Mainly about computer things
I’ve been rather computer based this last day or so. I’m searching through the many replies I have had on People Per Hour, a site where freelancers can post their credentials for those looking for jobs to be done and where those looking for a designer (in this case) can put up what they are looking for and then see what they get in. I’ve had loads of replies for The Saddling cover designer already and shortlisted it to four, after only 24 hours. Being (usually) polite, I have written a pleasant rejection, with reasons, for those who are not suitable; many have sent in very corporate designs and covers, which are not suitable in style, while others have sent lots of covers, all very good and varied and, more importantly, creative. In a few more days, or when submissions dry up, I will have to decide. Meanwhile I’ve written pleasant holding letters to the four so far shortlisted.
While doing that, and realising I will have to come up with the ‘back blurb’ pretty smartish, I have also been marvelling at Facebook. Well, not marvelling so much but I do find myself staring at it in wonder from time to time. I notice, for example, that now it wishes me a good morning every day, for no apparent reason. Another thing that makes me laugh is when it shows up ‘people you may know’, and there’s a photo of cat, or a cartoon, or a baby. In other cases, there’s a person’s face and I look at them, and the name and think… Why? Why might I now this person? It happens that we have a mutual friend in common and that, apparently is enough for me to want to share the ins and outs of my daily life with them. It doesn’t matter that, to use Dickens, Our Mutual Friend, is a far-flung acquaintance of a school friend I’ve not seen for 35 years, lives in Dubai, and has nothing in common with me, other than they have linked up with some stray blast from the past.
Along with all that comes the way that (depending on how you use the dreaded Facebook) total strangers can invade your posts or comments. The number of times I’ve been told to ‘get over it’ recently, to do with Brexit of course. ‘You lost, deal with it.’ Yeah okay, so if you voted on something you felt strongly about and lost by the difference of 3% of the voters, on something that was only asking for your opinion that then got turned into the ‘will of the people’, you’d keep quiet and not continue to stand up for your principles? Fine, you do that. I won’t. ‘I say,’ said the leader of Poland in 1939, ‘Looks like someone’s taken over our country. Damned cheek! Not what I wanted but, hey ho! That’s how it goes, we’ll get over it.’
If you can’t stand by what you believe is right, then spend your life sitting down but don’t expect everyone to do the same.
But the reason I started mashing on about FB is that I decided to sort my posts out and, from now on, anything I share that is to do with Symi/Greece will go to the Symi Dream page. Anything I share about writing will go to the James Collins Author page and anything that’s to do with daft cats, people caught on video having accidents, politics, my personal outrage at Donut Rump, Nigel Führage, Terresa Mayday-Mayday-Mayday-CQD and those other dangerous clowns, will stay on my personal page (as long as I remember to do this). So, if, in Facebook, you only want to follow the me/Symi relationship, or the me/writing one, you don’t have to put up with my personal principals and views, unless you want to, in which case you are very welcome. And, when I say ‘you’ I mean sas as opposed to sou, vous as opposed to tu, or you as opposed to you.
While I have been chatting, I’ve had several more replies come in to my request for a book cover designer, so I best go and be nice to them and see what they have on offer. No such thing as a quiet winter here on Symi.
