Last summer I took a course in blogging at the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD University).  It is a qualifying course towards a Digital Media Certificate offered by the Continuing Education department.  I’ve also taken a digital photography course, InDesign and am thinking about taking an Introduction to Adobe Illustrator.  Mind, Motion and Matter came to be on August 7th, 2010 a few days before  final assignment was due, the assignment, start a blog. The first comment on my blog was from my son.

Our instructor, Greg J. Smith provided lots of social commentary on blogging and social media as well as the mechanics of starting a blog.  His blog is called: Serial Consign, Digital Culture & Information Design. WordPress, was his recommended blogging platform.  He also addressed concerns that exist about Facebook and privacy issues and said that he had disabled his Facebook site, due in part to the paucity of meaningful discourse that typified his Facebook experience.

I decided to disable my rarely used Facebook site but was thwarted because I had changed email addresses since signing up and with no access to that email address, Facebook told me it could not be disabled. Food for thought, no?

In spite of this I have come to accept that Facebook is a “fact of life” and am working towards figuring out how to use it in small doses and make wise use of the different privacy settings.  And of course, this time round, I’ll have a back up email address to avoid losing control over my Facebook web presence.  I’m sure if push came to shove something could be done but who has the time to pursue this kind of on-line bureaucracy?!  Irksome to say the least.

Last Tuesday, I got the email below, telling me that I was part of an elite group of bloggers.  I was Freshly Pressed!  Comments and “Likes” began pouring in and by the end of the day I had surpassed my previous record for hits by almost 2000.  The following day, I had over 1000 hits and had tripled my number of subscribers.  What a wild ride!

To be Freshly Pressed means that your blog is one of 10-11 blogs featured on the WordPress home page where it says, “The best of 363,479 bloggers, 404,519 new posts, 403,358 comments, & 103,896,794 words posted today on WordPress.com.”  The post accorded this distinction was titled: I Think My Bathroom Scale is Broken.  Which is exactly what I said to my husband when I stepped on the scale for the first time after our 11 day holiday.  I had attributed the unusual amount of flesh around my belly to be caused by not sticking to my planking routine as my daily runs keep my weight quite consistent.

I learned a lot about blogging by the kind, funny and inquisitive comments I received as a result of being Freshly Pressed.  Prior to this, I had not given much thought to the Freshly Pressed concept, other than wondering in passing whether having a photo that lends itself to the narrow horizontal space allotted to each featured blog increased your chances of getting featured.

But now, my bar graph stats are hard to interpret at-a-glance, as compared to the big day, and the day after.  Subsequent and previous days show up as tiny slivers.  Back to reality and I do confess that I find myself a little self-conscious about my posts with so many new subscribers.  Hello, hello . . . and thank you!

On the run today, the blogging jogger tried a new method of carrying her point and shoot camera.  I clipped a small case to the back of my running skirt and there placed my camera.  I won’t go into the details but while making a pit stop my camera fell out of the case and into the toilet and it no longer works. Sad, and costly.

Is the description of this little mishap material for another winning blog post title?

Ciao . . .