A month at the Phaung Daw Oo School
Firstly, apologies to any millennials or computer savvy pre-millennials, this post is about my experience setting up this blog site. I’m part of the Generation X cohort that has avidly avoided social media. Until a 2 weeks ago I didn’t use Facebook, Instagram barely, a twitter account nope and snapchat err? Get the picture? Sure, I can use a smart phone, until recently I signed every text “Matthew” so people knew it was from me. My millennial daughter pointed out “its not necessary its your message from your phone from YOU!” The idea of blogging – just wouldn’t go away. It kept popping up, like an irritating drip, in the end you just have fix it. It was easier to say yes than to avoid it any longer. This trip would be a great opportunity to start. The first part wasn’t difficult, using my LinkedIn network to get the message out, was not hard. Pressing the “publish button” on the other hand was another story. Angst, self doubt, is my story interesting, can I even write? (I’ve learnt punctuation is not my strong point). Then where do you publish a blog? I have Instagram.com/matthewmakerart for my artwork (www.makerart.ca). But its for pictures, hence I started a Facebook page. Then a friend said, “do you really want to mix business with pleasure”, for this trip it's not an issue but in the future? Good point. Their recommendation, set up a blogsite. That’s where things started to go astray. It was Saturday night and I was due to fly in 12 hours, like all ADD afflicted project managers I decided to set it up there and then, why not! I actually had a domain name, I’d had it for a long time and quite remarkably it had expired that week. I’d spent hours getting it back and to cut a long story short I owned it again but it wasn’t quite where I thought it was. During that evening, as well drinking a bottle of wine (stress) I managed to spend $380 USD on hosting at two sites and software, none of which I needed. By the middle of the week, I’d reclaimed most of it and best of all had a blogsite. The site had a host whom I was now in constant time lagged dialog with trying to resolve my issues. This is where my previous point about the domain not being quite where I thought it was came back to haunt me. Somehow, I had the domain in two accounts, they were interfering with each other. What I saw as I developed was different from what was published, again and again. Finally, the blogsite looked good, the first post was up. I just wanted to add a few pictures but of course nothings free. The free hosting service had a storage limit but for a mere $120 I could post photos! There are photos. My advice, get things like your site sorted before you go. Different continents, with different time zones, local internet connections can be a little testing to say the least. And off course there’s still the publish button…….
1 Comment
Dad
4/10/2017 05:09:07 pm
Hi Matthew, I've been in the game of computer maintenance for donkeys years and never had the need to blog about my life in such detail. You have given us a facinating selection of photos and given us details of what you are trying to achieve. Stick with it as you're doing a superb job. Dad
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