Worried about WordPress Block? Perplexed by Pressword? Digital life at Tidalscibe Towers is far more complicated, it’s a wonder you are reading this at all.
Warning, technical geniuses may be offended by the use of inappropriate technical language in the following item.
Thanks to the easing of the Covid roadmap and visits from Cyberson 1 and Digidaughter, a few problems have been ironed out. I can now post and edit my blog from the BIG computer with the BIG screen – old television. I can write in the relative calm of Microsoft Word and cut and paste, I can add links. Actually, it turned out I got just as many Likes for blogs cobbled together on the iPad with bits and blocks, prose and pix dancing up and down the screen or disappearing. I am aware that the late Cyberspoue’s love of computers and digital technology, preferably second hand, meant our house had a higher than average digital delight rating, which was fine when he was my happiness engineer; more hands on than the WordPress Happiness Engineer… But now I do at least have more than one device to access the internet portal. I imagine bloggers all over the world; some in control rooms NASA would envy, others sitting in bed with their smart phone, which are you dear reader?
I thought my old android phone, bought by Cyberspouse from Dave at work and passed on down to me, was finally giving up. Then through a process of brilliant deduction, seeing a detached wire at the end of the charger cable, I looked in the dreaded drawer of wires and found a spare charger. But by then the seed had been planted that I should have an iPhone which could form some sort of incestual relationship with the iPad. We only bought the iPad so we could Facetime Team G when Cyberson 1 was posted to the USA for three years. They’ve been back for one year so the iPad is probably due to go to a museum soon…
Cyberson 1 decided to buy me one with his pocket money when they were here at half term, but the model we agreed I would like was not available locally, so he then had to check with his sister if she would be able to set it up if he ordered from Amazon. Yes.
The phone arrived and I was ready with the secret code to give the delivery man. Next day Digidaughter arrived and we were she was ready. Of course my old sim card was too big so she phoned up Tesco to send a new sim card so I could keep my very basic Tesco account and my phone number… not that I ever phone anybody with my mobile or tell them my number…
A few days later, on my own again, I came home and saw a Tesco leaflet amongst the mail and nearly threw it in the recycling bin, then realised this big piece of paper contained a minute piece of magic. I have never actually put in a sim card, I wouldn’t be much good as a spy or criminal constantly changing phones. But we had done a mock run through and I had a link to the ‘how to’ youtube video. All I had to do was not lose the wire tool or drop the minute sim card…
What are your favoured devices for writing your blogs and posting on WordPress? If you have a mobile phone do you use it to phone people or to look at Facebook and take photos to post on Instagram?
Times and Tides of a Beachwriter 
I love this post! My smart phone is brighter than I am. Humbling.
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Thanks Q, yes I am feeling very humble!
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It’s nice to have some techy friends and relatives!
my macbook air is my preferred device for blogging. My iPhone is used for checking my WP stats (no wonder the battery runs out by mid-afternoon. And my iPad is great for when I am teaching online and want to use a whiteboard…
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Well Jim your iPad obviously gets more sophisticated use than mine!
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it’s made teaching online so much better, well at least for me 🙂
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Like Jim, I use a MacBook Air to write posts, especially now that I’ve realised the block editor is good at embedding videos. My iPad is my regular online ‘toy’ which I use for reading, playing games, keeping up with the news and loads more. The iPhone gets used for WhatsApp and it’s useful for checking sleep patterns and steps walked (it links to my watch). Good to see you embracing the technology!
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Yes Clive proof that more than one device is a good idea. There must be lots I haven’t tried on my phone yet.
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As well as being useful I enjoy playing with them. I use the phone a lot more in times when I can go out, but there hasn’t been much of that recently!
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An entertaining post, a ray of sunshine amongst the usual mainstream media gloom 🙏 I am fully “Appled” with an iPhone, iPad and MacBook, all fully synchronised with each other via a number of apps. I use Scrivener for writing stuff, such as my two books last year and of course my blog. I can write something in Scrivener whenever or wherever an inspiration strikes me and on any of those three devices I have with me. It will instantly update the file in all three places. For my blog Scrivener has three main folders, one each for my areas of interest…… Wine, Philosophy, Buddhism.
I’ll shut up!
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Go, Dr B! 😀
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Lovely post! I always use a notebook to write anything. I just love writing in ink. After doing some editing on the paper, I use my laptop to log in to WordPress and write there. Obviously, another round of editing, picture-adding, previewing, and posting. I use my phone only for checking notifications and reading other blogs.
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Thanks, yes I nearly always scribble on paper first.
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I am impressed Dr. B – I feel very uncoordinated. I don’t know anything about MacBook.
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If I lose my Silver Surfer status for fessing up I shall be most disgruntled. I use my beloved desk top for virtually everything. .I have a laptop
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The laptop is for use if I’m confined to bed or some other place of misery. I have a 10″tablet which I can use to do my emails if I’m out, which never happens. A 7″tablet which is a museum piece now and a 7″ fire which a friend gave me to listen to my music on the bus, and a smart phone which is used for text messages as I don’t give out my mobile number either, and if I did I couldn’t answer it. Probably the largest collection of single-use technology ever.
Huge Hugs
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What a collection – if my mobile phone does ring it’s usually someone asking if I have had a road traffic accident. But I can never get it out of my bag in time to answer it anyway.
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Yes David you can’t beat a loyal desk top.
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I enjoyed this humorous post. Ah, technology . . . I create my blog posts on a desktop, and I use my iPhone mostly to text family members.
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Thanks Liz, glad I’m not the only one using a desk top.
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I have a Chromebook for keeping up with blog posts and email, but for actual work, I use the desktop.
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all of the above.
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As they say … Ain’t technology grand … except … when it isn’t! I use only a Dell laptop for everything I do .. I have two, one in my kitchen office and one in my living room office. I have an Android ‘smart’ phone, but I only use that to read emails and breaking news updates … everything else is done on the two laptops.
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Two lap tops Jill, definitely Nasa would be impressed.
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Maybe, but I had to get my granddaughter to connect them to the wireless when we had a new modem installed! My techie skills are no longer high-tech!
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I have great difficulty doing anything on my phone, including making and receiving calls. The few attempts to post Blogs or comments by phone have been comical and embarrassing disasters.
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Yes Geoff I think the fact phones are so small makes seeing what’s going on and trying to write, a recipe for disaster.
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My laptop stays put on my desk, and that’s where I access WordPress. My phone is used only for talking on the phone:) For now (and probably forever) this suits me well.
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That sounds very sensible Becky and good to hear you use your phone for phone calls!
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It works for me, Janet:)
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I write blog posts on my laptop only. I’m a pretty good typist on a regular keyboard, but slow at thumb-typing. I do read other people’s posts on an Android tablet, but don’t comment often because of the thumb-typing thing. And the tablet’s keyboard lacks an apostrophe! The only way to use a contraction like “don’t” is if the word appears among the anticipated/suggested words. Annoying.
My mobile phone is a museum piece from 2013. I don’t use it for anything blog-related.
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Yes Audrey comments can be a disaster area if you don’t stick to regular keyboard.
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Quite! Autocorrect once mangled an unusual name in one of my comments. Embarrassing.
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I have a Hewlett-Packard PC with a flatscreen 24-inch monitor. It is directly connected to the fibre-optic broadband router, so I don’t have to ever worry about Wi-fi drop-offs. I bought the PC last year when my old (2012) one started to ‘act up’. It has a Solid State Drive, so boots up in 20 seconds. For storage it has a separate 1TB hard drive, which I will never live long enough to fill up. I do 99.9% of my blogging on the PC, as well as emails and any web-surfing or online shopping.
I also bought an Amazon Fire 10-inch tablet, mainly to use to read Kindle books in bed. I never use it to create blog posts, but I do sometimes answer blog comments from it.
As for my modern (and very large) Chinese ‘smartphone’, I am not smart enough to use it properly. So it is only ever used for phone calls and texting, though I have used it to video Ollie, and managed to create a You Tube channel to send the videos to.
Best wishes, Pete.
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Sounds like you are very well set up. I have an external hard drive also to save photos and my many thousands of words. What better reason to have a smart phone than to film Ollie.
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Julie bought me a 500GB portable hard drive some years back, and I usually copy all my photos onto it. When I remember.. 🙂
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I have a laptop in my office that I use for the most part but have a Samsung tablet for reading and Instagram. I use it when I’m travelling and when I’m sitting on my terrace. I am using my android phone more now and love it for taking pictures and quickly checking messages etc. We tend to need more than one device these days. Don’t make many phone calls anymore, prefer WhatsApp or messenger. I still like emails and do a lot of emailing.
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Yes Darlene it seems most of us use more than one device and what a lot of different ones there are. I prefer WhatsApp and messenger to phone calls – you don’t have to worry about whether it’s a good time to call or if they will stay on the phone too long!
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Thank goodness for a digital-savvy family…sigh…Apples I like… Apple I don’t…my laptop is my writing implement …my phone I use to take photos and talk on What’s App…the only and its now ancient iPad and the only Apple thing I have owned is used to play music it calms me as trying to navigate around it doesn’t…HOWEVER…my darling grandson who is a cyber genius has told me if I want to avoid all the annoying blips I get with Microsoft/Windows 10 updates(bring back windows 7)…I need to be Appled…Brilliant post, Janet have a great weekend 🙂 x
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Thanks Carol, I wonder if we are the first generation to be totally dependent on our chidren and grandchildren long before we are ( hopefully never ) physically dependent! The son who gave me the iPhone has literally everything on his phone, never has to get out his cards to pay. I said aren’t you worried about losing it. He said YES!
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I know to me that is crazy..I won’t pay anything on my phone…sigh… probably my grandson is an admin on my blog..just in case and my go to when windows 10 decides to play up after an update which is why he recommended Apple…x
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Yes, years back my son astonished us by merely swiping his watch to pay at the till!
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Ha, ha. good one. I love the cartoon about the robot saying being asked if it was a robot was offensive. Another thing that drives me nuts if having to pick out ‘how many somethings do you see’ and if you miss one they keep sending more pictures. Arrgh. I check my email on my phone and look at texts. I do not write any posts from my phone. I prefer my computer (laptop).
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Thanks Deborah, yes that’s my favourite cartoon. I wonder who devises those picture puzzles! Seems for most of us the phone is no substitute for our main computer.
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I use a laptop (with proper keyboard, mouse and in the past a large screen all attached by USBs.)
After a few tries I am now a whizz kid with inserting new sim cards in phones, once you can get the **** back off them! I’ve never properly used my smart phone but you inspired me to take it into the garden to catch up with blogs while the sun was shining. I have to admit to coming back in to the laptop to write this, though. 😀
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Well done with the SIM cards. Taking the phone into the garden when it’s sunny is very pleasant but sun makes the screen hard to see!
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I write everything on my desktop PC. The end! 😀 … it’s not that I don’t trust WP not to screw everything up, it that … well, I actually don’t trust WP not to screw everything up! 😀 … also I like working with a 32″ monitor, and watching movies on it, and YouTube stuff. 😀
I work from home, this is where my office is. When I’m ‘mobile’, that is, anything outside the house, I don’t want to be ‘wired’ to anything other than what I’m out in the world to do.
I barely answer my phone. It’s an occasional timer, compass/spirit level, texting machine. The only app I’ve ever downloaded is to enable a bluetooth connection for my hearing aids. 🙂
Does that make me a Luddite, I wonder? Or remarkably sane?
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Definitely sane, using technology that suits you not just because it exists! Here’s to lovely big screens and proper keyboards…
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😅😅😅
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Hi there, I’m a new visitor! I may be at least almost what you call a tech genius but haven’t found anything offensive yet so maybe I’m not! But I’m to my parents what your son and daughter are to you. Fix good screens and all that.
I wish I could say I always use my iPad to write my blog posts, but since I got my new laptop that actually works and even wants to charge the battery, I almost exclusively use that nowadays because it’s so much more convenient. WordPress blocks behave weird on an iPad, and I also need to fiddle with photos and export them to be decent size for web and blabla, and I do that with Photoshop. Plus the writing experience on iOS has been totally ruined a few version updates ago.
Phones. I use it for phone calls, chats (if I can’t do it on the laptop), Instagram and to use apps to identify plants and insects. And check the weather. Sometimes for Twitter if I don’t have my laptop or iPad around. I really dislike writing too much on the phone..The phone keyboard is too small and annoys me.
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Thanks for visiting, Susanne, I don’t blame you for using your laptop and phones have their excellent uses, but not for writing.
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I work on a computer so we are trained in all the ins and outs of spreadsheets, powerpoint and word. We also learn about Teams. In my personal capacity I used twitter, FB, WP, Pinterest, and instagram. I don’t like to mix up my accounts so I use different devices for different purposes. I have two personal emails linked to two different twitter and WP accounts so I have one laptop for each blog and affiliated social media. I also have a work computer. I have two iphones, one for work and one for IGM and my personal outlook. I have two ipads, these are for reading as sometimes I read a few books at once.
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Hello Robbie. I once worked in an office for three months as a filing clerk; though my parents and grandfather all commuted up to London to work in offices, at school I avoided learning to type so I wouldn’t end up in an office! In Covid times it turns out office workers have been in an ideal position to work from home and stay safe, who would have guessed that when I was at school? Though I know little about modern offices, except what I glean from neighbours and friends, I can well imagine needing different devices and accounts kept safely separate. I’m sure you wouldn’t want my blog turning up in your powerpoint presentation, though that does give me a story idea…
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Haha, Janet, no, not at all.
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Love this post – Digidaughter and Cyberson – brilliant!! 👏 😊
When it comes to writing blog posts – it’s always a laptop for me. I barely use my phone for anything, bigger the screen the better (I prefer the way pages display on a larger screen). 💻
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Yes Cheryl a big screen is certainly so much easier on the eyes and brain.
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Great post! ♥️
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