Day: March 3, 2023

A Bone to Pick with WordPress

Fandango43 Comments

I have a few bones to pick with WordPress. Well, at least they finally seem to have resolved the on-again/off-again pingback issue. Good for doing whatever they had to do to fix, after a week, whatever they did to break pingbacks in the first place. That’s the good news.

But on to the not so good news. I just realized that at least one blogger I have been following for quite a while, I was no longer following. Apparently, unbeknownst to me and with no action on my part, WordPress has been arbitrarily dropping blogs I follow from my follow list. Because I follow around 170 blogs, it sometimes takes a while for me to realize that posts from bloggers I follow are not showing up in my Reader anymore. So if you notice that I used to like and comment on your posts, but I haven’t for a while, let me know. It’s very possible that WordPress arbitrarily purged your blog from the blogs I follow.

If you’ve been following my blog for a while you may also know that since November of 2020 I’ve had an issue with commenting on blogs that do not have “.wordpress.com” in their URLs. WordPress admits that it’s a bug, blames it on Apple’s iPhone security settings, and is doing nothing to address it. As a result, even though I’m logged into the WordPress iOS app, if I want to comment on someone’s blog, I have to enter my name, my email address, and my blog’s address. That takes me to another screen where I have to enter my blog’s password and offer to sacrifice my first born child in order for my comment to be posted on the blog.

That’s a real pain in the butt. But even worse are those blogs that warn that I must be logged in to comment. I am logged in, dammit, to the WordPress iOS app, so I don’t get what the problem is. And yet, for bloggers that have this setting under Discussions, I can’t leave a comment.

So, for those of you who have checked the setting, “Users must be registered and logged in to comment,” and you know who you are, even after I attempt to re-login (though I’m already logged in), I cannot comment on your posts when I visit your blog. I can only comment when I find it in my Reader if I’m following your blog.

But now, if I want to contact a happiness engineer to report these issues, do I do it via WordPress or Jetpack?

Many of us who have been blogging on WordPress from our smartphones or tablets are being told to delete that mobile app and install the Jetpack mobile app if we want all to keep using all of the features of WordPress. Why? Because as of March 8th, WordPress is “simplifying” its mobile app and dropping functionality that most of us use, such as stats, the Reader, notifications, the activity log, menus, and themes.

What? Everyone knows what WordPress is: the worlds largest, most popular web hosting site. Who the hell knows what Jetpack is? Why would the owners of a well known, highly regarded brand (WordPress) push most of us off to something few people have ever heard of? I don’t get it. Do you?

Fibbing Friday — In Honor of Tersesa

Fandango12 Comments

Di (aka Pensitivity101) hosts Fibbing Friday, a silly little exercise where we are to write a post with our answers to the ten questions below. But as the title suggests, truth is not an option. The idea is to fib a little, a lot, tell whoppers, be inventive, silly, or even outrageous, in our responses. For this week’s Fibbing Friday, Di has tapped into the originator of Fibbing Friday, Teresa Grabs, when she was known as The Haunted Wordsmith here on WordPress. Di has picked some gems from Teresa’s archives.

1. What did you find in the unopened can of mixed nuts?

The tip of a human finger.

2. They just cancelled your favorite TV show – what do you do?

Turn off the TV and write an angry blog post about how pissed off I am that they just canceled my favorite TV show.

3. What is the answer to 3 Down?

Seven-Up.

4. What do Scots wear under their kilts?

Plaid socks.

5. How did the platypus get its name?

These creatures were first discovered by Aboriginal Australians who named them. In their native tongue, “platy” means flat and “pus” means face.

6. You find a treasure map – what is the treasure?

An unlimited supply of Ben & Jerry’s Stephen Colbert’s Americone Dream ice cream.

7. They are making a movie of your life – what is the biggest whopper they invent?

That I invented the Whopper burger sandwich they serve at Burger King.

8. Bollocks doesn’t mean what Americans think it does…what does it really mean?

These are the metal sheds in bowling alleys where the bowling balls are locked away when the bowling alley is closed.

9. What did you give the last person who asked you for a tip?

I told him to not sweat the small stuff and gave him a dime.

10. What is over the next hill?

Fame and fortune.

Fandango’s Flashback Friday — March 3rd

Fandango15 Comments

Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Flashback Friday post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 3rd) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.

This was originally posted on March 3, 2018.

Smartphone Addiction

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So I read in the paper the other day that the average smartphone user typically touches his or her smartphone 2,617 times per day.

What? More than 2600 times a day? Assuming that the average person is awake 18 hours a day, that comes to around 145 touches per waking hour. Or two-and-a-half touches a minute! Is that even possible? That’s crazy.

Well, maybe not. According to Pew Research, one-third of American smartphone owners describe their phones as “something they can’t imagine living without.” And I am one of them. I freely admit that I am addicted to my iPhone.

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My cellphone additction started around 1997, when I got my first BlackBerry, the RIM 857. It was a miracle device. I could make phone calls, compose, send, and receive emails. It had an address book, a calculator, an alarm clock. I didn’t go anywhere without my beloved BlackBerry.

It didn’t take long for BlackBerry devices to earn the nickname “Crackberry” because users — predominantly business people — became addicted to them. And that was before web browsers and cameras became standard issue on smartphones.

Everything changed in 2007 when Apple introduced the iPhone. Suddenly using a smartphone to take snapshots and to browse the web became “the thing.”

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Fast forward a decade. Our smartphones have become an extension of ourselves. There are apps for just about any task imaginable. And many people don’t even talk on their smartphones anymore. They text, email, and post updates on Facebook or Snapchat, and photos on Instagram.

Smartphones accompany us in some of the most significant and intimate experiences of our lives. We take them with us when we go to the bathroom. We keep them near us while we sleep. They join us at meals, while watching TV or reading, at church, in our cars. Dare I say that they’re not far out of reach even when we’re having sex? We are rarely without them.

I have a laptop and an iPhone. Sometimes days go by when I don’t turn on my laptop, but my iPhone is never not by my side. It’s the last thing I look at before I go to sleep at night and the first thing I look at when I wake up in the morning.

I do all of my web surfing on my iPhone. And all of my blogging activity as well. That includes composing and posting, reading others bloggers’ posts, and commenting. I no longer have a digital camera. Rather, all of my photos are taken with my iPhone. In fact, when it gets right down to it, I could easily live without my laptop, but not without my iPhone.

So when it comes to the average number of smartphone touches at 2,617 times per day, I’m probably way above average.

What about you?

FOWC with Fandango — Place

Fandango21 Comments
FOWC

It’s March 3, 2023. Welcome to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (U.S.).

Today’s word is “place.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Please check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. Show them some love.