Problems with Blogger comments

Over the last month or two I kept coming across Blogspot blogs where I've written a comment and had it totally disappear - at first I wondered if it was awaiting moderation or just a glitch on my part, then lately I've found I couldn't even reply on my own blog to comments, so apologies if you have left a comment here and I haven't replied.

I went googling and found I'm not alone in this, (I found a post from Rurality with just this same problem and lots of her readers with similar)

It appears to be the blogs that have a little comment box under the post - which is called embedded comments.
No matter how I try to sign in to this box, with my google ID or open ID, just nothing works.

It has to be a Blogger problem and I suspect it has only recently begun to happen.

Which is why I've now switched to the full page view for comments, this seems to be the one that works best.

It would be interesting to hear if you have a Blogger blog with the embedded comments form - have the number of comments on your blog mysteriously dropped off during the past month? You might want to switch to the full page comments.

No Koala Prison !!

Last weekend at the Winter Magic Festival at Katoomba we saw this group in the parade and decided to find out more.



A development application (DA X/1128/2008) has been lodged with the Blue Mountains City Council (BMCC) for an animal exhibition space (described as an 'educational facility') at Echo Point, Katoomba. (a very popular tourist spot)

The applicant wishes to display reptiles and koalas.

The arrangements for housing and displaying the koalas are appalling.

According to the development application, two koalas will be imported from Victoria and housed in an enclosure in a basement-style room.

The koalas will not have access to sunshine or fresh air, and will be made available to members of the public for petting and photographing for an unspecified number of hours every day.

Potentially, the koalas could be handled by thousands of people every day.

The koalas are from Victoria, meaning they don't like to eat the less-nutritious leaves from NSW eucalypts, and so arrangements have to be made to get regular shipments of Victorian gum leaves to Katoomba.

The Blue Mountains Council has already denied the Development Application for this project so the developer is now approaching the next highest authority, the Land and Environment Court of NSW.

Sydney Morning Herald, Basement Koala plan savaged





More about it in the Blue Mountains Gazette

We signed a petition at the festival but were unable to get to the rally yesterday, I've been looking for information on how it went but haven't found much to date.

Winter Magic

Last weekend we headed up to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, for the annual winter solstice festival.
Previous years have had good clear sunny winter days, but this year it was bleak, grey, foggy and the rain kept up all day in light splashes.

It was looking very bleak as we reached the outskirts of town:


but it didn't stop the crowds, Katoomba Street was packed:


The Fashion Police were writing tickets for anyone dressed in beige:



The Grand Parade was interesting as always, lots of characters and colours




and bellydancers who didn't look the slightest bit cold


and zombies (there was to be a Zombie Ball that night)


and very cool steampunk


and a very sweet Mad Hatter serving coffee


and this is Bandit in her dragon costume:

I've met up with Bandit over the last three years of festivals, in her outfits, unfortunately her owner thinks this may be her last year as she has leukemia and is not responding to treatment, she is such a lovely patient dog.

There were several local issue groups, one protesting the closure of Katoomba Hospital - the maternity ward has already been closed then re-opened from public pressure then closed again, nearest hospital is Nepean, which is a 45 minute drive away (that's on a good day, with no accidents on the one road out of town which can tie up traffic for hours)


Another issue that we learnt about during the parade was the plan by a developer to install two koalas in a BASEMENT room at the Echo Point tourist centre for photographic and petting opportunities:

I'm going to make another post just about this, it is appalling treatment of our native animals

After the parade, we wandered up and down the street stalls, then headed off home pleased to be leaving the cold wet mountains behind:


Here's my video of part of the parade,

slow cloth and practical pottery - #8 the kiln

Here's another little piece of my low fired embroidery series, the kiln, on rusted fabric







Technorati tags:
textiles embroidery

miniature hexagons

Time to get back to something textiley -
I spent last weekend at the Sydney Miniatures Show (will post some pics in the next day or so)
Some of the miniature needlework on display and for sale was exquisite. I can't say mine was anywhere near their standard, but here are a couple of quilts started yonks ago and never quite finished (sigh....why is that not surprising)



This method is usually referred to as 'English Patchwork’. A most used shape is the hexagon, assembled by tacking patches over paper templates, then over-sewing the edges together.

Mal has been showing some of her hexagons here - Mal could easily join the exquisite ranks, she mentions using a ladder stitch to join the pieces, and you can't even see her stitches, unlike my hens teeth overcasting.

I really do admire fine needlework, I could probably do it if I set my mind to trying, I just always seem to be in a hurry and hurrying doesn't gel with fine work.







I'm not sure what I'll do with this last one, it started to sprout in all directions at once, not at all 'quilty'

Geocities Nostalgia

Yahoo is pulling the plug on all those free Geocities web sites - there must be millions of them out there, including three of mine which I'd practically forgotten (and it seems can no longer access, thanks Yahoo!)

It was back in the halcyon days of early internet - Geocities was the place you practised your self taught html skills (or lack of).

Suddenly everyone (teenager or middle-aged geek) with a computer and internet access could realise their dream of becoming a web designer and show the whole world their holiday slides and photos of the cat.

It was the place you found java scripts for cute things that followed your cursor around and made snow and autumn leaves flutter down your pages.

(see here for example if you use Explorer, never could get it to work in Netscape)

It was GRAPHICS personified - gifs that moved, jpgs, flashy backgrounds with Borders on Both Sides, how cool were we!

It was the home of halucinogenic colours and flashing lights and moving things and dreadful wav files of Strawberry Fields Forever.

And every little hobby group suddenly realised they too could become a world renowned force for good.....which is why I'm wasting time downloading ten year old pages and trying to persuade said hobby group that web sites are old old old - get a blog heavens sake! - we could even TEAM blog! (this is one of the sites I lost access to which is why the content is about 10 years out of date)

Back before Yahoo took them over, Geocities had their own little social networking system, our sites were in themed 'neighborhoods' then each neighborhood was divided into suburbs then into blocks and that's where you built your site. We had community leaders and it was all very pally and helpful.

I was trying to remember the name of my original neighborhood and found this old list of names - I was in Heartland/Meadows

Yahoo took over Geocities in 1999 at the height of the dot.com boom and immediately dismantled the neighborhoods.

Some would say that was the beginning of the end, but I think the end was helped along by the static nature of web sites in general, much more direct were the new social networks offered by blogs, facebook, YouTube and photo sites like Flickr

Somewhere I read a note comparing Geocities to an abandoned amusement park - perfect description, the ride is over, just waiting now for the demolishers to move in.

gggrrrrrr!!

I am really p---d off!! - REALLY I AM!!

I set up some Google alerts, stuff like "textile art" "cloth dolls" just time wasting little things that let me know when someone has written something about them,
(like I need more blasted links to follow!!) (sorry Paula, lots of exclamation marks in this one)

anyways - one of the alerts I set up was for my full name, which lets me know if anyone mentions me by name - it very seldom happens, but today an alert came through with my name and a link to "sculptured dolls" - which when I clicked was a BLOODY PORN site!! (more exclamations)

It has picked up the meta tag description from my web site and used it to lure people in to their dirty little site - do they really think cloth doll people want to ogle hard sculpted naked bodies (don't answer that!!) (exclamation) I suppose you could call it anatomical research....

So I've just spent hours re-wording the meta tags leaving my name out, which involved downloading files then uploading again to the server.

I've been thinking about deleting the web page and just using the blog, much simpler to use, and the web site is so out of date, I need days to write new pages - this might have just been the push I need, we'll see.

Meantime, just watch out where your mouse is taking you!

Salvaged

salvaged bag, originally uploaded by gramarye.

The Generation X'er broke the zip on her cooler bag - "I'm throwing this away mum, DON'T get it out of the bin"
"But it's still GOOD..." says the Baby Boomer mother

and so it was, once the zipper was removed, and the flap lid cut off and the outside patchworked.

and I've got a little carry bag for my little projects.