Here All Year
I just changed the billing behind this blog to “yearly”, meaning this little island on the internet will remain above water at least until January 2017. There was some method to the madnessthe company that hosts my idiotic words will soon be forced to charge tax in each European countrybut they have already confirmed they will notcharge retrospectively. Given that a yearly subscription for the hosting is significantly cheaper than a monthly subscription, I switched.
If I switch blogging platforms in the next 12 months, I need somebody to kick me. I did wonder for a few seconds about adding a donation form to the blog, but seriouslywho on earth would PAY to keep this rubbish afloat? Given the choice between paying to read this, and wandering off to Tumblr and finding all kinds of depravity, I know which I would choose.
I've always been against advertising in websites. I'm even against advertorial content. The one time I've ever received anything in return for a blog post was totally unsolicited. I wrote a post about “King of Shaves” shave gel years ago, and the owner of the company commented on the post. A few days later a box of everything they make arrived through the post.
Actuallythere was another timeat Easter about six years ago. Cadbury ran a promotion with life-size chocolate footballs, accompanied by footballs with GPS trackers built into them. In return for promising to send the GPS footballs off around the country with friends, they gave you the chocolate football.
I once asked Nokia if I could have a demo unit of their then-flagship mobile phone handset (the one with the 50 megabit camera sensor), with the promise of writing a nerdy blog post about it. They immediately agreed, but would only loan me one for about ten days. Hardly worth the bother, so I never took them up on it.
I can't imagine I will ever write for moneyor be hired in a writing job. I have no formal English qualifications, and the quality of my writing (particularly here) varies enormouslymostly because I invest very little effort in it.
My word this is an introspective, boring blog post.
As always, there are lots of things going on in the “real world” that I'm not writing about at the momentproblems with children, problems with the house, problems with the world in general. I guess I'm not writing about it because much of it is “not my story to tell”. It's been interestingas the children have grown older I have naturally stopped talking about them. Our eldest daughter always checks when I take a photo of her “you're not posting that on Facebook, are you?“I have had an ongoing conversation with a distant friend on the internet over the last several weeks about my self-imposed exile from the various social platforms such as Tumblr, LiveJournal, and WordPresswondering what I might eventually do. I'm starting to fall down on the side of “just this placenowhere else”. I've played the lots of fingers in lots of pies game for too many years. I've become cynical about it all. If people want to find me online, and if I stay in the same place, they will come and find me. If not, that's fine too.
For many, the “social” internet isn't really social at all. The word “social” implies an interactive relationship of sorts. Stalking a scrolling wall of recycled mugshots, soft porn, shoes, clothing, and photos of food hardly qualifies as being “social”.
I really need to stop complaining about everything.