Clear white light

Or perhaps that should be titled a light bulb moment? Except I don’t like clichéed and hackneyed phrases. (Or even tautology).

Whichever tosser decreed that we can only have light bulbs of 60watts or whatever the latest lowest wattage light bulb is, seriously deserves shooting.

I am not in the habit of leaving every light on in the house. At all. I seem to remember reading that the queen went round Buckingham Palace turning off lights. Certainly my posh pal from university would leave the house and order peremptorily ‘Are all the lights turned off?’ to her husband. (This is the million pound plus house in Primrose Hill they lived in at least ten years ago).

I walk, bus or cycle before driving. I don’t have a TV on or a radio on all day. I just do not use energy.

But I really would like to see what I am doing. My eyesight is poor at the best of times but having to struggle with appalling light bulbs really, really, really, annoys the hell out of me. So, instead of using one decent bulb to see what I am doing, I now need to light up three rooms to get a remotely adequate level of lighting.

People who can’t see what they are doing are likely to have accidents. Simple as that. Whether it is cutting themselves preparing food or whatever. I am really tired of straining my eyes because of poor lighting using 60 watt bulbs. Bring back 100 watt bulbs or 120 watt say I.

Seriously, how much energy has been saved by reducing light bulb wattage?

Next, I see WordPress seems to have been fiddling yet again. How to justify your job and existence by fixing with something that ain’t broke.

In a rare fit of madness – aka I really didn’t want to do more important things so was looking around for a distraction – I clicked on freshly pressed. It too has gone the way of reader and is no longer in magazine format. It is, in fact, in two columns that take up 40% of the page (approx). Now I’m a big believer in the judicious use of white space but that is plain silly and totally un-user friendly.

It’s time WordPress got itself a nice little user group that had the guts to say when the changes are crap. In search of inspiring and intelligent posts I chanced on one offering top tips to bloggers. How to make your blog better than average, or some such title.

Always willing to learn, I clicked. After I had read through it twice, in sheer incredulity, I clicked on the about page. Seemed to be someone in ‘high’ which I thought was school – well I went to an all girls’ high school – but no, they are at university. I probably didn’t read closely enough. After seven years of blogging I’m not sure that advice from a 20-year-old who has blogged for a few months is really that helpful. It was on the level of start sentences with a capital letter. Actually, there weren’t any grammatical points, I lied. It was more on the lines of ‘write for yourself,’ ‘make sure you like the posts you write,’ sort of drivel.

Seriously, that sort of guff is not helpful advice at all. Practical advice is useful – short sentences, short pars, break up the text, a few photos, eliminate slow loading time, downsize photos etc etc. Proof-read, grammar check, add captions to photos or introduce them within the text, and all the basics, because if you don’t do any of that why are you blogging at all? But this admirable freshly pressed post didn’t contain any of that.

~ Give your blog a theme.

Wow! Thanks for that, would never have occurred to me. Because if I mix up a load of different posts on the same blog, it will look like a mish-mash. Those of you who read more than one of my blogs will know that is exactly why I have far too many blogs. If you aren’t interested in dogs/land rovers/old photos/travel photos/Gib and Spain, you don’t need to look at those blogs.

~ One shouldn’t write nasty posts criticising people. There is too much hate in the world.

Well, absolutely spot on (with regards to too much hate), but if anyone thinks I am going to sit back and say, ‘I don’t like that but I don’t want to upset anyone so I won’t write about it,’ they can think again, because people actually need to know what is going on and what is wrong.

There are some good blogs out there with excellent tips. Time Thief’s One Cool Site is the classic example. This is an extremely good site with great advice.

But to freshly press a banal and quite honestly mundane and nothing post, is truly ridiculous. I lost the will to live after that but generously thought I had clicked on the worst of the best, so tried again, only to find I hadn’t. Someone was droning on about their wonderful wooden intrays they had bought.

I mean to say, a whole post on intrays?! I might write on roughseas about the art on my walls at the finca or in Gibflat but usually as part of something else, and at least there is a story behind them. Perhaps I need to write about my Ikea intrays, black sprayed metal, bought years ago from Gateshead. A truly riveting post in the making I think. Better even than my peach chutney post of which I was extremely proud.

Have to say, I hold out no hopes of ever being Freshly Pressed, nor do I want to be. Apart from the fact that I endlessly criticise WP (someone needs to), my satisfaction in blogging comes from a) writing and b) the intelligent, sensible and thoughtful comments and discussion I receive on all my blogs.

None of you need trite advice. Many of you have theme-specific blogs. Some of you have at least two blogs, others have three and probably more.

Seems to me WP is not taking one step forward and one backwards, it’s no steps forwards and ten backwards. I can’t honestly think of a single change that has been made in the last 12 months that I would consider an improvement.

I had another rant to add but two will do for today (actually I’ve forgotten what the other one was).