My family photos find a new home

~

This is my father on his 1923 Model 16H Norton motorbike. As it happens I have not posted this picture before, even though a year or two ago I did a feature on my father's 'wheels' - that is to say his motorbikes and cars. Today some of those pictures have found a place on a website which celebrates the Norton motorcycle. John, the website owner, has managed to improve the quality of this picture, and so I have copied it back again from his website to post here.

This is the sort of exchange which really makes the internet, and blogging in particular, worth while for me. My mother and father are honoured again on a new blogsite, and John in Holland has found some more of his beloved Norton motorbikes to add to his blog.

I think I have at least one reader who will enjoy a visit to John's website, somebody else who loves his 'wheels'. Let me know what you think, Avus.

A funny thing happened .....

~
Not long ago I bought myself a new printer, changing my loyalty of many years from Epson to HP. A different way of operating, and some all singing all dancing features I haven't mastered yet. It wasn't long before I had to get to grips with a paper jam, however. I read the instructions carefully, and found that I had to turn the printer round and open up the back, then proceed to remove the trapped sheet gently but firmly. Careful as I was I lost a corner which tore off and remained in the machine.

Now, I peered into that machine from all directions. I picked it up and shook it. I shone my Anglepoise lamp right into its innards. I looked all round the floor of my workroom; the missing corner failed to reveal itself. With considerable trepidation I tried printing again, fully expecting it to jam up again. It didn't - what luck! But the mystery remains: where did that corner of paper hide itself, and will it pop up again to counfound me on some future occasion?

A month or two later I had a second jam, and without bothering to read the instructions this time, I opened the front of the printer, as I do for changing the ink cartridges. And there, nestling harmlessly in the back of the changing bay for the cartridges, was the missing corner.

Ridiculous!

Managing a website

I wrote here a while ago about setting up a new website for my women's network Growing Old Disgracefully. When I set out on that journey, I thought that once the website was live I would be able to withdraw and leave it to the team of colleagues who had expressed an interest in looking after it. That was before we opted for a content management system (CMS).

One of the two design companies we asked for an estimate was offering us a contract which included maintaing and updating the website; the others offered us a website which we could run ourselves, with a manual of instructions for making the sort of day to day changes and updates that we should require. This last was going to be a cheaper option for us on an ongoing basis, so we decided to go for it, not without misgivings. Only about half our members are currently on line, and I have the impression that many of those do not use their computers for much beyond emailing. It is time, we thought, to nudge them forward a little into the age of cyberspace.

What I didn't realise was that managing a website goes on all the time - that is if you are going to keep it lively and up-to-date. And that although the manual we were given was very good, and despite my blogging experience, there is still a lot to do and to be learned about editing text, adding pictures, updating the events calendar and responding to enquiries about membership.

Added to which I have invested so much of myself in this project, and it has been so interesting and satisfying to work on, that I now find myself deeply embedded in the fabric (or the wire frame, or whatever), and unable to tear myself away. But a deal will have to be struck somehow, between growing old disgracefully and Not Dead Yet! I am determined to get back to regular blogging here.

Still here ......

This is a friendly greeting, believe it or not!

User UNfriendly

.
I had my new Yellow Pages delivered last week.

• First thing I noticed, it now covers a third area, along with the previous two.
• Second thing I noticed, the book is only two thirds as thick as the previous book.

How did they do it, I asked myself?

• Third thing I noticed, the print is now so small that it hurts my eyes to read, even with my bifocals on.

They may as well stop delivering it to me, for all the use it will be. My fingers may be able to do the walking for me, but who will do the reading?
.

New widget

.
I've at last fallen for the temptation of the 'Link Within' widget. But hey, what's going on here. The previous posts that it is choosing to offer at the end of each blogpost seem to have no relevance to what is in the new post. I have got the idea for this widget from Lee who writes 'The Curate's Egg', and associated blogs. Now all his thumbnails of previous programmes seem to come up with a high degree of relevance. But his blogs all have pictures, and I guess it is easier for the widget to index and sort posts by picture than by text.

It's annoying though, as I downloaded it deliberately because I have just written about' growing old disgracefully', and I know I have written about it many times before, so I thought I would let the widget do the walking for me, instead of having to add links individually.

I just wonder what old posts it is going to throw up to go with this one. I am not at all sure I am going to keep this!

Why have I been too busy to post?

.
Because I have been ...



I have written quite often here about growing old disgracefully, a network for older women to which I belong. About a year ago I was asked if I would lead a small working group to look into the practicability and cost of commissioning a professional website, with an interactive members’ section, for our organisation. The small group boiled down to two in the end, and together we began getting estimates from a number of professional designers. We took our findings and recommendations to our committee, and were given approval and a budget to commission the work.

Then began a period of the most intense commitment and focus: a time of forced learning, endless research, and hard, slogging work. Although both of us were competent computer users and knew our way around the web, we knew little about websites except “what we liked” - which is actually a useful basis to work from.

We had to provide a new logo, photographs, and information about the organisation. We also chose to include illustrations from the two books which were the starting point of g.o.d. And it soon became apparent that much of the information we planned to put on the website was out-of-date, and needed checking or rewriting. Bearing in mind that we are an organisation of scattered individuals around the UK and abroad, with no geographical home or centre, and that about half our members are not yet on line, this all took a lot of time.

We were constantly having to ask questions about what the designers were doing - (we had picked a mother and daughter design team by the way - SugarCat Publishing) - and they would patiently explain to us how things worked, and why they were done one way rather than another. The more we learned, the more possibilities we saw in what we were doing, and it wasn’t long before we were expanding the original brief.

It all came together in the end, and the website went live on 29th January. The response has been immediate. Membership enquiries are coming in, as we hoped, and we are also getting enquiries from radio, television and other media, for members to contribute the g.o.d point of view in various ways. So we are being noticed!

[The images in this post are © growingolddisgracefully.org.uk]