The Insidiousness of Social Media In The Middle of Nowhere

Well essentially I am badmouthing Facebook on this one as I thought there's no harm in installing EA Games' Scrabble via the Google Play Store on to my phone so I can still play Scrabble. I then asked for my Facebook id which is my email address, so I put that in. Next thing I get an email saying "Welcome Back To Facebook, Your account has been reactivated as you signed into Scrabble".

Oh Really?

Well Facebook or Messenger  is not on my phone, and I have a feeling it will never return now. I may access it again via computer at the start of July, but I am not really missing it much and certainly no one is missing me. That might sound a bit pouty, but I have over 400 Facebook friends, it would take a while for me to notice anyone disappearing and if someone disappears and you don't know any of their contacts then that's it , they are gone and despite the insidious ubiquity of Facebook, most people don't actually use it.

I've just checked but not logged in and there are 39 updates against my Facebook login, I would deactivate it again but have a feeling that as soon as I use Scrabble it would reactivate.

So the holiday cottage "Honeysuckle Cottage" in Oswaldkirk really is in the middle of nowhere. There are no places to socialise or meet or shop within walking distance. Add to that most roads round here don't have footpaths, and also there is nothing really worth seeing apart from the views of the hills and the moors, and there in lies the reason for staying here, it's a perfect place to relax. It has wifi and a TV with a million Freeview channels so it's hardly cut off . The cottage is booked through cottages.com via Top Cashback to get 5% back

While I've always liked Joan Jett I have never taken to her version of "I Love Rock'n'Roll" but on 6Music today I heard "Bad Reputation" which is rather good, so I will share it with you and Facebook , has a bad reputation as far as I am concerned.

Missing ... Not Missing

This morning I switched on 6Music and an excellent take on Bob Dylan's "It's All Over Now Baby Blue" was playing. I was surprised because it was on Lauren Laverne's show and she is usually techno heavy, so I assumed it must be a modern song, but no, it was by Them and I had recognised the voice of Van Morrison.

So what am I really missing from Facebook? Playing Scrabble, seeing what friends are up to photowise (but I do catch a lot on Instagram) and posts from God (but again I catch a lot on Instagram)., also there's a few pages / groups that I share and update but a thirty day rest won't harm them.

I have a feeling the Feedburner effect is tailing of a little but I am still getting 1,300 hits a day so I thing that June should see me hit  40K in June which is fairly startling as I haven't really done anything different.

Today is meant to be grey and showery although it did start off very sunny, and , as yet, there's been no rain so fingers crossed.

So I will leave yo with the piece that I first heard this morning, "It's All Over Now Baby Blue" by Them. Have a good Tuesday everybody.

Fatigue and Observation

I had a dream last night but it's virtually disappeared from my memory as dreams tend to do. I've just noticed that this laptop keyboard has direct accented letters like á and é which are activated by pressing the letter with the alt gr key.

Anyway I was wondering if when I wake up in a morning and feel I want to go back to sleep, is it because I haven't taken my drugs, or because I am just tired. I know sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of the night and be wide awake. I once heard a story about a man who was unable to drive until his wife had given him is drugs. That just sounds wrong to me.If you have not got control of yourself then you should not get behind the wheel of a car. As a diabetic I have to check blood sugar levels every two hours while driving but that is in my control. If I ever was into a situation where my condition affected my control then I would not drive again.

The other thing is that when I got into the sower this morning, the door wouldn't close. I thought the rollers are screwed which the doors run on, but couldn't see anything blocking them. I pondered what it could be then looked up and saw the shower room mat hanging over the top, which of course was stopping the door from opening.

It's post number 1936 and from 1936 we have the excellent "Let's Face The Music and Dance" by Nat King Cole with a video featuring Fred Astaire, Rita Hayworth , Ginger Rogers and E. Powell dancing to Billy May's arrangement.

Enjoy on this gorgeous Monday morning.

More Time

Not having Facebook active seems to be giving me more time. I could use this to do other things but I;m probably reading more, watching more TV, walking more but not improving my creative output (yet) unless you count this.

I spent some time in Helmsley today and because Scott's was not open to sit in we tried  La Trattoria , a new Italian based restaurant next to the Town Hall, and it is definitely an excellent new find.

I also had a brief walk round the Castle and posted some Instagram photos here.

I know I'm on holiday, but I can post this, I have watched an X-Men film , and am watching an episode of Marvel:Agents of Shield waiting for this weeks Gotham, while reading Neil Gaiman's excellent"Norse Mythology"".

This is day one with no Facebook and while I am talking about it,I am doing other things. I suppose I slightly miss sharing things and having things shared with me but I have Instagram and Twitter if I want to interact.

As yet no one (I told about five people) has asked me where I've gone so I am not being missed (yet).

So you can see the analogy between Social Media and Drug Addiction .

I thought "Free" by VAST is semi appropriate so giving the year a miss for this post but I will use it as I work up to 2019, we shall see, although 1935 was the year that my dad was born.

A Facebook Holiday

I'm on a thirty day Facebook ban. I checked their Community Guidelines and have not transgressed any for my last two bans, but Facebook can interpret the guides any way they want, they can always say it's sexual whether it is or it isn't. It's their club so it's their rules.They don't even tell you what the problem is, it reminds of the Monty Python sketch where the guy gets a coffee table nailed to his head for transgressing the "unwritten rule", almost Kafkaesque.

My main problem is that you are stopped from any kind of response to anything including via Messenger so people think you are ignoring them. So I think that the best option is account deactivation then reactivation after the ban is finished. To be quite honest I don't think anyone will notice I have gone so that may influence whether I go back to Facebook.

I am very happy that Liverpool won the Champions League Final though the match was hardly a classic. So this is post 1934 so what song can I share with you from that year. Well "Honeysuckle Rose" by the excellent Fats Waller fits the bill, and I think it's an excellent song too.

Another Facebook Ban

Well it's the first day of June and I start with a thirty day Facebook and Messenger ban for sharing my friend Sophia's Tattoo Page picture of a sternum tattoo (see here) with another friend who had posted one that she had had done. Facebook bans are pathetic and inconsistent but there is zero I can do about it apart from stop sharing and stop posting because they can deem anything not acceptable, and person A can post something and person B can be banned for sharing it. There needs to be consistency, but my thought on the ban which I set down here still stand.

I often use Messenger to communicate but the ban holds on that too , so people who message can't be replied to.

Anyway less of that, it's the first of June, a gorgeous day, we have the Champions League final between Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool in Madrid which hopefully will turn out as good as the second half of the Europa League Final between Arsenal and Chelsea.

This is post 1933 so keeping the lear connection I'll share "Lazybones" by Hoagy Carmichael from that year, as this has been covered many times, and it's just a song I remember from a cover in the seventies which I think was by Jonathan King. After he was disgraced like Gary Glitter I was in liverpool and the Caver Club has a brick wall with the names of all the acts that have appeared ther, but there are two highlighted bricks that say Jonathan King and Gary Glitter have been removed. They should have just removed them and said nothing.

The blog passed the 200K mark last night so still getting lots of visits , which is not bad considering I have only four subscribers. I do wish some of my 400 Facebook friends would subscribe so that when I am banned or finally leave they can still see what I am up to.

Anyway have a great day.

To Buy or Not To Buy

... that is the question, I was thinking about getting a Google Pixel 3A and then I thought "What will it give me that I don't already have?". The onboard memory is double that of my Pixel , but that is really a minor thing. It may have better battery life, a faster processor and better cameras, but the reality is that it will not tangibly improve my life. I still miss the Samsung Note Stylus, but I am not paying a grand to be able to use a dedicated stylus every now and then.

Whether it's age or just being sensible I think for the foreseeable future I will just keep my current phone on my SIM Only plan.

It's like the roll out of 5G, seriously what do I need that for. I can see it's uses in a large scale or industrial environment, but for personal users the benefits, again, don't really affect you or me.

I've just finished Stephen Fry's "Mythos" and absolutely loved it and am following that up with Neil Gaiman's "Norse Mythology" which I am sure I will enjoy , being a fan of almost all mythologies, and I got into them at School not through Stan Lee's comics (that is not a dig at Stan Lee, just me showing my age).

The blog is set to hit 200K page views tonight, which is an unexpected surprise due to Feedburner helping me to hit 20K views this month. I really didn't see that one coming. Also I was only intending to do about 15 posts this month to hit 2K posts since the blog started, but I have manged to post 32 times this month.

A Sudden Surge on Seven Days In

Given that the post numbers are now corresponding with the years of our current timestream, I thought for the next ninety posts I could use a piece of music from the corresponding year. This is post 1932 so we'll go with the Cole Porter song "Night and Day" from "The Gay Divorcee" performed by Fred Astaire. I bet you weren't expection that. Although the first time I heard this song it was John Peel playing Tuxedomoon's take on it.