Portrait of the old man as a blogger

First of all, let me apologize for my column’s absence from last week’s paper. I take full responsibility for this and I hereby vow to do my best to see that this doesn’t happen again.

Because of the regrettable lapse, I have become a blogger. And on my newly created blog is that missing column. If anyone would like to see what they missed, let me direct them to http://edispilfehtmorf.blogspot.com/, and they can read all about it. In fact, I will henceforth be posting my weekly column on this blog, along with various other musings that occur to me on occasion.

Notice one thing, that seemingly meaningless jumble of letters between the two backslashes and the period before blogspot.com is the name of my column spelled backwards.

I would like to say that I am a genius for having thought of reversing “From the Flip Side”. It does seem sort of apropos, considering the image evoked by the title, doesn’t it? But the facts of the matter are: One, I had to look up the word “genius” in order to spell it correctly; and two, the name “From the Flip Side” had already been taken, no doubt by one of my legion of fans. LOL (laugh out loud), as computer users are sometimes known to utter.

Okay, the real truth of the matter is this, I probably am the reason that name was taken. In filling in the blanks in the initial phase of creating this no-doubt-soon-to-be-widely-read blog, I was asked what I wanted to name it. Of course I went with “From the Flip Side”. Why mess with success, huh?

Having given my blog that name, though, meant that that it could not now be used in the URL. The URL, or uniform resource locator, is, in effect, your Internet address, sort an electronic P O Box. It has two parts, does the URL, the protocol identifier and the resource name. This came, by the way, courtesy of a handy web site called http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/U/URL.html. It has a much better way of telling you what I have just stumbled over, so if you really want to know what I just said, visit this site.

Upon reaching http://edispilfehtmorf.blogspot.com/ the astute reader will soon realize that anyone can become a blogger, as there, on the same page as my missing column, is a connection to www.blogger.com. By clicking on this, you are given instructions as how, you, the ordinary, everyday computer user, can join the literally uncountable number of people who have become bloggers.

This site has been put up by Google, one of the better known Internet entities. Google is well-known as one of the more successful search engines, and has even beat Bill Gates and MSN at this game.

Because of this success, it has even produced a web browser that is a competitor for Internet Explorer, called Google Chrome. I do use its services for my blog, but I am content with Internet Explorer (IE) 7, and I have even resisted, thus far, at any rate, MSN’s entreaties to upgrade to IE 8.
What the heck, I guess I am just an old-fashioned type, which is easily evidenced by my very late entry into the wide and wild world of blogging