This year marks the 30th anniversary of the National Garden Festival 1986, which took place in Stoke-on-Trent. I worked at the Festival during a university placement.

I took a lot of photos at the Festival and so far I have uploaded roughly half of them. They are available under the “Photos” menu item, but a selection follows.
[flickr_set id=”72157667759665986″ max_num_photos=”10″ randomize=”true” pagination=”none”]

There is a Wikipedia page about The Festival, and this Potteries.org page gives information not seen elsewhere. There is also a page at http://www.christopherellis.net/, and a Flickr album showing the surviving relics, at least as they were in 2011.

A few embedded YouTube videos are below, including the Festival Theme Tune, which I thought I would never hear again.

The post National Garden Festival 1986 appeared first on Stationary Journey.

Well, it’s been a long time since my last post. Did I spend the rest of the Autumn and most of the Winter sleeping?

Of course not – at least I didn’t sleep any more than I normally do. I did engage in a major overhaul of some of my home systems though, which started with me deciding to ditch my long obsolete Windows Home Server (thanks for that Microsoft, another one of you “next best things” that turned out to be digital cul-de-sac) and replace it with a FreenNAS system. This set off an avalanche of events with led me finally install Plex (something which I had been planning to do for a while) then to update my [Tvheadend[(https://tvheadend.org/) server and Kodi (formerly XBMC) clients. In the process I finally got HD DTV recording working in a way which was usable, with 5.1 as a thrown in bonus, something I was never able to achieve before. I just hope it survives the next upgrade of Ubuntu (I am not hopeful). I’m missing a lot out along the way but this magical mystery tour concluded with me trying out a free upgrade to Windows 10 on my main desktop, which was running Windows 7. While it has many frustrations (of course it’s not as great as Microsoft claim it is, nothing ever is), Windows 10 isn’t the catastrophe that was Windows 8, which didn’t get past a preview version for me. So I was able (with some trepidation) to make the transition. The other option would have been to move to Linux for my main desktop, which I would like to do, but I still don’t think I’m ready for that yet. I am very impressed with Ubuntu MATE though, and that is now my distro of choice for messing around with Linux. In the whole process I learnt a few things, such as running jails on FreeNAS, some of which I may document here if I find the time – which I didn’t at the time I was setting up the server.

This site has also moved – whether the move will prove to be temporary or permanent at the moment is unclear. In a previous post I mentioned that the Shaarli bookmarking application stopped saving bookmarks. It did prove to be an issue with the modsecurity configuration on my shared hosting account. After initially being helpful my hosting company made it clear that they weren’t going to change those settings, effectively making Shaarli useless. I couldn’t find another self-hosted solution that was satisfactory so I switched to Pinboard (and very good it is too). Again due to other pressures I didn’t report that here. Around the same time the Microsoft Access application I used to maintain the ink and other collections and which could update the relevant WordPress pages automatically stopped working properly as well. Because the Access application used some code from elsewhere that I found incomprehensible I couldn’t diagnose the problem with certainly, but I strongly suspected it was also due to modsecurity. While I can understand my shared hosting companies position on maintaining security it finally convinced me that shared hosting was not optimal for me, and I would rather try to maintain my own security and not suffer the risk of important functionality of the site suddenly failing as it did in this case. So this experience prompted me to move the site back to the VPS host that I used when the site was originally set up and which I had kept just for development purposes. Even this proved to be more complicated than I expected, not least because I needed to upgrade the operating system on my VPS, and in doing this found that the web server configuration I used before wouldn’t work now. After a couple of abortive attempts things now appear to be running okay, but I can’t rule out a switch back if the new server fails. I haven’t tried to resurrect Shaarli, simply because Pinboard is more than satisfactory, but the Access application has magically started working again with the new server, confirming my belief (as much as I can be certain) that the settings on the shared host were the problem.

One useful byproduct of the move back to the VPS is that I was able to implement HTTPS across the site, using the Letsencrypt service. Getting rid of the mixed content messages was a bit of a challenge but I’ve achieved A+ on the Qualys SSL Server Test, which I am quite pleased about, hence the green padlock at image at the top of the site. There may be unwanted side effects yet to surface, but only time will tell.

While I am hopeful that everything is running okay for the moment, if problems do arise and I have to switch back to the shared host, the first sign will be that this and subsequent hosts will disappear. If that happens, you can think of me going back to the metaphorical drawing board.

To conclude, one other annoyance is the impending retirement of the Mailchimp Social plugin which is used on this site. It handles reposting to Facebook and Twitter, and does it in such a way that the reposts are linked back to the original post. I’m not sure at this stage how I will replace that functionality, but this and the links post which will follow will probably be the last ones to use it. I started this post with one piece of obsoleted software and ended with another – how appropriate

The post Update February 5, 2016 appeared first on Stationary Journey.

I have returned after another posting hiatus. This has been a difficult few weeks – I won’t dwell on most of the details but one sad example was mentioned on this page.

I would like to say that the posts over the last two days (which finish off the last batch of ink reviews) plus this one mean that this quiet patch has come to an end. However, I know I’ve said that before and circumstances have intervened, so I’m not going to make any more commitments I’m not confident I can keep.

The plan in the short term though is for a another batch of ink reviews, but a small one this time – a trio of my favourite inks: Noodler’s Heart of Darkness, Pilot Iroshizuku Asa-Gao and Diamine Crimson. These have been my everyday carry black, blue and red inks for while now so reviews are long overdue.

Another problem has also emerged with the website. There’s nothing new in the Lifestream since 12/07, which in itself wouldn’t be a surprise since my online activity has been virtually nil. However, the posts that I made yesterday and today should have appeared (along with the Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter syndications) but there is nothing. The Lifestream plugin shows no errors, and I’ve run the update script manually, but still nothing shows. No events are showing on the Lifestream page either. While it has been a constant battle keeping this plugin going, mostly because services keeping changing their APIs or closing their RSS services, nothing like this has happened before where everything suddenly stopped working. My best guess is that a recent update to WordPress has finally broken the plugin, which hasn’t been maintained in over 2 years. So I now have a dilemma. Should I try to repair the plugin or look for another solution? At the moment I am undecided, but for the time being the Lifestream widget will be removed and a note will be put on the Lifestream page.

Finally Shaarli, (the bookmarking application I use) won’t accept new bookmarks. This appears to be due to a mod_security issue on the web host. I’ll need to file a support ticket. It’s one more annoyance I could have well done without.

The post Update August 20, 2015 appeared first on Stationary Journey.

The post Normal Service Resumed appeared first on Stationary Journey.

This is the final spur that I’ve needed to leave Demon after more than 20 years – they were my first real ISP after using Compuserve and CIX. Demon was a real trailblazer at the time, but the company has changed hands a few times since then and for several years they have only stood out as expensive for the service that they provide. I’ve been a fool to myself for not leaving before now. I’ve signed up with another provider and am just awaiting a MAC authorisation, although from what I’ve seen elsewhere Demon can be obstructive in this regard and the web page I entered my details on gave no acknowledgement that the request had been received. I fear an uphill battle is ahead.

In the meantime I may try a links post if I’m feeling brave, and the occasional update if the move to another ISP doesn’t go smoothly, otherwise normal service will be resumed once the move to the new ISP is complete or I drop below Demon’s capping threshold.

There are other issues affecting the site at the moment. There appears to be a DNS or routing issue on my web host which is stopping the Lifestream plugin from accessing content hosted on the same server, which means that (for example) links bookmarked to Shaarli and aren’t appearing in the Lifestream. This has been reported but has not yet been resolved. The Instagram widget isn’t updating either – that could be related to the other issue or it could mean there has been an API change at Instagram – either way I can’t debug it with such limited connectivity.

The post Timeout appeared first on Stationary Journey.

Things have been quiet here for the last couple of weeks, mainly because I was busy getting the Collections database working the way I wanted it to, and more recently I enjoyed a short trip to Malta to celebrate my 50th birthday. The photos I took have been uploaded to the following page Malta April 2015.

Among the many photos taken from a couple of open top bus tours, the highlights are:

• San Anton Palace Gardens where we briefly saw the President
• Malta International Fireworks Festival – my photos don’t do it justice
• The Blue Grotto – again my photos don’t really do it justice.

We stayed at the Radisson Blu Hotel, St Julian’s

The next ink reviews that I had planned were to be for the Diamine 150th Anniversary inks. However, I have recently received a kind donation of a bottle Noodler’s Park Red from Pen Chalet, so I am going to prioritise this for the next review, which I should complete within the next week.

The post Update May 04, 2015 appeared first on Stationary Journey.

The last “Recent Links” post actually was quite a challenge to post. As normal I spent a few minutes checking that recent links in Delicious were properly tagged, but when I came to generate the post using the Delicious Curator plugin no links were output. Zilch. Cutting a long story short, the Delicious API appeared not to be working. “Oh dear”, I thought, or words to that effect.

In my last Website Update one of my plans for 2015 was to find an alternative to Delicious. Apart from a problem when a number of rogue links (mostly for adult content) appeared in my feed a few years ago, which then quickly disappeared again, my use of Delicious has been trouble-free. However, over the last couple of years the demise of Delicious has been predicted on several occasions so I did have it in the back of my mind to jump ship at some point. Although I didn’t have an alternative lined up, when the latest problem occurred I thought now would be a good time to export all my links to be on the safe side and start the hunt for an alternative in earnest. At this point I thought disaster had struck – the export function has stopped working too. Now I was kicking myself for my past complacency. I eventually managed to find a way to get a dump of the links in XML using the API (which was by then up and down like a yo yo), but more work would be necessary to change this into the format that it appeared every Delicious alternative could cope with. By this point the API would at least allow the Delicious Curator plugin to do its work, and I was able to generate the post.

The alternative to Delicious that I ultimately chose was Shaarli. This is self hosted and easy enough to deploy. It’s not as slick as Delicious, but has the basics that I need. I can’t rely on the Delicious Curator plugin anymore (but as the plugin hasn’t been updated in 2 years I think its future isn’t especially rosy either), or the IFTTT magic that used to copy links from various web applications straight into Delicious, so I now have more manual work to do before I can make future Recent Links posts. However I do now have peace of mind that my bookmarking application won’t disappear overnight, unless my hosting account fails of course, in which case I will have a few other problems to worry about too. The icing on the cake was that the Delicious export facility started working again, so I was able to export my links and import them into Shaarli. Links I have bookmarked in Shaarli have now started to appear in the Lifestream, and I won’t be using Delicious any more. I won’t close the Delicious account, but any links to the account will receive less prominence in future.

One of my other plans for this the year was to take more photos and post them here. I take a lot of photos for work and 99% are the grimmest you could imagine (e.g. weeds, flytipping, damage to grass verges) and I realised that it was taking the joy out of photography for me. So the original plan (at least in my head) was to “take a photo for pleasure every day”. It quickly became apparent that if I was only taking a photo to meet a self imposed target that undermines the pleasure aspect, so I made it more flexible and took the pressure off. Why am I dwelling on this? Two reasons. The first is to give me an excuse to link to a page I created with some photos I took recently at Pole Hill, Chingford. The second was to explain that for future Updates (I’ve dropped “Website” from the title as it seems redundant) the featured image may not bear any relevance to the content if I don’t have a suitable image to hand – instead it may just be a recent photo taken for pleasure. In this case it’s one of Winter Jasmine. I know have much to learn about Macro Photography.

The post Update January 26, 2015 appeared first on Stationary Journey.

The following is a roundup of what happened on the site in 2014, recent changes (along with the reasons why) and what’s planned for 2015.

Recap of 2014

So although a new year has started, but I’m going to dwell on the last one for a few moments.

When I rebooted this blog in January 2014 I had the objective of making at least one post per week for the next 12 months. In practice I skipped a few weeks here and there, but over the year I made a total of 77 posts – which may not keep to the letter of what I intended, but isn’t too bad overall.

Looking at the stats for the site (which don’t cover the whole year due to a few technical issues) the top 5 most view posts in 2014 were:

• Noodler’s Baystate Blue – Ink Review
• Pilot Capless Matt Black Fountain Pen Review
• Noodler’s Liberty’s Elysium – Ink Review
• Noodler’s 54th Massachusetts – Ink Review
• Noodler’s Black Swan in English Roses – Ink Review

Apart from search engines, the top referring sites were:

• pennaquod.net
• fpquest.com
• penpaperinkletter.com
• fountainpen.link

Thanks to those sites for the traffic that came my way.

It was little surprised by the traffic generated by a post on Reddit which linked to one of the inks reviews, and also to find that more visits are generated by the posts I syndicate to Tumblr than from the ones to Twitter. I had toyed with the idea of abandoning the companion Tumblr site – that’s now not going to happen at any time in the near future. I set up a Facebook Page to help with syndication, although I’m skeptical that this will generate any interest in the blog.

Recent Changes

There have been a few cosmetic changes to the site in recent weeks. The most obvious one is the appearance of the “About” widget in the left hand sidebar. Normally an introvert like me wouldn’t bother with displaying information about myself so prominently – much preferring the keep it tucked away on a page of its own. I have included it as part of trying to make the site as Indieweb friendly as possible – but that’s a topic better served by a dedicated post at some point in the future, once I’ve got a few remaining issues ironed out. Although I’ve tried to keep such changes to a minimum, it also explains why there’s now a little icon of me on each full post (shudder) and why there are links to Twitter and Facebook copies on the more recent posts (i.e. the “Also on” section). Because I dislike my profile photo being on the homepage so much, I greyscaled it to make it less prominent. Having done that I realised that all the coloured icons in the Lifestream widget didn’t look too good against the blue background either, so I replaced them with grey font-based icons instead.

Other changes (not related to Indieweb) are the inclusion of Open Graph data, which improves how links posted to Facebook are displayed, and Twitter Cards, which do the same for Twitter. Open Graph was easy to include, Twitters Cards not so much – they required several weeks to get working and only did so just as I was about to give up.

A Subscribe page has also been added, which gives more options to keep up to date with the site.

What do I have planned for Stationary Journey in 2015?

In the short term I need to get over the hump of the outstanding ink reviews, but the following are priorities for the next 12 months:

• Keep to the target of at least one post per week – in letter as well as spirit if possible
• Take more photos and post them here (rather than just on Flickr or Instagram).
• Generally post more varied content
• Look at a self-hosted alternative to Flickr (although there are good reasons why I currently use Flickr)
• Look at a self-hosted alternative to Delicious (it’s convenient, but I don’t think it will last forever)
• Revamp the “About” page – it’s a bit unstructured at the moment and I want to include more on my Social accounts
• Create a page listing all my pens, inks and other stationary, including those I haven’t reviewed yet.
• Create Projects Pages where all the information on ongoing and completed projects (such as Indieweb integration) can be pulled together. Each project will have its own separate page.
• Update my profile photo. I don’t feel I photograph well, and the current one is the best of a very bad lot of photos I have of myself. It’s everywhere and I’m sick of the sight of it.

One of the Christmas presents I received (a lighting cube tent kit) should help with future closeup photos of pens, inks etc. The featured photo with this post is my first attempt at using it. I obviously need to look at my exposure levels and colour balance, as well as finding a suitable background, but I’m really looking forward to no longer being reliant on ambient light.

The post Website Update January 04, 2015 appeared first on Stationary Journey.

A new Facebook Page has been added for this blog. It is here: https://www.facebook.com/stationaryjourney/

Updates to the blog should be automatically posted to the Facebook page. If the plugin works that is – this post is intended to test that out!

The post Facebook Page appeared first on Stationary Journey.

The package mentioned in my last post arrived safely during the week. I am flattered that Kaweco invited me to review their pens, and I chose the following:

• Special in black with an Extra Fine Nib
• AL Sport Stonewashed Blue with a Medium Nib
• Allrounder in red with a Fine Nib

Along with the associated packaging for the pens, also included in the package was a full set of Kaweco ink cartridges, a full set of bottled inks, as well as a very nice printed catalogue.

For the avoidance of doubt, I am not being paid to carry out the reviews, and I will be returning the pens afterwards. I do get to keep the inks.

Once I have reviewed the pens, I will complete the current batch of ink reviews, then I will review the Kaweco bottled inks.

The post Update 01 November, 2014 appeared first on Stationary Journey.

The last batch of ink reviews took a long time to work through. The next batch may take even longer. I won’t give excuses here, suffice to say that real life has intruded a lot recently, and this blog has had to has had to slip down my priority list. That doesn’t mean that I’m planning to give up any time soon, but I need to be realistic about the amount of time I can spend on the blog.

The next batch of ink reviews are for more sombre, businesslike inks. Maybe the choice reflects my state of mind, and a couple of inks will be a challenge to review and keep the momentum going. Just inking up the pens and doing short writing tests show that I will have trouble finding positive things to say about some of them. However, my long term aim is to review every ink that I have in my collection, so I can’t shirk the ones that will be a slog. I will say that there is also an ink in this batch that I really like – so it’s swings and roundabouts to an extent.

One other thing that I should mention is that a pen manufacturer has kindly offered to loan me a few pens to review. The pens should arrive over the next couple of weeks and when they do I will interrupt the ink reviews to concentrate on the pens. More details will follow when the pens arrive.

The post Update 25, October 2014 appeared first on Stationary Journey.

The most recent batch of ink reviews is now complete, and the best performers proved to be Noodler’s La Couleur Royale and Noodler’s Tiananmen. These will definitely form part of my rotation in the future.

The next batch of reviews should start in a week or two’s time.

I have also created a new set of pages showing my reviews as alphabetical lists for ease of reference. The Reviews page is accessible through the menu. There are also child pages which list just the Ink Reviews and Pen Reviews. More will be added when I start to carry out different types of reviews.

The post Update 25 August, 2014 appeared first on Stationary Journey.

What happened to the mega-pen review of eight pens promised in a previous update? We know what’s paved with good intentions, and the review relied on my buying a replacement nib for one of the pens. I’ve has a few personal issues recently which indicate it wouldn’t be a good idea to have any unnecessary spend for the time being, so the pen review has had to go on hold for the moment.

Instead I’m starting off another batch of ink reviews (yes, Noodler’s again) and these should appear over the next couple of weeks. The same issues that have cut down my pen spend have also reduced the time available to blog, so the frequency of posting will be reduced too. When I can give more details on what has been going on I will.

The post Update July 27, 2014 appeared first on Stationary Journey.

After the flurry of activity at the end of May, things may have appeared quiet again. That was just real life (mostly work) intervening again, which it will continue to do over the next week, so this update will be short.

I have managed to achieve one thing though. After trying to persuade myself myself that I not should try to fix the Flickr plugin which stopped the Inkpourium images being embedded properly, I finally gave in and had a go. What’s more, I actually succeeded, so it’s all working again. I learnt more in the process about WordPress shortcodes and the Flickr API than I ever wanted to, but at least it got the job done. My OCD is now satisfied – it was getting seriously on my nerves.

Doing four ink reviews in one go went as well as I had hoped, and I plan to do the same in the near future – with no less than five inks this time around. The featured image above this post is a heavy handed clue that this will be a “Noodlerfest”. Once this week is out of the way I should be able to crack on with that. After that the next step will be another pen review, or I should say a review of eight pens in one go. Yes, eight pens – that wasn’t a typo, but I’m not giving any clues about what the pens will be.

There won’t be a “Recent Links” post this week (mainly because I haven’t been reading enough online recently to justify one), but I have started adding links for the suppliers I use regularly on the Resources page. It’s only a small number to start with, but more will follow.

The post Update June 8, 2014 appeared first on Stationary Journey.

This has been a busy week. First I had a long weekend and last Monday had a trip to the Horniman Museum and Gardens. A new album has been uploaded. An interesting museum, excellent gardens and the biggest white rabbit I’ve ever seen. Plus proof positive that mattri are not confined to Walthamstow.

The Pilot Capless from Cult Pens arrived and I have been using it for a few days. I had planned to write my first pen review today based on my findings. All the writing samples are done, but the photos are poor – too many shadows. I would have had more luck taking photos of a black cat in a coal cellar. Only the one on the left came close to being usable, and even the focus on that could be better. The remaining photos would have given a false impression of the pen, so I need to try again and won’t be able to do that until next weekend. Hopefully the results will be better next time.

The post I’m Late, I’m Late appeared first on Stationary Journey.

A (roughly) weekly summary of posts I’ve bookmarked to Delicious.

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey | Typeset In The Future
2. Crazed Ferrets in a Berkeley Shower – 2014 edition « blather.michaelwlucas.com
   via Published articles
3. Field Notes Colors Edition Update and Why I Now Like Orange… | edjelley.com
   via Published articles
4. Ink Review: Diamine Oxblood — Ionsomnia
   via Published articles
5. Pilot Iroshizuku – Asa Gao (Morning Glory)Made You Ink | Made You Ink
   via Published articles

The post Recent Links February 2, 2014 appeared first on Stationary Journey.

Google shows lots of images of the old and new bus stations, but there are pages devoted to the old station and the new station.

The old station is a creature of its time and looks very shabby, but then that what happens when buildings aren’t well maintained and allowed to rot. I’m not sure replacing a dated cliché with a modern cliché is that much of an improvement, especially when the new one appears to be functionally worse than its predecessor. The old station stood more than 40 years – while I probably won’t be around in another 40, I have a sneaking suspicion that the new station won’t be either.

While in Hanley I was able to treat myself to a visit to a fine example of a old-school bookshop – Webberley’s – which has recently celebrated its centenary. It’s actually more than just a bookshop, and it was always the place to get art supplies etc that no one else seemed to stock, long before they were just a few clicks away on the internet. The room full of jigsaw puzzles is almost overwhelming and I already regret not coming away with the Stoke-on-Trent version on Monopoly. I did come out with a couple of books that I doubt I would have found on the shelves anywhere else, and a Pilot Parallel Pen Set for a bargain price. To be fair the nearby Waterstones is better than many, but if Webberley’s were ever to close, it would be a tragedy.

I’ll finish with one further example of granite, concrete and steel design (hereafter abbreviated to “GCS”). I will preface this by saying that I have nothing against this style of design per se, other than it is now overused in a way that’s often unsympathetic to the location – in many cases real granite (shipped from China or not) may not even be present (or steel for that matter) but most readers will know the style I mean. This is one of the entrances to Hanley’s Central Forest Park, a place that’s has lots of changes over the years (I’m showing my age now but I can remember when it first opened). The entrances were less grandiose back then, but I suppose this is meant to be the gateway from the City Centre, so justifies something more elaborate now. I actually quite like it.

The post Granite, Concrete and Steel appeared first on Stationary Journey.

My first attempt at creating a link summary using Delicious Curator.

1. FPGeeks | Mandatory Reading: Blotting Out the Truth – The Remarkable Origin Story of L. E. Waterman and His Pen Company
2. Word Notebooks Blue Floral Review | THE UNROYAL WARRANT
3. How to read blogs efficiently with a feed reader » sacha chua :: living an awesome lifesacha chua :: living an awesome life
4. We have all written this sentence
5. Private Reserve Orange Crush Ink Review | edjelley.com
6. Ink Drop: November 2013 | The Well-Appointed Desk

The post Recent Links January 28, 2014 appeared first on Stationary Journey.

I’m not impressed with the way WordPress manages links, so it comes as no surprise that this feature is now deprecated in new installs. If there was any easy way to categorize batches of links quickly I would have finished by now.

In putting the page together I had to set up a page template and a custom theme (the latter because the Jetpack Custom CSS editor wouldn’t play nice). Now both are done I suppose it will be easier to make my own modifications in future.

According to the Internet, this is a Lifestyle Blog, rather than a Niche Blog. Also according to the Internet (and I’m paraphrasing now), if you want to be read, then you should set up a Niche Blog and not a Lifestyle Blog. This is a tremendous relief. I’d hate to think anyone was actually reading this.

The post Resources Page appeared first on Stationary Journey.

I enjoy messing around with computers and other technology. Microsoft has managed to simultaneously create the worst version of Windows ever, along with the worst version of Office, so one day I may write all that down – but only when I can bring some coherence to the rant. I’ve dabbled with Macs, but have never been impressed enough to make the switch. I’ve fiddled with Linux and set up servers running OpenBSD (yes, it’s obscure, but now is not the time to explain) – so HOWTOs may follow. When it comes to phones I’m happy with Android, although if that didn’t exist I’d probably use an iPhone and be happy with it – I just prefer to use the operating system that allows me most flexibility, and for me that’s Android, even if that means spending more time configuring things that most people would want to do. So if I find useful stuff on Android it may crop up here. I have no illusions about Google – at the moment I use their services as a necessary evil. I’ve spent too much time playing computer games, and still dabble from time to time, but if and until Valve release Half Life 2 Episode 3 don’t expect to see much on games here.

I take a lot of photos, mostly as visual notes for work, but also of anything that I spot on my travels. Photography used to be a serious hobby of mine, and I have a large number of 35mm slides that I plan to scan one day. When that happens they will feature here. A long time ago I turned my number one hobby – gardening – into my work, and over the years that has meant I’ve wanted to spend less of my leisure time one it. However, as many of the photos I take are of horticultural subjects, that’s how this interest will manifest here.

I like Movies and TV, mostly Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Crime Dramas, so they will make an appearance. I spend a lot of time listening to music (classical and contemporary) so that may feature too – some videos have already been posted. I don’t read as much as I should, but as completing a book is a Big Thing for me it could prompt me to post here.

“Procrastination is the Thief of Time” – and to avoid my time being stolen I have invested substantial amounts of it looking at ways of improving my personal productivity. I’m still waiting for the investment to pay off, but I have picked up some useful tips on the way, and they may feature here too. One unexpected consequence of looking into efficient ways of pulling together information has been to rediscover the seductive charms of pens, ink and paper. My Pinterest account is a bit of a giveaway on that, and there will posts on this subject. I’m not sure I’m glad I fell down that particular rabbit hole.

As more posts appear, so will the Categories and Tags, which are shown at the foot of the site. RSS feeds for both categories and feeds are available at http://stationaryjourney.com/category/name-of-category/feed and http://stationaryjourney.com/tag/name-of-tag/feed respectively. If you are clever enough to be using an RSS reader you should be able to work out what to do. With the mention of RSS comes the opportunity to take a pop at Google for shutting down Google Reader (I now use Tiny Tiny RSS) so here is the obligatory Downfall video:

The post What will I be posting about? appeared first on Stationary Journey.