This blog was offline during April while I tampered with its appearance. I tried nearly every theme WordPress offers. I tried nearly every color WordPress offers.
I understand that for blogs, white is in fashion, but I like color. I’ve played with the colors a lot. My main specifications:
Background must be light enough for text to be easily read.
Font must be dark enough for text to be easily read.
Colors must enhance header.
Colors must be attractive.
Numbers 1 and 2 are easy enough to satisfy, but 3 and 4 are just bears. Grays are too brown or too blue; whites are too yellow or too pink; blues are too green or too gray; greens are too blue or too yellow; reds jump out at you; pinks and yellows are insipid.
All I want is what I want. It shouldn’t be that difficult to get.
After serious consideration, I’m putting Telling the Truth, Mainly back in public view.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. ~ Albert Einstein (maybe)
Image via Wikipedia
Regarding the whingeing still audible from the previous post, silverneurotic has come through with a solution:
“Blogger will not let you comment IF you log in with your wordpress account…however, if there is an option to comment using the name/url option…your comment WILL go through that way. If the blog doesn’t allow that, you can always comment using your google id.”
I tried logging in with my name and URL. It worked.
Thank you, silverneurotic, for clearing up this knotty problem.
Image via Wikipedia
The one question remaining is why I kept trying to log in with my WordPress account—aka beating my head against the wall—when the other possibilities were staring me in the face.
Never let it be said I lack perseverance.
Mostly.
Image via Wikipedia
Once more regarding the whingeing: I meant no disrespect to Blogger, just to whatever glitch has turned it against WordPress.
A couple of years ago, impressed with the Blogger templates I was seeing online, I set up my own account there. It didn’t take me long to discover that those attractive sites were attractive because their respective bloggers had made all the right choices when setting up their sites: blue here, red there, green along the border, ivory background…
Image via Wikipedia
It was like having a No. 64 box of Crayolas and no idea where to start. The pressure was too much. I scuttled back to WordPress.
Image via Wikipedia
Once in a while I drop in on Blogger, but just to play with the crayons.
James Madison, Author of the First Amendment, "Father of the Constitution" - Image via Wikipedia
“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” ~ James Madison
On January 18, 2012, Wikipedia, WordPress, and other sites will go dark to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA), proposed legislation that critics say could lead to censorship of the Internet. Senate Bill 968, PIPA, will come before the U. S. Senate next week.
SOPA and PIPA are supported by the entertainment industry concerned about online piracy. Critics, however, say both bills would go about fighting piracy in the wrong way.
“Copyright holders want to give themselves and the U.S. Department of Justice the power to block websites accused of infringement. They want to force Internet service providers to create a wall between their customers and these websites. They want to force banks and payment services like PayPal to cut off these websites’ money. They want the websites removed from search results and to ban people from linking to them. And all of that, WITHOUT ANY KIND OF FORMAL HEARING.” [Emphasis added]
Congressional support for SOPA has been weakened somewhat by negative feedback from the public, but PIPA is still in good health. San Diego CityBeat states,
“…[B]ills often come in pairs, and SOPA’s twin in the U.S. Senate is the Protect IP Act, or PIPA. Both bills threaten to rip apart the fabric of the Internet, compromise the planet’s digital security and open the doors for China-class censorship. While the SOPA brand is damaged, PIPA has yet to attract similar levels of negative attention. It’s scheduled for a Senate floor vote on Jan. 24 and could easily sneak through under the radar. The most important thing for Internet activists to do, right now, is spread the word that PIPA is the new target.” [Emphasis added]
Alternative legislation—Online Protection and ENforcement of the Digital Trade Act (OPEN)—is being proposed. It is the result of a bipartisan effort to protect against online piracy without the threat of censorship.
“The OPEN Act secures two fundamental principles. First, Americans have a right to benefit from what they’ve created. And second, Americans have a right to an open internet. Our duty is to protect these rights. That’s why congressional Republicans and Democrats came together to write the OPEN Act. But it’s only a start. We need your help:sign up, comment and collaborate to build a better bill.” [Emphasis added]
americancensorship.org provides ways to register opposition to SOPA AND PIPA. Anyone not in the U.S. may protest by petitioning the U. S. State Department. Online forms appear on the site.
The following links compare and contrast SOPA / PIPA and OPEN. As the quotation above states, it also requests input from citizens who want to help create a better law.
Regarding WordPress’ protest, Jane Wells writes, “…if this bill is passed it will jeopardize internet freedom and shift the power of the independent web into the hands of corporations. We must stop it.”
William misbehaving. Note in his expression the combination of smugness and defiance.
I think WordPress got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.
First it refused my perfectly good password and tried to get me to log in to the Hotshots! account.
Then, instead of saving this post as a draft, it posted the picture above with the title Private so only I had access. A check of my privacy settings showed no change–To write was still (supposedly) visible to the public. Unclicking and reclicking the same box then published William for all the world to see.
I presume he’s still there. I’m typing as fast as I can.
William has developed an intense interest in the piano. He jumps on it when he wants me to turn off the laptop and go to bed.
I’ve been operating all these years on the assumption that cats do as they please when they please. I thought a sleepy cat could just curled up any old place and lose consciousness.
Not William.
When he decides it’s bedtime, usually around 1:00 a.m., he wants everyone to close up shop. To get my attention, he jumps on the piano.
At first I tried to discourage this. He tended to stray from the piano to the sideboard. There are things on the sideboard I’d like to see stay there. Intact.
One night he jumped from the piano to the top of the china cabinet. There are a few breakable objects up there, too.
I admit William is graceful. That surprises me. As a kitten he was so tubby he couldn’t leap and climb as (other) kittens do. When he tried to pull himself onto a higher shelf of the kitty pagoda, his little body would just dangle there, bottom-heavy, until he let go and fell or was discovered and rescued. Instead of jumping onto the bed, he walked up the stairs we’d put there for Chloe.
The difference was that Chloe was sixteen when she stopped jumping. William was six months.
The adult William is enormous, but his paws are delicate and tapered, beautiful, but small compared to the rest of him.
And yet, he’s agile and light of foot. Earrings, cough drops, rubber bands, ballpoint pens–these things and more have found their way from high places to low, and in perfect silence.
If I hadn’t made an uncharacteristic decision to sweep under the refrigerator, the flash drive would still be lost.
There’s a reason they call them cat burglars.
Last night, or rather early this morning, a weary William had already traversed the mantel, the case of David’s collectibles, the dining table (I wash it often), and who knows what else before resorting to the piano. I was tired of popping up every five minutes to drag him off wherever he was, so I decided if you can’t lick ’em, join ’em and just kept typing. Glancing over my shoulder to make sure he didn’t have designs on the china cabinet, I saw the display that begins this post.
It was like the time my three-year-old cousin Chip sidled into the kitchen, hands behind his back, face and overalls covered in grease, and told the flock of gawking women he’d been “fixing the lawnmower.”
Just so darned cute all you can do is get the camera.
Kathy Waller 