Tag Archives: Apple

Where Do Broken Blogs Go … Can They Find Their Way Home?

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If I said I had been kidnapped by a monster to explain my lack of posting here over the last two weeks, it would not be far off from the truth. I took this photo at Eden Project over four years ago when I was in the process of relocating my life to Cornwall from the US. The monster in the background is made up of old electronic equipment, broken bits of televisions, washing machines, out-dated computers and other kinds of gadgets that can improve our lives or sometimes imprison us.

Held Hostage By My Indecision

Computer changes are at the top of the long list of distractions that have kept me from writing lately.  I’ve been getting updates from Apple for months letting me know that I needed to move to iCloud as Mobile Me was ending. Don’t worry if none of the details make sense to you, just know that over the last year I’ve known this was coming and put it off making a decision until now.

Keeping My Email

One of my chief concerns with not moving to iCloud had to do my email and I was only able to decide once I discovered I could leave it as it was and let some other significant parts of my online/connected life go. Even then, I waited until the last four days possible to do so and only after reading loads of confusing information. See what I mean about monsters and indecision.

No More iWeb

My first blog was through iWeb, which was a big part of the problem because it was affected by the discontinuation of Mobile Me and the required move to iCloud.  That blog became an archive for my earliest posts after I moved to WordPress in early 2009, a move necessitated by my lack of ability to moderate comments that were being left by a female stalker who did a variety of things to try to make my life miserable.

The early version of GOTJ no longer exists now. What you will see if you look for giftsofthejourney.com is this post as I mapped the domain name to my WordPress account knowing my iWeb version of the first GOTJ would disappear at the end of June.

I saved a copy of the first 80 or so posts and plan to move them over to this blog one post at a time, backdating them so they show up in the time period in which they were originally created. Even though it will take some work to republish them along with their comments, I think it will be worth the effort to have all of my posts since June 2008 finally in one place.

I’ve been wanting to use my domain name here without the addition of wordpress.com and hopefully this change to giftsofthejourney.com won’t create any problems for those of you who have subscribed to my blog. We’ll know after this post.

 

Sorting Things Out

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It feels as if it has been a long time since I posted although today is actually only day four since the post about my dancing ladies guiding me home. After traveling so much during the month of September with my sister, I  must admit that I have been sitting around with my feet up a good bit more than I normally would. Put plainly, I feel tired in a way that is difficult to explain. It feels like more than just travel weariness and I am spending more time than I probably should thinking about why.

My habit when getting get stuck in my head is generally some sort of physical movement such as cleaning out closets or giving things a good scrubbing. So far the closets still need a bit of rearranging and the spiders are taking over the house. It is difficult to clean when one’s feet are crossed at the ankles and resting the coffee table, but I am managing to get some work done even though my brain has been disinterested in writing and cleaning does not seem to be the answer this time.

Instead of sorting through old clothes or pairing stray socks, I have been sorting through the new and old images residing in my Aperture file. Having wrapped up the end of September with almost 12,000 new photographs, my computer was bursting with around 33,000 images. In preparation for my sister Margaret’s visit, I had moved about 15,000 off my MacBook to an external hard drive, but quickly filled it back up again to the point where I began to receive messages about how I needed to clear some space before trying to add any more.

It’s funny on reflection to think about how I tend to keep photographs where I did not get what I hoped for from my subject when so many good ones are sitting right next them. With the same sort of scarcity mentality that made my depression era grandmother save old things she should have tossed, I have kept photographs that I thought I might need in the future even though they were imperfect images. I held onto to the idea that I might shape them up with a bit of time and Photoshop.

Never mind that several perfectly good images sat on either side in the same grouping, I have always been slow to press the delete button on the imperfect, afraid like my grandmother … that I might need them one day.

I can see a correlation between my saving photographs that would be better deleted in the same way that I find it difficult to let go of many things such as beliefs, ideas, dreams, and even people, who clearly no longer wish to be included in my memories or life.

I hold on … shifting them over to an external hard drive of sorts in my memory, letting them take up space that would be better served by something else. For the last few days I have been ruthlessly deleting thousands of images and the big clear out is not over yet.

I should have done this years ago and when I pause too long before pressing the button, I remind myself that I am making room for new images that will give me what I want without all the effort of trying to shape them into something they never were from the beginning.