Menoducational; just a wee geek-peek

As you are aware, there have been grumblings around the 'hood about the onset of slow publishing of comments. Reading around the place, I think it took about a week of frustration for everyone to realise that it wasn't because their own computers were playing up, but that it was an online trub.

Specifically, it appeared to be confined to those comments forms which were 'embedded' in Blogger blogs. As I had belatedly pointed out at the start of this week, it did not seem to affect the pop-out box format. Although a couple of folks reckoned they also had trouble with those, I think their's may have been a separate cause to the wide-spread one which was going on. What did become apparent is that it appeared to date from the time of a Windows update. I cannot confirm that as I am one of those who stayed with Windows 7. However, given that a great many other minor complaints have arisen since the advent of Win10, it wouldn't surprise me. Very often, one or other issue can appear like a one-off, but is, in fact, part of a broader problem.

When I was programming (yes, last century), programs were still discrete pieces of software which had to be complete and integrated and all bugs removed before going live. There was no choice because to patch 'after the fact' was a major task - and an expensive one for the customer. If users wanted variations to what was available, then 'modules' were written to the original program and again, rigorously tested.

In the modern age of 'coding', the whole thing is patchwork! Applications (all those things which used to be separate and discrete programs) are nothing more, really than 'plug-ins' to the great big operational program in the sky cloud. The OS is the actual program, everything else just sits on top of it. Mobile technology sparked the move down this street, and now all our computers are trying to be 'smart'.

Which is fine, except that when the neighbour down the block decides to build a new extension to their home, they tend to forget that there will be effects upon all buildings attached to the block, even the furthest away. Cracks can appear from nowhere if proper and diligent care is not taken. When the block contains 87000 homes, the knock-on effects are not always revealed directly, either. Some take months to reach the other end and manifest. Then, what can happen, is that the original cause is missed and diagnosis is wrong; mould is sought and treated instead of insulation or structural underpinning.

The modern tech scene is such that we can expect a lot more 'anomalies' in our systems than we have ever been used to because we no longer have independent control of our machines. Even the much-lauded Linux rebellion is starting to show similar issues because there are far too many fingers tapping in the undergrowth.

Then there is the thing that, regardless of how much testing is done, there will always be something different when things go live. Which is why some apps now have 'beta' operations; live but still testing and taking in user feedback.

My point, if indeed there be one, is that nothing will ever be 100% anymore. This is a fact we will have to deal with. There will be periods where it appears so, but they won't last. We can moan and groan and attempt to move homes, but all that will happen is the same stuff in a different place. As well as the 'stuff' which pertains specifically to that home.

Some have been shifting home because, they say, they have been prevented from uploading images to their blog. This is not a general system problem and is entirely unrelated to the comments issues, but because it was happening at the same time, there was the tendency to 'misdiagnose'. (I hasten to add, this is educated guessing on my part, based on reading many blogs, many help forums and various articles on the matter.) There is a possibility that the Win update affected this for some users also, but the chances of that being piecemeal are slim. Although I did have one day last week, you'll recall, where I couldn't embed a vid-clip; and it is possible that it occurred as a result of the geek boys beavering away trying to fix the first problem.

What is more likely is that those with photo posting problems had reached a storage capacity marker. In Word Press (dot com, not dot org), that is 3GB free, then you have to upgrade to paid service.  In Blogger, there is 15GB free storage - which is really a very generous slice. HOWEVER; if you don't downsize your images, you may find you use that up quicker than you thought, in which case you can update with Google storage also. One of the symptoms of full storage is the prevention of adding more to the files - so if you are attempting to place images and it keeps getting rejected, check your storage levels! That link will show you a page like this;

Pie charts! (They are pics only and are not directly representative of usage.) If you click through from that, it will take you to this page, which is just to show again what your balance is and that you are, indeed, on the 'current plan' of free 15GB, but that there options for those who really want big space.

What you will note is that the 15GB applies to Drive, Mail and Photos. What I will do now is go and 'spring clean' Gmail. The Drive chunk will only have what you have shared (or synced); I hardly use it, and there is only a few megabyte in there. Photos holds all the visual content posted to Blogger or G+ page (used to be Picasa). I downsize all my photos to preserve space - but something I learned this week, (or had forgotten and have been reminded), is that if pictures are downsized to 800x800px, they don't count against the storage levels. I am going to start doing that for the less critical images from now on! Something else to point out here; all photos uploaded to your blog do not actually go to 'Photos' as such, (unless you put them there yourself) - they go to Album Archive. Still part of storage. As an aside to this, how many of you realised you could change your settings for photo uploads???

Similarly, you need to know if and what your computer is 'syncing' to the cloud all the time - that will eat up storage!

The key thing to remember, then, is that if you are a photo-heavy blogger, it is important to downsize your images and also to ensure your photos settings are at 'high' and not 'original'.

I have actually been and cleaned Gmail even as I prepared this post;

After doing this action, it dropped from 15% to 11% used space - that's 4% saved! Then I went through my 'sent' box and cleared out anything older than 18 months. That was a lot. Then cleared out the 'receipts' basket and a couple of other trays... and another 2% was retrieved - that is almost an entire gigabyte of storage regained. Just from clearing out the trash.

Am not in danger of running out of my free space anytime soon, but regular maintenance is always less troublesome than leaving it till it becomes frightful.

Anyhoo... the comments thing seems to have cleared up, so am reverting to embedded format.
Hooroo the noo. Yxx