• New Year Predictions 2016

    1. Following recent revelations, this will be the year that former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey finally shuts up. Expect no silly press releases on the eve of Church of England Synod. (From Carey anyway).
    2. The Columba Declaration recently leaked to the press will not in fact be adopted unamended by both the Church of Scotland General Assembly in May and by the Church of England General Synod in February.
    3. Solid vote in favour of first reading of legislation for removal of definition of marriage from the canons of the Scottish Episcopal Church opening the way towards a final vote in 2017.
    4. The Anglican Communion will move back towards being a fellowship of autonomous churches following the Primates’ Conference in January. Justin Welby will do the right thing for the wrong reasons. (ie he will accept the inevitable loosening of ties that stems from the global domination fantasies of his predecessors but not speak up for LGBT friendly churches).
    5. The SNP will win a landslide in the Holyrood Election. There will be UKIP representation in Holyrood for the first time.
    6. The SNP will continue to work for their preferred outcome in the European Union referendum – an overall majority in the UK in favour of staying in, a massive majority in Scotland for staying in and a majority in England for leaving the EU.
    7. The Democrats will retain the White House.
    8. Jeremy Corbyn will still be Labour Party leader by the end of 2016 and become a little more popular within the Labour Party the longer he is there.  The Labour Party will still seem unelectable at the end of the year. No major defections along the way. (There’s nowhere to go).
    9. A successful cyber terrorist attack on a major Western financial institution. (It is only a matter of time).
    10. Amateur drone crash causing loss of life.
    11. 3D printed food experiments in restaurants.
    12. More major news outlets closing down the comments sections on their websites as open comments become unmanagable.

8 responses to “How to write a blog #1”

  1. chris Avatar

    I’m afraid I hate using WordPress. I struggle with it every time I have to update the church site – maybe I’m more interested in having an easy place to say what I want to than in fiddling with the layout!

    Gosh. That sounds somehow superior. Not meant! 😉

  2. David | Dah•veed Avatar
    David | Dah•veed

    If you want complete control you can host your own wordpress site on your own server (which is what I do)

    I have always wondered why Safari stops and thinks for 30 seconds or more before your blog begins to load. Now I know why.

  3. Jackie Avatar

    If you are a student (particularly if you are doing a PhD), starting a new blog is an ideal way to procrastinate.

  4. Gareth J M Saunders Avatar

    @Chris – I notice that you use Blogspot (which is owned by Google). I struggle every time I have to use Blogspot, which is only very occasionally when assisting other people with their blogs. I’d go with WordPress every time, but then I’ve been using it for years and years, since version 0.6 (it’s currently at 3.0.1). I guess it’s partly what you’re familiar with. My top tip, if it helps, is simply being aware of the difference between posts (news-like articles that are time-dependent) and pages (mostly static content).

    @David – I’m writing this in Safari. I didn’t find any delay in Safari serving up Kelvin’s blog. There are many reasons why you might get a delay, including time of day, your own connection speed, what else is hosted on the same server, etc. I host my own WordPress blog too, and since moving to a new host it’s been lightning fast.

  5. Stewart Avatar

    Writing a blog can be difficult.

    Since June 2004 I have had an on-line photo album via fotopic, which allows me to show may photographs and put in a little story about them.

    Them along came Kelvin at St Mary’s in May 2006, and Kimberley’s “Bloggers and Bluebells” event in May 2007, which re-invigorated my fotopic activities. Although I have a Flickr account, I still prefer fotopic for my photographs. Moving forward to the Facebook era (again following a blog from Kelvin) and another means of displaying photographs. Then at Christmas 2008 I started the Pencefn blog on wordpress.

    I like to write items that are illustrated with photos I have taken, most times cross linking a blog posting to a fotopic collection. However even with the best intentions, I do not manage to establish the discipline to publish as often as I would like.

    One rich theme I have is travelogs from my trips, this does take time, selecting the most appropriate pictures for fotopic, and writing (what I think is interesting) for WordPress.

    Would I started blogging without see Kelvin – not sure, probably not. Thank you Kelvin for introducing me to blogging, even if it took me several years to start writing my own.

  6. RevRuth Avatar

    I used to use Blogger but I found it a bit clunky and prone to large quantities of the kind of spam which a priest really ought not to be promoting, if you get what I mean. Despite several complaints they did nothing about it and so I migrated to WordPress. I love it. I’m sure I could do more with it than I do (change the appearance from time to time) but for a novice it is just perfect.

  7. David | Dah•veed Avatar
    David | Dah•veed

    @Gareth – perhaps I misunderstood the Padre. (I often misunderstand many things in English!) I took the comment that he was hosting a blog on his own server to mean he had the blog on a computer serving as a server in his own home/office.

    I have tested Kelvin’s blog on Camino, Firefox, and Google Chrome. There is a definite lag as the browser sits there waiting for a response to the request for the page. The only other blog I see that with is Padre Bosco’s blog, Liturgy, in New Zealand.

    My service is 4 Meg DSL from my cable provider.

    It could be that I am in North America. That little country with the drug war located just south of the Statesonians, Mexico. Blogger blogs load instantly, but that is likely because no matter where the blogger is located in the world, the blog is hosted on Google’s servers in the US. So those blogs are physically near to my location when compared to a blog actually hosted somewhere in Europe or New Zealand.

    1. kelvin Avatar

      The server I use is not in my office. Its a vps located in Manchester, Englandshire.

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