What is in Kelvin's Head?

Quiet Wednesday – one week to go

03/12/2014

Guest blog post from the Vice Provost, the Rev Cedric Blakey

Quiet Wednesday is the idea at St Mary’s Cathedral, an antidote to Black Friday and Cyber Monday. A day with no work, no shopping, no card writing or food prep. A day, well up to 6 hours, without emails, blogging or social media. A day in company with a dozen or so others at a small monastery in the heart of Glasgow.

The idea? To give yourself a little space before things get too frantic. In fact to turn up and be looked after. To hear a couple of short talks on the subject “Great Expectations: a look at waiting and longing”, and most importantly, to find a space to read, to think, to pray or simply be.

Last year, one person wrote “it was just what I needed, a day when I felt I had permission to stop and to rest and be ministered to with quality words and in a beautiful, peaceful place. To have this day a couple of weeks before Christmas made all the difference. It was simply divine”.

People can still join the day on Wednesday 10 December starting at 10.00 using the form on the cathedral website. And those at a distance can join in too. Perhaps by planning a day at home or in a park or glen.

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

chris

12/11/2010

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! 😉

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David | Dahâ€¢veed

12/11/2010

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.

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Jackie

12/11/2010

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

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Gareth J M Saunders

13/11/2010

@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.

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Stewart

13/11/2010

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.

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RevRuth

14/11/2010

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.

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David | Dahâ€¢veed

14/11/2010

@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.

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1. kelvin
  
  14/11/2010
  
  The server I use is not in my office. Its a vps located in Manchester, Englandshire.
  
  Reply