Blogger Explains Move from Squarespace to Ghost
I decided to move my blog away from Squarespace. The main reason behind the move was that Squarespace is a full-fledged website builder and not necessarily focused on publishers. That meant, I had to deal with many unwanted problems. The biggest problem being the site speed. My website was incredibly slow on Squarespace and I wanted something fast and nimble.
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Since the backend of Squarespace is built to help you create a website with simple drag and drop tools, it is bloated. That means the backend is very slow and you will feel it every time you create a post.
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Another reason Squarespace is not good for publishers is website speed. Google punishes you heavily for a slow website, and my blog on Squarespace was excruciatingly slow. It constantly scored below 10 and 40, in mobile and desktop page speeds respectively. That not only means that Google was not ranking my articles, it also meant readers had a bad experience on my website.
This completely jives with my experience. Jakob Nielsen, a web usability expert, explains that slow response times are the worst offender against web usability: “Users don’t care why response times are slow. All they know is that the site doesn’t offer good service: slow response times often translate directly into a reduced level of trust and they always cause a loss of traffic as users take their business elsewhere.”
Blogging Makes My Writing Better
Steve Hodgson explains why he blogs rather than just writing in a diary or a journal:
I think the answer is that writing to publish, and the idea of someone reading it, helps me to make it the best writing I can. I don’t actually know how many people read these little articles but you (whether you are real or not) are important to help me distill these thoughts down to their essence.
Steve has been blogging for more than ten years. He calls his blog “Sulluzzu” because it is his wife’s favorite word. It means hiccups which Steve says seems to fit with how regularly he updates his blog.
It’s interesting to learn what motivates bloggers.
Steve is on Micro.blog as @BestofTimes.
Squarespace Sites and Google PageSpeed Insights
Studio Mesa, a website that sells premium Squarespace templates, explains:
Even with all the optimization in the world, Squarespace websites are doomed to a poorly-performing status due to it’s built-in CMS. To put it simply, Squarespace uses a Content Management System (CMS) to make it easy for users to build sites. Instead of writing code, you’re able to visually drag-and-drop blocks. This is great for designing, but this ease is what causes the performance to drop catastrophically. This is bad news for virtually ALL Squarespace users, no matter the version, amount of content, or efforts to optimize.
Even so, today his site is on Squarespace
Podcast with Julieanne Kost
Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop expert Julieanne Kost is interviewed on the Photocombobulate podcast. The topic is Lightroom Classic Tips.
Podcast: ‘Join Us In France’
If you want to travel in France and learn about French history, the Join Us in France podcast is a superb resource.
The podcast, which launched in 2014, was originally co-hosted by Elyse and Annie. They live in France and know it well. Annie was born in France but has lived in the United States. Although Elyse grew up in New York, she knows the language, the culture and the country’s history inside and out. Elyse, the native American, often seems more French than Annie who was born in France. Go figure. Due to time constraints, Elyse is no longer a co-host but still comes on the show as her time permits.
The podcast does a great job of explaining France and its culture to Americans. I especially enjoyed the episodes about driving in France, cheese and Le Marais. I also learned a great deal by listening to recent episode in which Elyse and Annie discuss the best places to see modern and contemporary art in France.
Each episode has show notes that are very helpful in planning a trip. For example, the modern art episode lists 18 museums around France to explore, including many new to me.
There are plenty of other resources to help travelers to France select hotels and restaurants. But this podcast will help you to understand France. Annie also offers self-guided audio walking tours.
Annie and Elyse were interviewed for Amateur Traveler episode 428 about Paris. The Amateur Traveler is a great podcast but if your destination is France, Join Us in France is the podcast for you.
‘Getting back to actual blogging’
Christina (CJ) Jones explains her blogging history and why she is resuming her blog in 2023:
My first blog was on Blogger, then transitioned to Livejournal. I owe a lot to Livejournal. It’s where I found my passion in design, friends from different places and understanding a world outside of my small town in North Carolina. My writing was all over the place, mainly middle and high school angst, and I didn’t care what people thought of my when I wrote it. Here’s to tapping into that mindset again.
Jones blogs on Squarespace. It’s a nice looking blog.
Personal Websites Provide Creative Freedom
Matthias Ott, a web designer from Stuttgart, on the value of personal websites:
Your personal website is a place that provides immense creative freedom and control. It’s a place to write, create, and share whatever you like, without the need to ask for anyone’s permission. It is also the perfect place to explore and try new things, like different types of posts, different styles, and new web technologies. It is your playground, your platform, your personal corner on the Web.
Blogging: ‘A Space of My Own’
Vincent Ritter explaining why he blogs:
This site acts as portal to my past and present self that one day I can look back on, on my steps forward and also missteps along the way. Life isn’t a straight road, so it’s nice to have a space of my own to share and reflect on.
Blogging to Connect with Others Directly
Kev Quirk engages with his readers via an email button at the end of each post. I like that because there is substance to the dialogue. You can’t get that by hitting a like button or through anonymous comments. Kev explains:
I enjoy writing content on here, and I love engaging with people who read my content. So it’s win/win. If something crops up within my email conversations with readers, that I think is worth sharing, I will always ask the person if they’re happy for me to share, then post an update. So other readers get the benefit of those conversations too.
Stella Tennant (1970-2020)
Stella Tennant, iconic model and fashion designer, died in Scotland on December 22, 2020. She was 50 years old.
Culture and style critic Guy Trebay, writing for The New York Times, explains that Tennant had deep aristocratic roots but “wore her rarefied heritage lightly throughout her three-decade run in fashion.”
She was photographed by top photographers including Steven Meisel and Bruce Weber.
The end of an era, way too soon.
Paris Photographers to Explore
Paris is a beautiful city and attracts many talented photographers. These are among the photographers who capture the essence of this extraordinary city:
- Peter Turnley
- David Turnley
- Paris Street Photography by Michael Erimo
- Nico Geerlings on Flickr
- Bruno Delavigne on Flickr
- Sophie on Instagram
- MagS on Instagram - Paris and travel photography She also has a nice color account on Instagram.
I will add to this list over time and welcome suggestions of other photographers to add to this list.
Last updated: January 22, 2024
Music: Stacey Kent
Stacey Kent is an American jazz singer with a glorious voice. She was born in 1965 in New Jersey and is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College. Her paternal grandfather was a Russian who grew up in France. He later moved to the United States where he taught Kent French. Once she learned French, it was the only language she spoke with her grandfather. Kent travelled to England after college to study music in London, where she met saxophonist Jim Tomlinson, whom she married in 1991.
I have the impression Kent is better known in France than in the United States. Her album Raconte-moi was recorded in French and became the second best selling French language album worldwide in 2010.
Kent has also faced serious health challenges. In a 2004 interview with Robert Kaiser of The Washington Post, Kent recounted that she’s been in comas three times caused by brainstem encephalitis:
Each time, baffled doctors were not certain they could bring her back. The last coma was in 1999, and Tomlinson nursed her through it. On doctors' advice, he brought records to her hospital room. When she awoke he was playing Mildred Bailey, one of the great jazz singers of the ’30s. “There’s just so much emotion in that voice,” Kent says. “It’s a cry - even when she’s singing a happy song.”
On the Power of Propaganda
Erna Paris (1938 - 2022) writing in The Globe and Mail:
The core learning future generations must acquire, in addition to the facts of Holocaust history, will be to recognize the impulse to genocide, how and why it starts, the propaganda tools it employs to persuade, and the known consequences of silence and indifference. I think this learning must also include the somewhat rueful acknowledgement that most humans are susceptible to propaganda in various degrees, which is why early-stage vigilance is so crucial.
Erna Paris was born in Toronto, Canada. She was the author of seven works of literary non-fiction and the winner of twelve national and international writing awards for her books, feature writing, and radio documentaries. Her book Long Shadows: Truth, Lies, and History was chosen as one of “The Hundred Most Important Books Ever Written in Canada” by the Literary Review of Canada.
A Frenchman at the Helm of Gucci
WSJ:
Jean-Francois Palus, Gucci’s new CEO was brought in “to reinvent Gucci as a steadier, more dependable brand less vulnerable to shifts in the fashion cycle. It is an approach that aims to bring its strategy closer to some of its biggest rivals, including Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Hermès.”
Gucci has also opened a series of high-end salons where nothing costs less than $40,000—and some pieces can cost as much as $3 million.
Photography is About Sharing
[T] he core of the photographic act is the verb “to share“ and that photography is all about sharing a moment I frame and want to hold on to for now, and for all time, and to be shared with myself and others. he core of the photographic act is the verb “to share“ and that photography is all about sharing a moment I frame and want to hold on to for now, and for all time, and to be shared with myself and others.
‘Let’s bring back the blog.’
Alan Jacobs writing on his blog entitled The Homebound Symphony:
[W]hile many of the old-school blogs are dead and gone, a surprising number of them remain active, and still have a multitude of commenters. In turns out that social media did not kill blogs, but just co-opted the discourse about blogs. Once journalists got addicted to Twitter, they stopped paying attention to what was happening elsewhere — but that didn’t stop it from happening._
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I don’t want to bring back the blogosphere, I definitely want to bring back the blog._
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[T]his is the time for people to rediscover the pleasures of blogging – of writing at whatever length you want, and posting photos, and embedding videos, and linking to music playlists, all on your little corner of the internet._
Let’s bring back the blog. And leave all the bad things spawned by the blogosphere to social media, where they belong.
Have Your Own Space on the Internet
Om on big publishing platforms:
No matter how often this happens, we don’t learn our lessons — we continue to till other people’s proverbial land and keep using their social spaces. Whether it is Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Medium, we get trapped in the big platforms because they dangle the one big carrot in front of our eyes: the reach, the audience, and the influence._
And we keep doing their bidding — they use our social networks, our work, and our attention — and, in the process, help make their networks gigantic and indispensable. We become pawns in their end game. And then they change the rules of the game — after all, if you own the league, you make the rules._
I have known the truth about social platforms. I quit Facebook and Instagram years ago, and candidly I am better for it. I don’t need 5000 friends — 15 good ones will do. And as far as sharing photos — I am happy that I have about a thousand people interested in my photographic work instead of 100,000 followers on Instagram.
Remembering Maisie Hitchcock
I recently learned that, Maisie Hitchcock, a guide on a Rick Steves tour of Switzerland I took in 2018 died peacefully of ovarian cancer on August 9, 2023 in the company of her family members.
Maisie was a kind, gentle guide who did an excellent job showing us the highlights of Switzerland. Although she was English, she lived in Berlin and spoke fluent German. She enjoyed people and knew how to relate to each person as an individual. Maisie’s father, Robyn Hitchcock, an English singer-songwriter and guitarist wrote a loving memory of his daughter on Instagram.
Maisie is the third from the left in the photo, above.
China’s Population Declining Rapidly
WSJ:
With the number of babies in free fall—fewer than 10 million were born in 2022, compared with around 16 million in 2012—China is headed toward a demographic collapse. China’s population, now around 1.4 billion, is likely to drop to just around half a billion by 2100, according to some projections.
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Demographers and researchers predict that data will show Chinese births dipping below 9 million in 2023. The United Nations forecasts 23 million births in India, which in 2023 passed China as the world’s most populous country. The U.S. will have around 3.7 million babies born in 2023, the U.N. estimated.
China has also made it much harder to block pregnancies or to get an abortion.
French Museums Welcomed Record Numbers in 2023
Le Louvre had 8.9 million visitors in 2023, up 14% compared with 2022. Versailles had 8.1 million visitors, 18% of whom were Americans. Most, but not all, French museums reached pre-Covid levels of attendance.
Only the Pompidou Center had a decrease in visitors due to a strike in October. The Pompidou Center will be closed from 2025 to 2030 for much needed renovations 50 years after its opening.