloggers.

As for the ones I don’t remember, it’s unlikely they remember me either, so they can probably go too.

I first came across this false friend syndrome on Facebook. I joined because the Nottingham RFC U16s were touring in Canada and the idea was for them to communicate with the parents via Facebook. In fact they didn’t post much as they had better things to do. I stayed as a member for a while but the inane communications and spurious friends irritated me so much that I deregistered and have never gone back.

If anyone has recently started following me, please don’t think any of this is aimed at you, it isn’t. Unless you are a site with a business name in your title. I tend not to reciprocate when business sites follow me as I don’t believe they are following me for my content, just to build up followers.

It’s a funny old world.

In the next post I hope to be more interesting, so keep an eye open for it.

One final comment – having tried to find a suitable photo for the top of the post I find the old problems have returned. It looks like it’s only the new editor that will allow me full access to my photographs.

Bah!

Lazy Sunday

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After dropping Julia off this morning I was in plenty of time to pick up Number One Son and we are home before 8.00. There’s no washing to do so I’m going back to bed after writing this. I will rise around 10.00, have elevenses and plan the menus before shopping.

I say “plan the menus”, but I really mean is “make a list of the food we will be eating”. Or even “select a day for vegetable curry” because that’s the day before we have Spicy Vegetable Soup.

There doesn’t seem to be a spell checker with the new editor, or a word counter.

Cancel that last comment, I found the word count. It’s not gone, it’s just inconveniently hidden.

During my stay in the car park I noted that the birds all seemed to come to life just after 7.00 and that the 4×4 vehicles of Highways England keep their engines running while one of the crew members goes for coffee. I really don’t like it when people keep their engines running like that.

I was planning a sophisticated essay on poetic forms or world peace (I was undecided) but it hasn’t happened, as you can see.

Maybe I will manage it after a little more sleep.

quercuscommunity

Life after the Care Farm