Slider; a small hamburger, about a third the size of a normal burger. Often sold in twos, threes and more – depending on your appetite. Sliders allow the eater to taste several different types (one of each; cheese, blue cheese, egg, bacon, etc.) at one sitting. Great idea. Massively satisfying. The best of all worlds really.

 

Slider; functionality in a Web site template that literally slides one item of content over another – photographs for example. It’s an excellent way of displaying several images in a space where only a single image might otherwise be shown. Great idea.

 

Great idea? Not.

 

Best of all worlds? Not.

 

Ulcer inducing? Yup.

 

 

The shiny new Web template had arrived almost as quickly as my US$50-odd tinkled into the developer’s pocket. Unpacked, it looked pretty straightforward, but from the get-go, I was aware that the things I wanted to achieve weren’t just a matter of selecting an option, clicking the check box to confirm my choice and leaning back to marvel at my astonishing technological prowess.

 

Nope.

 

I started this project late last year, intending to move my two sites; psukhe (the blog) and paulperton.com (my photography galleries) into a single environment.

 

Thinking that up was the easy bit. Making it work has taken almost a year. A year of frustration, irritation and such resulting apathy that it became necessary to give myself a stern talking-to in order to get anywhere near finished.

 

 

So, a couple of weeks ago, I called in the specialists. It’s shite to discover that you’ve run out of ability in this or that and have to call in extra hands. Still, if I wanted a Web site…

 

Long story short, I bought a different template – hopefully one that is significantly less arcane – and have had it’s initial pages populated for me. Now, I have a model to follow and should be able to cope.

 

This post is accompanied by some images I hope you haven’t seen before and will be followed by a couple of recent items that I originally posted on DearSusan and you may have missed. Having been off-air for a while, I find myself with a great deal of other topics I want to explore; those will have to wait a few days.

 

Anyway, I’ve finally got this far and I hope not to have lost many of the regular visitors to either site. Take a look around, try the links and load the pages. They should all work. While you do that, I’ll carry on wrangling with the technology.

 

Do let me know if you like it. Or don’t as the case may be.

 

And, while all that has been going on, I have to ‘fess up that I also took a bit of a sabbatical. Late in 2013, I wrote to Pascal Jappy, the main blogger/owner at DearSusan* to ponder whether he might be interested in me writing for the site – new face, new ideas etc.

 

I’d attached an article about my passion for steam trains and a few accompanying photographs and was delighted to be welcomed on board. Since then, I’ve been posting on DS, intending to re-start my own blog just as soon as I’d managed to wrangle the damned thing into submission.

 

 

That day has arrived. Please explore and if you’ve some time, have a wander around the DearSusan site too (link above).

 

There’s always a bit more here – I’m finishing this post listening to Pink Floyd’s two decade awaited final recording(s), called The Endless River. Essentially a collection of outtakes from the Division Bell sessions, it’s vintage Floyd and definitely pinned in that late ‘90s period. I’m not certain they shouldn’t have left it there and our memories intact. Maybe it’ll grow on me.

 

* Named as a response to Susan Sontag and her remarks about the proliferation of sub-optimal photography.