web analytics

Blog

Lost in the post

by

My apologies to regular readers – and indeed to casual ones – for the recent deafening silence from these quarters with regard to the posting of updated missives to this forum.

I wrote a couple of months back about the software update to the blog platform that I use that had the effect of making the entire online journal disappear from the face of the InterWebNet.

That missive referred to the fraught week that I spent rapidly re-engineering the site. At the point of writing I had hoped that all had now been restored and that business could continue as usual.

It became fairly quickly apparent, however, that all was not well – at least for those stalwarts who depend on the mailed ‘new-post’ digests that have long been featured on the site. WordPress was attempting to send out the new messages in the usual manner, but they were disappearing into yet another void. The best intelligence that I could muster (not to mention the largely useless hints from AI) suggested that the tightening of online procedures to try to combat spam, hacks and other exploits had – in fact – actually prevented legitimate communications from getting through.

Finding a solution not affected by such restrictions proved a difficult enough exercise, for which there continues to be precious little online (or even old-fashionably human assistance).

It is with considerable relief that I can announce that I believe that I have finally found a solution.

This posting, of course, should prove to be the proof-of (or proof-against) this conjecture.

So – fingers (etc) firmly crossed!

Dude!!

by

I feel that some sort of explanation is called for with regard to the enigmatic and unexplained offering that was my last posting to these pages.

Fear not – there is a perfectly good explanation – and here it be!

Tech bit coming up… skip ahead if such things send you to sleep!

I started writing ‘The Imperceptible Immigrant’ back in 2012. For those interested in such things the blog is built on WordPress and hosted by a reasonably large North American hosting company. WordPress uses mySQL as its database and much of the coding which it comprises is done in a scripting language called PHP.

Now, all of the components of this system are subject to regular updates – both to add and refine the services offered, but also for security reasons. This latter is most important to prevent undesirables breaking into the systems. The trick to applying updates is to ensure that all of the WordPress components are running on versions that co-exist happily with each other. The timing for all this can be quite difficult.

I have for a while now been receiving warnings that I should upgrade the versions of PHP on my site. I finally did so last week. Unfortunately the theme that I have been using for the site (the template that defines how it looks and feels) has been in use virtually unchanged since the site was built. This upgrade broke it – and ‘The Immigrant’ disappeared in a flurry of error messages.

I was obliged to commence an urgent and time-consuming exercise to find a more modern template and to re-engineer the site – which, in InterWebNet terms, had simply ceased to exist. Even with assistance from some helpful technical support folk it took much of the week to get everything back up and running again.

OK – tech bit over…

The upside (apart from being less likely to break in the future) is that the site now has a spiffing new look and feel. If you get a chance do check it out and let me know what you think. Please do the same – naturally – should anything not be working properly.

Thank you

 

Looking back (again!)

by

“Everything happens kind of the way it’s supposed to happen, and we just watch it unfold. And you can’t control it. Looking back, you can’t say, ‘I should’ve… ‘ You didn’t, and had you, the outcome would have been different”.

Rick Rubin

Ok – it’s that time of year again. Time to look back at the year just gone – reviewing the aims and ambitions that we set ourselves for it – and to effect a reckoning thereof.

Once that task has been accomplished I will post another missive containing some thoughts about the coming year. No – we don’t make resolutions for the New Year – but we do try to identify some of those 2things that we hope and intend to achieve.

At around this time last year, I wrote the following (with updates on our progress in red):

“Though our 2024 turned out to be better than anticipated, for the rest of the world it could well be argued that the year took a dramatically retrograde turn. We are, naturally, not immune to these external pressures and it may prove – as a result – that 2025 turns out to be the quiet – heads-down – dig-in – sort of year that we might have expected last time around.

Well – there was a certain amount of ‘digging in’ in 2025 – though perhaps less than there might have been. However, the fact that The Girl and I finally found ourselves (involuntarily) retired did lead us to spend a significant amount of time testing the boundaries (financial and otherwise) of our new situation. Let’s face it, we had actually come to Canada to be retired, so the fact that it took us a full decade to achieve that status might seem a bit of a bloomin’ miracle. Moving on…

These things, however, we are anticipating:

  • A week in Puerto Vallarta in Mexico, during the College’s reading week in February. Right now The Girl and I both need to feel some sun on our shoulders

We duly got our week in the sun – at a rather lovely resort too. Given that we were both in the process of becoming retired this was most welcome. The fact that I had had something of a health scare at the start of the year too, the sun drenched peace and quiet was a great boon.

  • Some overdue maintenance on our lovely home. We need a new hot water tank; the roof needs to be de-mossed; I am contemplating putting underfloor heating in my studio and we are long overdue in making a start on dealing with some of the clutter that seems to accumulate through modern living

Maintenance was done; a new hot water tank installed; the roof de-mossed; a significant start on down-sizing our clutter was begun… We also had a new roof put on our garden shed (shop) – but the underfloor heating in the studio has had to wait until we have a clearer picture on financial matters.

  • We are hoping to host some visitors this year – which is always fun when it also turns into a holiday for us

We did indeed get to see friends, with the additional boon of us getting an excursion to the Rockies and a trip on viaRail into the bargain. This turned out to be an excellent adventure and significant memories were made (photos and reports of this expedition were posted to this journal during July, August and September).

  • The will be music-making – no doubt – and I may serve a turn on the executive of the Peninsula Players (who presented the pantomime with which I was lately involved

There is news on the music-making front, but I will post separately in that regard in a little while. I am indeed serving a term on the executive of the Peninsula Players – and I was closely involved with the 2026 pantomime – for which I re-assumed my Musical Director role.

  • We will definitely aim to entertain in our garden just as much as the weather allows”

I am delighted to report that we were indeed able to spend more time in our garden – and I believe that we were suitably entertaining.

Coming soon – our plans for 2026…

 

 

Tough times

by

“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future”

Yogi Berra

At around this time last year I was following my usual custom of looking ahead to the coming year and outlining – in a post to this journal – the plans and projections that we were making therefore.

When I first sat down to write that post my mind was still clouded by the chaos that we, personally, had endured during 2023. At one point – towards the end of that year – we thought that 2024 would inevitably be a quiet year, with little travel or other like extravagance – and that a period of retrenchment was probably called for.

As it turned out – and as can be determined from this recent post (What just happened?) – the year was full of activity both on the travel front (our splendid trip to Scotland) – on the work front (particularly for The Girl at her First Nation) and with regard to our creative efforts (a new Anam Danu album and an unexpected pantomiming!). Perhaps the only area in which we felt that the year had not lived up to expectation was that we did not get to do as much socializing as we would have liked. The poor summer weather contributed considerably to this less than ideal state of affairs.

Though our 2024 turned out to be better than anticipated, for the rest of the world it could well be argued that the year took a dramatically retrograde turn. We are, naturally, not immune to these external pressures and it may prove – as a result – that 2025 turns out to be the quiet – heads-down – dig-in – sort of year that we might have expected last time around.

These things, however, we are anticipating:

  • A week in Puerto Vallarta in Mexico, during the College’s reading week in February. Right now The Girl and I both need to feel some sun on our shoulders
  • Some overdue maintenance on our lovely home. We need a new hot water tank; the roof needs to be de-mossed; I am contemplating putting underfloor heating in my studio and we are long overdue in making a start on dealing with some of the clutter that seems to accumulate through modern living
  • We are hoping to host some visitors this year – which is always fun when it also turns into a holiday for us
  • The will be music-making – no doubt – and I may serve a turn on the executive of the Peninsula Players (who presented the pantomime with which I was lately involved
  • We will definitely aim to entertain in our garden just as much as the weather allows

 

On a side note – I observe that this blog has just passed 1200 posts – this being number 1201. At the same time the blog has also just reached its thirteenth anniversary. Happy Birthday!

The power of ten

by

I posted to this forum a little under a year ago a somewhat reflective missive entitled ‘Time Passes’. The subject of that post was this very journal; the trigger for my writing it the circumstance that the ninth anniversary of my very first blog post had then but recently occurred.

I pondered the actuality that I had certainly not set out to embark on a project that would shamble on for quite such a long time – its longevity having surprised me just as much as I imagine it would anyone else who devoted so much as a moment’s thought to the matter.

I wrapped up that epistle by musing that – having gotten so close – I really did feel inclined to keep things going for long enough that my efforts would have encompassed an entire decade!

And here we are! Hoorah!!

I can’t help thinking that some sort of celebration might be in order, though not – heaven forfend – anything that breaches Covid protocols (or indeed breaks the law). I am not sure what form that might sensibly take.

Last year I included some statistics – for them as likes such things. Here they are again – but updated (with last year’s figures in brackets).

In the nine ten years that I have been writing this blog I have written 1025 (925) posts (averaging just over 100 posts a year – approximately two a week). If the internal statistics are to be believed I have written a little over 401,000 (365,000) words in that time and uploaded some 2,845 (2,590) images – many of them my own photographs.

As I wrote last year – “Not bad, huh“?!

In last year’s post I toyed with the notion of it long being time to wind things up. In the light of some most kind and affirmative remarks from gentle readers I determined instead to keep things going.

My thought this year would be that I could perhaps reduce the frequency of my posts, from the current average of around two a week to just a single weekly post. It is not that I mind the discipline of knocking out regular posts but as I get older I do wonder if there is still enough of interest on which to report.

Do let me know what you think…

Change

by

“Just because everything is different doesn’t mean anything has changed.”

Irene Peter

Those who receive these postings by email digest will have found yesterday in their inboxes an unfamiliar message which may have caused in them them some alarm. There is nothing to worry about – but I am sorry that this strange new message came without forewarning.

Since I started this online journal back in 2012 it has utilised a service called Feedburner to send out the email digests. Shortly before I started so doing that company was purchased by Google. Various pundits warned even then that – because it was a free service – Google would probably shut it down before very long. Now – ten years on – they have announced that they are finally so doing.

I have thus been obliged to switch to a different service and the email that went out yesterday was just the latest post going out from that new platform. Now – I had no idea what format that message would take or what I could do to make it look more friendly – so the somewhat confusing missive that was sent did not look very appetizing and nor did it sufficiently explain the change.

I have now done some more work on it and I hope that it has a more friendly appearance. I will find out at the same time that the gentle reader does – when this post is circulated!

Please do get in touch should you have further questions or observations.

Time passes

by

Time passes, and little by little everything that we have spoken in falsehood becomes true.

Marcel Proust

I receive a sharp reminder once a year of the passage of time… and in particular of the passage of time since I started writing this blog. That reminder comes in the form of the renewal demand from my hosting company for the pleasure of supporting my various websites – of which this blog was the first, having been created back in 2012. I started blogging at the end of January that year so now is the time that I must stump up in order that I may continue so to do.

For those gentle readers who don’t really get this whole blogging thing – there was a time when blogging was all the rage. That was the few years before I took it up, naturally, and by the time had I started keeping this journal the youngsters were already saying – “Blogging?… Nah!”

Now, of course, I am nearly a whole decade further behind the times – and you know what? – I really don’t care that I am old-fashioned. I am sixty seven, for goodness sake. I am allowed to be old fashioned.

For those of you who like statistics – in the nine years that I have been writing this blog I have written 925 posts (averaging just over 100 posts a year – approximately two a week). If the internal statistics are to be believed I have written nearly 365,000 words in that time and uploaded some 2,590 images – many of them my own photographs.

Not bad, huh?!

I started blogging when I learned that The Girl was going to take up a good job here in Victoria, even though I still needed to work for a few more years in the UK before I could retire and move to Canada to be with her. Faced with the prospect of carrying on a long distance relationship with an eight hour time difference I figured that I would need to find things to occupy my time (other than working!). When her job fell through and she came back to the UK some ten months later I decided to keep the blog going – documenting our eventual move to British Columbia, which was rescheduled for 2015.

I could have stopped once we settled here but I decided to keep it going – as a way of keeping a foot on both continents. I am blessed to have regular readers on both sides of the pond who seem happy to keep up with my chunterings.

Has the blog changed much? It is certainly less verbose than it used to be and I don’t reach for the thesaurus quite as much as once I did. I enjoyed getting to explore the language and to play little games with prose, but as I have grown older so have I started to keep things a little more simple – more straightforward. I have noticed that I do the same with song lyrics – which is no bad thing…

Having made it this far I will, naturally, be shooting for the complete decade.

After that – who knows?

Cinquecento

by

Image by David Bellot - Berkeley, CA, USAWell – who would have thought it?

It is to be hoped that the gentle reader might indulge me just a little if – with not the slightest intention of sounding my own shophar –  I express my astonishment at the relative longevity of this enterprise…

…by which I refer, of course, to this attractively eccentric almanac!

Yes – since I took my first faltering footsteps into the anarchic world of blogging on January 26th 2012 I have contrived to make additions to this agglomeration of arbitrary articles at roughly bi-weekly intervals. The end result of all of that tapping and scratching is (and I know that you have been keeping score!) that this is the five hundredth post since the imperceptibility of the immigrant was first imparted.

Very many humble thanks to all of those die-hards who have stuck with it.

I think a small celebration might be in order – and as that is something that is decidedly better done in the ‘real’ world rather than in the ‘virtual’, the Kickass Canada Girl and I will just have to do something appropriate here in BC! The reader may choose to take the opportunity to raise a glass for this (or indeed any other) reason at his or her own whim or fancy!

Cheers to all!

 

PS – Serious kudos to anyone who can glean the relevance to this post of the image thereto attached!