Thinking Ahead

Okay so by ahead I only mean this coming week but that's quite an achievement for me these days. That doesn't mean that I don't plan.  I do.  Sort of.  But this time I've done no planning apart from booking my flights. The rest is all being planned for me.

I'm going to Sydney to stay with a close friend of over 50 years who lives in Canada but who has a daughter living in Sydney.   The last time we were all together was when we all holidayed in Italy in 2012.  Her daughter has been on at me for years because we meet in Europe or here in New Zealand but I've never been to visit her in Sydney which is less than 4 hours away across the Tasman from New Zealand!

It is more years than I can remember since I have been away for more than a day or so without my laptop: especially if there were photos to be downloaded and blogs to be written.  Well the next eight days will be different.  I leave here at crack of dawn tomorrow morning.  Me, my iPad and my iPhone and no Macbook!  I have, however, decided that by the time I get to Sydney I will have learned more about using my iPad.  I know that at the moment I do not realise its full potential.  I've even downloaded the Apple manual for it.  My intention is to carry on blogging as if I was doing so on the laptop.  I suddenly decided this because of a post by Carol in Cairns.  Thank you Carol for that and for the subsequent information.

Why the photo below?  Simply because I wanted to see if I could do this post with a photo from the iPad.

A rather large hearse with a 1929 Austin 7 tucked in behind.

Addendum:

Well it didn't all go completely to plan.  The picture downsized itself and you can't take photos off the iPad using Blogger in Safari on the iPad which is rather odd.  However I'm sure I'll overcome these difficulties and carry on blogging.

Happy Anniversary and Plus ça Change

Five years ago today this blog was born: two years after I first went to New Zealand.  I say 'went' instead of 'came' because at this moment I am not in New Zealand.  Nor, in fact, am I in my 'other' home of Scotland.  I am hidden away in the Italian Tuscan countryside.  It is a Sunday morning and all's quiet, very quiet.

I was wondering how to commemorate the day.  I could search for my favourite posts or photos or a summary of some sort.  I even contemplated writing about why I love New Zealand and my life there.  I've decided, though, just to seize the moment and post a few ordinary reminders of my life in New Zealand.

Blogging has become such an important part of my life and, through blogging and particularly in New Zealand, I have made some truly wonderful friends.  I won't use the word 'real' because some of my blog friends are as real to me as those I meet face to face.

Most of my reminders are to do with thoughts of my friends and my special New Zealand family but there are some other reminders:

The hills of Hawkes Bay

A picture of a Kingfisher in pastel which hangs in my study by Catriona aged 9

Some of the things which make The Cottage my home

The Cottage

And, of course, croquet

How To Spend Saturday

After my irritating episode yesterday when I deleted a couple of posts, I received a message from Fiona to say that she had rescued the Myna Bird post from her Google Reader because it had not at that time refreshed and deleted it.  However the 'Legs' one had gone.  In fact it had gone from Facebook's Networked Blogs too and had, effectively, disappeared never to return. 

However my saviour for that post came from Mark, my Nepthew-in-law, who wrote the blog search program Postvorta and who knows about the dark arts behind computers that most of us can only wonder about.  Apparently my Postvorta had not re-indexed since the deletion (if I understand it correctly) and Mark was able to rescue all the text from it.

So today I am an exceedingly happy bunny and have re-constructed the two posts and the comments made on them.  

Some people today will have done great things:  finished their magnum opus, discovered a cure for an illness, re-invented the wheel or saved a life or, perhaps, just achieved a personal best on the athletics field.  I've re-constructed my blog.  I am easily pleased!

I should have been out on the croquet lawn this afternoon playing a match in the hot summer sun.  As it is it's rained solidly all day and the match has been postponed until tomorrow.

So for the second day running I've been catching up round The Cottage, in Blogland and Computerland.  The children, on the other hand are not on their play-stations or whatever - they are in the pool despite the rain - the water temperature yesterday was an almost bath-like 30℃.

I've also started using Blogbackupr.com to back up my blogs constantly instead of my supposedly monthly back-up to my own computer.  For someone who is a fanatical backer-upper and who keeps on and off-site backups I certainly failed when it came to the blog backup.

Blog Layout

Monica from Beyond the Lone Islands has been having problems with the text on this blog being too small. In addition the pictures push over the sidebar to the right.  I have no problem either on my 15" Macbook nor my 9" Windows Notebook.  I don't have a problem on any browser - Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Rockmelt or Safari  (I have only tested Internet Explorer 8 on my Notebook and that's ok too).  I'm wondering if anyone else is having problems.  This is the standard Verdana text set in my template.  It was was set at 14px but I've now increased it to 16px.

Monica from Beyond the Lone Islands has been having problems with the text on this blog being too small. In addition the pictures push over the sidebar to the right.  I have no problem either on my 15" Macbook nor my 9" Windows Notebook.  I don't have a problem on any browser - Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Rockmelt or Safari  (although I don't use Internet Explorer so I can't comment on that).  So I'm wondering if others are having problems too.  This is Verdana set on the composition page as normal. 

Monica from Beyond the Lone Islands has been having problems with the text on this blog being too small. In addition the pictures push over the sidebar to the right.  I have no problem either on my 15" Macbook nor my 9" Windows Notebook.  I don't have a problem on any browser - Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Rockmelt or Safari  (although I don't use Internet Explorer so I can't comment on that).  So I'm wondering if others are having problems too.  This is Verdana set on the composition page as large.

If you are having problems with reading my blog or seeing the pictures please can you comment.  Do you have any preference for a size of font?

Mark's Blog

Some of my readers have noticed that there have been problems with Mark's Blog "Tales From and English Coffee Drinker" and comments that he has made on my Blog which keep disappearing.  SP and I have also been having problems as in Bloggers and Followers.

This morning I received the following email from Mark.

As you may have noticed from one of the recent comments from Fi on your blog about followers my blogger nightmare continues. It looks as if not only has the comment I posted on that post been removed, again but Google have disabled my entire account. This means all my blogs have gone and I can't access my gmail account either. I've completed the contact us form but goodness knows what I did to have my account suspended,

Hopefully it will get resolved soon but....

I"m beginning to get worried/paranoid.  I do keep a back-up of my blogs but......

Blogger and Followers

I'm not sure what Blogger's up to these days but as I mantioned earlier SP and I were having difficulties following each other's posts and kept disappearing from each other's reading lists.  That seems to have been sorted.  Then yesterday Mark wondered whether I'd upset him and removed one of his comments from a post.  It was a perfectly innocuous comment, he's never upset me (how could he, he likes Marmite) but, nevertheless, despite me having the email to say he's commented the comment had disappeared.

Today I saw that I had an extra follower in that the number had increased by one.  However when I tried to find out who the new follower was I realised that, in fact, I was now followerless.  Come on Blogger, raise your game.

I'm Becoming Paranoid

Blogger is after me.  I'm sure.  SP from Secretly Skint keeps telling me that A Hebridean in New Zealand  has disappeared from her blog reading list.  She mends it and then I disappear again.  Likewise I've had problems with her blog disappearing.  There may be others but no one has mentioned it.  As I refreshed the blog a few minutes ago to check the last post I've just put up I noticed that the unusual pig photo representing SP wasn't there.  I might not notice less distinctive pictures.  In fact all my followers have been randomly shaken up and I'm not sure who is and who isn't there but as the number has just decreased by one I am assuming that it is just SP who has disappeared.  It's not me SP honestly it isn't!

Wearing My Other Hat

Some of those of you in Blogland whom I follow have wondered why I appear twice.  In case there is any one of those whom I have started following more recently is wondering why I have just started to follow again the answer is that whilst I am in New Zealand I follow using this blog and whilst I am in Scotland I follow using my Eagleton Notes blog.  Simple really.  How can you tell which persona I'm using.  Well it's the hat I'm wearing.  On the left (my photo for this blog) is my first Tilley Hat bought in Carmel in California in 2004 and, in this photo, shown when I was on a heli-hike up the Franz Josef Glacier in South Island, New Zealand.  On the right is a similar but newer one photographed when I was playing Pétanque in France last year which I use for my Eagleton Notes blog.  I bet you can't tell the difference.  Well, actually, there is no difference.  I do love my Tilley Hats.  In fact I should really use my latest one for Eagleton Notes because it's distinctive and more appropriate to the Hebridean climate.  Perhaps next year.