Johnathan Morrow, on the  Copyblogger blog (founded in 2006 by Brian Clark and which is a very interesting and useful place to get stuff on this arcane thing of an Internet Presence has a very thought provoking post:

“How to be Interesting” - Copyblogger

All the sins of being a bore: I have committed most of them! Check it out, even if you don’t try this stunt of writing a journal on the web: I think much of the advice is very useful for writers in general.

Until next time, when we will try and be more interesting here, at Mostly by Knight.

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Venezuela’s Mr Chavez ’s administration floats off political reefs that would tear the bottom out of much tougher and more serious governments (ships of state? ) Cristina Fernandez, Argentina’s President - the wife of her predecessor Nestor Kirchner - has a comfortable draft of agricultural produce between her policies and danger, with ample space to try out even the wackiest policies. Or not?

This report, from “The Economist”:

“Cristina in the Land of Make Believe”

Maybe there’s a tidy connection between Jorge Luis Borges, Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel Garcia Marquez all from this part of the world and classed in the “Magical Realism” school of writing, and South American political culture with strong ingredients of Magic “Reality”. Room for at least one MFA thesis there.

They are favoured by their lands’ bounty and to a great extent, coincidence: they happen to have just the commodities (in large quantities, fuel and food) that the World needs most desperately - during their time in office. They can get away with a great deal of blunders and will try to do so for as long as they can.

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For reasons unknown, with about 50 GB of files. So while it runs self checks, reloads and re installs, I’m on an ancient laptop left thinking about the immortality of the crab - means … just that, but may be found on Wikipedia with this Illustration y Greg Williams and generously licensed under the Creative Commons “Share Alike” attribution.

First (well for a long time now MS Word wasn’t loading properly, it would attempt to install itself on opening (a fragment of a previous installation, which in turn was provided by the machine’s vendors, turned out to be pirated and these good people went out of business before I could claim). Then Images stopped loading, this WordPress setup began crumbling on (on that computer, so it was OK on the server), and it began burbling like a coffee percolator. Backed up what I could ( a lot of stuff, with AutoCad drawings and pictures too). Now reinstalling as I test this old backup with something better than Lorem impsum or ‘ thinking about the immortality of the crab, a Spanish idiom for day dreaming and blank mindedness in general. Surprisingly, the expression is commemorated by Spanish Philosopher Miguel de Unamuno but expresses the state of mind one is in when watching Windows load. Next stop: Linux and Ubuntu, Open Office now: With writing assignments pending and no word processor program other than notepad.txt.  Handrwiting of course, i do most outlining and brainstorming on large spiral notebooks. The archive of those is two pillars on the floor, at teetering height. So OK, back on the main computer now,  back to work. Tomorrow i guess, it’s late now.

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Yesterday (my birthday): Most of the day - at least ten hours of it, trying to work out this web log’s presentation. I erased Amateur Alligator Wrestling Association. I will get back to that, after all, the good people that wrestle amateur alligators need a home - I claim the name anyway: a future and separate project.

Which is the point: I’m spending far too much time on this fiddling (learning I suppose, and necessary) with software and setup things that I’m getting behind schedule with more basic stuff:

• To Jean Lauzier and the Book Tour next month, this week should get the material together, more I hope.
• Back to WVU: and the MFA Short Story, specially to Grumps, Raven and Susan F of the Sisu
• Tales of Chestamovarado : A collection of my short stories; I’ve postponed this far too long. Begun ten years ago - ten? Good Grief !. I wanted to develop the first of them with WVU/MFA classrooms… They must be at week sixteen there by now, or more.
• The ongoing commentary on what I’m learning from the WorPress WordCamp Dallas videos, just rough draughts for now.
• The biggest nuisance of all is getting this property finished: the legal stuff (get the deed, register with Municipality and Revenue ) and settling outstanding issues with architect, condo tax, real estate and value.
• Whatever.

I doubt I’m the first that has found that getting ‘online’ can be frustrating and exasperating, more so when one starts out as a net newt nitwit.

There are advertisements appearing on this page, which I’m not seeing (I get them when I’m on another computer). If they are too intrusive and don’t produce much by way of income (!), they will have to go. Comments, as always, most welcome.

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