Imagine my surprise when I jumped on to make a quick post for tomorrow about the ‘Trick or Treat Bonanza’ going on all month, which I’m a part of. What do I see? This white void with no personality and the interface of a handless, all blade ginsu knife that’s covered in acid. First of all:
WHY DOES THE CALENDAR GO FROM MONDAY TO SUNDAY INSTEAD OF SUNDAY TO SATURDAY?
Yeah! It’s small and petty, but calendars don’t go that way. If I’m scheduling something for Sunday, I will look to the far left of the calendar. NOT THE FAR RIGHT! Oh, and thank you for putting a ‘classic editor’ option on the bottom that does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! Not unless I want to upgrade to a business account for $201 extra bucks a year. I have the classic toolbar here, but I’m still writing in such a sterile, white void that I can feel my soul leaving my body. Facebook did something similar too. Was there a memo that went out saying humans do better when there is less color and personality to what they’re looking at? I think I saw something about ‘distraction free’. The fuck were the distractions here? The toolbars and menus that I actually used? Were those really nothing more than decorations that I wasn’t supposed to be paying attention to, WordPress? Please tell me that aliens took over and thought this was a good idea because no functional human would think this is an upgrade. Removing color is what the sun does to pretty things, which forces us to throw them in the garbage. There’s no word count on these posts either, is there? Oh, it’s the ‘i’ in a circle that I have to go out of my way to click on, which is totally NOT as big a distraction as glancing down at the bottom of the screen. You know, this white void is even worse than I realized. I’m getting a headache as I write this. When I looked away, there were black spots in my vision for a few seconds. Think this sets off some light sensitivity, especially when I’m starting out. Utter nightmare!
Well, I didn’t expect that rant to happen, but it had to be done. Honestly, I’m writing this on Thursday while my allergies take a break from slowly suffocating me. Damn pollen. It’s really bad because I was inside for most of the spring and summer, so my resistance is down. This is not the year to have a sniffling, coughing issue while working in a school. Not to mention I keep checking my temperature to be safe, including one genius move when I did it 5 seconds after drinking a hot cup of tea. It was 100.4 on two thermometers and I flipped out until my dad got the forehead one to work, which said I was fine. I mentioned the tea, realized what had happened, and walked back to my room in shame.
Work was busy with a lot of people needing to use the testing center. My years of being a cubicle monkey is helping with keeping the paperwork side of things organized and problem solving as I go. I’m still enjoying the time I get with the students who keep me on my toes. I think some of them (or all) have each created their own game with me to see what reaction they can get. This is what makes me really happy to be there because these kids are so amazing in their own unique ways. Helps the day go faster as well, which is always a plus.
My son is back as of Saturday and he’s been keeping me busy. Monday was Yom Kippur, so I was fasting while he was munching away next to me. 9 hours of playing ‘Castlevania: Symphony of the Night’ with him helping out when my fingers were tired and we were in an easier section. He still goes charging into bad guys, but this is a game where that gets you hurt. Hit points and limited lives are foreign to him unless they’re done like Super Smash, which doesn’t help here. Aside from this, it’s been all schoolwork and homework. The latter made a big jump, so afternoons were all work and no play. We get the weekend at least with some pumpkin stuff being tossed into the works.
(Gets lost among the blocks . . . Wait . . . Where did the second block come from? If I could transform into Clyde, I’d get my vengeance.)
I didn’t get any writing done, but I’m a part of ‘Trick or Treat Bonanza’ for this month with the last two ‘Nytefall’ books being a part of it. If I can figure out the block thing then I’ll post more about it, but this is testing my patience. Nothing else happened with writing though. War of Nytefall: Eulogy is inching along, but it’s more of a mystery than an action book, so I have a lot of talking and searching parts. The last chapter I did was entirely around Clyde having doubts about his own abilities because things are falling apart. I’m about to hit the part where the body count jumps and all the secrets are revealed too. Barring any other things going on, I could feasibly write 4 chapters during the next time my son is with his mom. Probably be 2 though. Wait . . . Columbus Day is off, so that gives me an edge. I’m really just talking to myself here, huh? Allergies and exhaustion are taking their toll.
Dang. I forgot to ask if I could mention something here, so it’ll have to wait until next week. Let’s see. Did I mention that I built a chidori for my son’s Kakashi costume?
The costume was store bought and the first thing he did was strike the Chidori (lightning attack) pose. So, I had to make one before he came back from being with his mom. Not that bad considering my artistic ability isn’t very good. Aside from all that, I’ve been watching ‘D.Gray-Man’ and finally hit episodes I hadn’t seen before. That’s really it for this busy week. Time for the list!
Goals of the week:
- Enjoy time with son when I can get it.
- Work hard when I have to.
- Hopefully finish the last short story outline for a future collection.
- Continue cursing block editing. (I guess the phrase is now ‘if it ain’t broke, made it bland as fuck’.
- Watch more D.Gray-Man.
- Try to put the usually music video at the top of this post. Can I move the blocks?
- Get the allergies under control.
- Write more War of Nytefall: Eulogy. Should be higher, but you never know. Almost time to return another cast, I guess.
Legends of Windemere 
To quickly get to the Classic Editor, adapt and save the result of this link to your browser favourites, Charles: https://***YOUR BLOG NAME***.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post-new.php?classic-editor
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Thanks. I’ll give it a try next time I’m on my laptop.
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👍😃
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I’ll try that as well. Do I need to include the asterisks?
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No – just insert annabellefranklinauthor 🤗
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Let me know if it works for you too, Annabelle 🤗
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Yay! It works! Thanks, Chris! 🙂
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GREAT – Welcome, Annabelle 👍🤗
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Just got to try it. It definitely will help out. Looks like it brings up the classic to use through a back door or something. I lose it if I leave it at any point though. So, I can’t update posts using this from what I can tell. Certainly helps me get new posts done though. Kind of curious how this exists.
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Hi, Charles,I’ve explained it at: https://thestoryreadingapeblog.com/2020/10/02/block-to-classic-editor-alert-for-sight-impaired-or-sighted-but-confused-wordpress-bloggers/
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Thanks.
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I woke up to the same block shock. I searched everywhere for the Classic return hit button. No such luck. The costume is awesome and the Chidori is terrific.
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Thanks. I found a classic toolbar if you hit the plus sign and scroll through options that appear on the left. There was a link for classic editor mode too, but it didn’t work. The plugin requires a service upgrade of around $200.
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Can you say sons of bitches?
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Very easily. I’ll type it too.
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😬
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It sounds like they’re deliberately making it terrible, to make you cough up the extra money, and upgrade. That reminds me of this funeral business I heard of, where they deliberately painted the most affordable coffin an ugly pea soup and bile green, to make customers feel like they have no better choice, but to get an expensive coffin.
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That could be it, but they’re praising this a lot too. I wonder if they sunk a bunch of money into this thing, so they feel obligated to force it. Interesting how they forced us into it about a month after Facebook did the same.
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😬
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I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, but I don’t find the block editor as annoying as everybody else seems to. The main thing that bugs me is that most of the time, there is no Categories space. Very occasionally it appears. I’ve noticed many of other people’s posts are ‘uncategorised’, so I suspect it’s general. Also, occasionally, when I’ve been adding tags, the whole ‘tags’ space disappears and won’t come back, losing the tags I’ve added. And I can’t add the tags I’ve already used elsewhere. Yes, they appear, but if I click on them to add them, I lose the whole lot of tags. Again, it won’t always come back.
I’ve just remembered something else. When I ‘press’ someone else’s blog, the link either doesn’t appear, or doesn’t work. And I can’t reblog as the reblog button doesn’t work! Has anyone else found this?
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I see the category space on the right, but it has to be opened. Same with tags. You don’t just see it all there anymore. I find it annoying because I seem to be clicking around more just to get things started. Not having most used tags there pisses me off too. Again, it means it takes longer to do the setup. The boxes don’t have clear borders too, so it’s just a section of the void that I happen to be writing on. It sounds like there are tons of glitches and I haven’t run into them. My issue is becoming more that the appearance is giving me a really bad headache and occasional vertigo. It’s not like the white page of Word where there’s enough color variety on the screen for my senses to be okay. This is like the light you’re not supposed to go into unless you’re done living.
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Lots of people have been having this problem. Love costume for your son!
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Thanks. He’s really happy with the costume too.
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Start a new post with the f*n block editor, name it, save it as a draft. Go back to your /admin page, click on “posts” you will see a list of your posts, find the one you just created, and PAY ATTENTION to THIS… mouse over the title of your post. You will see these choices below: Edit, Classic Editor, Quick Edit, Copy, Trash, Preview.
Obviously, you will click on “CLASSIC EDITOR” and live happily ever after. 😀
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Thanks. I’ll try it. Though, it’s feeling like I’m going to have to add a bunch of steps to get around this mess.
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My app went to the block editor a while ago. I’ve figured a few things out, but it’s maddening. Many of my posts are just words now, because doing anything fun is a pain. I can still get to the old editor to left justify a book cover or something along those lines. This is a perfect example of someone justifying his or her job. They create a new monstrosity to keep the employer happy with no regard for the end user.
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It definitely comes off as a change for no reason other than justifying an existence. It took me 5 minutes to figure out the justification part. Today’s post was a nightmare. The larger lettering originally overlapped because the spaces between lines were for regular-sized lettering. I had to hit enter until they weren’t touching, which is why the post is so small.
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Ah, yes. The unheralded format change. Took me a bit to get used to it.
Love your son’s Naruto costume!
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Thanks. Really hoping he can use the costume. Trick or treating is iffy now.
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I wish they’d stop changing everything. Sounds like the WordPress changes are even more annoying than the Blogger ones. Anyway, sorry I’m so late in here, and hope this week is turning out to be a better one for you than last week was.
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What did they do on Blogger? This week has been rough and exhausting. Think all of them are going to be for a while.
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They made most things have to work with dropdown menus… My screen reader hates those. They also changed how adding images and things work, changed how you add labels to your posts, etc. It’s a bunch of small things, but they all add up to make things more complicated for me to work, so it takes me a lot longer to do a post, and more difficult for me to be sure things are arranged how I want them in the post. Plus, it’s lucky I took advantage of a deal back in April, or JAWS (my screen reader) wouldn’t have been able to work with it, as I found out accidentally when I forgot I hadn’t removed the old JAWS from my computer, the wrong version got opened, and it was insisting it was too out of date to do anything.
Anyway, sorry you’re having another bad week.
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Sounds like a lot of companies are doing ‘if it’s not broke, break it’. All of this sounds rather unnecessary.
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Agreed.
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