About
Do not maintain anger or hatred… Learn to look at other beings with the eyes of compassion. Thich Nhat Hanh.
Thoughts on life, books, and many things from a grumpy old man and recovering pontificator in Surry Hills, Australia. Just doing my thing…
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A suite of blogs
My blog works like this: consider this and the other sites as a suite of blogs, or even as a single blog.
Each blog has its purpose
This blog
Lets you know what’s new and is a space for me to rabbit on about stats, or blogging in general.
New Lines from a Floating Life
This is comparatively rant-free, comments excepted, and quite personal in tone. It is the lead blog in the suite, the one that carries most entries. All the old entries from Ninglun’s Oz Politics and Big Archive — or those worth preserving – and all the pages from that blog are now here. Ninglun on Blogspot has been mirrored here too.
Ninglun’s Specials: Personal Papers + Sans Words
On the URL of the old Oz Politics, Ninglun’s Personal Papers was a blog of pages only, bringing together material from several other blogs in a more logical sequence. Now that Floating Life Sans Words has been incorporated into Ninglun’s Specials there are regular picture posts as well.
Old Lines from a Floating Life (Updated and maintained but no longer active.)
Old Lines from a Floating Life ran from early April 2006, winding down at the end of November 2007.
With the 2007 HSC this blog outperformed all the others, with over 500 visits in the WordPress count in one 24 hour period. It is very much a resource centre for students and teachers, but has, I hope, some content of interest to all.
Ninglun on Blogspot (No longer active)
After being absorbed into Oz Politics and the Big Archive here, and then virtually closed, it revived for a while under the name “Old Teachers Never Die”, which had very moderate success. While the entries are still there I have mirrored the best of them on English/ESL too. In December 2007 I revived it under its present name as a place to pursue theological or spiritual issues in the main. All the newer posts have now been absorbed into New Lines from a Floating Life and no more posts will be added to it.
Using Live Writer
Where possible I compose in Windows Live Writer, sometimes off-line, sometimes on-line. It’s an excellent program, but not compatible with Journalspace — another reason for shifting Oz Politics to WordPress. Not only is Live Writer very user-friendly and intuitive, it is also able, even when off-line, to preview an entry exactly as it will appear in its template. Great stuff. Get one for your own use. This is what the interface looks like as I work:
Lately I have also been using Flock, a really good new generation browser based on Firefox. It includes a useful blog writer: you’ll see a small acknowledgement on the right of entries posted with it. In the current template it actually does a neater job on indented quotes, in my opinion, than either WP or Live Writer.
Why Floating Life? Why “Ninglun”?
The blog title is an allusion to a Chinese book: Shen Fu’s Six Chapters (Records) of a Floating Life, a beautiful book from 18th century China — lovingly brought into the present in Nicholas Jose’s The Red Thread. The name “Ninglun” is a Mandarin approximation of my real name (Neil); I like it because it happens to mean “peaceful discussion”. Even if my rants are at times a touch loud…
OzPolitics rated me as more left than I thought I was. Surprised me just a bit…
I was a teacher for just on forty years but am now retired, aside from some casual work and/or coaching. I was until recently a teacher of English as a second language, and my English and ESL blog reflects this interest.
Where am I? Who’s who?
See also Surry Hills and Who’s who.
