Until July 2017, documenting the seasons of coastal Dorset. I'm a complete amateur so don't trust I'm always right. If ever you see I'm wrong - whether with identifications or in anything else - do say! Meanwhile . . . I've now moved to Halifax in West Yorkshire. Click on the link below to collect the new URL. Don't forget to follow there!

Tuesday 15 July 2008

YOU CAN NEVER KNOW WHAT PEOPLE ARE THINKING UNTIL THEY TELL YOU. NOT REALLY.


This is a post left over from when Loose and Leafy was a work of fiction. Later, it evolved into what it is now - a blog about the wild plants of the South Dorset Coast.

To make sense (in so far as there is sense) of these early posts, you may like to take a look at Esther in the Garden.

* * *


It's not so much where you stand as the direction you're looking in.

When Casterbridge Pies relocated to Perth I could have gone too but I didn't want to leave Dorchester and chose voluntary redundancy instead. Losing my career was tough but selling my home and missing my neighbours would have been worse.

If I'd had warning they were about to start murdering each other and disappearing, I might have gone to Scotland.

But I didn't - so I started as a summer season Tourist Guide for one of the up and coming hotels in Weymouth, thinking that would keep me afloat while I decide what to do next.

So, yesterday morning, while waiting for the day to begin, I went down to Ferrybridge for an explore. (I'll feel more confident about taking people around if I know where all the public loos are, and the cafes, and can name the distant hills and some of the wild birds which an awful lot of people come to see but are currently a mystery - to me.)

I stood below the bridge. One way, I saw this.



I turned on the spot - and saw this.


I went left out of the picture, walked for about five minutes and turned left again up a little bank









and at the top of the bank, I saw this.


.



I crossed the road which had crossed the bridge and saw this.



I'd come over at an angle, so I was now on the other side of the causeway and only about five minutes from my starting point. (You can locate yourselves by picking out a nick in the top of the Purbeck Hills.)

The weather was the same. The sun was still shining. It was still a beautiful day. No storms were brewing. But by changing to black and white - I changed everything.
These four photos are of the same place.
I think this is like me and Esther. We were standing within a few feet of each other but looking in different directions, through different lenses. You can never know what people are thinking until they tell you. Not really.
- - - - -
p.s. The man who was outside my house the other day has asked me to look after Ceres for the summer holidays.
.
p.p.s. Does anyone know why, if you click on some pictures, they pop up enlarged but, if you click on others, they don't?
.

8 comments:

garden girl said...

Hello again Lucy! I've just been catching up on your posts and enjoying your wonderful photos.

How nice you're so close to Ferrybridge. What a lovely place to visit.

Barbee' said...

I do not know why some photos enlarge and some will not. I hope if you learn the reason you will share it with the rest of us.

Barbee' said...

OK, I did some digging about the problem and here is the dirt, sorry, but it will be long, maybe a thousand words, Lucy, delete if you want. There could be any of the following problems. These relate to Blogger.com blogs. Esther and Lucy have Blogger blogs. I found all the information in the Blogger.com Help Group site RIGHT HERE I searched for the problem in "Something Is Broken" group. I think it is difficult to find one's way around in there so I will try to give you links to what I found.

I tried to collect the pertinent info and paste it here, but it had html code in it that the server wouldn't let me send. So I drop back to doing links.

Here is one possible problem: Sometimes the code breaks if the person is using the drag and drop feature while in Compose mode. It is better to use the Edit Html mode. Let the photo load at the top, and then highlight the code with your mouse, cut the complete photo code and paste it in your post where you want it. All that has to be done in Edit Html mode NOT in Compose mode.

Now I will give you two links. The first one takes you to a page where there are 3 messages. It may be collapsed so you may have to click on the middle person to expand the page. It is the middle persons comment that I hope you will see.

The second link seems to have a solution in it. At least it is something to try. He has a lot of good information on that page. You will have to scan through and find the part about the enlarging photos.

Here is the first link and be sure to read the middle person's comment. That person is hululangath4 and that person's comment gives you the first clue to the problem. Nitecruzr replies with acknowledging the problems.
CLICK HERE

Here is another helper's post about the problems and this may explain what to do. Some code may need to be adjusted.
CLICK HERE for Panther's Page

I hope these links work!!!

Lucy Corrander Now in Halifax! said...

Brbee - You are incredible!

Thank you for doing that research!

When I can gear up my braveness, I will follow it up and work out what it means.

The very letters 'html' bring me out in a clammy sweat - but I do want to know how to make sure all the photos are enlargeable at a click and would like to be able to make the pictures bigger on the page itself without distorting them.

Really - many, many thanks.

Lucy

Lucy Corrander Now in Halifax! said...

Garden Girl - so glad you like the photos.

Ferrybridge is, indeed, impressive.

I think a lot of people miss it because they stay on a very dull causeway and head straight over to Portland. I took masses of photos that morning and there isn't a human in any of them - just vast expanses of sand and water and pebbles.

Looking over the edge of the bridge, I could see huge crops of wonderful seaweed (the water is very clear) but the phone had run out of memory.

When I get the opportunity (and a very clear and sunny day) I plan to go back and photo them too.

Lucy

bare-faced gardener said...

Could it be that the photos that don’t enlarge were taken on the phone ?

Lucy Corrander Now in Halifax! said...

Hello Bare Faced Gardener (!)

All my photos, here and on PICTURES JUST PICTURES were / are taken on the phone.

I don't have a 'proper' digital camera.

Barbee made some suggestions about the way of doing layout using html instead of drag and drop.

This is something I have yet to look into. (It's on my list, Barbee!) That I haven't done so yet is mainly because of time but the very letters 'html' cause me fear and trembling . . . I hardly know how to do anything with it . . . which also means I'll need extra time when learning what to do to solve this problem.

(Incidentally, I went to the college in Weymouth to see about a short course in html but it takes place in a horried room upstairs in the Colwell Centre (if you know it) - with no windows and only strip lighting - ghastly . . . I'd be keeling off my chair within five minutes. I'm amazed the staff can manage to work there day in day out.)

Lucy

Barbee' said...

Hi Lucy, I wouldn't waste my time and money with HTML classes. On Blogger it's all copy and paste, pretty much. Blogger adds some of their own tags, and has their own version of HTML, XHTML, and XML. So, I don't know how helpful learning HTML would be.

And, the HTML is changing to XHTML and XML or something like that which are newer codes. If you haven't already looked, and are interested, Google it (HTML Introduction or something like that). My favorite site for basic HTML is gone. I was going to give you the link, but couldn't track him down. But here is a good one that is frequently recommended:
http://www.w3schools.com/

First I want to say, I had no idea phone cameras could make such wonderful photographs! I thought you were using a regular camera of some sort.

I have never done photos with a phone (mine is too old for that, but I like it anyway), so I don't know if there is a difference in the way the code looks and don't know how photos are uploaded into Blogger.

I would be more than glad to walk you through a practice of working on the HTML side instead of the Compose side. Isn't that weird, I don't know why I keep thinking of those two as different sides of a file card. I guess it looks like a card to me. And, I think of it as having the HTML on one side and Compose on the other. I should say 'mode'.

It's pretty much a matter of learning to recognize the code tags. Once you do you will know if it has gotten broken (divided into more than one section) just by looking at it.

When loading photos just remember it will always go to the top of the page of your post. That being the nature of blogs. I upload photos from my computer. Before I do one, I go to the HTML side and move everything down to give lots of room at the top for the photo's code - so it will have plenty of room. After it loads, I highlight it, cut, then paste it where I want it in the post.
Preview, to be sure I got it in the correct location.
Close Preview.
I keep doing that until they are all loaded and in the correct places. That way I can be sure all the code is together and doesn't get broken. After you are experienced doing that, you can begin to do more than one at a time if you can recognize where one ends and the next one begins.

I cannot put code into this comment, so I will refer to symbols: less than < and greater than >

The group of code for a photo will begin with the less than symbol followed by an a. It will be seen at the lefthand end of the line. The group of code will end with: less-than-symbol /(slash) then the letter a then a greater-than-symbol which usually falls about mid line on my screen.

They can be seen in Vin's (a.k.a. panther) article which is the last link I gave you earlier. He explains the two parts of the code for a photo. One part is wrapped by the other. If only one part is there, I guess the photo will not enlarge.

That little a is called an anchor tag and it just tells the computer that this is the beginning of something and to pay attention to what follows. The lesser-than /a greater-than closes it and marks the end of the 'something'. You will learn to recognize those two little tags and know that they are the start and ending of your photo's code.

Look at the code of some of your photos already in your blog and you will see what I mean. Once you are familiar with it, you can look at your code and see if both parts are there.

Another trick I have learned is to always use UPPER CASE when naming each photo. Then if, for some reason, I need to find the name within all that mess of code, it is easier to see. There have been times I needed to know which block of code was which photo. The UPPER CASE helps a lot. The camera always gives them a name, but I rename them and change those to a title that has meaning to me so I will know which photo it is. The camera was giving a bunch of numbers and they were lost in all that code, I couldn't find the name. By re-naming and typing with upper case letters, I can now find the name in all that code.

Another thing I have done is: I opened two browsers (Internet Explorer and FireFox). Next: I opened my practice blog in one and my real blog in the other. Then: I uploaded the photo into the practice blog... cut the code from there... and pasted it into my real blog where I wanted it. But, now I don't do that any more. I (working on the HTML side) just make that large space at the top of the post, load the photo, then cut the code from there and paste it down on the page where it is supposed to go. When all photos have been loaded, I close that open space at the top putting everything back like it was.

When you have time to think about the problem, and if you want to work on it, I would be glad to try to help. If you want to correspond about this you might prefer to do it by email. If so here is my address: bees dot garden at yahoo dot com

But, after reading Chuck's response about the problem. It may be that some of yours are in that group that they are puzzled about and are not sure why it happened. That comment was dated 2007.