Blogger is a blog-publishing service that allows multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. It was developed by Pyra Labs, which was bought by Google in 2003. Generally, the blogs are hosted by Google at a subdomain of blogspot.com. Blogs can also be hosted in the registered custom domain of the blogger (like www.example.com). A user can have up to 100 blogs per account.
Up until May 1, 2010, Blogger allowed users to publish blogs on other hosts, via FTP. All such blogs had (or still have) to be moved to Google's own servers, with domains other than blogspot.com allowed via custom URLs. Unlike WordPress.com, Blogger allows its users to use their own domain free of charge, while WordPress.com charges around $13 to use a custom domain. Blogger cannot be installed on a web server. One has to use DNS facilities to redirect a custom URL to a blogspot domain.
I have two other blogs - or, more properly speaking, web sites - both called L. G. William Chapman, B.A., LL.B. They are both "Proudly powered by WordPress". Oddly I can no longer figure out how to edit the older of the two web sites, which is why I began the second one. That in turn caused me annoyance because of the sudden appearance of advertisements on the site. That alone may not have succeeded in estranging me from WordPress but I also found the site inconvenient to view. Rather than fight with technology for any reason I have opted instead to grope along other avenues and in doing so I have unwittingly revealed to myself the facility of dealing with Google Blogger. I won't bother to delineate what it is I like about the dynamic but suffice it to observe that I find it more than suitable for my pedestrian purposes. I know the success of Google is no accident and I admire them not for the least reason that they have painlessly rendered to the masses a superb product. My objective is to have somewhere to record and catalogue my literary productions. Pointedly this particular site is called "Simple Theme".
Though I diminish the substance of what I do on this and the other blog/web sites I nonetheless take the productions seriously. For example I want the material to be well and uniformly presented. This meant for example that I spent upwards of four hours this evening editing my historic entries on The Toy Box for the period 2009 - 2017 comprising 314 entries. Parenthetically allow me to note that there are a couple of entries which purportedly precede 2009 (when I first hooked up with Google) but those entries were actually written on a regular WordPerfect platform on one of my first Personal Computers (PCs). Though I had written a mass of material since the age of 14 years when I first began attending boarding school at St. Andrew's College in Aurora, Ontario and subsequently through undergraduate at Glendon Hall in Toronto and Dalhousie Law School in Halifax, all that material was sent to the shredder when upon retirement I did the same with mountains of old legal papers accumulated during almost forty years of practice. The loss of that material is irrelevant because as always the primary goal of the literary exercise is merely self-expression (even though I naturally attempt to make the stuff interesting). Besides I have come to the conclusion that much of what I wrote prior to 2009 was garbage anyway. It was the shift to the semi-public domain of Google that prompted me to work more assiduously at my literary talent (as opposed to a plain transcription of events). That focus was subsequently heightened when I was asked to be a contributing columnist to our local volunteer e-newspaper championed by a married couple in Town - a former Toronto Star journalist and a CBC senior legal counsel respectively. Writing for a strictly public audience forced me to conform to strictures which I had hitherto been able to ignore. Of course the central theme of my writing project remains the same; namely, to amuse myself and to perform a semblance of catharsis. Occasionally I am entertained to re-read what was written years ago but for the most part, once the act of writing is performed, I forget about it. I don't actively cultivate any initiative to record matters of possible historical significance or even local folklore except to the extent that the material is the heart of my rendition.
My glorified record-keeping wouldn't be complete without my mentioning that I had an encounter of sorts today with a friend who reminded me that one can never predict the thoughts of others. That ambivalent observation should also include a general notation that it is not beneath people to have an agenda (in which I include myself of course). Why it is that I should be taken aback when discovering that others have their own pragmatic intentions I shall never know! Perhaps it is their lack of finesse in execution of the selfish enterprise which disturbs me (though likely it is equally offensive to attempt to disguise the blunt purpose of any social maneuver). I acknowledge that I am prevaricating. There is no point in attempting to isolate the failings of others - if indeed that is what they are. I was however mildly disappointed with the outcome of our communications even if the olive branch was subsequently extended. I am rapidly graduating to the point in these matters where I refuse to submit to connivance. Incrementally I am also distancing myself from further involvement on any level, both tangibly and emotionally. While it serves no useful purpose to condemn anyone for anything, neither is it necessary to cavort with unacceptable behaviour. I am reluctant to risk a repeat performance of what was oddly flagrant mendacity. I am also more than a little suspicious of the motive which disturbingly appears to be an evolution of on-going wilful distortion.
I fully suspect that I shall eat each and every one of those valliant words in due course. As angry as I may become I seldom succeed to sustain the vitriol. Admittedly the trials of a relationship contribute to the texture of the experience. But in the meantime I suppose it doesn't matter that I voice my complaint.
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