DITCH THE LABELS

Photo credit and thanks: Rawpixel .com from Pexels

THE CAMERA NEVER LIES. HASHTAGS, RATHER MORE OFTEN!

I take lots of photos these days with my faithful ultrazoom bridge camera.

Even on days when I'm too ill to venture far, there's always something swanking into shot, flaunting its best profile, posing for its spotlight moment, framed by my lens.

Birds. Such remarkable characters, always up to some busy business!

The Moon. I try to capture her in all her moody magnificence.

Clouds. A member of the Cloud Appreciation Society and a BBC Weatherwatcher, I aim to keep one eye on the sky.

Trees. Flowers. Fungi. Every one inspirational and unique.

Planes. Pipers with their sleek lines and their ankle socks aka in less anthropomorphic style, their wheel fairings or spats. Cessnas with those jaunty struts bracing up their wings. Taildraggers. Show-offs phuttering over my rooftop.

Anything that makes my imagination do a creative somersault.

I upload my snapshots to Flickr (other photo clouds are available!)
Flickr has its own puzzling range of bewildering tags. Even when you've tagged your own images with the appropriate search terms. Sometimes I find my crescent moon's been labelled "FULL MOON" or even worse "PIZZA" or just "FOOD".

Flickr once labelled my image of a Pheasant as "DOG" and a Wood Pigeon recently metamorphosed via Flickr tag into an "EAGLE". Though I never was quite sure what kind of crossbreeding they imagined was going on, or what they'd been drinking!

Then there are clouds that Flickr insists are "MOUNTAINS" "SEA" or "SNOW". Local upland fields here in northern England it calls "PLAINS" as if they've been transplanted into the New World. Often the Flickr bots throw up their hands and attach perplexing tags like "ABSTRACT" "MINIMALIST" and (even when it isn't) "MONOCHROME".

I often marvel at how Flickr manages to transform birdwatchers like me into unwitting soft porn peddlers! No sooner have I tagged a Great Tit, Blue Tit, Coal Tit or Long-tailed Tit than my view count soars up into the hundreds overnight! Last week when I tagged the catkins of Salix caprea, Goat or Pussy Willow, my view count skyrocketed and kept on climbing off the scale.

Just imagine the droves of disappointed users clicking and salivating in anticipation of extracurricular thrills, only to be frustrated by my innocent picture of a tree in springtime!

If you've ever had hilariously inappropriate tags added to your photos, please share your laughs by leaving a comment below.

If you fancy exploring my Flickr, ditch your dirty raincoat, grab a cuppa and join me over at:
Joyce's Flickr

New Blogger Layout...what the...oh, actually...it's okay!

"Blogger will be changing in April."

Passive aggressive to the eleventh hour, I read and resisted those "try now" invitations.
As the songwriter Jimmy Webb wrote:
"Tomorrow comes, but it will keep"
As a callow teen, I found that lyric such a comfort, the night before a test at school!
Still pretty comforting at 50.
So I didn't rush into the irreversible tomorrow of the latest layout changes right away.

Until today.

After a week of hardly having strength or cognitive powers and concentration to read, let alone write, this week my body's generously letting me read more than a couple of sentences at a time and occasionally remember what I've read, as a bonus!

So I decided to take the plunge before I was pushed.

Did the same with Facebook.

Twitter changed without asking, which frightened the cr*p out of many. Both actually seem better in the end. I'm a laptop user rather that an iPhone juggler, which no doubt would bring a different perspective. People with iPhones seem to have a lot more trouble connecting and adapting to recent changes, though that may merely be because more people are using iPhones, of course. My old banger of a phone thinks predictive text is futuristic!

While some are still whining and lamenting over the new Facebook timeline, I actually find I quite like it, with the dramatic new "cover" photo.

The rest of Facebook is still just as irritating at times with its mindless "like and move on" mentality, depressingly focused ads ("Over 50? Try these frumpy fashions, dearie! Still got your own teeth? Try this stunning state-of-the-art teeth whitener, available near where we know you live! You clicked "like" for "dogs"? - here's pet insurance-r-us at competitive rates") and the photos of tortured cats and battered babies often photo-shopped to get the unwary
a) clicking on dodgy links
b) wasting energy on thinking they're making a difference to the tragedies and injustices of the world
c) both

But the timeline's okay by me.
Whether it is or not, it's not going away any time soon. I choose my battles, these days.
Better get used to it!
Put up or shut up.

So I took a deep breath and started to use the new Blogger interface and dashboard.
Guess what?
The world didn't stop turning.
Like moving house, once you learn where you've put things, you'll eventually stop opening the wrong cupboard and leave the coffee cups on a hook where you can easily find them!

The new Blogger looks cleaner, like anything does when it's pristine and new.
I can find my posts.
I can check my stats.
I know how to change my layout, as and when.
My reading list of other people's fabulous blogs is still there. Just as long and impossible to keep up with on a daily basis.

The labels feature is so much better. Before, blogger often switched to the (wrong) previously used label. The window showing the labels was so small, I often couldn't change or check labels till the post was published.

Now there's a way to drag the label window wide so you can get in there and rummage around to your heart's content. You can more easily choose from your saved labels. Scary to see them all there, actually. I'm a quirkier tagger than even I realised! Ball-pein hammer? Harlequin Rasbora? Pseudoacacia? Doubt half my tags EVER get searched for!

I'm glad my quirky, unfocused, but house-trained little blog is still here to pour my many interests into. If they connect with other people in random, happy ways, as they often seem to, all the better!

Yes, I know "Pinwheels & Rainbows" ("Pinny" to its friends!) defies all the rules! It doesn't deal with one narrow subject, as it was my firstborn blog. It's a crazy catch-all. Just as it says in the subtitle "Sense and Serendipity". More serendipity than sense, usually, and plenty of dippy but who's counting?

I'm just very grateful and glad for all of you who keep finding your way back here, one way or another!
Thank you, and watch this space!

Come on in, the water's lovely!

I'm NOT a Barbie Girl, in a Barbie world!

Was just going to throw this catalogue (should that be cata-lol-ogue?) advertising clerical gear in the recycling bag when I saw this photo again and had to share:



I guess it's pretty much par for the course in "forward" churchy thinking, but seriously? Blue for a boy and pink for a girl (with icky sweet shorty-short sleeves)? In the 21st century, what were they thinking?

OK, so yes, I do own and wear a pink clerical. Yes with short sleeves. In fact I still have the ones I've had since I was ordained in 1999, made before I was a probationer c1996, hand-stitched by a company in Yorkshire and made to last!

But I also have a blue one. And a yellow one. And a green one, several black ones and one of a weird washed-out shade that was dyed like that accidentally when my washing machine broke and the shirt found itself unexpectedly stewing for hours with non-colourfast band t-shirts, socks and other more colourful fabrics!


This photo made me laugh. One of those slightly manic, others-might-despair sort of laughs. Nice shirts, though, no doubt. Just saying. Suppose we should just be grateful to be pictured at all! 


On the same theme, this wonderful photo that's been doing the rounds of the Facebook-Tumblr-Twitter-sphere. You've probably seen it by now. It's an advert for Body Shop challenging society's idea of ideal female beauty and perfection. It's powerful and so spot-on. 

Sadly, the advert was apparently banned when Barbie INC, who own the rights to the Barbie imagery, decided it didn't reflect well on them. That's why it's now being shared and reblogged all over the social networks to stop the usual "pretty in pink" message being the only one getting across to vulnerable men and women who feel pressurised to conform to society's phoney norms.


To misquote the lyrics of Aqua's European hit "Barbie Girl":


'I'm NOT a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world,
Wrapped in plastic, it's NOT fantastic.'


It won't be fantastic, till we all learn to value everybody for who they are, just as they are, and give each other a little respect. Not damaging each other with stereotypes, labels and unhelpful nonsense pushing people into 'little boxes made of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same' (Malvina Reynolds, lyrics to "Little Boxes" a hit for Pete Seeger in 1963).

Rant over. Pink shirt alongside the blue in the closet.