"Hey Google"

 

The Author at work with writing slope and ink pen, 2014

"Hey Google"

Unfortunately, and for reasons explained in this post, I have made the decision to discontinue posts for the foreseeable future. 

As my new posts are no longer being indexed by Google as they were in the past, it appears to be a futile exercise to continue posting which is all quite demoralizing. While it would appear that I have a small 'hard core' of followers, readership of my latest posts quickly drops off to almost zero which was never the case in the past. This means that the considerable effort to research and write posts, and in some cases even buying and sourcing additional items to fully illustrate posts, is simply not worth the effort nor the expense. While I would never class my posts as 'academic', I have endeavoured to write varied and interesting content aimed at a general audience and which, in an effort to hold reader interest, was hopefully not mired in excessive irrelevant detail or intellectual phrases and wording. And the one thing that almost instantly makes me cease reading any post is being faced with a lengthy transcript from a publication, most of which is irrelevant when a small transcript woven into the narrative would have been perfectly adequate.  

The odd thing in relation to my Blog is that Google continues to re-direct searches to my site but only for older posts, most of which do remain indexed. Manual efforts to have my more recent posts indexed using the 'Google Search Console' have all, bar one notable but inexplicable exception, failed and I find this all rather perplexing. Error codes like referencing "canonical tags" is just confusing when I am not doing anything differently to before. This "issue" may very well be affecting other Bloggers but I simply do not know. And in some cases, I am aware that Google "search budget" allocations mean that once you reach a pre-set limit it can prove extremely difficult to have additional funding allocated to your specific site, this being based on various algorithms.    

Having also, till a few years ago, been an active poster to an historical based Facebook site I 'pulled the plug' on that site due to different reasons. In that case the main reason was that "keyboard warriers" could not help themselves by commenting on posts and twisting the narrative to suit their own agendas or putting things into a modern day context as well as tersely (and publicly) reprimanding me for the slightest error with no thanks for the effort taken to actually research and write the post. The so called "error" was usually quoting from a published secondary source which in itself was incorrect. But also, my own images were being ripped off and used by opposition sites that provided (and continue to provide) low quality reader content. So, in that case everyone who desired to read quality researched pictorial posts with some actual context were the losers. 

As for myself, after I finish completing some time consuming and expensive home renovation work I shall commence the high resolution scanning and cataloguing of my post 1974 colour negatives which are all 35mm and, where not too faded, also the corresponding original prints. Colour dyes change over time and some of the the original prints are fading, some earlier ones already to the point of no return, so it will be a very worthwhile exercise, where possible, to copy both mediums while this is still a realistic option. 

In hindsight taking colour slides would perhaps have been a more stable medium - but only if those had been Kodachrome. Other slide filmstock has proven, in varying degrees, to be very unstable over the last 40 to 50 years. This perfectly illustrates the perfect minefield that colour photography has proven to be over the last few decades. But at least I did have the good sense to preserve the original negatives so hopefully I can at least resurrect some of my lost and faded images. I have however, already noted that age degradation in the colour dyes on the older negatives does not provide the same colour balance as the original print, even with the Epson scanner "Colour Restoration" function. The "Silverfast" bundled software that also came with the scanner is designed to provide further colour restoration enhancement based on the brand and type of photographic stock but as yet I have not experienced any improvement so it may require some considerable trial and error. With the best image scan possible it will, however, probably need further work in 'Photoshop' to provide any further image enhancement but this can be done later or on an 'as required' basis. 

But based on the shoe box I hold of roughly dated and identified negatives, and quite frankly I have no idea exactly how many, this will no doubt prove to be a minimum two to three year winter months project. Having completed the cataloguing of my family photographic collection, being a roughly five year project and numbering over 8,000 images, this has already proven of immesurable benefit in that it now saves me a huge amount of time searching and with far less likelihood of missing any relevant images. While images in this collection will only be scanned when needed, black and white photos and negatives are generally fairly stable and, when correctly stored, are not likely to suffer rapid degradation as in the case of colour photos and negatives. Thus, with time on my side the inherently unstable colour prints and negatives are now my priority so I shall digitize these while this is still a realistic option.

So, with a fair amount of scanning and cataloguing work ahead of me, I can only try and turn my 'Google' woes into a positive in that it now gives me unrestricted time to devote to this new project.

On that note, I thank my 'hard core' of followers for their interest in my Blogs and perhaps, at a future unknown date, I may be able to resume such posts. I still receive occasional feedback on my older posts and will be happy to hear from any readers with questions, comments or additions to any of my posts.