Communicating With Aliens. Nanoo. Nanoo.

CAN 05; Boy meets egg, originally uploaded by Colonel Blink.

Right lets get THAT famous quote out of the way first:

Two nations divided by a common language

It was Oscar Wilde who said it btw. (a man whom everyone knows from the immortal poem "Georgey Porgy pudding and pie, Kissed the Boys and made them cry, His mother said you darling child, I think we have an Oscar Wilde")

It all started when I decided OK I am writing/publishing this weblog primarily as part of my communications with my daughter but I am not writing anything rude or personel so lets invite some others in. And so dear reader, I decided to join some webrings or blogrings or whatever they are called

So I went over to Blogs That Flickr read the instructions as well as I could and filled in the online form,(with excitement I may add, because if you have read my online profile you will know how absolutely exciting I find filling in forms)

I then cut and pasted the script for the blogring (or webring) logo and inserted it into the script for this page and felt I had done a job well done.

Back • Next • Join •

Homepage

Five days later I clicked on the next button on the Blogs That Flickr logo and got a message saying
"Sorry you are still on the Blogs_That_Flickr queue or your site doesn't belong to this ring !!!!!"
I realised that it was still not activated because I need my reg. number or something and went back to their homepage to try and discover what I had done wrong.

What happened next is best described in a thread I posted to The Blogs That Flickr forum

Quoth I

I went to the Blogs That flickr site to read again the conditions of joining and to find out if I was a bona fide member of the ring and how long it should be before I get an approval code emailed to me.
I had to resort to pushing links at random because I did not realise the significance of the phrase The 411 which is the link, I subsequently discovered, to 'learn more about blogs that flickr'
Trial and error has told me that The 411 is the page I needed to read but could someone tell me what is a 411?

Within minutes a bloke named Fishlamp wrote to explain

"411 is the number you can dial on telephones (in the USA) for information (i.e. directory listings). Some use "411" as slang for "information"."

Fishlamp btw from his profile seems a damn good chap and one of us. His photography is excellent too though I may have to go and visit him one day and steal his cameras!

I replied as follows

One lives and learns. If ever I am in Little Rock, Arkansas and need a Pizza I will know who to call!

I thought it was going to be one of those extraodinary numbers you hear being used in American Cop Shows. You know the kind of thing; A voice comes on the car radio and says "Sarge, there is a 411 being perpetrated on the corner of 108 and 12 near the 711" And Kojack (for it is he) replies "Ten Four"

But what really tickles me is that on the page for Blogs that Flickr are written in large letters the words

International or non-English blogs ARE ENCOURAGED to join!

To which I ask, in the light of my utter bafflement on their webpage what about English language blogs