Who cares? and what’s in it for me?...

So I recently saw the question posed, Who Cares? And who cares in deed. I suppose no one cares so why should I. Lets come at this from another angle whats in it for me, what do I get from this infrequently visited Bio Blog and what on earth did I expect to happen. Who Blogs these days so quaint and old fashioned, with the voices whispering quieter and quieter, Blog after Blog being abandoned, raging click-bait and wide spread disquiet as bloggers in there dozens debate switching off their comment sections, Trolls and Flamers running riot it is a wonder anyone wants to put their delicate selves out there all raw and bloodied on the Interweb. Me Myself and I did it but Incognito lurking behind the anonymity of The Funky Nomad and purposely not telling people who would read my ramblings that I rambled away on my own custom site. Because quite frankly I am no one in particular, I have no S.E.O strategy, no advertising no way of monetizing my grand 9 followers, and possibly I have no business cluttering up the Interweb with my ramblings. I did however come across this awesome widget, there it is in my side bar pulling my Instagram pictures into my blog. Follow that too if you like. Now I know I have been a bit invisible the last couple of months and its pretty simple writing actually writing in any spare minute to struggle towards a first draft on a Novel a first novel no less is bloody tiring a long slog and I just don’t have words spare right now ( Other than the few I am using up here, and these are not the type suitable for my Fantasy Novel anyway.) So Gibbous Tyke as mentioned in other posts  is the hero who has now made his way through  37.6% of the story he is travelling through, we sit at just north of 31,000 word and the odd one or two are pretty good if I do say so myself. But we are in the doldrums the snarly do not really want to type this middle bit but slowly we climb the hump and pretty soon will be headed down hill in the wicked race to the end. And low and behold there are both boys and...

Footprint

Footprints left in the snow or on the beach or on your soul, record of your journey through the times of your life and the times of those who carried you or you carried in return. They are there even if you don’t want to believe me. Not just talking about your electronic footprint your transactions or social media postings but your physical and metaphysical footprints. Yes I know this all smacks of a theme and yes I have read ‘And Did Those Feet’ but what did you expect a retrospective to be, and knowing the importance of footprints to my family history you should not be surprised. (If you have no idea what I am talking about  stick around as I ramble my way through some what ifs and probably stride through some so whats.) I also have a couple of Ideas why Generation X is a little bit angry and pissed off and probably a little inwardly focused. You can forget all about Gen Y,  being selfish I would like to consider Generation Z (That’s my kids). They are where it’s at. Far more collaborative and civic minded than any generation since the 2 wars, don’t believe all you are told they will lead us into the great future they will be hero’s the like of which we have not seen for generations, I can see it in my children. They have been promised nothing and will achieve everything they appear not to carry our burdens and will make lighter footprints than I. They will lead each other into future and shame our leaders and they will do it because it is right and not for self aggrandizement and power and Ego. How can I be so sure I hear you ask? I have faith an old fashioned belief that does not need proving to me, because its time and because I would dearly like it to be. However lets get on with it, the Footprint I am talking about is Footprint Tools and possibly Footprint Wrenches  in particular, an all purpose wrench, being used extensively in plumbing and general pipe work applications. The world famous Footprint wrench was invented by Footprint’s founder Thomas R Ellin in 1875 and since then more than 15 million have been sold across the world.       And what does...

Rise and Dear Demise

So that’s that had enough of this already.                 You may be wondering what it looked like all these years? What did I see? What music were we listening to and what were the big events? What was it like from the inside? Maybe even what did you look like? What ideas were on the Rise and which of my various plans met their Dear Demise along the way. So lets answer a few question, I possibly don’t know what you looked like! But that’s what I looked like, look like. Here is the answer to the second question, I saw Penguins. Listening to well not exactly you get my drift though. And this is what its like from the inside. And this is what ended up happening to all those great ideas they reside on this small piece of shiny cardboard in a box in a draw about as useful as any other idea I had along the way. And there we have it all time views  610 views top page ‘The Funky Nomad’, Top Posts ‘And did those Feet’ and well I had hoped ‘Shades of a Blue Orphanage’ would be up there but not too shabby which leads us to the bottom of the table which I can tell you has most of the posts of the last few months sitting there with may be 4 views of which I probably accidentally viewed twice myself, so weeks and weeks of flat histograms in the stats tool, effort to reward disproportionate. And by now all the way down here I am pretty sure no one is still reading. ( My 8 Subscribers stay subscribbed . Thank You) So no I have not had enough of Me of course not I still profess myself to be very interesting and wiseish Dude, just think it might be time to change directions a bit change the focus. Stuff has happened, stuff happens and stuff is a happening. We are happily dropping photo Albums into Flickr see Home Page we have an instagram account and I have learnt to do them Hash Tags and lo and behold some likes and so far I have only posted 3 photos and quite frankly I am very excited and and and I can steer folks this way...

Show the Rod show the Sole

So I know its supposed to be spare the rod spoil the child, and I might have something to say about that but I am not that sort of controversial Blogger. Here in the Canadian Prairies the summer arrives one morning you notice the snow has gone and you leap into the summer and go hell for leather until Labor day which is this weekend. Later today #1 Daughter and myself are off to Elk Island for 2 nights camping and bike riding and buffalo photographing given a chance. It will be all campfire and food and a quick looking forward to the new school year which starts on Wednesday. We are especially looking forward to Steak and Eggs for breakfast and Garlic bread stuffed with herb and garlic cream cheese something we invented on our trip to Jasper to see the Rodeo. ( Not saying we are the first but we have great hopes for it.) So am I trying to make an excuse for my lack of blogging, maybe but I have been busy, my summer blogging schedule  was filled with great intentions, I have stuff on its way, the only problem is that its all beginning to run into the  one year time delay my brain seems to operate. So here is a taster of the fantastic articles to come, now that the summer is grinding to a halt and my big Hawaii  approaches. This is a strange thing I don’t think I look Hawaii on the outside or feel Hawaii  on the inside and as much as I want to be taken seriously I don’t want it to have anything to do with being older. So is Hawaii the new thirty something? Probably! Which leads us to these:- BBQ MOJO :–  The exciting history of the Funky Nomads crazy culinary outside adventure and the loss of the mojo just don’t have the BBQ mojo any more. YESTERDAYS BIRTHDAYS:-    5 O years of reflection. the future self and Premature Immaculation. EURO  83:- The big one and the revelation of the heartless soul. ALL MY WEDNESDAYS :-  A look at the Wednesday club, Sheffield and my complete inability to play football. THINK BIG OR GO HOME:-  A disturbing glimpse into the aftereffects of thinking outside the box. It has not been a completely wasted summer I wielded...

Toast!

So panic has set in, the last few days have been truly miserable, spurred on by the Penguins and some suggestion from various Gurus on the interweb it appears that the whole point of a Blog is to have subscribers (who Knew)  by doing all sorts of clever social media marketing and networking you can get some. So I have ordered 100 shiny business cards ( I guess this is an old school solution)  with the blog address on them and and and………..     I didn’t want a bloody blog in the first place, I was trying to do a WordPress website for my photos, and found this template  and well its front page was a Blog format. It had a Flickr feed so I linked that to my 40K feed (got to have content and that’s the only thing I had digitized and ready to go).  I could not make it do what I wanted (WordPress/template thingy) so the only option left was to give up or do what it wanted. So I have a Blog. So what was I to do with a $9.99 a month 150gb web site? And so was born the Funky Nomad  and riseanddeardemise.ca (because the real me is not that exciting on the outside but a legend on the inside.) And everything would have been fine if my head had not exploded  there were Penguins everywhere (I am blaming Wes & Dan for this.) By the time I had all the penguins stuffed back in their boxes with some complaints apparently they are not that keen on standing on their heads. I had a mission and had no intention of shutting up ever again. (her’s me initially thinking I could get away with a hand full of crappy old photos.) The stuff that was on the inside was now on the outside. The slow calcifying death that was my journey to conformity; something I had never done before was beginning to seriously mess with my mental health now that I was trying it for the first time. (being normal that is) I was like Frodo, stabbed with a Morgal blade slowly slipping into the shadow world. Wes and Dan saved the day, it appears  I was right and everyone else was wrong, Teachers, Parents, Society as a whole, the Universe. There...

Facebook Disconect.

So what? Am I just a cranky old git who does not see the beauty of the wonderful people at and on Facebook?  Am I a teenager escaping parents, schools, teachers, bullies,  cyber-stalkers and other dubious denzines of the book to get all crazy on Snapchat, Instagram,Weheartit, kiki or what ever. No, I am just an aging no-body late to the game; I was late in and late out. ( Oh yes that icon means I have deactivated my face book.) I had thought I was ahead on the curve on this bail out but if the reactions I got in my house were anything to go by I am the last to catch on, like I have only just found out Sliced Bread is a good idea. #1 Daughter has an account not been active for 3 years, #1 Son has an account hardly ever uses it ( I guess it was in action in grade 7 ) My Wife has deactivated both her accounts sometime before Christmas so just bumbling old me. What lead to this Rise and Dear Demise of Facebook accounts in the Funky Nomad household. Well I can only speak for myself and and its not simple, not being one for clarity I did some digging around some self examining, research and what have you and I can say its entirely possible this is not what the Interweb is supposed to be, this is not what social networking is supposed to be  and we can add some familiar names to those first against the wall come the revolution. You can ignore the next bit its a bit of a ramble, disclaimers and that sort of thing. ( Now I feel obliged just to mention, no one is going to actually be shot with bullets etc, its more a call for accountability for  those that trample beautiful things in the headlong rush for mammon or get it wrong in a way that effects the rest of the people trying to participate in life in some sort of meaningful way. As my wise Uncle has mentioned recently don’t be too fast to recommend death for politicians etc . ( The etc is a very long list of which I was about to add a few more.) What I will do instead is throw up some things...