Sighs for the technological wonders

Someone said that if cars worked like computers, nobody would ever buy a car that randomly crashes, do not always start, have weird unexplained problems, can get viruses and other bad things that live inside it (and I am not talking about mice chewing on things under the hood of the car), or have parts that refuses to work with each other.  But that is what we get with computers.  These days, we are all also supposed to be able to figure it out ourselves, know HTML, command line code, a billion settings and options, and be able to find buttons that are hidden or staring us straight in the face but not associated with any description or text.

I have just spent more than one hour trying to fix why our little icons for 'mail this', 'recommend this', etc., wasn't showing up on our blog. This blog.  It was added by me a few years ago to the template through the 'click this button and you get it on your blog' in the Blogger settings.  But they never showed up.  So now, a few years later, I decided to see if I could fix it.  Some googling, lots of testing with suggested html code in new places, and now finally it works. 

The Blogger Help Forum didn't solve it, I found the solution in a post on another blog that had had the same issue. Such a simple thing, and just imagine how many of us that are trying to solve similar issues in our daily lives, including our daily work. 
"Why can't I import this file?" 
"Where is that command again to fix the white balance on my photo?" 
"Why did Word do THAT?" 
"How do I get rid of that?" 
"Help, I can't sign into gmail!"
"Why do I have to sign in everyday even if I click 'remember me'?"
"Why is Firefox so slow?"
"Why isn't Netflix working (again)?"
 And on and on...   Ever heard anybody complain about their cars like this?  No, me neither.

How in H*LL is anybody that knows nothing about html supposed to be able to fix something like this by themselves?  Why aren't these things foolproof?  If computers could be insured, and cause bodily harm, like cars are and can, then I bet we would have a lot better working computers.  It is pretty amazing how sensitive and breakable this system is, and I am not talking about silly buttons at the bottom of blog posts, but in general. We are pouring our work and private lives into these machines, and they are totally non-dependable.  Sure, they work most of the time.

But if you have a broken car you take it to a mechanic and he/she fixes it.   For computers, having them fixed by an expert would mean 1) at least weekly visits to a computer mechanic, 2) immense costs, and 3) sometimes things can't be fixed because of bad hardware or software.  For a car, you can usually choose not to fix something because it would not be worth the cost, but many times for computer you simply can't fix it, you are simply not given any options. 
"Sorry, you laptop monitor is broken, can't be fixed, better get a new laptop." 
"Sorry, I can't recover your harddrive data". 
And still, we have so much invested in these undependable units - photos, memories, letters, work data (a lot in my case), finances, and so on.

So, gals and guys, here is my advice:

• Back up your data. 
• Keep a data backup in a different house or building (or the computing cloud)
• Realize that everything on your computer can be gone. Anytime. 
• See the computer as a tool, not as your life.  Your life is what is going on when you eat, breath, walk, see, think... not what is stored on the computer. 

Do I follow this advice?  Yes, partly, but not well enough.  So I need to follow my advice better too. And now, you can all e-mail, Facebook, like, or tweet this post because I fixed the buttons at the bottom. (she says smiling... ).

Another week

It is that time of the year when weeks flush past in quick succession, when days get relentlessly shorter, and the daytime temperature cannot make up its mind.  We had a few days with over 95 degrees F here this week, that is far above 30 degrees Celsius.  That is not what I want out of September. But the temperature is dropping steadily right now....

The first red Virginia creeper leaves have shown up, both in our garden and on my favorite art/nature photography blog, STILL (photo courtesy of Mary Jo Hoffman):

'Hello autumn', (c) Mary Jo Hoffman, stillblog.net

On the porch, the hummingbirds no longer visit their feeder, and the praying mantis seems to have forgotten that colder climates are on the way.  All students are back in classes, and all teachers back teaching... just like every year.

As new leader has been chosen...

For a long time, the blog post on this blog about the BIONICLE Mask of Life was the most popular post. 

But, a new top choice has been selected by the people that read this blog.  THIS is now the most visited post.  Who knew that fish evolution could be so interesting!? 

The Bionicle post is now second place, and in third place is Chinese Zodiak Animals.

I really don't get why these are so popular... maybe they have very popular words in them.  The internet and the Google is unpredictable sometimes :)

Congratulations! Five years ago....

...to the day, this blog was born.  Thanks for hanging out here now and then, and reading our thoughts, looking at our photos, and thinking about stuff with us.  Like today, five years ago it was a very green, springy day and that was reflected in the first blog post, reposted below. 
_____________________________________

Wow, första posten/first post!  
Don't worry, not everything will be written in two languages, and posts and comments in either Swedish or English are fine.
Today is a beautiful day here in New Jersey, flowers everywhere, spring has sprung!
Or as the Swedish poet Gustaf Fröding said:

Ett grönt blad på marken
Grönt! Gott,
friskt, skönt vått!
Rik luft, mark!
Ljuvt stark,
rik saft,
stor kraft!
Friskt skönt
grönt!

A green leaf on the ground
Green! Good,
Fresh, nice wet!
Rich air, land!
Deliciously strong,
rich sap,
big power!
Fresh nice,
green!

Bits and pieces on the internet: size edition

Big or small?  It is all about scale, and this is fantastic.  I could play with this power of ten website for hours. (by Cary and Michael Huang)

These are the most amazing spider macro photos I have ever seen. (by Thomas Shahan, on the Flickr blog)

IKEA things come in different sizes, but I doubt they have made a some-assembly-required dinosaur yet.  But there is how the assembly manual might look. (from CollegeHumor)

If you haven't yet, you can waste some time online, draw a stickman, and enjoy the creativity of this website (and it is fun too!)

The smallest thing I saw in Costa Rica was a tick crawling on my finger, and the largest - hmm - the largest animal was probably a 4+ meter long crocodile.  Nasty things, those ticks and crocs.

Really, really annoying spam commenters

So, you add bothersome things to your website so you are sure real people comment on our blog posts, and all of you that want to comment have to try to decipher strange letters and numbers to make a simple nice little comment.  You hope that it at least will keep out the spam-bots that are just out there to put in hidden links for companies to get them a better Google rating. But oh no, in the last week, the spamming has started again.  And, this time it is real people doing it.  They are faking nice comments and at the end of the comment they include a url to a link for a commercial company (or even worse, it could be a website with a virus on it).

I really, really don't like this kind of spam terror.  I don't care if there are poor people in some third-world country that get their living from this - it is plain time terrorism, and should be banned.  If I see any comment like that, it is gone immediately from here.  The text is often written in a way to make you think it is a real and positive comment, like this one, but when you start reading you realize that this is not what it is meant to be (I deleted the link to the commercial url):

"I would like to thank you for the efforts you've put in writing this website. I am hoping the same high-grade website post from you in the upcoming as well. Actually your creative writing skills has inspired me to get my own website now. Really the blogging is spreading its wings quickly. Your write up is a great example of it."

(I wonder if this was written up with Google Translator... and if so, from which language...)

Dear spammers, please just STOP.  Shame on you for doing this.  First it was telemarketers, now it is blogmarketers that are trying to sneak in and disturb our personal peace.  Go away!

Linking blogs and ideas...

If you haven't yet,

go over and check out this blog: WEEDS EVERYWHERE....  another little project of mine.

When you are looking for some more interesting things...

..to read or think about, head over to the interesting WEEDS EVERYWHERE blog.

Weed blog

A new blog is up, WEEDS - what are they good for?, founded by me and someone else. The subject is weeds, of course, these misunderstood and subversive plants that stalks us humans through our increasingly non-natural manmade landscapes.  Personally, I think weeds are among the most interesting plants, and our reaction to them is equally interesting.

Take a look, and you can subscribe to the the weed blog (and this one) using e-mail or a Google Reader.

eye to eye

Happy birthday to KV - a frequent reader of this blog!  Grattis!

Ponderings on originality and authenticity

Interesting thoughts on originality, copying, authenticity, sharing, borrowing and creativity in these two linked articles: To live outside the law, you must be honest (Mobylives) and The Work of Art in the Age of Maniacal Appropriation (UTNE). I took the freedom to borrow the image by Jim Jarmusch that goes with them (see below), and hope that is considered creativity and not stealing, as suggested in the articles. I don't condone any plagiarism, but look below - we do share and borrow ideas and images and thoughts and inspiration from books, sunsets, old and new art, knitting patterns, photos, views and landscapes, and just snippets of information anywhere.  These are not easy questions, and to talk about them is to talk ethics, not an easy thing, and maybe something we talk too little about.  Sometimes we want it all for free, sometimes we want to own our own creations, and sometimes we just want to connect it all and take what we want and reuse it in new ways.  Reality is never so black and white as in movies or made-up school examples. The Mobylives article is really worth reading about this topic.

(Link to Jarmusch quote)

some BS (= blog statistics)

This is the most viewed post during the last 6 months on this blog.  Who could have expected that? More from LA please. Nearly 1500 people have viewed this blog post since May this year.

This is number two...  I think people like animals, especially Chinese ones.  (EH posted, nearly 1300 views)

Then there is a gap of nearly a thousand views down to the famous Pirate Island Board Game, which has about 600 views. (LS photos and post)

It seems nearly impossible to predict what will draw a lot of views... here are more in the top ten since May:
extinct professions, Twinkies, Poison Ivy, Ramshakles, Swedish mountain hiking, Tjaldur, and my Via Ponte restaurant review.  

Can you see a trend in these top reads?  I can't, not more than they are as diverse topically and geographically as the interests of our family.  Keep on posting dear blog members, people are reading!  We have over 95 000 visits so far, since the start of the blog in 2007.

More facts you don't need to know (for the last 6 months):
13% used a Mac, 84% a Windows computer
Internet Explorers leads among the visitors with 52%
The most found image from the blog is this (long live SAAB!)

Yesterday, a Google search for "archeology +underground houses in Scandinavia" lead to our blog. As did "cleo cola history"  and "ridiculous ponderings".

This blog is decidedly ad-free (and tweet and Facebook-free too), but if I go into the ClustrMap to see where you blog visitors come from geographically, I can see the ads that Google think fit with this blog.  Right now we have these ad headings featured:  US Railway Project, Locomotive Leasing, Free Legal Consultation, Top Quick Italian Recipes, and Rail Fleet Consulting. That is what you get when you write about 1880s train accidents, wrecked locomotives, and Italian pasta shapes. The ads lag behind, these posts are a week old at least. Automatic internet marketing a la Google...

Thanks for all the visits, dear readers!

Where you are...

It is time for our little visitor map to be reset, which happens once a year, but before that happens, here is the visitors during the last 12 months to this blog.  You are really spread around the world!  27 000 visits or so in a year, that is about 75 readers a day.  Thanks for all your visits!

Something unique, handmade and beautiful

marvelous blue handmade blue buttons, originally uploaded by knitalatte11.

Knitalatte has a blog (Resurrection Fern) with gorgeous handmade things, see here. How about these handmade buttons?

Egg breaks record...

With the egg post yesterday, which was mailed out and twittered to many people (not by me), we broke our old record of visits per day. 526 people took a look at our blog and the peacock by the egg tractor. Thanks for the visit, come back whenever you like!

More news in the world: Sweden got its first gold medal this year in the Olympics, in Women's cross country skiing. Go Kalla, go!

Check out the ferocious hunger of the geckos of Madagascar in Chad's fantastic blogpost.

In Stockholm there is the yearly design week. Some photos here.

Everything you need to know about brain farts. (you might have to subscribe for free)

And the seeds for the garden are ordered. On its way are Sungold orange cherry tomatoes, tiny pickling cucumbers, sunflowers, Chioggia and red and golden beets, Swiss chard with orange, pink, and white stems, lettuce in many colors and shapes, and some flowers that I hope will survive the onslaught of bugs and mammals, as well as rain and drought. Gardening in New Jersey is more of a challenge than I ever expected.

Another year starts - blog visit statistics

Our global readership: 30,258 visits to this blog in the last year. Now the Clustermap on the right side will be reset to map visits again. The total number of visitors since Aug 2007 is 60,106. Here is where you were from during the last year:

Friends, family, and all others, many thanks for your visits.

Seen on other blogs

Sometimes I just browse around, and check out blogs that are not my everyday places to visit. Tonight I enjoyed:

A luna moth at Farmgirl Fare (always reminds me of Barbara Kingsolver's book Prodigal Summer, a fantastic read, especially for entomologists and wildlife biologists)

Why I love farmer's markets... or really, markets anyware as long as people sell their own things, not junk produced in factories.

Why the 80s sucked... clothing wise. And I love how organic shapes and colors can be so beautiful in/on manmade things.

My friend Cindy got a beautiful surprise waiting for her in Madagascar. And some animals have really long tongues. Wow.

If you chew Copenhagen, it is a pleasure. Those were cheap oranges! Now they can be up to 1 dollar each.

Swine flu news: "They found that S-OIV was borne of several viruses that circulate in pigs, with contributions from avian and human strains. The virus made the leap to humans several months before we twigged to its presence. It was spreading right under our noses, undetected because of our lack of surveillance of flu viruses in pigs." (Note: a 15-year old boy died of it in the neighboring township last week....)

.... and I really want to make homemade pea ravioli. Maybe next Sunday...

Good morning!

This is post number 1001 on this blog. Bacon is still the theme.

Dream job?

Someone I know got a job in Madagascar recently and is on her way there via Paris, France. You can check out her blog about her adventures here.

Design for Web Icon

I was thinking that we could create a web icon (the 16x16 picture next to the url) for the blog. Here it is:


It shows a sink pipe with orange gooey stuff coming out of it, as well as two letters that are in the blog name.

Well?