Posts Tagged ‘blogging’
See It?
Alright, you jigsaw puzzlers… can you see what happened to me here? (You may need to click on the images to get a better view.)
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As I made progress on the lower right corner, it became increasingly obvious that something was wrong. Certain pieces weren’t meshing properly, despite the majority of obviously matched pieces in the immediate vicinity and beyond. I can understand having one piece occasionally placed incorrectly, but this implied there had to be many pieces wrongly placed.
I took the picture on the left with the intent of describing my plight here, but after posting that image, I noticed the obvious open pattern in the upper right corner. Could it be?
I went back and checked.
Yep. Six pieces across on the right, for about three-quarters of the height of the puzzle, needed to move up two positions. The image on the right was taken after I fixed the problem.
This puzzle has a lot of pieces that are cut too similarly in addition to enough repeating patterns of darkness that it has me struggling a bit to ensure I’ve placed them in the correct spot.
Regardless, I continue to enjoy it immensely and was able to use some of my reclaimed blogging time of the previous few days to puzzle, in between tending to all the other responsibilities of the ranch and my day-job while Cyndie is in Florida.
The little break I’ve taken from daily blogging has served me well thus far.
Thanks for bearing with my change to a less predictable posting routine!
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Slowing Down
I’m going to try something new. With apologies to those of you who have told me how much you enjoy checking in every morning to read or view my daily “relative somethings,” I have decided to readjust my energies to free up time that I have been holding in reserve every day for over a decade.
I am not going to commit to how this change will play out, other than to announce that I am moving away from my old priority of striving to assure a new post every single day. This isn’t the first time I have considered making this sort of change, so I already have some ideas I may try out going forward.
One possibility I have favored in the past would be to post a single picture. That seems like it wouldn’t take much time. However, I have learned from experience that my picture-taking often goes in spurts and days can pass when I don’t get out with the camera. If I committed to posting a daily picture, I would still be in the mode of reserving some time every day to achieve that.
There are also fewer daily stories to tell about our adventures here since we returned the horses and Wintervale activity has dwindled, so, to spare you repeating versions of ‘me walking Delilah’ or ‘me plowing snow’ (two things that have commanded my time and energy recently), allowing some quiet time between tales will hopefully germinate new content of more intriguing substance.
One can hope.
Of course, one other option I considered was to just cease blogging altogether, but being so “all-or-none” extreme was an older trait of mine that has softened with time. There is no reason I can’t keep this blog space open for use as more of a periodical. Weekly? Monthly?
Who knows?
That sort of mystery is one of the fun aspects of creativity. I will be creative about slowing down my rate of publishing posts.
Before I step away for my initial pause from daily posting, I’ll leave you with two images that made their way onto the SD memory card late yesterday afternoon…
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No critters were harmed in the recording of that adventure (but not for lack of intent).
I’ll be back before long. In the meantime, send your precious love out into the world during the minutes you would have been perusing new Relative Somethings in the days ahead.
Namaste.
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Accidental Intelligence
It was an artificial deadline set arbitrarily by his own initiative. Who else would care? As time flittered away, reality began to press upon the drowsy writer that nothing was going to simply drop out of the sky onto the page. Someone was going to need to pull a worthy tale out of their proverbial top hat (or some other oft-referenced lower anatomical location).
Meanwhile, sleep was making a valiant run for the pole position.
Why did any of this matter? Frontline was on later and it was going to be all about the 2018 Camp Fire in California. That kind of real-life drama beats made-up stuff hands down. If he was going to immerse himself in the experience without distraction, his plan was going to need to kick into action ahead of time.
There was nothing noteworthy to report about the animals, the weather, the landscape, the trees, the shrinking hours of daylight, the amount of sugar in dinner, the spinning gears of the day-job, the greatness of family and friends, or the stature of the recently refurbished deck, so something would need to be invented.
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maybe a poem
rich with deep thoughtful meaning
evoking sky blues
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It could be short, like three lines of haiku. Words could be tossed out in a free-form flow of curious reasoning that defies logic but reaches souls. Why not? It’s worked in the past when down to his last gasp for a grasp.
How many times before has he written random nonsense that struggled to hint at coherence and later learned of recipients who thrilled over the poignancy to their very lives? You can’t make this stuff up if it already happened.
The thing is, such a denouement happens in absentia. Often times he never knows, just wings it and relies on grace for an outcome that holds a possibility of reward.
Occasionally, it works.
Such end results get labeled “accidental intelligence” but that doesn’t prevent him from occasionally pretending to believe the results were exactly as intended. <cough, cough>
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Beyond Mowing
The time of mowing is upon us in multiple ways. Beyond the usual routine of cutting our lawn grass, the big tractors are finally hitting the local fields to cut hay. The neighbors who are renting our fields knocked down the tall grass in opposite corners of our property recently, leaving a very noticeable line of uncut growth along the fenceline that Cyndie tackled with our power trimmer.
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Despite all the mowing going on, Cyndie continues to pull off a heroic amount of raspberry picking which naturally led to canning jam. Since she was going to be in that canning mode, she also made a trip to a local strawberry grower to pick a bulk of that jam favorite, as well as a stop at the grocery store for a couple of bags of cherries.
Even though canning jam deserves to be a single focus task, Cyndie chose to merge it with preparations to drive to Northfield, MN, for a mini-reunion with visiting Hays relatives. There, we uncovered a treasure trove in my sister Mary’s files of family newsletters from the days before the internet took over communication.
I don’t remember writing all those annual reports detailing our children’s school years, but reading back over those missives now gives me the impression I have been writing the equivalent of this daily blog for longer than just the ten years I’ve been posting here on Relative Something. In fact, the old family newsletter was called, “Relatively Speakin’.”
Seems to be a certain congruency there, no?
Who knows what lies ahead for this relative crew? It won’t surprise me if it ends up involving less mowing, but I doubt I will ever stop writing about whatever is happening in all of our lives.
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Another Test
My previous test to learn if I can create posts on my phone to achieve my desired result taught me a few things. Yes, it is possible, but it doesn’t match posts I create on my laptop. No, I haven’t found out if I can format the text as “justified.” My images appeared, but not as a clickable link to the full size, like I want.
So, I am trying again. I am importing a full-sized image that I successfully transferred from my camera to my phone over WiFi.
The app didn’t ask the size I want the image to appear, so I need to hunt for that setting somewhere.
I chose this image of my lock in case someone can offer advice in dealing with a forgotten combination.
(Oh, I also learned how to add text to my images.)
My idea with the lock was to start at 0-0-0 and spin in a sequence that counted up to 9-9-9.
That would hit every possible number combination.
It didn’t work.
Thinking it was possible that I goofed somewhere along the sequence, I tried a second time. I started at 999 and worked my way down.
It still didn’t open.
Am I missing something?
Too bad I can’t just click a link for a forgotten combination which would then allow me to reset it to a number I might remember.
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Testing Mobile
I’m thinking about taking another crack at posting from my phone next week while on the bike trip.
So, today I am typing with one finger, adding photos, and fumbling with formatting to achieve my desired look using icons I don’t understand.
Things may look different than usual on your screen.
Yesterday, I got out for my longest training ride so far this year. Topped out at a whopping two-hour jaunt.
The scenery may not be as beautiful as riding up at the lake, but it gets close once I get beyond the farmland.
I rode down into the river valley where the trout fishermen play. Hit 40 mph on the way down and 3 mph crawling back up.
The kids came over yesterday and provided gift labor in honor of Cyndie’s birthday. We chose moving the gazebo from the round pen over to the labyrinth.
It was a grand success of design collaboration and task cooperation.
Since I don’t know how to tweak images to my liking on this tiny mobile device, I will point out that Julian provided the gazebo images.
Thank you to our wonderful children for a really meaningful gift of time and energy!
Here ends today’s test of the alternative posting system.
I still don’t know how to customize image frames like I usually do, nor justify text, but I’m ready to look at this on my computer to see how it compares.
Thank you for reading!
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Words
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they are just words
but you can’t write them fast enough
because they flow
like lyrics in a song
that everybody already knows
even though they only remember
two lines of the chorus
because the verses wander
all over the map
about kittens and deforestation
cloth diapers, crime, and comedy
lightning, goal celebrations
vegan recipes and political tragedy
ghosts, authors, fancy makeup
chainsaws and Ultimate Frisbee
cyber insecurity, false witness
lost love and fortunes found
like a blog roll of unending topics
scrolling down a glowing screen
ideas on how to make millions with ease
or at least to transform
this world
into a better place
than it could ever possibly be
through song
sing along
with incandescent harmony
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Minutes Revisited
From March 27, 2012:
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Words on Images
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I’ve really been enjoying my little forays into the archives of this blog lately. Picking a single day of the month, and then jumping through each of the ten years of posts on that day has been very revealing.
In 2013 on March 27th, I was writing about getting fence posts up to define the border of the paddock, excited about how things would change when we got horses.
It was later that year, September, when the herd arrived. Here is a picture of the moment the four horses had just walked out of the trailer:
Tomorrow, the process is reversed.
Our time together was too short, but we had a lot of great adventures over the years and they touched a lot of people’s lives here.
I’m not sure what’s in store for us next, but whatever it is, we hope to do those horses proud. They’ve taught us a lot during the time we’ve been together.
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Choose Twice
In celebrating the accomplishment of my 10-years of posting daily, I am somewhat randomly exploring the “Previous Somethings” archive in search of anything that might catch my fancy. One of the first challenges I have discovered is dealing with a bit of embarrassment over plenty of what I am finding. Who wrote this stuff!?
Oh. I did.
Skip that one. And that one, too.
One of the features of “Relative Something” that evolved pretty early on was resorting to two-word post titles. On one hand, it took a lot of thinking out of the process of deciding what to title my posts. When writing every single day, trying to come up with a worthy title over and over again can become an inordinate burden. Limiting it to just two words simplified the task nicely.
However, when I started down the path of this feature, I didn’t realize how soon I would reach a point where I was coming up with titles that I’d already used. Most of the time, I make changes until I come up with something fresh, but as I’ve approached this tenth anniversary, I’ve decided it doesn’t really matter so much.
You may have noticed that I differentiate my poetry posts by using a single word title. It’s a lot harder avoiding repetition when reduced to one word.
Here are two poems that I posted under the identical title, “Choose.”
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From August, 2013:
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freedom
to choose health
in the face of other options
takes effort
that is rewarded
incrementally
sometimes infinitesimally
over time
do the math
not the science
that it takes
making rockets fly
simple addition
day after day
for months at a time
healthy emerges
for goodness sakes
like green on the grass
running in a river
rounding the rocks
headed toward forever
where life is esteemed
and success of good health
the spectacular garnish
that feeds on itself
in magical ways
running and jumping
with joyous persuasion
returning investments
of health options chosen
turn off that tv
go do something else
break down that routine
be someone else
that unlikely person
you never felt could
emerge from your shell
stuck there for good
just a choice
to be made
inside the mind
there’s reward to be nabbed
free for the choosing
life filled with promise
of better than good
outside the lines
of everyday drab
just beyond reach
of those who don’t try
it’s easy to grasp
for the bold few who do
exercise free choice
to choose better health
not just for a day
but from now on
days-months-years at a time
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.From October, 2017:
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Words on Images
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Relative Something 
Still Flying
with 2 comments
Before I start with today’s post, I want to give a shout out of thanks to Jennifer Alexander for sharing her wonderful collection of student responses to my “Guess What” post from last week. Fearing most readers might not notice a new comment added to a previous post, I am specifically highlighting a fresh link to it here:
Another Guess – March 19, 2019
Check out the comment Jennifer added. I think she and her students have enhanced my photo-guessing game immensely!
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Ten years ago today I posted “Time Flies,” which is an impression that continues to feel valid to this day. In fact, I get the sense it is flying faster all the time.
Words on Images
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But, let’s not stop there. In my research of March 26 in the archives of “Previous Somethings,” I found the following post from 2017 too irresistible to exclude from today’s review:
Empowering Love
Editorial cartoon by James T. Pendergrast for Rolling Stone, June 2002
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Imagine replacing the negative with the opposite:
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Let fearlessness enhance enlightenment to fill our crucibles with love!
Let’s carefully teach everyone, before it’s too late, to love all the people, “all our relations” on this planet, fearlessly.
Happy March 26th, 2019. Send love. The world deserves more love.
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Written by johnwhays
March 26, 2019 at 6:00 am
Posted in Creative Writing, Images Captured
Tagged with archives, blogging, comments, empowering love, images, Love, old posts, poem, poetry, previous somethings, remembering, ten years, time flies, words on images