Why Do You Blog?

Last night Frances Garrood asked Why do you blog?  Interesting question.  4½ years ago I wrote the following at Sucked Into Blogland.

I started A Hebridean in New Zealand towards the end of 2007.  My Brother had been blogging for a while and it seemed to me that it was a way of telling my friends and family back in Scotland and England and France and Spain what I was up to in the other half of my life.  It was somewhere between a diary and a supplement to the emails that I sent (and still send).  It is also lovely to look back and be reminded of what I have done and where I have been. 

When I returned to Lewis at the end of April 2008 I continued my diary in Eagleton Notes.  That way my friends in New Zealand could see what I was doing when I was back in Europe. 

Before Andrew (our elder son) died on my birthday in June 2006 he had kept a blog of his long and arduous battle against cancer.  I re-read it some while later and started another blog A Life in the Day Of.  OK silly title but as I used the pseudonym L'Homme Bizarre avec la Barbe Grise why shouldn't it have been a silly title.  I've not kept it up but at some stage my cancer will become a nuisance again and I shall no doubt resort to it as my blanket. 

Perhaps a month or so ago I wandered into a few of the blogs that Scriptor Senex follows on his Rambles.  I found a life out there which was absolutely fascinating and compelling.  I have only visited a small (ish) number of blogs but have discovered a few that I visit every day (almost).  Given that my life was filled before from 0630 to about 0100 (I have never needed much sleep) I now have a real dilemma.  How do I fit my new found acquaintances into my life? 

What really puzzles me, however, is how one can suddenly become so attached to people one has never met and is unlikely ever to meet.  I have become acquainted with someone with one of the most beautiful smiles and sunny outlooks on life; someone whose brain and ability with words (and, obviously other things too) blows me away; someone from 'my' Island in Scotland whom I've never met on the Island (so far as I know); someone from the North of New Zealand who has met recent tragedy with apparent great fortitude and whom I have come to admire; and someone with a bright pink (is it pink?) blog which is full of the most interesting things (which I am working my way through backwards as I've only just come to it).

It is highly unlikely that in non cyber-space life we would live lives that would ever cross.  We may live in different continents and cultures.  We may come from different backgrounds.  We may be from different age brackets.  We may hold diametrically opposing views on certain things (but we may never know).  But we all have a common interest in what each of us has to say. 

Thank you Scriptor Senex for introducing me to an entirely new life.

If I were writing that today I could add new friends and some of the above have gone and some have both come and gone but apart from that I don't think I would alter many words.

Just a Thought

CJ has just said to himself "That is not what I set out to do this morning.".  I have come to the conclusion that that shall be on my headstone.  Or would be if I were to have a headstone.  Being of the view that I would prefer my ashes to be scattered a headstone is unlikely.  In any event I'd rather it wasn't something that had to be considered before I've had the opportunity to reduce my Association Croquet handicap a bit further.   Anyway to get back to CJ's statement.  Most mornings I get up pretty early with every intentions of 'getting things done'.  I usually have a list because I'm a pretty organised person.  At least that is how I see myself.  Does it ever work out that way?  No.  Why not?

The answer is probably ARADD (Age Related Attention Deficit Disorder) or, as shown in this YouTube video Age-Activated Attention Deficit Disorder.  Leastways that's my excuse.  Of course if you read the serious stuff then you will see that ADHD is a problem with inattentiveness, over-activity, impulsivity, or some combination of these and if you keep on reading the serious stuff then you will get very depressed - I can guarantee that.   Fortunately I couldn't concentrate hard enough to get to the end so remained happy and unaware. 

You see even this post is a good example of ARADD.  When I started out it was to be a post about Virginia in Barbados but CJ did have to go and say "That is not what I set out to do this morning."

Thinking about it further "That is not what I set out to do this morning." would be rather apt for a headstone.  After all not many of us who wake up with a list of intentions in the morning usually have death on our list.  Not even Batty *.

And by way of adding a bit of colour to this post here is a picture of a little arachnid in my pond.  It's a Water Mite and is about 2.5mm long in real life ie tiny!

Water Mite

*  For those who don't know the film Bladerunner: Batty: "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time... like tears in rain... Time to die."  

Horses For Courses

There has recently been some discussion about cameras and lenses in my neck of Blogland.  When this subject comes up I always get that yearning feeling for the days of the SLR and lenses that can define the segments of an eye at 100 paces.  Then reality kicks in.  Firstly there is the transportation problem.  [Oops.  I nearly said 'issue' but I would not want to upset Frances who has issues with issues].  The weight allowed in the cabin of a transcontinental plane is generally 6 kg.  My camera equipment used to weigh about 16 kg.  If it travels in the hold then neither the airline nor travel insurance will cover it.  Secondly for the type of photography I do an ability quickly to go from a telephoto to wide angle is important to me.  Thirdly there is the cost.  I won't go on.

Since 2004 when I bought my first bridge camera in California I have used bridge cameras.  I currently use a Sony DSC-HX100V with built in GPS and image stabilisation and a 30 x telephoto zoom lens giving 810mm equivalent.  It will produce the following with no change of lens and only a few seconds delay whilst the zoom operates.

Original image (tone mapped) at 'normal' format

Image taken immediately after the above using 30 x zoom

Image above 'enlarged' 

When I bought it last year it was just over £400 if I remember correctly.  That would just about buy a couple of filters for some SLRs.

Early this morning I took the following purely as an example:

Can you see the yacht? 

This one!  Oh yes there's a seagull there too and a bot on the horizon.

All of a sudden I'm more than satisfied with my camera equipment.

Thankful Thursday: The Kindness of Folk

A few weeks ago I was reading a blog post of a new blogger when the blogger commented that she had lost her USB lead for the camera and had been waiting for another to come in the post for several weeks.  I sympathised but said that I'd been waiting for a lead for two months only to be told that the lead was no longer being produced for the piece of equipment that had been supplied.  

I could not find one anywhere in the UK but I discovered that it was readily available on Amazon.com in the US but not suppliable to a UK or NZ address.  I did find one US supplier who would send one but he wanted an exorbitant price plus $40 to post it.  So I had cut my losses and abandoned the project.

I received an immediate email asking what it was I needed and offering to obtain it from Amazon, have it shipped to friends in the US (the blogger does not live in the US) who would ship it to me.  I have learned that when people make offers like that they are unlikely to have made the offer if they didn't mean it.  So I gratefully accepted and before I could blink the wheels had been set in motion.

The cable arrived yesterday.  It's brilliant.

What makes this even more exceptional is that when I tried to reimburse everyone involved for the cost of the item and the postage etc I was met with a very curt response.  A person who a few weeks previously had been a complete stranger had done me a really good favour on the basis that I, in my turn, would one day do something for someone who would, in all probability, not be her.

There are some lovely people in the world.

So today I am thankful to a have a new Blogland friend who has re-affirmed my belief that those in the circle of Bloggers in which I find myself are a wonderful people.  I am a very lucky person.