April 26, 2016badfish

LIFE IS ABSTRACT

1 ZU roof 2454
The flowing roof of a building in Abu Dhabi (iPhone 6)

2 Backwater 6864
The backwaters of Kerala

 

3 RAK view 0631
The view out my window after a tall mug of 11% brew

 

4 K-shadow-train 3912
The Amtrak train stop in Albuquerque

But here’s the kicker, the real abstraction of the day. Have you ever written a post and wondered if anyone outside the WP community ever sees it? I have. I don’t spend much time, none really, looking at my stats and views for my blog. It doesn’t mean anything to me. I can’t even figure out how to use the Reader. But it seems that all the commenters on my posts are from WP groups. So the thought has crossed my mind if anyone outside WP sees my stuff.

The other day, one of my commenters mentioned a similarity between Mexico City and Katmandu: both were built on ancient lake beds, making the ground underneath unstable, and allowing earthquakes to rumble through in waves and destroy stuff on the surface. I was unaware that Katmandu was built on a lakebed. So I googled it. Get this: the first hit was from a newspaper in the UK. MY POST, the one I just wrote on Katmandu and the quake–along with my commenter’s comment–was the second hit on google. So apparently, our stuff goes somewhere in cyberspace. And even if it’s never actually read by anyone else, it could be.

5 KTM post

You can find more WP Photo Challenge entries here: Abstract

You can find more entries to Lucile’s Photo Rehab here:   Photo Rehab

You can find more entries to Sally’s Phoneography Challenge: Sally’s

 

 

 

147 comments

    • Yeah, I’m not quite sure about those tags either, and do categories act the same as tags? And of course, you’d love the shot about the 11% brew…you’re a Chippie

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    • BB–thanks, and yeah, that roof is pretty impressive, modernistic, but a little useless in real life. So I’m cool with the googler, but still don’t know how to operate the Reader. Ether star, that must mean “unseen.”

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  6. It definitely gets read by people outside the community. My most popular posts are the ones I’ve written about the history of tattoo. Some of it has even been quoted in a scientific paper, on several other websites, plus in a printed magazine.

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    • Lois…a fee! Hey, I’m beginning to like the sound of that, eh? And who doesn’t want to be a rock star…especially if I don’t have to learn how to play a guitar, or carry a tune.

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  9. I often wonder about that, too. I don’t track views and whatnot either, but sometimes I write something that I’m particularly proud of and I feel like I’m just tossing it into the ocean in hopes that someone sees it before it sinks to the bottom and dissipates on the ocean floor.

    But I imagine we all blog for many more reasons than recognition.

    Love the roof photo. Looks like an urban snake.

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  11. One of my posts about Exeter Cathedral and another with a photo of the sky have been on the first page of google images four a long time – several years ago.

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    • Gilly…man, aren’t you the STAR of the google world!!! How awesome. I guess it’s good to know that we also live in cyberspace, as well as this physical world, eh? Do I just google Exeter Cathedral? And “Gilly’s sky” to see them?

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  17. First – I love the photos, all of them, but especially Kerala. Second – I guess I knew that our stuff gets read outside of WP. I once googled altar offerings hoping to find more info and my post came up. I also once, for some reason I can’t remember now, googled the exact titles of my posts and found they’d been copy/pasted onto another site without crediting the source. I sent them a nasty email and they stopped. I sort of know my way around stats and see people are finding my site from places other than WP. Reader is seriously not that hard – it just offers another way to view the new posts of blogs you follow. There may be more to it than that, but that’s all I’ve figured out anyway.
    Alison

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    • Wow…someone copied your post! And didn’t tell you…not like reblog, but like plane plagiarism, eh.Yikes. That bothers me. I always wondered why you didn’t put your name on your photos. I don’t either, but yours are like your “thing.” But words on photos ruin the photos. The Reader, yeah, it scrolls, but it just doesn’t have any way of controlling what you see. I see people’s blogs I don’t know or follow, and not the ones I do…all in no apparent order. I think you can make your own reader section, but I don’t know how, haven’t taken the time.

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      • That’s strange about your WP Reader – mine only lists the blogs I follow. They stole loads of posts, and showed them as being from Adventures in Wonderland, as direct copies, but with no link back, and didn’t notify me.
        A.

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        • My reader, one section, shows who I follow. But the reader now looks different, I think they changed it, and I can’t figure it out.
          Appalling that someone posted your posts!! Scary, really. Doesn’t that copyright thing mean anything?

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  18. Love that roof and also your shadow person – very cool. I wonder that as well. I have some readers who are people I know from work or who I’ve met and the topic of blogging has come up. If your title and tags are good enough then you should pop up in a search. I once had someone search for something like “hands around her neck” and they came to my page!!

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  19. Believe me, Badfish, your stuff is out there! Your photos, especially if identified…I can watch spring happen around the world based on what old posts people are looking at (container gardening, building a pea trellis from bamboo, straw bale gardening…). And then there are the pictures the Thai’s seem to like (of Italian gardens) and (I’m not kidding) the famous picture of field cress. It may also depend on how you tag things, but your blog’s out there. And good for it! Love that roof line.

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  21. WTG Dude! And I never considered that, myself. But just put in my A to Z Challenge – Dandidoo, and sure enough, I’m first on the list! How funny is that? LOL

    LOVE the pics! The one with the trees is amazing!

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    • What is WTG? And of course, you’d be first for Dandidoo. You’re like the Queen of Dandidoo, aren’t you? The photo of Kerala soothes my soul, I get a warm feeling, a nice memory, when I look at it.

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  22. Like others commented, I was in a top spot on Google with one of my posts…apparently “naked Santa” is a broad topic of discussion on the web. Huh.
    I LOVE the Albuquerque shot!

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  23. Good Work! Actually I did know but I have my links posted to LinkedIn and Twitter, so they are bound to be picked up by others, but most comments come from WP folks.

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    • Jo…I have LinkedIn account, but put nothing up there, and don’t add people to my list when they ask…because well, it’s not a list. And I just don’t understand Twitter. But may have to get more “social” in the future.

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      • Oh Baddy, you do need to utilize all those resources. You have lots of blog followers, but accepting friends on the other is easy and worthwhile. Some you’ll connect with and some not. I met this young French girl from LinkedIn who’s film was running for an academy award but didn’t make the final cut. She stayed with me a few weeks and we’ve become friends. I was able to do a background check and verify her awards and history online, so I figured a few days would be okay. She came out in Feb and only now leaving this week. She hasn’t been with me the whole time, but it gave her a place until she could find something closer to LA.

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  25. I love that first photo, both shapes and colours.

    (I don’t know whether this is the place to respond to a follow. If not apologies! Thank you for following snippetsandsnaps. However it’s in recess for a year while I’m living in Warsaw where I reside at 12monthsinwarsaw.)

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  26. Google, a curse and a blessing. I share your wonderful stuff with friends all the time because I love it and think you are something else! What a great and deserved compliment!
    (funny story. I just erased the whole thing I had written here on why Google can also be a curse….”paranoia strikes deep…into your life it will creep”…) maybe I will be brave and put it on my own dang blog…..

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    • Right…curse and blessing, I guess. Good and bad in everything. And I know what you mean about erasing everything. Someone wrote a comment, and I was in the process of writing a rather long response, and then in one second, the whole thing…her comment and my response disappeared. Couldn’t find them anywhere!! That’s the “bad” in everything.

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      • Yeah but in my google paranoia I wondered if they were monitoring me and erased it as I wrote it. I was, after all, addressing the “curse” part of the blessing and curse……..
        (twilight zone music here…) do do do do, do do do do.

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      • here’s a test for Google…my original response. Let’s see if they erase it.
        “And, I know that Google can be great for spreading material around…writing, photos, etc. But sometimes they remind me of that one girl in high school. The one who, if she got a hold of your secret, you knew you were doomed!!! Instant gossip blast, never to be reversed!
        Once I did a workshop and a comment was taken out of context and shared on a website on Google. The next thing I knew, I was being advertised as a professional in the field of arranging and facilitating the “polygamist lifestyle”!!! If you knew me or my history of “religious persecution”, this would be hysterical! I’m just saying.”

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        • I somehow missed this comment! But yes, too scary. You never know what may happen when you write something. It goes anywhere. I’m amazed at how Google keeps tabs on us. You do a search for something like an air ticket, and for the next month you keep getting ads for air tickets. spooky

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  29. Well done you deserve the recognition and this set of photos are all stunning especially the Abu Dhabi roof. As others have said I also found myself on a search I did about a small town, trying to find more info, it seems not many had written about it because I was the top of the hits.

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    • Thanks Pal…and that roof is kind of interesting to look at in a photo. Seems redundant in real life, I have to say, but still cool…if only to prove you can do such a thing. Well cool…at the top of the google hit list, maybe we should start a club! I found it interesting…

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  30. Love the image ‘the view out my window after a tall mug of 11% brew’.
    No surprise to see that people are reading your work beyond the WordPress crowd. Your posts are informative, hugely entertaining and visually delightful.
    And bringing it back to me (because it is always about me) I find my most popular posts, those that seem to go way beyond my regular readership, are about other people …street artists, photographers, sailors, or villages I have visited. It is especially cool when those that have inspired me find the posts I’ve written about them and comment on it.

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  31. Uh oh. Well, you deserve the recognition — your writing, photos and locations are superb.

    But, I am not sure I want anyone in the broader bad wide world reading my blog! I have to think about that as I really aim it for WP. That is one reason I restrict myself to reading a short-list of WP friends only.

    Scary! But, congrats.

    (Hey, I was referring to the Borgias’ underwear! Not mine. I hope you knew that. Of course you did. )

    ❤

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  32. I like the train stop picture best. As for readers from outside WordPress reading our posts. I don’t think it’s ever happened to me except on those rare occasions when I’ve been on another platform (e.g. Blogger) and left a message on someone’s site. I’d love to think someone would find me through Google, but as far as I know, it hasn’t happened yet.

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    • Thanks Bun…I like that train shot, too.
      I think we need a lesson in SEO…there has to be a trick for others to find you, somone must want to search for “buns” of one sort or another.

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  33. Congratulation to make it first page of google!! Yes.. blog posts are in the internet and searchable but not every blog post could make it to the first page of google. That is not easy to be on the google first page, so you did well!

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  34. What a cool set of photos, Badfish. Is that roof in Abu Dhabi supposed to represent a metallic sand dune? And I love the upside-down reflection (or is that right side up?) from the Keralan backwaters. You know what’s even more abstract? In your screenshot from Google, I was drawn to that fourth result, the one titled ‘Please Don’t Let An Earthquake Hit When I’m In The Shower’. Looking at the date it was published just about sent chills down my spine. It says February 25, 2015, so exactly two months before the big earthquake hit… that’s a prediction right there.

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    • James, thanks. I’m not quite sure what that roof is supposed to represent, I actually don’t like the looks of it in reality. It serves no real purpose…except to look like that. The photo from Kerala…right, it’s upside down! And funny…I also would not want a quake to hit while I was in the shower (or maybe anywhere if it was huge). You gotta wonder where that person was when it did hit?

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  36. You have a big following in the WP community. As other have said, tags are key. Categories help too, but I think tags are most important – don’t listen to me, I really don’t know.

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    • When I first started blogging, I asked about tags and categories…in a WP forum. I never got a straight answer. Seems to me like the category is more important as it states what the post is about, but if it doesn’t go out and act like a tag, then you have to use the same word in a tag, eh?

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  37. 11% huh???
    ha!
    and yes, the stuff does get read by others. I once had some poetry posts used for a poetry class at two colleges – and it really depends on tags and words within the post – but I also heard that if certain blog posts get “backlinks” – or get liked, shared, and referred – that can lead to more and more exposure for certain specific posts.
    But in my opinion – the web is the web – and with all these sophisticated search engines – well everything gets circulated. It actually freaks me out in a way – to think about how much is out there – and I am more of private person and so it still shocks me that I blog like I do- but I guess not he other hand I feel like I am an open book and I intrinsically like sharing some things in a very general way….
    oh – one more thing-
    now this is not anything I know about as I am not a techy, but I did hear some people gripe about how some search engines customize your search results – so if you put in a term, your blog would maybe come up for your results, but not necessarily for someone else’s.
    and one final thought – I think one reason why it is mostly WP folks leaving comments is because (maybe) they are already logged in and in the mode. I know I do not leave comments elsewhere (even though I might read and have comments) but it is either too hard to log in to things (and I am not on Facebook or in some of the other systems that are needed for commenting on certain pages) – and heck, I have even stopped commenting on blogs within wordpress lately because in my latest mode I actually just enjoy reading an moving on. Sometimes it is hard to write right away and switch gears after enjoying a good post (like yours are here) – and so I think there is a time to flow from reading to commenting – but other people also might prefer to stay anonymous. They will enjoy things and just want their space and privacy.
    just my thoughts on the topic you brought up –

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  38. Rest assured (or be worried) that someone outside of WordPress has found your stuff. On your stats page the “referrers” and “search terms” are interesting to look at. And yes, people outside of WordPress leave comments, but not often.

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    • Yeah, that’s what people say, but I don’t even understand the Reader, let alone all those other stats. You’ve had comments by people outside WP? That’s cool…I’m not sure I have??

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  39. I love the photo of the sharpest the station ~ it has a strong composition.

    I feel like I were good content it’s interesting and different and yet am not able to get “traction” on our blog. Look at all your comments!! I’m happy when we hit 10. I’m probably doing something ” wrong” not being a technical type, but who knows what ? Oh well, at the end of the day it’s a great “diary” of times in our journey but sometimes it’s disheartening ….

    Peta

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    • Peta…maybe this is the problem, maybe not. But when I clicked your name above to get to your site, I was not able to??? Is your site by WP? Or selfie?

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      • My site is WordPress yes!

        http://www.greenglobaltrek.com

        I’m not sure why that didn’t work .. ? That’s the problem – I am so UN technical that things go wrong all the time and I don’t know how to fix them. Insert big sigh here! 😬
        Ohhh it’s probably cause the email I use on here is not linked to my site DOH! Ok am gonna try the one that IS linked and see if that works? Why did I start using a new email address ? Because my original kind would not let me sign up as a follower on blogs!!!!

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        • Peta…this one works, it takes me right to your blog. This may be one reason people don’t end up at your blog! I can get to your blog if I click it, but not from your response, so…..I don’t know what that means. email may be the answer

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  40. I love the photo of the shadow – the composition is so strong

    Imitating be doing something wrong as I find it hard to get my blog “out there”. I’m happy if we get 10 comments. I know the content is good – well written, unique, different perspective etc. but I feel like my blog is hiding in the shadows.

    At the least its a good record of our journey.

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    • Peta…I know what you mean. And I can help. I have the secret to getting out of the shadows as a travel blogger. No matter where you go—sure, talk about the food, especially the searching out for the best croissant in Paris, but—write about poop. That’s my theory, and I’m sticking to it.

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  43. Great photography! I love the first abstract. That’s wonderful that you’re seeing your blog on their on a search engine. I look forward to reading about your travels.

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  44. Hi there Bad Fish, I find it annoying that so many of the hits that reach my blog are for “unknown search terms”. Love to know what got hammered into the keyboard to hit my pages. Well done to being found and thanks for finding my own blog too 😎 Not only that but placing a follow upon my pages 😳 Now just how cool is that ❄️Let me hop onto your about page and take the tour that bit further my good man, MM 🍀

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