Category: Burningbird

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Just Shelley

On Seeing

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Editing is going well with the book, other than I have a very tight window. I lucked out with this book and had the best editors–main, tech, and content. Between all of us, I have a high degree of confidence that the final book is going to be something of which to be proud.

I had a break today to go down and pick up new glasses. I finally replaced my 10 year old sunglasses when I realized I could no longer see through them. I also ordered new all around glasses, because I had a prescription change in both the far and near vision. Rather drastically in the near vision, which adds an interesting element in managing vision that goes across near and far spectrums.

I wear progressive lens, which are the modern version of bi-focals. I’ve needed them since my 30’s. The first time I tried progressive lens, I hated them. There’s a spot of vision, which is your far vision and you have to make sure your head is just so to get the effect. Then there’s another spot of vision for your close up viewing. After a while you get used to the glasses, and you don’t have to twist your head about as much trying to line up your viewing ‘target’ in the sweet spot. At first, though, the effect is awful.

Now I’m comfortable with progressive lenses, though it is a bit unnerving when you switch the spot and the target and try to look up close with your far viewing spot and vice versa. Normally, it’s pretty minor…until your eyesight gets to about where mine is.

The only thing I can see without glasses is something held 14 inches in front of me. Book reading distance in bed. Without glasses, I could be married to you and not recognize you ten feet away. As for my computer and car dashboard and reading at arm’s length, I couldn’t see anything more than edge and color.

This prescription was exceptionally precise this time, and the far and near vision are wonderful. The only issue I have is that the difference between the two is rather extreme. I stood up and went to pick up my bag on the floor. Nothing. Well, blobbly color and that black thing must be my purse, but that’s it. Look up from the computer outside at the tree, with head slightly titled back, and near blindness until I hastily tiltled my head back down. I’ll adjust but may hold off on driving until I do.

They also made a mistake on my sunglasses and put in that awful amber glass instead of the gray I requested. They’ve ordered replacement lenses and in the meantime I’ll make do with everything having a yellow cast. Why anyone would pick dark yellow sunglasses has always puzzled me — the sky looks green.

When I was having my eyes examined, I asked the optometrist how business was with all the lasik eye surgery. She said that it has cut into business somewhat, but there are still many people for whom surgery is not a good option. For instance, in my case, there is no way to correct the vision of someone who has presbyopia.

(I just broke away for a moment to see if I could find a site on presbyopia and found this site selling contact lenses. I noticed some of the words had a faint greenish tint on them and became rather alarmed for a moment, thinking something in my glasses was causing a color shift. A moment’s clear thinking and moving my mouse over the words revealed they’re links. Do we need to repeat how important it is to make your links vary enough from the regular text to make them easily viewable? Especially when you’re selling visual aids to sight impaired people? )

If someone like myself wanted to have lasik surgery the approach used is called monovision. We have a dominant eye, which is the ’sighting’ eye .With monovision, they correct this eye for far distance viewing, and then correct the non-dominant eye for close up viewing. The same approach is used with contact lenses (which they recommend people try before having the surgery).

Unfortunately, you lose your binocular vision if you opt for monovision correction with either contact lenses or surgery. Frankly, I’d much rather have my glasses.

Speaking of which, my new glasses are charming. I didn’t notice until I got home that they have a little round diamond in the corners. Not the cat’s eye flair, just a little round diamond. I didn’t get them for the diamond. I mainly picked these frames because they’re the semi-visible kind with a slight metal frame on top, and no frame below. The metal also had a pretty coppery tone instead of the usual silver or gold.

I like the little diamonds, though. I probably wouldn’t have bought the frames if I’d seen the little diamonds, but I like the diamonds. I feel like I’m wearing a pillbox hat and a Channel suit, but without the hat and suit. Chic. That’s how I feel. Chic. You can’t get that when you have your eyes zapped by a lazer.

eyeglasses

Categories
Just Shelley Weblogging

Shadow of the Megalith

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

There’s a cicadia shell hanging off my neighbor’s door. It’s been there over a week. He (my neighbor) comes and goes daily, and I keep expecting him to flick it off. But each day when I go outside–to the store, the laundry, a walk–I look over and it’s still there.

I thought about flicking it off myself, but it is his door; it is his cicadia shell.

Speaking of shells, Sour Duck made an interesting comment in the post “Shiny, Happy, …”. She wrote, To my mind, this blog is still currently living in the shadow of that megalith, Burningbird..

Not a truer phrase spoken: my old site casts a big shadow. Not as creepy looking as the cicadia shell, maybe, but still noticeable. It was, after all, my identity for a time. No, that’s wrong. It was my ‘brand’.

Brand. I’ve been reading that term with increasing frequency; people are worried about their ‘brand’ now. Not their sites, or their identity, or their writing. No, the focus, now, is on ‘brand’.

Recently, when the PodShow site re-published several podcaster syndication feeds, it replaced the copyright information with the site’s own. The developers associated with the site said it was a mistake, and it could have been. Until it was fixed, though, there was a minor uproar among those so recursively syndicated. In particular, more than one podcaster mentioned about the ‘threat to their brand’ in having the syndication feed republished without proper copyright and attribution.

Brand. Huh. I grew up in farming country, where the only brand was the one made of twisted metal and burnt into the butts of cows to mark ownership. When I hear ‘brand’ among webloggers, I still see that big furry butt with the squiggle inside a circle with a bar across the top.

I walked away from a site that might be considered a popular site. Or more popular than some. The popularity, though, stayed with the site; the momentum of links and syndication is such that it stops for the will of no woman or man. All that’s left now is this simple site with it’s plain name and odd colors, and my other sites, which I’ll probably start and drop and change on a whim. This site, this writing, these pictures, the code, me, and you, of course; you, silent or otherwise who weren’t so caught up in the ‘brand’ that you forget it is little more than a facade. Or, perhaps, like me grew up around cows and recognize burned bovine butt when you see it.

As for the ‘megalith’ as SD called it, I walk the Ozark ‘mountains’ and they’re small and quaint compared to the those where I grew up in the Northwest. Hardly more than green rolling hills. Yet in the past, the Ozarks were an imposing mountain chain that reached high above the plains–tall and jagged and snow covered. Time wore them down. Time wears everything down. Nothing is meant to be immutable.

I was thinking that the old subscriptions to the Burningbird syndication feed also remind me of the cicada shell. It is humbling to see them. They, too, had meaning once; a use. Now, like the bug’s old body, like Burningbird, they’re just a remnant.

Now that that’s out of the way…

Categories
Weblogging Writing

What it is

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

My philosophy as I begin this new journal can be found in the movie, “Six Days and Seven Nights”.

In the movie, the main character, Quinn (played by Harrison Ford), is a rough edged island society drop out who flies a beat up old plane between Tahiti and a tropical island getaway. He’s sitting at the bar when the requisite female lead, Robin (played by Anne Heche), walks up to get a drink. They end up talking about people who vacation in tropical islands, leading Quinn to scoff about those who, “…come here looking for the magic, hoping to find romance, when they can’t find it anywhere else.” Robin replies maybe people do find romance. Quinn then replies:

It’s an island, babe. If you didn’t bring it here, you won’t find it here.

There you go. What it is.

In the sidebar to your right are screenshots of various sites I’m in the process of putting together. I had planned on waiting until all were finished, and then doing a “Ta Da!” moment, but that just puts pressure on to finish and adds to stress. Must finish, must finish. Instead, I figured I’d just toss things out in various stages, and eventually something tangible will coalesce out of the mess. Or not.

Most of the sites are for general writing and/or photography. The only ‘weblog’ format sites will be this, the Bb Gun, and ScriptTeaser. Everything I publish will have an introductory entry here, at Just Shelley; the post then forming a discussion forum. The Bb Gun is for general web commentary and expressions of opinion of which I’ve never had a shortage. The ScriptTeaser site is pure tech, and includes sub-sites for book support.

I had planned on having comments at all three, but why create multiple points of vulnerability?

This site is my starting point to all things Shelley, and hence the name. This is my point of contact with those others who make up the ‘community’ in which we connect to each other. My warm appreciation for those who missed me. *PHPPTT!* to those who didn’t.

Categories
Burningbird

Last of the ‘Bird

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Note from 2023, when post was recovered: Never say never.

I am closing down Burningbird.

I’ve had several different reincarnations of the Bird on this location, and the site has become an unmanageable heap of old and older…stuff. I’ve started dropping old pages and old sites–the old Alter Ego, the Practical RDF site, and so on–but each time I drop something, even more 404’s result.

As for the Burningbird weblog itself, my .htaccess rules files are a mess from all of the variations of links and tools. I’ve had Blogger pages, WordPress, my own Wordform, Radio, Movable Type. I’ve also had numerous permalink structures, links to code I no longer provide, old images that are gone or moved and so on. My .htaccess file is failing under all the redirects of so many other permalink structure changes. I had a post link fail last week because it accidentally triggered an old .htaccess 410 rule.

My site has come to remind me of the homes of people who never throw anything away. They still have their old National Geographics, Avon bottles, and disco pants that didn’t fit well when they were new, much less now decades later. Unfortunately, there is no jumble sale for web sites. One can only acknowledge the mess and move on.

I don’t want to leave others with broken links–though let’s face it, most of us have broken links in our past pages and it doesn’t really matter. Still, why add to the cruft? My plan is to clean out pages that haven’t been linked, physically generate a snapshot of this site, combine with the physical pages I’ve kept backup copies of from past incarnations– all mixed into one fixed set of static pages that can be moved without worry about weblog tool and databases. And then that’s it: no more pages at weblog.burningbird.net.

My Hosting Matters account comes up for renewal in June, and I’ve decided to move all of my domains over to my development server. I appreciate all the support HM has given me since I started with them in 2002, but I want to play in my own space from now on. If time permits, June, and most definitely July is when I’ll be making the biggest changes to all my sites, including the static generation of Burningbird. As for hosting my ‘production’ site in a development environment: thought I may, in my various tech explorations, end up taking my server down from time to time, there’s no permanent harm in doing such and life does continue after web access failures.

Karma demands that I learn to accept that my web sites may not be up 24 x 7; downtime is an opportunity, not a tribulation.

As for Burningbird the weblog, the persona, the concept–I’m not sure what I want from a weblog, or what I can continue to deliver. I have reached a point where I am repeating myself. I have reached a point where I am repeating myself. I have reached a point…

There are a lot of good times associated with an old weblog, but a lot of unhappy times, too. I’m not having fun with my site, and I think it shows in the writing. The only fun at the site has been what you all have been contributing: in comments, emails, and your own weblogs. That’s enough to continue reading you–it’s not enough to continue writing me, or whatever me is as the ‘Bird.

It must seem as if ‘quitting’ one’s weblog is the hip new thing. I appreciate the fact that this is one of those few times I may be in with the insiders–actually, I savor the moment, wonder if I’ve developed a golden aura as a result–but this wasn’t the impetus for this change. I don’t plan on ‘quitting’, but I do want to rethink what it is I want from my online presence.

Regardless of what I do, it’s time to retire the ‘Bird. I don’t expect this to be my last post, forever, but this will be the last I write as Burningbird.

Categories
Writing

Silence of the blog

Rob writes: As places writers can find themselves, this is one of the worst.

You can be a writer. You can be a friend. Rarely can you be both at the same time.