900 posts

That's the number of entries I've got to read. Sorry folks: I'm just a wee bit behind, and it's not going to get any better, any time soon. For the moment, I'm doing the rounds, leaving behind my new URL, and it might be an idea if we all did that during this month. It is no use looking at all the blogs behind my Blogger ID, as you'll find yourself looking at no fewer than 28.

At the moment, I'm also keeping an eye on my friend with the broken wrist, who may find herself looking at a healing process spanning many months or even years. Tomorrow, the orthopods will do the job properly, rather than the emergency measures taken on Friday night. The computer is back in action, but I'm now working from my own laptop. I'm an Internet addict, that's what lol.

Oh, don't forget to pull your stuff from AOL Hometown. You'll lose that too on November 1st.

Monday 13 October

Quite a nice morning, compared to the blow and rain of recent days, but still the odd shower about. Our freight ferry Muirneag was late coming in, 9.20 am instead of the 'scheduled' 8 o'clock. The friend who fell on Friday had a very lucky½ escape, as it appears her fall was broken by a plastic bucket full of water - as well as her wrist of course. She is up at the hospital this morning to show the damage to the orthopaedic surgeon.

I'll start reading journals again later this week, but am currently working on the dormant blogs (should not be a problem at all). If you know of a journal, whose owner is away, unaware of the transfer or whatever, PLEASE let me know. We still have just over 2 weeks to sort something out.

I am planning to build a journal to provide a cross-reference between erstwhile AOL journal and new Blogger journal, complete with AOL username. I am sort-of lost without the screenies, as there are so many people out there with similar first names.

To demonstrate the problem, I'll tell the story of a temp doctor here in Stornoway, who got a call to come and see Mrs MacLeod in the High Street [fictional streetname] at 3 in the morning. Now, there are several hundred Mrs Macleod's in the town, and even within the one street there will be a couple of them. So, the doctor had to go round all the houses in which a Mrs MacLeod was resident - which took him a long time.

Sunday evening

The wind howls and the rain clatters. Your average Hebridean evening. Who said London was at 23C today? We did not exceed 12C all day.

I have not gotten round to visiting everybody's new journal yet. I am still chasing up everybody's new links. It would appear that I have almost everybody's that I used to read on AOL. As I speak, I am downloading the blogs of the deceased that have not yet been catered for by friends or relatives. These include:

Lahoma's Lament
No Sundays
My Reason for Reasoning
Pennie's Pieces of Ohio
The Diatom Project
Dribble by Chuck Ferris

I am asking around for ways of uploading these journals back to the Net. For the moment, they're safe with me.

Abandoned

The majority of formerly J-land has now migrated to Blogger, and judging by the 800+ entries on Google Reader, is busy clattering away at their keyboards. Please spare a thought for the unhappy few who are unable to go through this humungous change.

Cathy, chatzeekay, left an entry on October 6th on her AOL journal Life and Lessons, saying she would not be able to make a new journal at Blogger, or wherever. She has suffered two severe brain traumas, the results of which have left her quite incapacitated. The entries, not spell-checked, speak for themselves.

Please call round, and ask if you can be put on an emailing list for her to continue beyond November 1st. Let it not be said that J-land (on Blogger or AOL) does not care for its less fortunate members.

Copied to Call for Support

Dormant blogs

I have been given a way to download dormant blogs and preserve them in one way or another for posterity. If you know blogs that may disappear that way, which you'd like to see kept, please drop me a line. I'll give it a try in the course of the next few days.

On Blogger

I have gone through all the emails I received this month, copying people's new URLs to Google Reader. Next stage is going through the posts on the old AOL journals, to eek out any new
URLs from there.

Transfer of Northern Trip has not gone smoothly (keep having problems), as the server conked out halfway down the final stage of publishing all the posts. 4768 of them. Will try again tomorrow.

I have worked with Blogger for some time, and find it bare bones and minimalistic. Probably too negative an impression, but will review in time.

Returned

Well, here I am again, at full throttle. Got myself a new laptop and after spending the last 90 minutes setting it all up: he has RETURNED! More later.

Saturday 11 October

Things continue in the not-so-good category. Found myself taking an elderly friend to A&E late last night, after she tripped. The result was a broken wrist, which required a plaster-cast. Hope this will heal in short order, as anyone would be inconvenienced by this, not to mention the pain.

As I write, my old blog Northern Trip is being transferred to Blogger, where it will reside as an archive. The AOL version will remain until Journals shut down on 31 October. Atlantic Lines is my primary blog now. When my Internet access is restored to normal, I will publicise the URLs of all the transferred blogs here. In the future, I may shift to another blogging platform again, as I'm not overly impressed with Blogger.

Unless the PC gets fixed in the meantime, I cannot access internet again until Tuesday.

Comments

I have been requested to remove image verification from the comments page, which has been done. Should I start to receive (large amounts of) comments spam, it will be reinstated.

Friday 10 October

Computer woes are being tackled as I speak, but don't know when things will be back to normal. Hopefully later today - cannot promise. Transfer process of Northern Trip did not go well, as I was doing other things with my Google account in the meantime, which tripped the process. Try again another time. I'm not totally desperate yet (there is 3 weeks left), but would like to get it done. I'm also hamstrung by the time restriction in the library.

I have a lot of emails from you folks about new blogs etcetera, which I shall attend to as soon as the PC is back in action. I also have 1,150 pictures to share of my trip to Orkney. Again: bear with me!

Thursday 9 October

Well, that was a nice home-coming: a dead computer. A wee pop on the wall-socket, and that was it. As dead as a dodo. Here I am on the library computer, and hope to have something sorted out in the next couple of days - if not later today. I am currently restricted to 60 minutes Internet access per day, whilst on the library computer, so cannot do anything extensive. Bear with me.

From AOL to Blogger

I am receiving a steady trickle of questions regarding the transfer of journals from AOL to Blogger. I shall publish a few links later in the week. I cannot do anything at this point, as I am not on my own PC and only have limited time.

Don't forget, we still have 3 weeks. For now, you should be reassured that a manual transcription of your old journal is probably not necessary.

I have ceased entries on Northern Trip. I am sad about that, but face it with an attitude of "onwards and upwards". That journal will be backed up to Blogger, to remain as an archive.

I can see a heap of work waiting for me when I return to Stornoway. Not just related to this transfer, it is also the research into 2,000 war dead whose names I've dug up here in Orkney.

Can I ask you all to mark October 14th as a date for remembrance? It will be 69 years ago that HMS Royal Oak was sunk in Scapa Flow, just south of Kirkwall, with the loss of more than 800 lives.

Kirkwall, 6 October

Afternoon all from a very blustery Kirkwall, Orkney Islands. Just a summary of the last few days. On Saturday, we had a foretaste of winter, with a bitter north wind and heavy hail showers. I visited one local cemetery and photographed 125 wargraves. Afterwards, I bussed to the ferry which took me to the island of Hoy. A very friendly B&B put me up for the weekend, cooking all my food &c.

On Sunday, the weather was much more friendly, not as cold and not that much wind. Went to the Naval Cemetery at Lyness, 15 minutes' walk away, where I photographed 580 wargraves. Like you do. Took me 2 hours, so not too bad. Went for a wee bit of a walk afterwards in the afternoon sun.

Today, wind and clouds returned, making it feel cold.

I'll catch up with matters related to the transfer of AOL > Blogger from Thursday 9 October onwards.

Evening note

I've done a wee run round the new blogs this evening - for reference, I am posting under my Google name ADB. If you look at my profile, you'll see about 14 blogs or so, but Atlantic Lines is for the moment my primary blog. Tropical Cyclones is full of hurricane information. The other blogs are static, in fact, they could best be classified as websites.

Over the next 6 days, I shall try to get Internet access where possible whilst in Orkney.

This is a picture of St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall, the islands' main town.
I'm returning to Stornoway on October 8th.

Remarks

I only "follow" those blogs that are private. I follow public blogs through Google Reader, so please don't be surprised NOT to find me in your followers list, in spite of the fact that I'm commenting.

I've also decided to completely revamp my sidebar - in other words, it's bare bones at the moment. I'll add to it as time goes on, and as graphics reach me.

MSN group

A group has been set up on MSN for J-landers. You need a Hotmail / MSN username & password to join it. You can change the email address.

Away

I am pleased that my J-land 2 folder on Google Reader is filling up nicely with everybody's new URLs.

Ken (buckoclown) is suggesting we drop the J-land name. Let's not have too many changes all at once - this move is proving traumatic enough, and I'm not looking to the heartache that's bound to occur on and after November 1st, when people discover their blogs have disappeared.

The J-land Hub, the Magic Smoke on Blogger, will come to life in the next couple of days with more information on the transfer.

I'll be off Internet from October 3rd until (and including) October 8th, but will try to get internet access at some point. I'm travelling to Orkney tomorrow to photograph 700 wargraves in Kirkwall and Lyness. The weatherforecast is atrocious, so please think of me whilst I feed the fish in the Minch and the Pentland Firth.

entry copied to Northern Trip

New beginning

This will be the place where I shall continue to blog after 1 November.
Northern Trip will remain as an archive post transition. Proper blogging will resume later in October, or in November at the latest.