Frequently asked questions

Here are some frequently asked questions about Dear Kitty. Some blog … well, at least things which readers of this blog might want to know but are afraid to ask 🙂

Like other features in my blog, this page is a work in progress. Probably, I will add more questions and answers.

1. What is your Internet Gravatar?

It is a photo of a red-billed firefinch, made in the Gambia. See here.

2. Why do you blog?

See here.

3. Have you ever been interviewed about your blog?

Yes. The interview is here.

4. Why this name of your blog?

For the first, Dear Kitty, part, see here.

My blog is called Dear Kitty. Some blog, as a wordplay on Blogsome, where it was originally.

Blogsome stopped in December 2011, and I had to move to WordPress.

5. Did you blog before going to Blogsome?

Yes, in January 2005 I started blogging at ModBlog. Then, a big corporation took over ModBlog. They let the ModBlog blogs go down the drain.

6. I clicked on a Dear Kitty. Some blog link, and it did not work. Why?

Maybe, a link to my old Blogsome blog which is gone by now. I have many internal links. When my blog moved to WordPress, all these URLs still linked to Blogsome. I am repairing these links. Surely, but rather slowly. They are many thousands of links. I prefer writing new posts to repairing old posts.

Thousands of old links to dearkitty.blogsome.com have to be replaced with new links dearkitty1.wordpress.com. If you do that replacement in your browser, if you get to a non-working old link, then you will probably land at the correct new link.

7. According to some bloggers, it is very sinful to change old blog posts. What is your view on this?

If I find a link which does not work, then I will replace it with a link which does work. If I discover a typo or wrong spelling, then I will correct it. I am grateful to readers pointing out such things.

There is some sense in the “don’t change old blog posts rule” in preventing bloggers from making themselves look more intelligent or prescient than they really are.

Eg, let us suppose a blogger in 2003 believed all the lies of George W. Bush and Tony Blair for starting the Iraq war.

And that that blogger today, after over a million dead Iraqi civilians, millions of injured or seriously ill Iraqi men, women and children, four million Iraqi refugees, thousands of dead United States and other soldiers, etc. later, has finally realized the Iraq war was and is wrong. And that that blogger would now destroy the evidence of his 2003 credulity; replacing it with 2013 stuff making it look like he already opposed the war in 2003. That would be untruthful. But it would be another issue than with my old blog posts.

8. There are many quotes in your blog. Usually longer quotes in italics, short quotes with : here, with hyperlink in the “here”, after them. Do you agree with all items which you quote?

Not necessarily. If I quote something, it just means that I think that it is interesting. The authors of the quoted stuff are responsible for the contents; not me.

9. Are you on Facebook?

I am not a Facebook user, as there are privacy issues with Facebook.

10. Why is your Internet name petrel41?

Petrel because of the beautiful snow petrel which I was privileged to see near Antarctica. And 41 because of a number in a street where I used to live, but don’t live any more.

11. Why is Dear Kitty. Some blog an anonymous blog?

This blog  is anonymous, because:

A. This blog is not about promoting myself as an individual. It is about things which I see, or read on the Internet, and consider to be interesting.

B. Because nazis threatening lives have easier work if they know personal details about people whom they may want to kill; as I have experienced.

12. Sometimes, you have national flags, figures and other WordPress statistics data in your blog posts. How do you do that?

A. I start Add New Post.

B. I put “Visual” mode on: if you have opened Add New Post, then on the right, under the space for writing the title text, there are two buttons: Visual and Text. You should choose Visual if you want to copy blog statistics items like flags etc. into your new blog post.

C. Then, I open “My Stats” in another tab.

D. I copy the stats from the “My stats” pages which I want to be in my new blog post.

E. I go to the Add New Post tab, to the place where I want the flags, figures etc. from the My Stats page to appear.

F. I paste these stats from the clipboard into my new blog post.

13. How about Related articles links in your blog posts?

There are three links called “Related”, at the end of WordPress blogs, made by WordPress. In my blog posts, there are also links above that, called Related articles.

These were made by Zemanta.

UPDATE November 2018: Unfortunately, Zemanta does not seem to work any more.

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