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Category Archives: Blogs
A Glimpse into 2017: You and Your Site in the New Year (Part III) — Discover
A Glimpse into 2017: You and Your Site in the New Year
Another set of bloggers share their resolutions and plans for 2017.
In it’s Resolutions series, WordPress asked writers, artists, photographers, poets, and business and website owners: what’s in store for you — and your site — in 2017?
Last week, everyone shared goals here at Discover and The Daily Post. Here’s a final set of resolutions to inspire your own journey in the new year.
To Read the full post Click the link given below:
via A Glimpse into 2017: You and Your Site in the New Year (Part III) — Discover
https://arresteddevelopments.wordpress.com
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Creative Commons Copyright © Arrested Developments 2015
A Glimpse into 2017: You and Your Site in the New Year
WordPress Discover, asked writers, photographers, artists, poets, and business and website owners: what’s in store for you — and your site — in 2017? Here Members of the WordPress.com community share their goals for the new year.
Bloggers share their resolutions and plans for 2017.
Kelly Heapy, travel blogger, Compass & Camera
Kelly from Compass & Camera at Mount Everest.
In 2017, I look forward to expanding the content of Compass & Camera to include a series of posts about my experience of moving and living abroad. From the US to London to Singapore to Vancouver, the past ten years have been an ongoing journey of finding home and finding myself.
I’ll also be telling the story of my grandmother’s trip to Europe in 1972, through her travel diary and postcards — my most cherished keepsakes from her life.
And in 2017, I have two goals. First, I hope to combine my travel experience and design expertise in the first edition of a travel magazine. Secondly, I’ll be collaborating with my husband, a feature film visual effects producer, throughout a journey abroad with 360° content from destinations my followers might never go to themselves. It’s an exciting time to make Compass & Camera more compelling than ever. I hope you’ll follow along!
Cecilia Gunther, farmer, The Kitchen’s Garden
Remember when you had your heart broken for the first time and you knew you would not survive, you would surely die of it, you had made a massive error, your body was doomed to shrivel up, and your mind would turn to dust from loneliness?
So in 2017, I would like to give myself, and my daily farm blog, permission to fail and start each day clean and new.
Then someone said, “Take it one morning at a time. Tomorrow is a new day.”
“What rubbish,” I had thought at the time, clutching at my broken heart.
Of course I took no notice at all — after all my heart was BREAKING. Hullo!
But I did heal. In fact, being human, I healed enough to go on and make many more mistakes. So in 2017, I would like to give myself, and my daily farm blog, permission to fail and start each day clean and new. No more fretting and agonizing over perfection.
If I make a mistake? OK, I’ll fix it. No hiding or pointing or running and screaming in the other direction. I will own the mistake, think on it, then fix it and learn from it.
The learning is the hard part. Wish me luck!
Emily Austin, parenting blogger, The Waiting
My blogging resolution for 2017 is to get active. On November 9, 2016, I woke up at 2:45 am absolutely terrified by the future of America as lead by President-Elect Donald Trump. And in the past weeks since the election, I’ve realized that my fears weren’t unfounded and that I am morally obligated to speak out against the hate-filled, despotic path the United States is now on.
But the blog isn’t about us; in fact, its main virtue will be the voices of others.
My blogging friend Crystal at Broken Condoms and I started talking about what we could do to process our feelings and mobilize ourselves and others into action, and we are excited to launch Equality Diaries early next year. But the blog isn’t about us; in fact, its main virtue will be the voices of others. We’d love for people to get involved and to contact us at equalitydiaries@gmail.com to share their story. We’re looking for posts about how people are promoting kindness, equality, and love during this time when those things seem to be in short supply; we’re especially interested in hearing from parents and ways that they’re raising their children in a culture of love and inclusion.
Andrew Seal, artist, thechangingpalette
Image by Andrew Seal
What’s in store for thechangingpalette and me in 2017:
Keep improving and reorganize the blog; it’s time.
Continue to share paintings and palettes from the studio, and become more skilled with the gift of the Four Treasures of The Study.
Create more multimedia posts, including “over my shoulder” videos.
Be grateful for the privilege of freedom, and use the blog, as I have done far too often (Paris, Marseille, Orlando, Brussels, Istanbul, and now Berlin) to express solidarity and sympathy with those suffering the tragedies and horrors that I expect sadly the year will inevitably bring.
Visit more fellow bloggers, and always be grateful to my wonderful followers who continue to amaze me with their own work.
Look forward to Italy later in the year and the photographs and paintings that I know will be inspired by our visit.
Share the joy of our beautiful granddaughter who will be two next year and really is the light of our lives.
Breathe, laugh, love, slow down, take time, and remain ever hopeful.
Happy holidays and Happy New Year to everyone. I look forward to enjoying the fruits of your own blogging resolutions in 2017.
Susan Rushton, writer and gardener
Susan Rushton at susanrushton.net.
My readers love nature, curiosities, and creativity. They make me laugh. If I let myself fall backwards, outstretched arms will catch me. I thank my lucky stars I’m blogging in this thoughtful community.
I naturally flick between serious and unserious, which can disconcert the most generous of readers, so I’ve tended to hold back. In 2017, I’ll dodge my inner censor long enough to share a few serious ideas you might think are daft. Such as:
- How Google has broken the internet and personal, curated, Akismet-like search filters could fix it.
- Why we should talk to other life forms on our own planet before trying to reach aliens (that one’s not rocket science).
- Why morning toothpaste should be a different formula to nighttime toothpaste.
And I might even write more on world peace.
You know, the obvious things.
Oh, and I’m learning CSS. (Listens for B-52s-like shouts of “You’re WHAT?”)Look out for me in the forums!
What are your blog or website goals for 2017? For more inspiration, visit WordPress Discover, where they’ll share your final post on resolutions next week.
Source: A Glimpse into 2017: You and Your Site in the New Year (Part II)
https://arresteddevelopments.wordpress.com
Along with thanks and compliments to the sources for the shared data
Creative Commons Copyright © Arrested Developments 2015
VR and 360° Content for All WordPress.com Sites Introduced
WordPress introduced VR and 360°
Virtual Reality is coming to WordPress.com! As of today, you can create and publish your own VR content on any WordPress.com site, starting with 360° photos and 360° videos (beta), and you can view regular photos and panoramas in VR. Our goal is to make publishing VR content as simple as publishing text or photos to the web — just add VR content to your site and anyone with a web browser can instantly enjoy it.
Let’s start with some examples.
Click the “play” button on any picture below and our VR viewer will load. On a regular desktop browser you can then “look around” using your mouse, including in gorgeous full-screen mode. On a phone browser or a webVR enabled desktop browser, you’ll see a VR button in the bottom right — select it and our viewer will render the content in full 3D mode inside your VR gear. So far we’ve tested with Cardboard, Gear, Daydream, Rift, and Vive.
360° photos:
Panoramas:
Here’s a panorama that the Mars Pathfinder took:
We’re already seeing examples of how VR can help tell stories. The Harvard Gazette is starting to use 360° photos to convey their stories, for example in Confronting the Refugee Crisis.
Augmenting your own posts with VR content is simple: Upload VR content to your WordPress site just like you would with any other content, decide if you want to present it in 360 or cinema (panorama) mode, and publish it using the “vr” shortcode:
or
Detailed instructions are here.
An easy way to start taking 360° photos today is to use the Google Street View app (for iOS and Android).
The 360 degree views works fabulously barring the zoom in features still We can’t wait to see how WordPress.com users will use VR to tell their stories!
https://arresteddevelopments.wordpress.com
Along with thanks and compliments to the sources for the shared data
Creative Commons Copyright © Arrested Developments 2015
Virtual Reality is coming to WordPress.com! As of today, you can create and publish your own VR content on any WordPress.com site, starting with 360° photos and 360° videos (beta), and you can view regular photos and panoramas in VR. Our goal is to make publishing VR content as simple as publishing text or photos to the web — just add VR content to your site and anyone with a web browser can instantly enjoy it.
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How to Blog Your Way around the World
How to Blog Your Way around the World
A conversation by WordPress with blogger Shivya Nath
In 2011, Shivya Nath left her corporate job in Singapore and jumped head-first into a life of nomadic adventures. Five years on, the Dehradun, India, native has been chronicling her journey on her popular travel blog, The Shooting Star, where aspiring nomads can find well-crafted stories from around the world and resources and tips on supporting a travel bug while on the road.
We recently chatted with Shivya about full-time blogging, solo travel, and why she doesn’t keep a bucket list.. Via Discover.
You’ve been a full-time travel blogger for several years now — what are the biggest lessons you’ve learned about yourself and about travel since taking the plunge?
We take life too seriously. Most of us grow up with checklists of what we are supposed to achieve by the time we’re thirty or forty. We forget it’s okay to mess up and live a little. When I quit my job as a social-media strategist five years ago and decided to experiment with long-term travel and blogging, conversations with my family and friends made me feel a lot like I was shying away from adulthood and the responsibilities that come with it.
But the more I travel, the more I meet people who are choosing less steady, more satisfying paths in life. A common thread is that we all have gone in knowing we might fail, but also knowing that we’ll never know for sure until we try. I met a fisherman in Mauritius who chooses to fish for a living over working long hours for big bucks in a factory, because he loves the sea; in rural Kerala, India, I met a craftsman who is single-handedly keeping a traditional craft alive, even at meager wages, because it is his legacy and calling. As for me, I may not have a fat monthly salary or an MBA or the high life of my banker friends, but my days on the road are full of unanticipated adventures and I love that.
Has your perspective on the places you visit changed as well?
I’ve come to realize that our perception of the world is seriously flawed. In Honduras, notorious for being the “most violent place on earth,” I lived with local hosts who don’t even bother locking their doors at night (their biggest fear is that the neighbor’s dog might steal their chihuahua’s food!). In my solo travels in India, I’ve witnessed overwhelming kindness from people who really don’t have much else to offer. I’ve learnt that judging a place and its people before you engage deeply is like judging a book by its cover. People from around the world, no matter how different from you and me on the surface, have the same heart and the same insecurities — and when we travel without preconceived notions, we discover that in beautiful, unexpected ways.
Many people dream about becoming a self-sustaining travel writer, and your blog is full of insight on how to pursue this passion. What do you think is the most important thing aspiring travel bloggers should know about this path?
Travel blogging is a bit like being in a serious, long-term relationship: the only way to make it work is to love it selflessly, commit to it irrespective of the ups and downs, and believe that you can make it.
Enjoying this conversation? Explore wanderlust topic page for other stories about exciting journeys.
It’s a lot about loving travel, blogging, and social media in almost equal proportions. Perhaps unlike other genres of blogging, travel blogging often involves working out of beautiful locations — which can seem glamorous in Instagram photos, but in reality involves a tremendous amount of discipline. Imagine being in beach mode on a remote island and having to pull out your laptop on the sunbed to meet self-imposed timelines — I personally think the only way you can psyche yourself into doing that is if you really love spending time creating aspirational content on your blog and social networks.
You’ve amassed an impressive following on your blog but also on other social platforms. Do you treat these different “channels” differently? What role does your blog play in your overall online presence?
I like to think of my blog as the hub of my online presence — the home of my adventures, where I ideally want to lead all my followers.
Besides my blog, I am primarily active on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and have been experimenting with different content and engagement strategies on each. Instagram is for (relatively) longform stories, Twitter for quick observations, and Facebook for a mix of both — and since I’m always on the road, most of my updates are in real time from the location I’m in.
I like to think of my blog as the hub of my online presence — the home of my adventures, where I ideally want to lead all my followers. But I also curate my social channels so that they can exist and engage independent of my blog.
Many recent conversations in the US and elsewhere have focused on street harassment and other visible symptoms of patriarchy. Do you sense differences between how solo male travelers are treated compared to solo female travelers? Is that something that influences the way you design and write about your adventures?
There are certainly differences, though contrary to popular perception, I wouldn’t say solo female travelers are always on the losing end. Personally, I’ve struck up interesting conversations, hitchhiked, and lived with kind locals in many parts of the world. After the initial shock of meeting a female traveling by herself, they went out of their way to connect me with their friends and help me sneak a peek into the local way of life. It’s hard to say if they’d shower the same kind of attention on a solo male traveler. The challenges are different too: the perception of safety tends to influence the kind of adventures I land myself in (often unintendedly), which in turn influences what I write about.
Truth is, the exhilaration I feel on solo adventures in remote parts of the world, without the need for a man to keep me company, in a time where patriarchy (especially in a country like India, where I grew up) is still very pronounced, is perhaps far more liberating than a solo male traveler might ever feel.
How do you feel about the ever-popular notion of bucket lists? Do you keep one?
I’ve never bothered keeping a bucket list because it’d be so long, looking at it would probably exhaust or intimidate me! I’m usually pretty spontaneous and unplanned with my travels — deciding on my destinations literally a day or two before I fly in. That’s partly because I hate planning into the future (hello, commitment phobia!), and partly because I’m lazy. I love that I tend to travel with a blank slate, without being too influenced by the impressions of people who’ve been to a place before me.
What are your next destinations — and which do you enjoy more: exploring a new place, or rediscovering an old favorite?
I’ll be traveling back to Germany in September, and for the first time to Scotland after that — both for travel-blogging campaigns (and hence planned well in advance). Between October and December, I’m thinking of either heading to Bolivia, since I’ve loved my time exploring other parts of Central and South America, or traveling up north to Bhutan, where the focus on happiness has intrigued me for years.
The thrill of landing in a new place, not knowing what horizons lie in store, is often hard to resist.
I find myself drawn to places that are not high on the regular tourist radar, for they still tend to have a genuine warmth towards outsiders and lend themselves to incredible adventures; my six-month sojourn through Central America in 2014 bore testimony to that.
The choice between returning to a place I’ve loved versus going to a new place is always a tough one. I usually lean towards the former when I’m in work mode; the familiarity helps me to settle in sooner and I feel less tempted to trade work time for exploration time. But the thrill of landing in a new place, not knowing what horizons lie in store, is often hard to resist.
How do you envision the long-term arc of your travel blog? Is it something you can see yourself doing for the foreseeable future, or would you like it to transition into something different?
I’m working on transitioning towards passive income from travel blogging, so I can spend longer stretches on the road without connectivity, yet not burn through my funds. In the long run, I also want to evolve my blog from its entirely personal voice to being more community-driven — a place where other long-term travelers can share inspiring perspectives and compelling stories from their adventures.
Shivya Nath is an inspiration for many who are trying to break out of the status quo and hitting challanges.
Visit The Shooting Star for more .
Have a look on some more enthusiastic travel bloggers works:
Moon Roy, the blogger at Footloose Forever, documents a visit to Lake Gurudongmar — one of the highest lakes in the world — in the Indian state of Sikkim.
A Screen of Green Leaves shimmer in the Winter Sun as the Gopuram ( a signature feature of Temples in Southern India) looms in the background by Mukul Chand 51 year old entrepreneur who has traveled extensively around the world for work and pleasure can be found on Enchanted Forests.
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You are requested to post your blogging experiences in the comments, which I will select and add to this article. . Thank you.
sources: https://discover.wordpress.com/2016/08/18/travel-blogger-shivya-nath/
https://enchantedforests.wordpress.com/2016/12/10/naturally-magnificent/
https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/8812025
https://arresteddevelopments.wordpress.com
Along with thanks and compliments to the sources for the shared data
Creative Commons Copyright © Arrested Developments 2015
WordPress and the Law(suit) – Automattic’s Response to Legal Threats
WordPress and the Lawsuit
“Pushing back on abuse, giving users full transparency about complaints, and being as transparent as possible when we see abuse helps to make it a fair fight for those who put their trust in us as host.”
I was honored by the invite to give a talk at the Post Status Publish conference last Thursday. Thanks again to Krogsgard for the invitation – it was a great event, that I hope was …
Source: WordPress and the Law(suit) – Automattic’s Response to Legal Threats
WORDPRESS AND THE LAW(SUIT) – AUTOMATTIC’S RESPONSE TO LEGAL THREATS
I was honored by the invite to give a talk at the Post Status Publish conference last Thursday. Thanks again to Krogsgard for the invitation – it was a great event, that I hope was not bogged down too much by a late afternoon discussion of legal issues.
My original topic was “WordPress + the Law”, but I changed the title slightly to “WordPress + the Law(suit)”: I used some of the many lawsuits we see against Automattic as examples of the legal issues that hosts, users, developers working with WordPress might see.
At the beginning of my talk, I laid out three general principals for dealing with legal threats that we follow at Automattic. Now doing this short follow up post to flesh out those principles a bit more, since a few people asked about them after the talk.
Automattic’s Approach to Legal Threats
Cut Through the Noise, Don’t be Intimidated. We receive a lot of legal threats. Some of them become actual lawsuits, but the vast majority do not. Most legal complaints relate to content that we host, that someone has a problem with. We steadfastly defend our users’ rights, though we do remove things that are truly harmful or not allowed under our user guidelines. Just because a lawyer, or someone who’s willing to invest in hiring one, says that a website should come down does not mean that we automatically do what they say. In many cases, the louder the complaint, the more a site needs to stay up. This is very true in whistleblower situations. TLDR: don’t be intimidated by a lawyer threat letter, do your research, stand your ground.
Side note: when threats do come in, there’s apparently a rule you learn in lawyer school that says you have to print out the entire contents of the blog you’re complaining about, and attach it to your complaint. For some older sites, the print out can get pretty big. This is a lawsuit threat we received from India, that came delivered in a box. By our standard metric, it measured a 0.67 PBR:
Transparency. We try to provide as much information as possible about the government legal threats we receive, and our guidelines for responding. Check out our Transparency Report, and our Legal Guidelines. I think all companies, hosts especially, should produce these kinds of reports, so users know the volume and kind of government demands a host receives, and how they respond. Individually, this information gives users of a platform comfort that their host has their back. In the aggregate, this data really informs the policy debate about government surveillance and censorship.
A Level Playing Field. A golden rule for us is to, at minimum, make the playing field level between our users and those who might have legal complaints about their sites. If there’s a legitimate complaint, we will of course take action – but more often than not, we see deep pocketed platintiffs and big companies make idle threats. On many platforms, they get what they want – the removal of a site or post they don’t like, only because they can bang the table louder than a small individual publisher. We don’t let that happen on WordPress.com. Pushing back on abuse, giving users full transparency about complaints, and being as transparent as possible when we see abuse helps to make it a fair fight for those who put their trust in us as host. Take a look at our Hall of Shame for some of the worst examples of abuse. As our transparency report indicates, copyright and trademark complaints are two fertile grounds for shenanigans. We reject a very high percentage of the complaints we see in this area. I’ve written before about how internet platforms should do more in this area, specifically standing up for users’ fair use rights.
https://arresteddevelopments.wordpress.com
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Creative Commons Copyright © Arrested Developments 2015
The Rise of the Crowd-Sourced Syllabus
The Crowd-Sourced Syllabus
From the Trump Syllabus 2.0 to the Native Lives Matter Syllabus, crowd-sourced syllabi have popped up as resources for educators and readers looking for background about complex current events.
2014, following the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, Dr. Marcia Chatelain started the #FergusonSyllabus movement to help explain the history behind the protests over police misconduct and the birth of the Black Lives Matter Movement sweeping the nation. Since then, a slew of similarly inspired syllabi have popped up as online resources for both educators and readers looking for background information about complex current events.
Some of the more well-known syllabi include, but are not limited to, the Charleston Syllabus(following the terrorist shootings at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC), the Black Lives Matter Syllabus (highlighting the history of the movement), the Native Lives Matter Syllabus (in celebration of Indigenous People’s Day), and The Standing Rock Syllabus (in response to the the continuing movement and growing protests over the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock).
But what is the purpose of all this? Jay Parkes and Mary B. Harris explored just this in a 2002 study in which they argued that the purpose of a syllabus was ultimately to drive content. Parkes and Harris also noted that a syllabus generally serves three functions, acting as a contract, permanent record, and learning tool.
Professors looking to cover specific timely topics are looking to crowd-sourced syllabi.
Professors looking to cover specific timely topics can adopt and adapt these syllabi, but the scope is much larger than simply hitting a faculty/educator audience. Any online reader becomes the student. As Parkes and Harris argue, “a well-designed syllabus can provide information that assists students to become more effective learners in areas that go beyond the scope of our own courses.” This is certainly the case with the online syllabi movement. Suzanne S. Hudd studied “collaborative classrooms,” notinghow students thrived and learned more when actively participating in the design and preparation of their class materials (as #FergusonSyllabus creator Chatelain herself testifies).
Leading up to the election, The Chronicle of Higher Education released a Trump 101 syllabus to explore his campaign academically. Following that, N.D.B. Connolly and Keisha N. Blain released a corrective one called the Trump Syllabus 2.0 that more fully considered Trump’s campaign, focusing on xenophobia, racism, and sexism. Following the release of now-President-Elect Trump’s infamous “locker room talk” footage (wherein he made references to nonconsensual, predatory sexual advances towards women), Laura Ciolowski released the Rape Culture Syllabus in order to situate the culture in which Trump’s comments about sexual assault could be normalized.
Post-election, the Trump-related syllabi and online educational resources continue to appear. Vanderbilt University’s Center for Teaching released a five-step guideline with suggestions for faculty “Teaching in Response to the Election.” The Zinn Education Project released a special lesson and resource page dedicated to “Teaching After the Election of Trump.” And Teaching Tolerance, a Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, also offers Election 2016 Resources, including suggestions for recognizing and countering bias.
The rise of crowd-sourced syllabus is an important leap, in both disseminating and gathering knowledge and in shaping active learners, no matter what their age or location.
via The Rise of the Crowd-Sourced Syllabus — Discover
https://arresteddevelopments.wordpress.com
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Creative Commons Copyright © Arrested Developments 2015
The Geography of Connection
“There’s a lot happening in the world right now that would lead us to believe how disconnected we are from each other — but if this map says anything, I believe it’s that connection is real, alive, and important to us all.”
via The Geography of Connection — Discover — Inspiring Muslimah
“Since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special attention to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstances, are brought into closer connection with you.”
— Augustine of Hippo
Last Friday, I set up what I expected to be a very simple giveaway on the blog. As a [very honored and excited] contributor to the latest Lonely Planet Travel Anthology, I’d received two copies of the book from the publisher, and to help share in my excitement for being part of the collection, I decided to give away one of the copies here.
I kept the method of entering the giveaway fairly straightforward—I merely asked people to leave a comment on the post, answering the following question:
What was your favorite travel experience?
I wrote up a quick post to announce the giveaway, snapped a few photos of the anthology to use across social media, and hit ‘publish’—after that, all there was left to do was wait.
* * *
For the rest of the day that Friday, I was supposed to be working on an Etsy painting commission—but I couldn’t help taking frequent breaks to refresh the post and see what comments had come in. The last time I ran a giveaway here on the blog, reading people’s responses had been my favorite part of the process, so again my curiosity was high.
And again, my curiosity was not disappointed. Within minutes of publishing the post, there was a comment from my long-time online friend Pauline, sharing about her time on the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage trail through northwest Spain:
“I have SO MANY amazing travel experiences. If I have to choose just one, I think it would have to be from the Camino. Our group of walkers all checked into the same albergue in Los Arcos. Come dinner time, we decided to go to a tiny bar in front of the cathedral. We ended up taking every single seat and keeping the bartenders busy the entire night—it was like our own private party in the middle of Spain. I loved every moment that night, and I’m always in awe of the connections you can make despite language barriers and cultural differences.”
By 10 p.m. that night, the post had around 45 comments. This was about the same number of entries my last giveaway had received, so the quantity wasn’t too surprising—but what did leave me altogether astonished were two other things.
First—the sheer breadth of places that you all mentioned. As I read through the comments, it felt as though I were almost flipping through an atlas: You wrote about Canada and Cambodia, Slovenia and Sri Lanka, Scotland and South Africa. Other memories were from Mexico, Morocco, and Mongolia, and from Bhutan, Bangladesh, and Botswana. It seemed like there was no corner of the world you all hadn’t traversed—from Peru to Portugal to a remote jungle village in Papau New Guinea; from Estonia to Easter Island to the Danakil Depression in Ethiopia.
Although I still had a little work left to do on my commission, I couldn’t help but set it aside one more time and pull out my notebook, which I normally reserve for to-do lists and schedules. With a ballpoint pen, I drew the most hastily drawn map the world has ever seen, settling for the mere suggestion of a continent’s shape instead of the exact shape itself. Then, with a blue highlighter, I went through each comment and placed one blue dot on the map for every one of your experiences.
By the time I was finished, I couldn’t believe what the map held—all in all, your favorite travel memories spanned 36 countries across five continents.
* * *
But it was more than just the breadth of your responses that impressed me so deeply—it was the depth of the stories you shared.
So many of your responses went far beyond simply naming a place—you took the time to tell me why that place mattered to you, and I can’t tell you what an honor it was for me to read every story—once, twice, often three or four times, just to make sure I’d absorbed the details and little moments properly.
And as I kept reading through your comments (which soon tallied somewhere closer to 60 entries from six (!) continents), I was astonished by another thing: That while the location of your favorite travel memories varied greatly, there was one clear and common theme running through them, which had presented itself from the beginning in Pauline’s story about the Camino:
The power of connecting with others on our journeys.
Connection has become the very lifeblood of my vision and vocation, so it was a serious thrill to discover how many of you also place value on connecting with others. Here are just four of your stories that came to immediate life for me on the screen:
“In 1986, our Fiat Ritmo was traveling through Greece, fueled by my father’s love for classic history and my mother’s enthusiasm for beauty and nature. That old car of ours broke down twice, was towed, repaired, towed again, and didn’t manage to bring us to Mycenae in time for a visit. The archaeological site was already closed and the keeper was going home. When the man noticed my father’s delusion, he gave him a lemon as a present “for his little daughter.” To me, such a gift represents hospitality, friendship, and the value of little things.”
— Marianna
“Travel is such a wonderful opportunity to connect with people and one of my most amazing experiences was meeting a family in the village of Cassis in the south of France. My husband and I struck up a conversation with a woman and her young daughter at the train station, joined them and more of their family for coffee and patisserie at their home, stayed for drinks of the local liqueur and talk of family, genealogy, and local history, then returned the next day for a personal tour of the hillside neighborhood. It was such a lovely time, and we treasure the experience and the lasting friendship.”
— Gayla
“My favorite travel experience was on the overnight train from Zurich to Amsterdam this summer. I was leaning out the window in the corridor and a boy came up and joined me. We got to talking and I asked him if he would like to play chess, as I always carry a pocket chess set with me wherever I go. He said yes, and so we settled at the end of the carriage on the floor and played chess for the better part of the night!
I taught him a new version of chess my sister and I invested called anti-chess. I learned so much about Switzerland from him, and we talked about everything Swiss—Swiss cheese, Roger Federer, the Bernina Pass. Next morning, he asked for my name just so he could give me credit when he taught anti-chess to all his friends. We wished each other the best of luck and parted ways. I don’t know anything about him, except that he made one mundane train journey through Europe very memorable for me!
Both Zurich and Amsterdam were beautiful to me, but I feel on any journey, it’s the people that make the trip magical.”
—Manalika
“One of my favorite travel moments arose from disappointment. I had made my way to Iskenderun, Turkey, late last winter, following rumors of the possibility of passage to Israel via boat. No boat, so I decided to head back north. I had five hours to fill on my last day in town and there was this one view that had been on my mind since I had arrived.
I make my way to the pier and settle in to sketch the waterfront and mountainous backdrop. I’m getting into the groove, soaking in the sun, weeding through the details, and at some point between outlining the view in pencil and picking up my pen to start inking, I am surrounded by wide eyes, curious smiles, and Turkish chatter. A group of kids had snuck up and wanted to see what I was doing.
I smile back, apologize for not knowing what they are saying, and hand over my stack of finished, painted postcards as a way to engage without words. They love the one with the pelican from Izmir. I get an idea. I point at my pen, then at them, miming drawing in the air, and get a round of enthusiastic nods and wider smiles.
I dig deep into my pack for extra paper, the parents have drawn closer at this point, questions of where I’m from, am I a student? Nope, tourist. One-word sentences back and forth, their English better than my Turkish. Out comes the paper, I hand around pens, and we’re huddled around my bench sketching away.
At some point drawing turns into a language lesson, I learn the words for bird (kuş) and foot (ayak), and I am being called abla (‘sister’—I love this Turkish custom). Drawings are signed and gifted to me, cheeks are kissed, I thank the parents for stopping, grateful for the connection, disappointment at not finding the boat forgotten.”
— Genevieve
* * *
By the end of the weekend, I knew I had to do something—to honor your stories, and to thank you for taking the time to share them. And I decided that the perfect ‘something’ was to create a more finished version of that first messy map I drew.
Illustrated maps have long been a favorite sketching project of mine, but never before have I created one specifically for this blog. Usually, each red dot on one of my maps has the name of a place beside it. This map is a little different, though—next to each red dot below is one of your names, marking the location of your favorite travel experience. And each illustrated ‘vignette,’ or what I like to call the small sketches embedded in the map, also stands for one of the places you wrote about.
As I sat on the floor of San Salvador’s airport on Monday—painting the map during another seven-hour layover on my way back to Uruguay—I couldn’t help asking myself: Is this the start of something new? Perhaps we can all keep collaborating, sharing our stories and creating art that speaks to a real spirit of community and connection. (And if that sounds like something you’d like to see more of on this blog, please feel free to let me know.)
There’s a lot happening in the world right now that would lead us to believe how disconnected we are from each other—but if this map says anything, I believe it’s that connection is real, alive, and important to us all.
* * *
Thank you again for sharing your stories! I’ve also uploaded a high-res version of the map here, so please use or share it any way you like, or even print it out…nothing would make me happier.
https://arresteddevelopments.wordpress.com
Along with thanks and compliments to the sources for the shared data
Creative Commons Copyright © Arrested Developments 2015
Freakonomics
At the online hub for Freakonomics, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner have expanded upon their 2005 bestselling book of the same name — with a blog, radio show, and more.
Freakonomics
Until 2005, the words ‘economics’ and ‘fun’ were unlikely to be found in the same sentence. Economics was seen as a dry, technical, mathematical discipline: the preserve of driven businessmen, greedy bankers and staid Treasury officials. Fun was its opposite: spontaneous enjoyment available to regular people.
The publication of Freakonomics in 2005 changed all that. Steven Levitt, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Dubner, a New York Times journalist, somehow gave economics popular appeal. So far the book has sold over four million copies worldwide. In 2011, a sequel, Superfreakonomics, was published and there is also a Freakonomics blog linked to the New York Times website.
“Freakonomics” the movie
Like every other Best Seller We also have a movie based upon the bestselling book written by steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, “Freakonomics” the film is an omnibus of shorts, where different filmmakers adapt a segment of the book for their respective sections, and then putting them all together into a feature length documentary.
Like the book, the film examines human behavior with provocative and sometimes hilarious case studies.
Freakonomics is one of those films that tries to make a complex subject accessible to a mainstream audience. Here, there subject in question is economics, and how it is everywhere. Although trying to reach a wider audience in a fun way we can relate to is admirable, it can’t avoid a patronizing tone. Still, there are lots of interesting parts to this documentary. It’s split into a number of sections, with each section helmed by a familiar documentary filmmaker. This allows for a number of fun and interesting style to be put on display. As we delve into the world of economics, this all feels like a few great bits in an overambitious whole. Each segment has a fascinating topic, and one that could be explored at full length. Corruption and murder in sumo wrestling, how our names affect our lives, and how abortion may have helped to reduce the crime rate. All great subjects that are handled with kid gloves.
The big question is do you want India’s Demonetization be taken up as a Case Study by Freakonomics ?
sources: Freakonomics on Discover
Read further:
Gods get richer
https://arresteddevelopments.wordpress.com/2016/11/15/gods-get-richer-as-black-money-pour-in
Why BJP Govt’s Demonetization Move Is An Absolute Disaster
Demonetisation Loot And Plunder Says Manmohan Singh
The cash crunch may paralyse economic activities in India
https://arresteddevelopments.wordpress.com
Along with thanks and compliments to the sources for the shared data
Creative Commons Copyright © Arrested Developments 2015
The Google Translate Widget
Your Site, Now in Other Languages
Introducing the Google Translate Widget
How it works
To enable automatic translation on your site, add the Google Translate Widget in your Customizer by going to My Site(s) → Customize → Widgets. Once enabled, your site visitors will be able to access a dropdown menu in your sidebar or footer and automatically translate the content into 100+ languages.
Additionally, you can also send readers to a specific language version of your site by adding a language translation code — such as “?lang=de” for German — to any page URL.
You’ll find the steps to activate the widget and use language translation codes in our Google Translate Widget support doc.
Available for Jetpack
The Google Translate Widget is also included in version 4.4 of Jetpack so you can enable automatic translation on your WordPress site, too. Install the latest version of Jetpack on Jetpack.com.
We’re excited to offer this tool to all of our users — and make it easier for you to reach and connect with a wider audience around the world.
Help Us Translate WordPress.com
When you’re with friends and family, you probably speak in your native language.
Here at WordPress.com, we think of all of you as our family, but we have yet to master all 105 languages into which WordPress.com is translated.
To address this, we’re happy to announce a major effort to improve the quality of our translations.
We’ve deployed a brand new tool, In-Page Translation, to allow you to participate more easily in the translation process — you’re part of the family, after all.
Here’s how it works:
- On any WordPress.com dashboard screen or blog with its language set to something other than English, hover over your name and avatar on the Admin Bar.
- Click “Translate WordPress.com” link.
- A new sidebar with translation tools will appear on the left.
- Choose one of the rows, enter your translation, and hit “Submit.”
- Your suggestion is now sent to GlotPress.
Submitted translations will be reviewed by the translation validator for your language, and will become available on WordPress.com once we deploy the change.
We’re also working steadily to improve the quality and completeness of translations in the signup flow, the dashboard, and documentation. Our volunteer community continues to do amazing work! We’re continuing to supplement their efforts when appropriate with professional translators.
As part of this ongoing effort to improve our translation tools, we want you to share your insight with us. You’re all invited to provide feedback, give this new tool a try, and let us know how we’re doing.
Update – May 7: We’ve run into some last-minute technical difficulties, and the in-page translation tool has been temporarily disabled. We’ll update this post when we’re ready to go again.
Update – May 8: The in-page translations tool is active again. Thank you for your patience!
source:
THE WORDPRESS.COM BLOG
https://arresteddevelopments.wordpress.com
Along with thanks and compliments to the sources for the shared data
Creative Commons Copyright © Arrested Developments 2015
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