Cole's Notes - The Sunday Journalist

Dear readers of The Sunday Journalist, I hope this blog post finds you well. It's been a while since I last posted, and I wanted to share with you why that is. As many of you know, there was a recent security breach at LastPass, a popular password manager. The breach was a wake-up call to me and many others who have relied on these services to store our sensitive information. In light of this, I decided to step back from blogging and focus on revamping my security. I looked closely at all my online accounts, from email to social media, and evaluated their privacy and security settings. I used strong, unique passwords for each account and enabled two-factor authentication wherever possible. This involved updating all of my passwords, which was a time-consuming but necessary task. Which I am still working on. In addition to these steps, I also took the time to educate myself on best practices for online security, the dangers of phishing scams, the importance of keeping software up-t...

Introducing The Sunday Journalist  C. Mark Cooper As you can tell - there wasn't much going on in 2022 for my Blogging. I did (and still do) most of my posting on Facebook. Both  Quotes of the day  and  Column of the day  are part of what I have been doing as a hobbyist communication and content creation blogger. But I have been spending more time reading and cross-posting than creating. Passing on other people's writing rather than creating my own. While it gave me a more significant following and audience than posting in the  Cole's Notes   Blog, I was doing it the lazy way by using my iPhone to curate and post on Twitter and Facebook. I was spending more time browsing Facebook and Quora than doing any writing for myself.  So today - I'm starting to revise this Blog and my online profiles to reflect my new Pen name. Well, back in 2020 - I was working two jobs unrelated to journalism and had reached the age where I look back on what I'm doing wit...

Annus horribilis Annus horribilis is a Latin phrase, meaning "horrible year". It is complementary to annus mirabilis, which means "wonderful year". As usual, this cartoon nails it. My year has been like this. Stuck in March of 2020 under lockdown due to hygiene socialism. The year 2020 was when all levels of government, politicians, media, academics, companies and social media went insane. Future historians will shake their heads at the madness that came from the fall of Journalism. It has been replaced with the dumpster fire of the "Woke revolution" sensitivity and the Cancel Culture of the Internet Mob.  The loss of credibility of all levels of government and mainstream media and the outright suppression of opposing viewpoints have been the hallmarks of this past Annus Horribilis. On the plus side - I finally got the first flu shot on May 4 - and now I’m scheduled for the second on August 4 - yeah.  I probably get a bunch of anti-vaxxers calling me an id...

Thought for the day Getting organised - there will be some new posts coming in the next little while.  The G+ page is getting linked in and will come here.  I'm still working on te new website and will have a new announcement around Mid-September

A New Year - and new additions to the Blog -  Now that I'm back in the working world again - I've rolled up my job search site and will start Blogging here again.  And since I'm working on a new design and starting to post my photographs and writing here - I've always used a Creative Commons licence for my content - but starting this year I'm going to try using © 2015. All rights reserved. for the blog. Trying to organize things here  

Well, I'm relaxing in the backyard, cleaning up some of the technology, and re-thinking some of my plans.  I'm enjoying the time off, and the upcoming long weekend has got me thinking of re-vamping the job search.  More quality, and less quantity.  Right now, I'm spending an inordinate amount of time online trying to apply for jobs. 

I just posted a new article at View from the Plateau – which was the result of a phishing e-mail I got through my LinkedIn account.  And it’s got me thinking as well.  I’ve been posting and lurking on a number of sites, reading a lot of RSS feeds and spending a lot of time on email and Facebook, with the result that my blogging has suffered.  I’ve not even updated either for months, and there are two articles sitting in draft form that need to be finished.  The short form on the Twitter and reading the newsfeeds from my iPad has cut back on sitting down and writing long form posts.  I’ve also been lax in getting graphics done for the posts – as the linking of the latest missive at View ends up plastering my visage all over Facebook and Google+.  These new mini blogging platforms – and Twitter as well are moving to more and more graphics – and less and less text.

This Sunday I decided to do a little "enterprising". Or what used to be called roving when I worked at the Herald. Just go out and see what's happening around the town and shoot a photo or two. So I went out to the new Symon's Valley Ranch New Farmers market. Posted with Blogsy

Updating machinery – will be back soon.