I am not a photo blogger, although I often include photos in my blog posts if I think they will enhance or clarify what I am trying to say. I probably will never be a photo blogger. Having said that I thought I would try my hand at a photo essay. Last March we went to California for a couple of weeks and while we were there I did a tour of the Shasta Dam and Power Station. Hopefully the photos tell a story. Continue reading A Sort of Photo Essay – Shasta
Category Archives: Blogging 101
Re-sprung boing, boing
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Re-springing Your Step.”
As Zebedee said “Time for bed”. Which may be a clue to getting the spring back in my step. To many late nights for good and bad reasons slow me up. Actually it’s not the late nights that cause the problems it is the early mornings. I’m fine going to bed at 2:00 a.m. provided I don’t have to get up again before 10.
It is the middle of winter here in the Northern Hemisphere and although the days are gradually getting longer it is not properly light until eight and it is getting dark again by four. That’s on a good day, on one that we actually see the sun. If it is a normal London winter’s day, overcast, dank and if not actually raining, threatening to rain or sleet but hardly ever snow, it can feel as if we will never see the sun again. Other than having to earn enough to pay the rent and buy the food, there isn’t that much incentive to get out of a nice warm bed in the morning. Continue reading Re-sprung boing, boing
Cycling in Cork and Kerry – along time ago.
I started to follow Adam’s blog The Wine Cycle because, well it is a cycle touring blog and I am a sucker for reading about other people’s cycle touring adventures, and he also has an interesting concept; Continue reading Cycling in Cork and Kerry – along time ago.
A New Look for the New Year
Following on from re-naming the blog (from johnm55 to A Scotsman in Suburbia) I have decided to give it a new look. After spending all morning trying different themes and finding something that I didn’t like with most of them, I finally settled on the Twenty Fourteen theme.
I have spent the rest of the day designing and creating a new header image and tweaking the layout of the side bars. From my end it has a few advantages functionally over my old theme, and I think that from the perspective of a reader it has a cleaner look. I’ll probably make a few tweaks to the layout and may slightly alter the header image as I am only 95% happy with it.
I hope that you like it, and if not please leave me a comment below.
An appeal to my ideal reader
In trying to work out who my ideal reader could be I first had to work out who I was writing for. It turned out to be myself . My blog is not intended to be a commercial operation. I am not blogging to make money from it. I am not even hoping to make money from it. I know there are bloggers out there who do at least supplement their income from blogging, but I’m not one of them.
As I wrote in my introductory post I started this blog (under the name johnm55) in the hope of influencing a few people to vote yes to electoral reform back in 2010. I still hope that what I write will have some influence on my readers but that is no longer why I blog. I blog because I enjoy it. I blog because the act of writing for someone else to read helps me to clarify my thoughts in a way that putting them down in a journal for my consumption does not. That means that I write about what interests me today. It could be a piece about politics but it could equally be a review of an art exhibition or sharing a recipe that I have made and liked. Other subjects that often feature are cycling, especially road racing, but not exclusively, I like all forms of cycling. I also have an occasional feature called “Songs I Love”, where I take a You Tube video of a song that I really love and explain why. Most of the music featured tends to be either Folk or the music that gets listed under the title “Americana”. I also post the occasional photo essay, mainly if I have been off on my travels.
As I said, I think that I am probably my ideal reader. However I bit of interaction on a blog, or even knowing that someone other than your partner is reading it is nice. So the person I am writing for probably shares at least some of my characteristics. They are probably interested in politics but not obsessed. They will read books, listen to music and have opinions on what they read and listen to. They will enjoy food, both eating and probably cooking it. They will probably enjoy traveling and exploring new places, close to home and further afield. They will appreciate that a bicycle is one of the best ways to travel. They will probably also be interested in the sporting aspects of the bicycle even if, like me they don’t race.
If my reader is ultra-interested in any of those topics my blog probably won’t satisfy completely. It will hopefully point him or her towards people whose knowledge of politics, art, music, food or cycling is more extensive than my own.
One characteristic of my ideal reader that I haven’t mentioned yet is this;
My ideal reader brings something to the blog by adding his or her comments. I welcome constructive criticism, but agreeing with me is even better.
A Scotsman in Suburbia
Following an extensive and thoroughgoing review with my image consultant, we decided that “johnm55” as a brand name was very 2014 darling. Actually it was probably more 2010. We made what we hope will be major game-changing paradigm-shifting decision and renamed the blog “A Scotsman in Suburbia” however the tag line remains the same; “Random Thoughts, Ramblings and Rants.” because changing the name doesn’t mean that a suburban Scotsman, will be anymore coherent than johnm55.
We do feel that this could drive the page views up into the low teens (per month). We also hope that this Blogging 101 course might improve the content,
As you can see there is still a bit of work to be done on the YB image, I need a new header image for a start. Still the weather forecast for the weekend is not great, so I will try to remember how to use the GIMP* and see what objects of informative beauty I can come up with.
Edit 17/01/15 as you can see the header and a few other aspects have now been tarted up.
*The GIMP is a very powerful free image editing program, which has only one disadvantage, a fairly steep learning curve.
So who is johnm55 anyway? (and why is he rambling away on this blog thing?)
It’s a good question. I sometimes wonder what the answer is. Actually I don’t think that there is one definitive answer. The answer tomorrow will probably be slightly different to the answer today.
Who is johnm55
The short and easy answer to the first part of the question (who is johnm55 anyway?) is that johnm55 is my online name. I am actually called John Manderson and surprise, surprise, I was born in 1955. I sometimes think that I should think up a snappier name for the blog that sums up what you should expect when you arrive here, but “Middle-aged Male Angst” isn’t any better, or is it?
edit 07/01 I have renamed the blog “A Scotsman in Suburbia”
A short biography.
I am a native of the Scottish Border country, I grew up on sheep farms, my father was a shepherd, in the Border Hills. I loved the Border countryside, but had no desire to work in it. On leaving school I joined the Merchant Navy as an engineering apprentice and set off to see the world, or at least the parts of it than can be reached by a 40000 tonne container ship.
That phase lasted about fifteen years, until I met my wife. I wanted to find a job that didn’t require me to be away for eight or nine months of the year. I found a job lecturing in Marine Engineering in the Solomon Islands. It was an experience, and I probably should write about it some day, before I get too old and senile to remember it. We were there for about two and a half years, until my contact expired and we came home to London (United Kingdom).
Since then, for the past twenty-five years, I have lived in South London (Wallington if you know the area) and worked for a large multinational insurance company as a Pressure Systems Surveyor, which isn’t as boring as it sounds and pays for groceries. I am planning to retire this year and after that who knows.
Why am I rambling away on this blog thing anyway?
I originally started the blog back in 2010 because I was in favour of changing the way we vote in the United Kingdom to some form of proportional representation. I naïvely thought that my blog posts could be the difference between victory and defeat for the Yes campaign. If you are really interested all the posts are still there in the archives. I discovered that the process of writing and researching was an excellent way to work out what I actually thought about something, rather than just going on a gut feeling, so I carried on with the blog after the referendum was over and lost.
I don’t really have a theme for my main blog I tend to write about what I fancy or what has caught my attention. There are a few subjects that tend to crop up more often than others. Cycling, art and food feature regularly ( I actually have a second blog which only consists of recipes) as do politics and more occasionally theology. . Politically I am a bit left of centre with greenish tendencies. Theologically I am less sure about how to sum myself up, agnostic Christian, is probably the best short description I can think of.
I decided to do this course (Blogging 101) partly to get myself back into the habit of writing this blog and partly to try to improve my writing. Let’s see how it goes
Edit 07/01 for “johnm55” now read “A Scotsman in Suburbia” except when I am commenting I’ll still be johnm55.
A Scotsman in Suburbia 