Mistakes

My Blog Header Photo

~ beetleypete ~ 51 Comments

I recently changed my blog header photo for the first time in many years. I have used a photo I took the other day, while walking in the countryside quite close to our house.

For a few days, the photo was too small to fill the gap at the top, and was just an oblong stuck at the top of the page. I took it using the 3:2 format choice on my Sony RX10 camera, and when I tried to ‘stretch’ it to fit as a header, it remained the same.

So yesterday afternoon, I resolved to tackle the issue. I uploaded the same photo to my media library for a second time, and clicked edit. I used the cursor to elongate the image, and applied it to my blog as the header. But when I looked at my posts, the smaller oblong was still there.

Trying not to get frustrated with my lack of skill and abandoning the task, I repeated the action.

That time, I noticed a box at the top left of the Edit screen, marked ‘Save Changes’. Once I clicked that, I had a nice panoramic header in place.

If I was Homer Simpson, I surely would have said,”DOH!” 🙂

Clearing Up A Bridge Confusion

~ beetleypete ~ 71 Comments

As someone who lived in London for most of his life, I do get unusally annoyed by the same old mistakes concerning that city. Because of recent protests by climate change activists, both Tower Bridge and London Bridge have featured heavily on the news media and social media over the past few days. Twitter is busy today with many videos and photos about the protests, and hundreds of people are also posting photos of themselves by the bridges in question.

Trouble is, many of them don’t know which bridge is actually London Bridge, even when they are standing on it. Allow me to clear this up for you, once and for all.

THIS IS LONDON BRIDGE.

THIS IS NOT LONDON BRIDGE, IT IS TOWER BRIDGE.
SEE THE DIFFERENCE? IT HAS TOWERS. AND IT RAISES IN THE MIDDLE TO LET SHIPS PASS THROUGH.

Twitter users, bloggers, social media maniacs, tourists, and photographers. PLEASE REMEMBER!

Rant over.

Unconscious Errors

~ beetleypete ~ 60 Comments

Looking back on old posts as I reblog them, I noticed some consistent spelling errors. That led me to check on some recent comments I have left and posts published this year.

Words including the letter ‘W’ are easily explained, as my keyboard has an issue with that letter, and I have to hit it very hard (or twice) for a ‘W’ to register. That is why you will often see my usual ‘Best wishes’, appearing as ‘Best ishes’. I could change the keyboard, but it was a gift from Julie, so will hang onto it a bit longer. I have tried to ‘fiddle’ with the ‘W’ key, but it doesn’t appear to want to budge.

However, other mistakes are less easy to explain. I contantly mis-type the word ‘Remember’, leaving out the second ‘M’, and ending up with ‘Remeber’. I do this so often, it seems I have a blind spot of some kind when it comes to the word.

‘Because’ is another one. I seem to type ‘Becuase’ as frequently as the correct spelling.

When you consider how carefully I check text before posting, I wonder why I miss those errors on a daily basis.

Is this a sign of some kind of mental degeneration, I wonder? Anyone else experiencing something similar, or is it just me?

Social Media: Grammar and Spelling

~ beetleypete ~ 77 Comments

I should have known better than to try to spend some time on Twitter earlier.

After seeing at least 200 glaring spelling and grammatical errors, I became so exhausted, I logged off.

How many times?

YOU ARE is ‘YOU’RE’.
Please, please stop writing ‘YOUR’. STOP IT, STOP IT, STOP IT!

I want to slap your stupid legs until they sting all night, then make you stand in the corner with no dinner, like the irritating fools you are.

I really have to stop looking at this rubbish, I really do.

There are times…

~ beetleypete ~ 78 Comments

Are there times when you wish that you had done something different? Or times when you regret doing something that has affected you ever since? I know that both apply to me. I wonder if this will provoke thoughts or feelings in some readers? If so, please add your own examples in the comments.

There are times…when I wish that I had gone to university. I have no way of knowing if that would have made my life turn out any differently to what it is now. But I could have gone, and at the time it would have been free of charge too. I should have gone, and perhaps studied one of my passions.

There are times…when I wonder what it might have been like to have had children. Not that it is something I have ever regretted, I assure you. But I have wondered.

There are times...when I regret not going to live abroad, when I had the chance. If only for a while, as it might have been something good to look back on now, and would have undoubtedly broadened my horizons at a fertile time for my mind.

There are times…when I wish I had waited to get married, (the first time) as who knows how my life might have been different had I not spent eight years with someone who almost certainly regretted her decision.

There are times…when I miss London. After spending sixty years there, that’s understandable. But fortunately, it soon passes.

There are times…when I feel I should make more effort to keep in touch with my oldest friends. We are all getting on now, and none of us know how long we will be around.

There are times…when I wish I had developed more practical skills. I have grown up not equipped to do so many basic things, and now have to pay others to do them for me. It’s all very well being able to read Jean-Paul Sartre in French, but that wont help you fix a problem with the plumbing.

There are times...when I wish I was more organised. Surrounded by piles of paperwork, never knowing where anything is, and constantly looking for things I have lost can all become very tiring, believe me.

So there are just a few of my ‘times’. Over to you.