On Friends, The Series, Being Offensive
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On Friends, The Series, Being Offensive

Byrichard

Friends is a television series that aired in the 90s and that still makes millions today, as the show is re-aired. Jennifer Anniston, Rachel Green in the series, says that people today find the series offensive today. I find it ironic, that in a day and age where books are edited to be more politically correct, parties that are immoral, are voted into power.


Brexit, the Tories, the UDC and The US Republican Party are two examples. They represent old fashioned views and yet people not only vote for them but they lead politics. In the age where people are worried about what people said and thought decades ago, people are showing more bigotry in who, and what they vote for today.


If we edit books to be more politically correct, and if we criticise television series and films for representing old fashioned views, then we should edit the bible and Quoran, to make them more representitive of modern values.


Television series, films and books represent the world as it was, and if we have moved on from the values seen in TV series, films and books, then that is the entire reason we study them in the first place, whether through english litterature classes, film studies or media studies. The fact that our values change is part of the academic discussion to be enjoyed.


The danger comes not from laughing about something, but about growing angry, and showing intolerance. Remember that joking about something, offending someone by accident, and apologising is one thing.


Brexit and some political parties are about radicalising hatred against people based on race, religion or national identity. Whether Roald Dahl or Friends shows old fashioned attitudes to one thing is an interesting quirk to be discussed by parents, children, and students.


The movement to divide, radicalise and spread hatred is quite another. Until Drumpf and Brexit I felt that England and the US were making forward progress. With BRexit and Drumpf the US and England took a big step backwards, morally.


Complaining about books, televisions and films is nice, but it’s a desire to change the past. What worries me is that the Far Right is thriving in the US, England, Switzerland and other countries. I want people to vote against the Far Right, in government, rather than worry about how people thought three decades ago. What I see happening now worries me. England voted against Europe and the European identity. They behaved in a xenophobic manner and no one noticed.


Rather than complain about television, books, and films people should vote to keep the Far Right out of power. If the Far Right is in power then the very things that people decry in films, books and television, are shaping government policy in the wrong direction. Vote intolerance out of government.

One Hundred And One Blog Posts in One Hundred and One Days

One Hundred And One Blog Posts in One Hundred and One Days

Byrichard

I have written at least one hundred and one blog posts in one hundred and one days. During this time most blogs have gone by unread. Blogging could be seen as futile but it isn’t. Having the discipline to write every single day, despite having no inspiration is good. It forces us to stop, think, and develop inexistent ideas.


In different times I would not write one hundred and one blog posts about nothing but we’re in a pandemic that is being ignored by the people with the power to get us out of it. This means fewer conferences, fewer meetings with people to do sports activities and more. It means less freedom to find covid safe work. It means living with the constant risk of getting long COVID. Switzerland is living in denial about the pandemic and this is frustrating.


The Swiss radio and television removed COVID from their news site. They don’t even keep it as a tribute to the last three years. For them the pandemic is over. You watch the news and you see no masks, no safety measures. Nothing.


Not Waiting For Inspiration


If I waited for inspiration then the blog would be dormant, as it has been for the last decade and a half. It would be updated when I do something out of the ordinary. It would be updated for an interesting bike ride or an interesting walk. It would document an interesting idea, or event. Instead it is about the thing that inspires me enough to write three hundred words


The Stereotypical Blog


Recently I was looking for books about blogging and they’re all about the same thing. Monetisation. They’re all about making money, rather than about exploring and developing ideas. They are all about financial gain rather than idea development. If I found a book about blogging to share ideas and experiences, rather than to make money, I would be tempted. A blog should be about sharing and developing ideas.


Blogging as an Investment


Social media today is about the ego of the people who own the companies. Twitter has become a chaotic mess that sold for 44 billion. Facebook is a social network that used to be about friends and friendships until Zynga ruined the experience for everyone. Instagram was great, until it was bought by Facebook and turned into a glossy mag that promotes influences, rather than human beings. Before you tell me off, I posted more than three thousand images over a period of years. I stopped using it because it made me feel lonely.


Blogging is a worthwhile social media replacement because we generate content for our own blog site. We practice writing, and if we get enough traffic then we can generate a small revenue. If we’re going to spend time on the world wide web then we might as well do something that benefits us personally. As I have said plenty of times, social networks forget that ROI should be about generating value for users, not just for corporate interests. Blogging does provide ROI for the user, me.


Social media was about community, but with time, and algorithms, community has been destroyed. It is now a shouting match. I like blogging. I try to write positive blog posts. It takes effort to be positive. The natural instinct is to write about what bothers me, rather than what I enjoy.


And Finally


Blogging is about taking half an hour to an hour and a half to think, and to develop the ideas I think about. It’s like going for a walk, where the steps are taken by my fingers. It’s a moment to turn inwards. I will continue this habit.

Learning About Laravel and PHP
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Learning About Laravel and PHP

Byrichard

Today I started to follow a course where someone turns a static html page into a Laravel blog. I experimented with home.blade and one or two other features and I got two pages to load, and the login to work, without more than that.


What makes today’s learning and experimenting interesting is that the time I spent creating PHP arrays for my website content is now easy to transfer to json files for use with dynamic websites. What this means is that content that was stuck on individual pages is now organised by website section. I am now free to do more.


The primary goal is to convert the static part of my website into a flexible content management system as well as to possibly swallow up the WordPress powered blogs. For at least a year I have disliked that Wordpress uses react, so if I can replace WordPress with Laravel then I will be happy. All websites that use React look the same to me, and I don’t want to use technology that was developed by Facebook, no matter how popular.


Having a website is not just about writing blog posts and creating content. It is also about playing with technology and learning new skills. I want to understand how laravel works, and to have a way to demonstrate that I have learned relevant skills for future job applications. This website isn’t small. It has quite a few sections, topics, content and more. It’s worth working on and improving this website.


And Finally


I am curious about playing with ActivityPub. It is still in early days but if and when it is ready, it will be a more advanced of interactive RSS. I want to see what possibilities it will open up.

A Walk Between Moments of Rainfall
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A Walk Between Moments of Rainfall

Byrichard

Today I woke early, shopped, studied German, read the news and then studied WordPress Child themes. It rained on and off, and I took a break from studying to go for a walk and I stayed dry almost the entire time. I carried a Sea to Summit three litre bag with me, in case I needed to keep the phone etc dry. For a moment I thought it would start raining but it didn’t so I stayed dry.


The walk was short, just one hour, as the conditions are not ideal for walking. The views weren’t good and the probability of being caught in the rain was high. I also wanted to walk a route where I did not soak myself and my shoes. On the route I walked, cars were unable to bully me like they do on other routes.


The course I am studying now is WordPress Building Child Themes and so far I find the course interesting. I have only gone so far as to create a child theme and ensure that it works. That’s when I took a break for the daily walk. I enjoy studying JavaScript, Angular and other ideas but there is a lot to learn, so I thought that by returning to WordPress. I could focus on learning how to use functions, and understand concepts individually, and then return to Angular, JavaScript and more. I want to step my learning. I don’t want to simply finish a course. I want to understand a concept first, and then finish the course.


I still have a lot to learn about CSS but at least this is a technology where I understand the ideas, even if I have not played with all of the tools, or learned of plenty of solutions yet. That is the point of step learning. You learn, get comfortable, and move on. I can also learn what I learn now, to move my entire website into a CMS with different sections having a different look. I have aspirations, and they will force me to learn how to implement them in WordPress.


I will spend more time studying, now.

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Increase your surfing speed

Byrichard

Is your internet connection slow, do pages take a long time to load, do you visit certain sites more than others? If your answer to any of these is yes then I suggest that you download Netsonic, a program I have tested which works well, since I’ve installed it my browsing is much faster.


At first it’s normal for the netsonic program to seem a little slower but once you’ve started using it and it some files are cached the surfing speed will be far greater since pages which are constantly visited load faster. There is also another function on it which allows you to pre-fetch pages which are kept in a cache file


What is pre-fetching and what are cache files?


When you visit a webpage there is sometimes a lot of text meaning that you will spend some time reading this text, as you spend time reading the page the modem and the line aren’t been used which is when netsonic comes in. This program is designed to follow the links on different pages and download the pages without you feeling that the connection is slower because it does it when you’re not using the modem, for instance when reading a long text.


When does it’s usefullness appear?


If you have had a hotmail account such as I used to use before you visit this page and you begin to be frustrated at spending quite some time online. What netsonic does is cache pages such that the login page for example loads immediatley as well as certain frames load as soon as you get into the account.


Another way it’s worth is shown is when you’re looking through the school’s online magasine, for example coming to read new articles, if there is a page which you like then as the structure of this magazine will remain the same you can get to the page you want in thirty seconds on a 26,000 modem. This means you have more time to enjoy the page and ultimatly a lower phone bill.

The importance of a good title

Byrichard

Today everyone seems to be using the web either by getting e-mail addresses at places such as Rocketmail, Hotmail, Altavista or getting webpages from places such as Tripod, The Globe, Xoom and Geocities. The use of the web has increased at an incredible speed, within the school as well as outside.


It is precisely because of this evolution in technology that the school’s electronic magazine should remain with it’s name Kaleidoscope rather than changing to Contact. Contact is the old newspaper’s title which to me suggests isolation and reminds me of last year’s committee and those before because they didn’t do much in the field of web mastering. I am to change that which is the reason for which I am spending so much time on it, to establish it outside the school too, not only within.


Kaleidoscope on the other hand suggests tons of information  flowing into one place where people come to read new articles written by younger students as well as the older ones, after all why should we have the same title for so many years, especially when this website is blossoming into something great.


Conclusively the motivation of the person working on the website is simultaneously increased if he is interested in the title, try it out to see how valid it is.