So I sought early this evening to give the blog a new look, import all the stuff from the old one, and come up with a new name. I owe the new title to Gary, a guy I 'met' when I was a freshman in college over internet relay chat, or IRC as the cool kids called it. I won't digress too much about how back in the day, you had to know something about computers to connect with people across the globe, that it was all telnet and unix shell command prompt action from college campus servers. It makes it sound harder than it actually was. I only bring it up because it makes me sound smart.
Gary had several 'handles' throughout our long virtual friendship but my favorite was Serendipitous Freelance Hacker. I had a mad crush on Gary even though I never knew what he looked like. I talked to him off and on for 12+ years and never met him. I have never been so passionate about politics that I thought I could lose a friend over it but Gary felt differently. After an exceptionally abusive and long volley of e-mails long before our last election, mostly attacking my apathy because I was honest about how I felt about politics in general, Gary and I dropped contact. Haven't talked to him since but when searching for inspiration on the next evolution of my blogging life, his old handle inspired me.
After weeks of zero visitors, someone stumbled onto my blog and left some lovely comments and suggestions. If that's not serendipity, I don't know what is. I also had a new and unexpected visitor on the old blog who also left a comment. All in all, quite well done fortunate chance!
2 comments:
Yay!!!! That was me!!!! Thanks for leaving a comment on my blog, and no worries about asking me anything (I'm not sure where else you could have done, really!) As I promised in my comment back to you - back to everyone actually because I was in bed when half those comments were made... ah, the joys of being in a different time zone to everyone else - I am posting back my answer here.
When you log in to Blogger, you should come to the Dashboard page (the one with your profile, followers, blogs you're following and buttons to edit your blog). Scroll right down to the bottom where it says "Other Stuff", and to the column on the right (the 3rd one) that's headed with "Help Resources". Click on "Help Group" (the second bullet point) and when that page loads, scroll down a little bit to a link to "The Coffee Shop" (it's on the right of the white page, below the "Publishing Trouble" link. It's not on the blue bit on the far right).
The Coffee Shop is basically a big forum where you can "post your question" to start a discussion, or add to one of the discussions already there. Don't forget to include the link to your blog when you post, or no-one will find you, and frankly it looks like you've gone long enough without being found!
I also learned from another blogger yesterday, on a slightly different subject, that when you're posting comments on other people's blogs, it's a good idea to include a link to your own blog in your comment if you want people to visit you, as apparently the Followers box above doesn't always show the blogs your followers have, so they can't always use it to visit you back. This was news to me. Something to bear in mind I think.
Sorry I made this so long. I hope it helped.
Oh whoops - I see from The Coffee Shop group you already found it. Sorry then! :-)
Post a Comment