wordcurrents is really fixed!!

The final problem, keeping anyone including search engines form finding wordcurrents, was that Google Analytics was preventing pages from loading. I removed it, and everything is A-okay. What a relief!

A little too early for Halloween

True horror story: The past week, I have been working desperately to overcome a disastrous database problem in wordcurrents. Two fields in the database totally disappeared, making linking from page to page impossible. All six hundred-plus posts were there, but there was no way to read anything but parts of the front page. Search engines could not find me, and my readership dropped dramatically. I tried several approaches to resolve the problem, but the ultimate solution was to delete the whole database and install a backup copy of the database I made a couple of weeks ago.

Am I glad I believe in backups! I have altered my back up procedure to have the system back itself up automatically on a regular schedule.

I am almost back to normal: I have just a dozen and a half posts to restore, in order to fill in the gap left between September 27 and October 18. The saving grace here is a program called Clipbook that came with WordPerfect. Clipbook saves a permanent copy of anything you save to the clipboard. So, when I knew that I was going to have to replace those items, I went into the database and saved them all in Clipbook, so I could restore them, even the drafts I have not yet posted, like my unfinished review of the production of The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood.

My thanks to Fei-Jan, who called my attention to the problem.

the ends of days

This is not about anything Biblical: it's about sunsets. I posted a few from this summer on facebook. These look so much more amazing on a monitor than on paper. This one is from July; it is the view from our cottage.

"Centaur"

Yikes! I posted my next poem after taking the summer off.

As September approached, I was beginning to wonder if I might face an insurmountable writer's block, but "Centaur" just flowed out easy as sighs.

I originally started blogging in wordcurrents as an antidote to blockage; it seems to have worked so far. I watched Stranger Than Fiction again last night on TV. It is one of my real favourites, partly because three of my favourite movie actors are in it: Will Ferrell, Emma Thompson, and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Unlike Emma Thompson's character, a writer who is horribly blocked, I seem able to function (for the present, knock would)

I was moved to write "Centaur" after seeing people--mostly macho guys--roar past the cottage on seadoos, going nowhere as quickly, loudly, and annoyingly as pointlessly possible. Of course I feel the same way about snowmobiles, which are just as unathletic, dangerous and macho and pointless and annoying. Heaven help anyone hapless enough to be swimming away from the dock when one of those "personal watercraft" screams recklessly around the corner of the island at lethally high speed.

Creeeping out of summer

It will be a slow process: first, I have to figure how to turn on my computer; summer has been so wonderfully Luddite--no TV, no Internet, no WordPerfect--just birds, river water lapping, and the patter of grandchildren's feet as the cicadas sang in the island heat . . .

wordcurrents takes some time off

Starting July 1, riverwriter will be working on two significant writing projects for print media, and will not be posting in wordcurrents. This hiatus will probably end in September , although there may occasionally be a post in the interim, in wordcurrents or here, in platinum river. Jean-Marie Morin will be taking over the posting of Duplicate Bridge scores during that time.

So until next time, both blogs are still here for browsing!

Vanity Googling

I just discovered that I am listed in Arc Poetry Magazine's list of Canadian Poets, along with some fifty, including Margaret Atwood, Margaret Avison, bill bissett, Patrick Lane, Dennis Lee, and rob mclennan. Here is a link to the listing: Canadian Poets —awesome. Thank you, wordcurrents! this process is working!

The reason I call this entry "Vanity Googling" is that I notice many people Google their own names to find reviews I do of their work in theatre. So I tried Googling "Doug Hill"+poet, and found the above entry not far from the top of the five hundred and change entries that came up.