Category Archives: this site

When we were very young

I started blogging on livejournal about 15 years ago, and then went to blogger, and then, got my own domain and set up a Drupal site on a host that has since gone bust, and then moved the whole lot to WordPress and another (still my current) hosting company. 

I ran a few sites, covering photography, general stuff, art, more photography, ore general stuff. I got nominated for a couple of original of the species Irish Blog Awards. It was fun; I didn’t win and I never wrote a book but I got profiled on RTE at some point, and assorted photos turned up in newspapers and magazines. I’ve been thinking about how it used to be lately as Facebook and Twitter have been infuriating me in different ways. 

I never really loved Facebook. Twitter, I sort of got, but Facebook was a bit meh. Its network however means it replaces functionality from personal correspondance that I’m not sure I’d get back. I’m looking at paring it back (but cannot find the time). Twitter is more problematic because the network changes as people come and go and so, while I’d probably benefit from dropping it, the truth remains I don’t get what I used to get. I used to get interesting information and reads and conversations. Now I get flagellation about whether I’m right on this, support that cause, aware of this other cause complaining about this action by one of about 140 different governments and am I outraged by this view by some plonker in central Missouri whom I have never heard of and could not care less about. 

So in a way, I prefer blogging and then I wonder if part of the issue is I’m just getting older and not getting with the way social media has changed. As Damien and I are much the same age. I hope he’ll forgive me for wondering if he has hit a similar wall

I built a new blog for the first time in a while last year (the piano practice one) and I am toying with an art one. I don’t take so many Photographs lately (I point a phone at it and if it works good if not, well I’ll not be seeing any more sports photos published, anyway). But I don’t expect the world to be the same as it used to be. Most of my online life is on a phone lately and that sucks to write anything long on. I don’t spend much time sitting at a computer lately, not outside work anyway – because I’ve found life essentially much better fun, and also, because I’m not talking 10000 photos a week I don’t have to spend time on Photoshop. But I could make time, like I think I do for the piano site. 

It is just, some of the admin side of blogging wrecked my head. Almost all of my sites now have comments switched off. For every one valid comment I was getting here, I was getting about 10,000 spam comments. I don’t have time for this, even allowing the automation of a whole pile of it. It takes away a lot of the plus points of blogging. 

Also, the whole label blogging is another thing. There are individuals out there who think that blogging is getting free stuff and reviewing it. It is not. 

Anyway, the point is, I want to write more and here is as good a place as any. If I’m going to do that, though I probably need to rethink the social/comments side of things. The downside to all that is my hobbies are as follows: 1) painting/drawing 2) playing the piano 3) needlework and so, they’ll probably feature heavily. I don’t cook much so Experiments with a Cookbook is dead. 

Some updates

If you’re a regular around here, you’ve probably had a slight shock because I’ve had the decorators in (again). I updated the underlying software and while I was at it, applied their latest default theme. I find it a bit overwhelming but there you have it. I’ll be playing around with it and there might come some background images shortly. Leave it with me.

I’ve added two new sites to this domain which are both specialist blogs that I didn’t really feel like building separate domains for. One is Learning to Make Bobbin Lace and the other is Urban Sketching.  It is a measure of the software supplied by my very nice hosting company, Blacknight, that so far, this hasn’t caused any problems. Neither of those two sites have much content yet but if you are interested neither in urban sketching nor lacemaking, the chances are you won’t care.

In the meantime, my tech/data blog is still running over at treasalynch.com and the photography blog at livingforlight.org. The latter is probably looking at a full overhaul later when I decide what I want to do with it but for now it’s staying in place. After that, I’m in the process of looking at my digital assets and cleaning them out. I will probably shut down thingsthatstrikeme.org by the end of the year completely so some of the more interesting material will possibly get republished here before I ditch the site altogether.

After that, all the best.

Tea, lovely tea

Here are some of my favourite teas.

  1. Mariages Freres – Marco Polo
  2. Barrys Gold Blend
  3. Nordvist Tiigerin Paivaumi
  4. Nordqvist Kaiserin Morsian
  5. Le Palais des Thés – No 25
  6. Le Palais des Thés – Thé des Amants
  7. La Compagnie Anglaise des Thés – Túron
  8. La Compagnie Anglaise des Thés – Fuego
  9. Mariage Freres – Wedding Imperial
  10. Nordqvist – Karibean Aurinko

I may have spelt the Finnish ones slightly wrong – sorry.

Winter is approaching and warm drinks are more and more important. For most of my life I lived off Barrys Gold Blend and I will always have a box of it to hand somewhere. But Marco Polo is just the most amazing tea going. It’s a pity that no one sensible sells Mariage Freres tea in Dublin (that I know about) because the delivery charges from France are fairly hefty. Likewise for the Nordqvist tea from Finland. And Kudos to le Palais des Thés who have a shop on Wicklow Street where if you’re really very lucky, they will also have the most amazing ginger bread for sale.

Just fantastic.

The thing is, when you grow up in Ireland, tea is almost a binary experience. Are you Barrys or Lyons? Tea is so much broader than this now and yes,. we have a few decent specialist tea shops around the country now. And there is a bigger selection of tea in the supermarkets (nod to Twining’s Lady Grey by the way – it’s almost on the list).

This is a good thing. There are more varieties of tea available in Ireland now than beer. This is something we may want to consider when wondering about the country’s alcohol problem.

 

coming up for air

This is really just a brief note for anyone who still has an RSS feed for windsandbreezes.org stashed in a feedreader, if, indeed, there is anyone who does.

I’m in the process of rebuilding the site. It will slowly be coming back to life over the next few months.