Tuesday, 30 June 2026

Vocal's Car Crash Upgrade

When someone promises a new upgrade to improve a sysem it should be tested and seamless, and it should work.

I haven't used the new editor and I don't like the look of it, but that is fine, I will get to know it, when I get the chance.

The thing is Vocal is the finest publication platform and has a great community atmosphere but they have now added a verification step.

And there are over 700K users which means the Verification is overloaded, and I can't get on to be verified, despite being a Vocal/Stripe member for five years.

So at the moment a lot of people cannot use the system because of the amateurish implementation.

There has been no real announcement about this apart from the platform would be offline.

Verification stops us from editing, publishing and basically locks people out of the system, even though they are paying a subscription.

So it is a case of waiting and hoping and getting back to something like normal.

The music is "Crash" by The Primitives

Monday, 29 June 2026

Alan Turing Bletchley Park War Winner

"The Code Book" by Simon Singh is still teaching history, but now it is going into the workings of the Enigma machine. Simon has moved on to Alan Turing and the codebreakers' work at Bletchley Park, with the observation that if the army had known of Turing's homosexuality, we would have probably lost World War II.

At Bletchley Park, the work was important, and sexuality was whatever you were. Remarks were made that the codebreakers, who included porcelain experts and crossword solvers, were scruffy and never shaved, washed or ironed their clothes, but without them, we would have fallen to Fascism.

Ironic that many of our idiot electorate want to vote in the Fascist Reform/Restore parties today.

History

The Enigma machine was invented by German engineer Arthur Scherbius in 1918. He patented the design and founded a company in Berlin in 1923 to market it for commercial use, before it was adopted and modified for military use by Nazi Germany during World War II.

Also on TV, I am watching "Dark", which is also twisting the melon of my mind with its time jumps and people meeting their past and future selves.

Still reading "Imajica" by Clive Barker on my Kindle. This is a book I never want to end. When I finish it, I just restart it.

Books

I recently discovered that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog, which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not on others. C'est la vie.

The music is "The Code" by Alkimizta

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal, but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

The Plagiaristic Poetry Series - Poems Taken From Random-Themed Lines
Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
The King Of Elfland's Daughter - A Wonderful Book By Lord Dunsany
An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
God Knows I'm Good (I Really Do) - Thoughts on Vocal Writing
The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer, and this is her Instagram

Tuesday, 23 June 2026

Enigma In The Dark

"The Code Book" by Simon Singh is still teaching history, but now it is going into the workings of the Enigma machine. This is melting my brain as it is one small thing after another. The historical sequences help break up the technical parts of the book, but this has been a difficult passage while still being fascinating.