New Technology is Always Difficult

The Blog Archipelago Revisited

Artwork by Roger Dean.

Back in January, I wrote of The Blog Archipelago , a concept that struck me at the time to cover my concept of bloggers and their works, and how we interact. That we are travellers on a sea dotted with myriad islands, the Blogs.
Since then I've travelled far, made new friends, alienated one or two also.
We drop into a blog from all sorts of directions, sometimes through a link off another page, sometimes via a search for a phrase. And sometimes we very quickly decide that the content and style of a page is not for us, and move on, or the converse, we feel quite at home and stay, until we see the clock out of the corner of our eye, and gasp, wondering how so much time could have slipped by whilst we browsed.
As a Blogger (or Bluffer), I always hope for feedback.
Does anybody like what I do? Did what I said garner a positive or a negative response? How will I know if you don't stop to leave a comment?
Today, there are extra visitors, because I got a much appreciated mention on Draw Conclusions on the Wall a blog which leads me into much thought and philosophising. If anyone out there was taught to spell 'Dilemna' as it appears here, and not as 'Dilemma', David at Conclusions would like to hear from you.
There's much more there besides, and of course, the bloggers treasure map.... links to other islands.
Also, I got linked by Hanan, at Growabrain.
Hanan's following is huge... Some seven million page hits in the last three years. I've accounted for several hundreds of those, over the years. His energy and dedication to daily content shames me, and I can recommend, if you're ever bored, at a loose end, stuck at home with a broken leg or the flu, a visit to Hanan's archives will soon give your brain a new lease of curiousity. I tend to visit every day. But I confess I never get to follow every link trail he sets.
What amazes me is that for every topic he blogs, he must search over several more that he deems not to quite make the grade.
Here, though, is the link twixt Hanan and me.
A couple of weeks back he was wondering why he does this, whether anyone cares. Despite the seven million page hits he was having doubts. Just like me with my handful of hits.
And that, largely, is down to the paucity of feedback from visitors.
I know we won't comment on every blog we visit. And if there's a big heap of comment, our voices may be superfluous anyway, but please, every few blogs, leave a few words. Positive or negative, it all helps the blogger in future decisions.
So
If you've tarried a while here, and have thoughts good or bad, please spare a moment to comment. And thank you for dropping by.

HA!

Ed Alleyne Johnson

I'd never heard of this guy until i bumped into him on Random Good Stuff

pizza night on the farm

Lightening up again?

Another Fishy Poem

Fragments of 'Pike' by Ted Hughes.

To be precise, the final four verses of eleven.
To me, the first seven verses are in fact a separate, and inferior poem.
If you want to read it, go elsewhere. Me? I'm only posting the final four..

Pike

vs 7-11

A pond I fished, fifty yards across,
Whose lilies and muscular tench
Had outlasted every visible stone
Of the monastery that planted them.

Stilled legendary depth:
It was as deep as England.It held
Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old
That past nightfall I dared not cast

But silently cast and fished
With the hair frozen on my head
For what eye might move,
the still splashes on the dark pond

Owls humbling the floating woods
Frail on my ear against the dream
Darkness beneath night's darkness had freed,
That rose slowly towards me, watching.

Oh no! the record industry, that bastion of.........

The recording industry, that bastion of good taste, honesty, and fair distribution of costs and profits thinks file sharing is a crime!
Well, we saw it with the book industry too.
Once, nobody outside a monastery had the skills to make a book. Then along came that damned Gutenberg, inventing printing presses, and any fool could duplicate books.
Even more worrying. Peasants eventually learned to read and write, putting literally dozens of scribes out of work.
What really worries me though, is libraries, and the growing trend of book owners to lend books to others to read, thus depriving the publishing industry of profits and throwing the families of jobless monks into the street.
A further worry to us is the open availability of pencils and pens. Using these, it is possible for criminals to copy whole sentences, and, with that other item, whose posession we'd like to see controlled, or restricted, paper, these people can pin up illegally copied words, sentences, even whole Paragraphs in public places for all to see.
Furthermore, in a recent visit to an academic establishment I was horrified to find students being encouraged to learn and memorise, for instance, whole poems- even formulae, and songs. I saw plays performed where actors and actresses had memorised the lines, not a single one carrying an authorised text.
I tell you, unless the perpetrators are given punitive fines and prison sentences, the book publishing industry is doomed.