The Skull Cinema

The Blogger posts body is the working area for the Posts page, it is essentially a file list of the posts on the blog. The data on each post is split into two sections. The left hand side group starts with a checkbox to select individual posts. After which the function buttons of the posts navbar (the group above the post names) can operate on the selected posts. The title of the post and any labels applied are displayed next. Below that are three options for working on the post, Edit , View and Delete . The Edit function opens the post in the Blogger post editor, View will load the blog at the point that the post was made, and Delete removes the post from the blog. On the right hand side are four data points associated with each post, the author log‑on name, the number of comments made on the post, the number of page views the post has received, and the date that the post was published or last edited. Overall the data is presented well, but I can image that...

Labels are Blogger's way of allowing a user to divide posts into different categories. They appear at the end of a post as a hyperlink that, when clicked, will present a set of posts with similar content. They aren't indexed for search engine purposes, but are there to provide readers with a way to focus in on other posts that they are interested in, rather than reading through a blog that is displayed in date order. The labels can also be read by a Gadget (a program that will present blog-related information, usually in a side bar or footer) to create a list or word cloud of the labels. But that is a further set of tools that I don't want to get into yet. There aren't really any rules as to how to choose or present the labels. But the rule of thumb seems to be, not too many words per label and not too many labels per post; generally no more than 3 of each. Adding your first label First select the post you want the label to be applied to. Then hit...

Below the Blogger dashboard header lies the posts navigation bar . It contains functions associated with moving around the list of your posts and some basic operations for working with posts. The bar is split into an upper and lower rank. The buttons for basic posts operations are grouped together on the left hand side. On the top rank is a New post button that will take you straight into the post editing screen. Next to that is the user name that you are currently logged into Blogger with. The first button on the lower rank allows you to select all posts (even though the tool tip says ' Select all comments '). The next button allows you to label or tag posts that you have selected (more on that later). The Publish , Revert to draft and Bin buttons will act on all selected posts in the posts body. The right hand side of the posts navbar groups together the navigation tools for your blog posts. The upper rank allows the selection of a subgroup ...

The header of the Blogger dashboard has been designed to conform to the style of the Google suite of apps. Starting on the left hand side of the bar there are two elements. The Blogger logo will, once you are logged in, take you back to the Posts page of the last blog that you posted from. The current page of the dashboard is displayed after the pipe , as demonstrated below for the Posts, Comments and Theme pages. On the right hand side of the bar there are two icons These are the standard Google interface controls that pop up the Google apps box and the log-on box for your Google account. That is the entirety of the header bar, plain and simple (and easy to use). The next post will cover the Posts nav bar .

I wanted to title this post Control Panel Confusion, but apparently the interface isn't a Blogger control panel it's a dashboard. Oh well, 😞 . Having got to ten posts on the blog, it's about time to start investigating the interface in a bit more depth to see what other features area available beyond the basic editing and posting tools. A web search yielded quite a few pages but most of them are written from the 'oh it's new' (it was in 2016 ), or 'this is how you get started ', or 'this is how you do this ' points of view. But there didn't seem to be a dissection of the whole system from a 'this is what all the buttons do' point of view. Here is my attempt. Let's start with an overview of the dashboard. On opening Blogger (and if you are signed into your Google account) you will be taken to the dashboard of the last blog that you posted from. I have broken the content down into five sections and will look at each in ...

For me the term power station always conjures up images of monster buildings with attached chimneys and cooling towers. But times are changing. Over the last 5 years the decrease in coal powered generation in the UK has been dramatic; falling from 42% to 6% of power generated, an 86% decrease. From the charts it appears that we are soon to have quarters with no coal generation. In the weekly data for the past year this decrease is even more marked. During the summer months, when electricity demand falls by about 20% and solar generation becomes more active, there were weeks during which coal only provided 0.26% of total generation, and the UK had 1,898 coal-free hours during 2018 ( ie almost 80 days). So, to start with the basic questions. How many are left? Where are they? What size are they? Who owns them? How are they planning to deal with the increasing pressure to decarbonise electricity generation in the UK? As usual Wikipedia has the answer , that being sev...

Now the blog has reached 10 posts I have been through enough cycles to have a blog post creation process sort of worked out. Step 1 - 1 st draft text The initial drafts are written into OneNote , as that is the application that I use to organise most things. I could just as easily use word processing software ( Word , Google Docs , etc .) or even any old text editor , as formatting isn't crucial at this point. The aim of the game is to get the words onto paper (equivalent) and not worry about what it looks like. Any hyperlinks are put inside square brackets in the text so they can be copied and pasted into place in the second draft. Step 2 - 1 st draft graphics Most posts seem to be coming along with images, and this is unlikely to change unless I suddenly discover a literary bent (and am simultaneously and miraculously blessed with some ability to write fancy like). At the moment the graphics are a mix of photographs and screen grabs. The aim is to source the correct ...