blog – Journeys of Heart and Mind

Recent changes

Another change in the last month or two is the link to my Bluesky account at the top of the right-hand column. Click on that for smaller, more recent updates on what I’m doing.

Unless you’re very new to Journeys of Heart and Mind (JHM), you will have realised a few things have changed. It’s good to keep things fresh, and it’s good to make improvements.

The most obvious change (and the most recent one) is that I’ve removed the banner image that used to adorn the top of the site. I love that picture of Cirencester’s attractive, old Market Place; but it clutters the page and means readers have to scroll down even to see the title of any new article. I’ve taken out the logo as well, and I’m considering whether to remove the strapline. I’m not sure it adds anything of value.

Another change in the last month or two is the link to my Bluesky account at the top of the right-hand column. Click on that for smaller, more recent updates on what I’m doing. It includes a brief post every time I publish an article here on JHM, but most days there are three or four other items that are not major enough for an article here. They are often just personal, a sudden thought, something that caught my attention in the moment, or a photo I want to share.

There will be other changes as the weeks and months go by, but I don’t know what they will be at this point. My objective will be to simplify, make the site more user-friendly, take away what is no longer useful, and add new features as and when necessary.

I you are reading this, and you have ideas or suggestions, please leave them in a comment below. Thanks!

Did you know?

You can view earlier versions of JHM on the Wayback Machine (navigate through time using the banner). Or look for old versions of many other websites. See how things looked back in the day.

Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome!

Making some changes

It’s all been fun and you, my readers, seem to have liked the results.

Every now and again it’s time to reconsider, take stock, and make useful changes. That’s the point I’m at with the JHM blog right now.

Oh, it’s nothing major, don’t worry! I chose to lighten things up and improve the pace of writing by publishing an image every day. I’ve kept that up now for 51 days and it’s time to assess the results.

First I should say how much I’ve enjoyed doing it. Choosing an image, writing some explanatory text to go with it, and often presenting further thoughts and questions – it’s all been fun and you, my readers, seem to have liked the results.

The downside has been the impact on my other posts, there’s been a lot less time to cover off other things that I want to write about.

What I plan to do

I’m going to try posting the images a little less often, perhaps just two or three a week. This means I’ll be able to devote more time to other things, like the series of extracts from JDMC, like thoughts about the war in Ukraine, dusting off articles from the past and giving them a second chance, writing more ‘Cruising the Gospel‘ posts, and more canal walking posts. I also want to drop in random stuff from time to time, comments on this or that, ideas here and there. If you have any thoughts on what you’d like to see, please drop them into the comments section below. Thanks.

Bear with me while I do a bit of re-shuffling. One objective will remain publishing something daily, even if it’s just another image!

Another way – write.as

The focus moves from advertising, costly payments and central control to an absence of these things

There’s more than one way of doing most things, and write.as is an alternative way of writing stuff online. Whether you want to create a blog, a story, or just private notes, write.as is well worth a look.

It’s part of a long standing move by some web users away from the commercial world of Google, Facebook, Twitter and so on, towards a very different model of which Wikipedia is the best known example. The focus moves from advertising, costly payments and central control to an absence of these things.

If you like freedom, privacy and simplicity, you’ll find all three at write.as . I suggest you take a quick look around, you can begin with a simple page I put together in less than five minutes – write.as/chrisjj

Facebook?

I’m still not sure what to do about Facebook…

I posted this on Facebook a few moments ago. I thought I’d pop it on the blog as well.

I’m still not sure what to do about Facebook. I’ve been thinking hard about binning my account altogether. I only visit two or three times a month these days, and most of my friends have my email address.

Possibly, I’ll post material to my blog instead (scilla.org.uk), it’s been rather neglected for the last few years, but I could use it for more frequent and spontaneous messages as well as longer articles.

But before I make any definite decisions, I’d like some feedback from anyone who might read this Facebook post. What do you think?