These Flickr Things

I am ready to be done with the Flickr challenges. I think that the same minds that create and enjoy these kinds of games are the descendants of people who, in less technical times, would have been craftspeople. They would have been building furniture or knitting pullovers. They are like bees, driven by some innate instinct to make stuff, occupy their time productively. It's a force that is admirable. But I don't want to make any more little doohickeys, not even digital ones. By the way, it seems like this exercise (6) doesn't work if you try to upload EPS or TIFF files. Stick with JPGs. I figured that out after my first couple of trading cards didn't download but just disappeared. I do understand that if millions of people are doing this, it behooves me to have some passing familiarity with it, but I think I'd better go back and get a familiarity with some other things that passed me by. I never made my own wine, for example, or learned to dance. I'm not sure that I fully embrace a world in which so much contact and experience is mediated by technology. I must try to find the positives.

Thing 6

Flickr 5 Thing

So, I've spent about one hour 30 minutes here trying to make sense out of number 5. Some of the tools didn't seem to have a product that I could post. I've been toggling back and forth like a madman. I haven't felt quite this stupid since being introduced to differentiated equations when I was 12 years old. One of the problems with this kind of learning is that there's nobody to provide advice. I can't put my hand up and say "Please Sir." The tone of the email from our masters today seemed to be "You're all stupid. Just get on with it." That's basically what my math teacher told me as well. Consequently a life of letters. Oh well. I have a sneaking suspicion that what I have planned to be a daring exposure of flesh on my blog will instead be another little question mark. Or not.

More WIth This Flickr Thing

Okay. Since taking somebody else's photo didn't work too well, let's try one from the account I just created. Here's a picture of the front of the St. Cloud Public Library.

Oops. I guess that didn't go too well, either. More question marks. I'm spending way too much time on this. Overall pleasure and satisfaction with online activity is decreasing by the hour. Maybe one of the defining characteristics of people who really get into this is that they like a challenge.

The Next Flickr Thing

All right. I get to post a photo somebody took. Let's see. Well, how about this picture of the Spice Girls taken by somebody who identifies himself as emutree. They've always been favorites of mine. Come on girls, tell me what I want.

Oh. I don't think this is supposed to work this way. I think the photo is supposed to be here. Instead, there's a question mark. Click on the question mark and you get to emutree's Flickr page. Where did I go wrong?

Thing 3: Not really simple

This was a very frustrating Thing to do. The instructions were not clear and complete. I didn't know if I was supposed to be setting up new accounts (email and blogging) or entering information from existing accounts. The interfaces didn't clearly explain to me in sequential order what I should be doing. I've wasted a lot of time backtracking and re-entering information. Yuck! This is one reason why I don't embrace new technologies, even though I can see how it might be useful to get certain kinds of news delivered to me without my having to go seek it.
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