I am moving house

I am sitting here glass in hand drinking a quiet toast to the memory of my beloved Jack. Today 10th February would have been his ninety fourth birthday. We always marked the days in our own quiet way, and I still continue to do so. My Granny, the one you hear so much about was born one hundred and thirty years ago, yesterday. I include her in my celebration.

I have another reason to celebrate tonight. An ongoing project that my Toyboys were working on reached completion a few hours ago. It was not always easy, and I wondered at times if it would ever come to pass.

Back in the mists of time I entered the world of blogging. It was 2006 and I used the Blogger platform. It worked well at the beginning, but then formatting, placing photos etc., became a BP raiser. Time to change. I moved to privately hosted Grannymar.com in 2007. I considered myself still to be a newbie, understanding little of what went on in the bowels of the blog. Back then I knew nothing of Headers, Plugins, Widgets and I thought a Jetpac was something worn by folk involved in the sport of Jet skis!

My old theme became dull and old fashioned, and I wanted a brighter and sleeker look. I was also having problems with posting so it was time for an update. The Toyboys looked at my back end and were horrified! It was ancient and obsolete.

Stop that sniggering back there, we are talking about my blog!

Much work needed doing, if the large number of posts were to be saved. I decided to vacate the premises and let them get on with the make over.

Thus began Grannymar(dot)wordpress(dot)com. I grew to like the theme and the easy way the back end worked. Perhaps age had mellowed me into watching what was going on back there and being more adventurous.

As I played, the Toyboys slogged on my behalf. Darren, Anto, James all played a part, but it was Phil who kept me up to speed with all that was going on. He taught me plenty along the way and sent me to sources that explained in my language what I wanted to achieve. Thank you Phil.

So now we are ready to unveil the all bright and shiny Grannymar.com.
From tomorrow February 11th visitors will be automatically taken to my new abode. You should not really notice much difference, or maybe I should play a game and ask how many differences you can find….

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Tonight

I have made a decision!

Blogs that are of the ‘Blogger’ family, I will read, but no longer attempt to post a comment.

Why?

I hate the way the powers that be make commenting so unfriendly and almost want to know what I had for breakfast before they allow me to add my pathetic tuppence worth. I gave up jumping hurdles yonks ago. Life is too short!

Call me crabby if you wish, but I have had enough.

Coffee time?

Need something to improve the flavour? Try this:

99 Tiny Stories to Make You Think, Smile and Cry

I bet your heart will feel lighter.

Saturday Treat

Today I have a very special treat for you.

A guest post from a wonderfully intelligent little lady, all of three years old.

It was written in Word, thus the capitalisation, and copied and pasted by me.

I hope you will enjoy reading and give your thoughts on the meaning of the message in the comment box below.

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Will that do?

Buffy is fascinated with Tobias and jumps up on the chair beside me when I want to type. If I play the video clip of her playing with the ball, she goes ballistic and wants to get to the dog on the screen, once it is over she goes round the back of the laptop to find the dog! 😆

Interruption

Blog visiting has been light while I am enjoying my holiday.

The torrential rain and electric storms since Wednesday, have as they say in cricket & tennis terms, stopped play. Access to the internet and landline phones at my sister’s house has been interrupted. Thankfully the flooding further down the avenue, has not reached us.

We drove through light floods on our journey home across the city yesterday afternoon, and when we reached the driveway of my sister’s house, the rain pounded while nature’s fireworks entertained us as we sat trapped in the car for at least fifteen minutes!

Simultaneously we both asked: “Are we safe to be let out on a day like this?”  My sister has a metal plate, pins and screws in her foot following a bad ankle injury some years ago, and I have a metal hip.

In the car we were sitting on rubber tyres and not touching the ground, so considered we were quite safe.

A couple of years earlier a young child was playing in a park not many miles as the crow flies from that spot when lightening struck and killed him. Metal pins and screws in his arm were said to be the reason the lightening hit him.

My LBC post is ready – in my head – but will be late appearing on line. I feel bad since the choice of topic was down to me.

Laters folks!

Now I wonder if this will go live on one bar of internet access……

Me not Blogging?

Do you wonder why?

Wonder if I can type with my nose

If I lick her finger will she stop?

I better make sure she is telling the proper story

I wish she would stop working and play with me.

Five years

In ways five years is not a long time.

Sometimes it feels like a lifetime ago.

While searching online for something totally different this morning, I somehow came across this:

The people behind the blogs say hello, please.

That one little sentence brought bloggers out of the woods… like a colony of ants on a sunny day. Well over forty of them stood as if at an AA meeting to recite their names and share their blogs.

Looking down that list, they were all familiar names to me, most I had met in real life. A fun bunch of people, quite a few were younger than my daughter. Only one that I know of, has been taken from us and the woes of this world. RIP Debbie. Many have moved on to other more instant distractions like Facebook and twitter, but quite a few continue to blog.

I had met the questioner across a crowded room a few months earlier. Bloggers, meetings, social events, they all went hand in hand. I was often heard to say back then: The wonderful thing about blogging, is that you get to know the person from the inside, without the distraction of the outer wrapping!

Our friendship grew and we have remained friends. I think!!!!!

Why am I mentioning this today, you may well ask. As Ramana would say: Serendipity!

It has come to my notice that Blog Awards Ireland 2013 announced the date for the awards event on 12th October 2013 in the Osprey Hotel in Naas.  Nominations are now open.

Anyone from around the globe, can nominate their favourite Irish blog for one of the thirty one categories.

In previous years all nominated bloggers needed to be resident on the island of Ireland to be eligible. This year there is a new category:

Best Blog From The Irish Diaspora

This category is open to any blogger who has Irish roots and lives overseas. It can be about any topic and must be a good quality blog. Open to those blogging in all countries.

I do notice an extra question for this category: From which county in Ireland does the blogger hail from? An answer is required in order for the Nomination to be accepted. So sorry, being third generation Irish will not help. 😦

You can add a ‘Nominate Me’ Button to your blog sidebar.

Nomination button for Blog Awards 2013

Full instructions of how to do so can be found on the link above.

Now before you go rushing off to nominate all your sisters, cousins and aunts, I would advise you read the list of criteria.  Three of the twelve are below:

• Are blog posts written consistently/updated regularly?
• Interaction on the blog in the form of responding to comments and engaging in conversations.
• Attractive design and ease of navigating.

The Blog Awards are a wonderful platform to discover new friends and sure you never know whose bed you might end up in… even if like me, you get to sleep in it alone!

As we say in Ireland: Have a think, then go nominate and don’t forget to book your bed while you are at it!

Face Lift

I finally found sleep around 3 a.m. the morning and was awake again about 6.30 a.m. I was a little confused, thinking it was Saturday. Thankfully, unlike all the wage earners in Northern Ireland, I was not heading back to work after a long weekend.

I made breakfast, did a little web browsing and then added a few rows to a sleeve for a cardigan/jacket that I am crocheting at the moment.

Feeling a little restless I thought to myself… I need a change. By the time I got to the compose page on my old blog it became:

“I feel like having a face lift. What do you think”?

Well who else would I ask, but my faithful bloggie pals. Sure you are always ready to offer advice.

A quick chat with Elly and we were on the starting blocks.

With over 2,400 posts, in 33 different categories, to be moved, it is rather a tall order. The 30,110 comments may not all survive the journey, so it will take time.

I will let the old blog Grannymar stand for the moment until I relocate all the info I need. The old lady served me well, but alas she is now  incompatible with recent plugins to aid with positioning photos and formatting text.

I have spent many tantrum filled hair pulling days trying to sort out one page. Grrr!

 

Hopefully now we can draw up the chairs and drink a toast to my new home.

Mayo, Where is the Red Top?

Grannymar the old blog, will stand for the moment, though, I may close comments over there.

The favour…

This post was originally a short free online Podcast giving the story of how and why I began blogging and Podcasting:

Here in text form is the story as I remember it:

I started blogging in 2006. It was a favour to my daughter Elly.

BarCamp came to Ireland & Cork that September and Elly needed a case study for her talk, so who better for a guinea pig than ‘mammy’. I was given three weeks to set up and learn to blog and also Podcast. All this was done at a distance since Elly lived 125 miles away from me.

I didn’t go to Cork but my blog, my face and my voice did.

I sat at home and followed live blogging of the event – another ‘newbie’ for me.

I am still learning in January 2012!