No blogging today

  Not because of software glitches this time. I spent the better part of the afternoon/evening dealing with our health care system. It always amazes me how nice the people who work in hospitals and nursing homes are, but it is still an exhausting experience, so I'm bagging it for today. 

 Continuing battle with Iblog

  I am hopeful that my software woes will soon be behind me. I just downloaded a new build of by blogging software, which allegedly addresses the many bugs in the previous release, including the fact that RSS feeds were not working.  All kind of things keep popping up, such as the fact that the last post I put up lacked carriage returns and proper fonts. The original looked fine but when posted it looked like one big run on sentence. The biggest problem was the fact that each time I hit the publish button the program proceeded to republish the entire blog, including all archives, which is a multi-hour process. Supposedly that's been fixed, and if you're reading this it probably has. I'm writing this as I wait for it to completely republish one more time, which the developer says you must now do once, after which only new items will be posted. I hope and pray it works out that way.

If this keeps up I am thinking of creating a new blog using different software. I'll keep this old site up just in case anyone wants to look at it, with a top entry linking to the new blog. By the way, in order to speed the interminable re-posting process I deleted the old videos. I doubt anyone ever looks at them, and it makes a big difference in the time required to try to rectify this problem.

While I have succeeded in posting this, it has been at great price. I am pretty well convinced I will have to ditch this software. If you look below you will see that the run on sentence is now properly formatted, but the software decided to delete the words "New York Times" and move a link to the words "I am among". One thing I definitely am is unhappy.

Back from the shadows yet again 

Now it can be told. Saturday afternoon my newsreader informed me that Version 2 of Iblog, my blogging software was ready for download (Developer's website: it is recommended that all users of version 1 download this software). I dutifully downloaded, as I was particularly hopeful that I would be able to post Youtubes with the upgrade. Not to get ahead of myself this was actually Iblog RC2. The "RC" stands for "release candidate". Well, it turns out that this candidate has a lot of similarities to your average Republican Candidate, promising much but delivering very little at terrific cost. Definitely, not ready for prime time. Yes, I can now do Youtubes, but it took approximately 16 hours of work to get even that. Documentation? nil. Nonetheless, intrepid as always , I converted my old data, tried to add some, and found that the new posts did not get on the web. At least that's what I thought, until after hours of work I found that they were indeed out in cyberspace, only not at the correct address. In other words, the entire site was out there, twice, with the new version at an address that no one had. I had no ability to post to the old site, to direct people to the new one.

I have solved the problem, as you can see, no thanks to the software, or the developer. In a former phase of my life I was an amateur computer programmer, so I learned a bit about computers, and I was able to analyze the problem and take corrective action.

The irony of this is that I have been thinking seriously of bagging this whole thing, inasmuch as I am aware that recently much of the writing on this blog has been, to put it bluntly, crap. It didn't seem right, somehow, to simply stop without explanation, which is what would have happened had the problem been insoluble. Anyway, given this new lease on life, I have decided to inflict myself on a defenseless world for a little while longer at least.

By the way, in response to a comment, the duck video is definitely not of my pond (as the commenter well knew). It was chosen for experimental purposes only, it being the last funny youtube video I had seen prior to the date I posted it.

 Nobody knows the trouble I've seen

  If you are reading this, I may  be at the end of two days of frustration trying to get this allegedly improvesd software to work.

Book Report-the view so far

Swimming the Amazon

Apple and Itunes to come together?

Spring will come

This has, without doubt, been one of the most bizarre winters that I have ever lived through. In January I saw daffodils blooming in Washington DC, and some of our flowers were false starting here in Connecticut. Now, it looks like we're a couple of weeks behind. We usually see blooming daffodils by now, but at least here at our house, they've just started poking up shoots. At the moment only this brave pioneer has made an appearance, by our little pond.



Still, we're not holding back. Today I brought out the patio furniture. It may not feel like Spring, but that doesn't mean I can't act as if it is.

Free software for Mac fans

Back from DC

We arrived home from DC early this afternoon, after a blessedly uneventful drive home. Yesterday was a dreary day in Washington, with rain threatening all day. We had planned to go to Dumbarton Oaks, but the weather gave us pause. We spent most of the day visiting with our son, which we enjoyed immensely. The only tourist type activity in which we engaged was a trip to the Phillips Collection near Dupont Circle. No cameras allowed inside, though I did get a decent shot of a Calder sculpture outside the museum.



This collection is well worth seeing. The last time we went it was being renovated and we didn't get to see most of the permanent collection. This time it was on display, including the absolutely stunning Luncheon of the Boating Party , by Renoir, which shared a room with a van Gogh and several other impressionistic masterpieces.



This reproduction doesn't do it justice. The colors are just incredible.

In response to a comment from John Wheeler, I don't know if the Cherry Blossoms were out. We never got near them.

Off to DC

Frustrations

Signs of spring

I have posted pictures of our backyard pond before. We get a big kick out of it during the summer, when the fish and frog are active and the lily pads bloom. Today I noticed that there is something beginning to flower, which is really quite bizarre.



We do take steps to keep the water from freezing, so the pond can't be compared to a real one, but this is still the earliest something like this has happened. We have had green leaves on this plant all winter. The dead leaves in the background will start rotting and sink to the bottom as soon as the water starts warming up. These ponds are pretty amazing. When we first got it we worried about Ph, etc., and we fed our fish. We found out that feeding the fish made the water cloudy, so we stopped and they did just fine. We use snails to take care of the algae that blooms in the spring. The frogs reappear like clockwork. I have no idea what they do all winter, though there's a nice bed of muck at the bottom, so maybe they dig into that.

So, anyway, a sign of spring.

Ides of March

A walk in the park

It was far too nice a day to spend solving the world's problems, so no thinking today. Daylight Savings Time is here, albeit too early for my taste. The weather was warm and my wife and I took advantage of the fact that we live five minutes (walking) from a state park (Haley Farm), to take a little walk in the warmth. We had to slog through the mud, but it was a small price to pay.



Other than the warmth, not many signs of spring, but if this weather holds up that should change soon.

Easy come, easy go

Sunday blues

Orchids

A bit of color on a cold February day.

More news of the weird

Butterflies

We dropped by the Science Museum in Boston today, and visited the Butterfly Garden. It was about 100 degrees in there, a distinct contrast from the weather outside. Herewith some pictures of the beautiful creatures in the garden, as a reminder that we have summer ahead, though at the moment it seems incredible.





The founder of the Museum, Bradford Washburn, died recently at the age of 96. He apparently led an incredible life, among other things being an accomplished aerial photographer. The museum has a tribute to him on view, consisting of a collection of his pictures. He took pictures with an incredibly big camera, yielding huge enlargements with incredible detail. If you get a chance to see them, take it. They're incredible. Here's a sample, but it loses a lot being so small. Click on the picture to go to a slideshow.