Twenty- five Seven

Old Dog New Tricks : Day 5 #WTFOW#5

July 14, 2016
Can an old dog learn new tricks?

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks goes the adage. This old dog ( and female at that!) has managed to learn quite a few and turned it on its head . When I was growing up computers were mainframe . When I grew up they became Desktops. Now when I’m old they’ve become tablets and smartphones.

I first got a huge bulky monstrosity of a Desktop to write my great big novel. But like most of my novel dreams were diverted by the departure of Hubby Dear’s secretary . All of a sudden he was without an assistant so I had to pick up the keyboard and mouse.

Old dog learns new tricks
- While my friends were busy learning Bridge and Golf now that the kids were out of our hair, I began my journey into the virtual world .
- I learnt how to type emails, archive them and retrieve them.
- I learnt how to scan documents and attach them to messages.
- I learnt how to reboot and back up my data.
- In fact I learnt a whole new vocabulary like control+alt+delete .
Old dog learns even more new tricks

But what really transformed my life was my introduction to the Internet and the world of blogs

Alas, a time came when my secretarial services were no longer required as Hubby Dear’s business profile changed. With my DeskTop now slimmer and my time all my own, I could have gone back to my novel. But the fates decided otherwise and I began a blog purely as a means of keeping my daughter overseas abreast with my news.

And that was the beginning of the greatest learning journey of my life. URL, domain, WordPress and Blogger became part of my daily life. It was a long time before I understood SEO and Keywords and Twitter and Facebook.

Recently I learnt about comments and pingbacks and child themes and plugins.

Can I show off with my latest skill? Canva was the first online graphic design site I tried out

and that’s not all! Here’s another one using Piktochart

and finally this one using SNAPPA

This is my post for #WTFOW#5.

[tweetthis display_mode=”box” remove_twitter_handles=”true” remove_url=”true”]Undoubtedly SNAPPA was the easiest to use[/tweetthis]
Smart kids diagnose Smartphones- Day 4 WTFOW#5

July 13, 2016

Smartphones and smart kids

source

Coming from and analogous age when phones were rotary, music was recorded on vinyl discs and plastic tapes , and parcels were delivered by postmen, digital had another meaning. I’d only heard about them in mathematics and biology . So when the world became digital, I was lost. When did phones become smartphones?

And what did they mean by smartphones being intuitive? Are inanimate objects intuitive?

But when my grandson Wow Dinga swiped the screen of my smartphone with the practised ease of an adult, I understood. Nor was this skill gender specific either. Ms. Papaya followed suit. And today Little Po all of one, made a grab for my phone too. These kids seem to be wired into today’s technology!

However, I realised how smart kids really are only today. For a long while Wow Dinga’s Peppa Pig and Blippi refused to download via YouTube on my IOS devices. For months I grumbled about the wifi, the internet speeds, the service provider and even the gizmos themselves. What was the solution? Talking to Apple was quite the task because of the lousy phone connection to begin with. I don’t know how to get in touch with YouTube and Vodafone isn’t exactly my best friend.

Smart kid and smart diagnosis

After seeing me struggle with a download for an hour, Wow Dinga stepped back and pronounced with all the sagacity of a three year old,

” Your app is all wrong.”

I was stunned and dismissed it as a smart ass comment he’d heard somewhere and was repeating.

But when I called up Vodafone, I was told that I should delete the current application and re-install a new app as there must be a problem with the old one!

Now who was more intuitive? My smartphone or my smart kid?

I’m participating in WriteTribe’s Festival of Words WTFOW#5
A Weird Story of Blog traffic & Real Traffic – Day – 3 WTFOW #5

July 12, 2016

A strange comment on blog traffic.

Strange things happen in the Universe like this when people confuse Blog Traffic with Real Traffic.

Late last week I found a comment posted on a blog post written in March of this year.

After getting over the shock of having an old post recognised, I read the comment and was really taken aback. The visitor obviously got the whole thing wrong because he was complaining about the traffic in MUMBAI. This is what he had to say.

I am Sandy Gaitonde I am from Mumbai now leave in Canada I came all the way to Mumbai with traffic solution as I have police background and by law enforcement experience. DCP Chavan Traffic North Zone liked it but then he took me to CP Bharambe man who think no end of himself who treated me with arrogance and tossed my proposal without knowing about it and then I flew back to Canada disheartened. Mumbai will have no future as long as these kind of people will be in deciding post. IPS officer should go and work outside Metro areas specially if they are not from that town and they are handling traffic as in simple word neither they know city nor they know chemistry of local people and it applies to CP Bharambe who is wasting taxpayers money right now. Jai Hind

While I am fighting issue on our Mumbai traffic system. I saw by my own eyes how much suffering traffic cops go through in Mumbai while in abroad we have separate department for by law enforcement which does tagging, towing of vehicles who obstruct. They also look after abandoned vehicles. In Mumbai Traffic cops go through all jobs and it is too much for their size and number of vehicles we have. I also try to put this point with CP Bharambe besides car pulling we create a By law enforcement it will make big change I told him but he had no interest in listening as he was just waiting for me to leave while I was talking I was interrupted several times with his personal assistant for no reason and I was told to leave in short I was kicked out. CP forgot I was foreigner who traveled from so far because I care for Mumbai and I had no selfish motto but rather than appreciating my effort he looked at me as some silly civilian who just came to his office to bug him and same time he did not want to accept his challenge as he dose not care much for poor traffic cop who suffers on streets of Mumbai and I realized that. But time will change for Mumbai soon with new system will fall in place one day. As our environment is fully destroyed in Mumbai with no natural mangrove but CP Bharambe said to me environment is different issue and not of his concern while mind you pollution and environment goes hand to hand and traffic dose create pollution we all agree. Jai Hind.

And this is what he had to say on Monday

Please sign my Petition for Mumbai Traffic

Hello friends we have been fighting long battle for our dear city Mumbai. Our roads, infrastructure and traffic is in disaster condition so we found solution but as Mumbai Traffic Joint CP Bharambe has been negative about it and do not wish to help. He does not care being outsider but we care for our city because we grew up in this city and we love Mumbai.So we decided to take it to our CM and we are signing petition. I am attaching link over here kindly click and sign it. We need your support as without your support we can not make clean and green Mumbai with less traffic and and better environment. So if you love aamchi Mumbai please sign it This is for us and our future generation who deserve to breath clean air and enjoy better traffic on road. Jai Hind.

Comments and Blog Traffic

To most bloggers comments are common. Till I joined Blogelina’s Commentathon in September last year , my posts generated a mere handful of comments, if any. It didn’t really matter till I joined that Blogfest and learnt the importance of comments. Amd meaningful ones at that. Yet my blog continued to remain “uncommented” and “Unliked” till the A to Z Challenge this year. That was when I had the most comments and most visitors.

In November last year, I had the highest number of visitors in a day (240). What was more surprising was that my About page generated the most footfalls.

What was so special about that day that made people keen on knowing more about the person behind the words?

I still don’t know.

Have any of you had such a weird experience? Do you treat this as junk/spam or is it an SEO mistake picking up on your key word?

I’m participating in FTOW#5.