Now that I have your attention, I shall begin with a disclaimer: it was a ruse. The purpose of this post is merely to report on the state of things, not to instruct you on how to alter them. The latter you will have to learn by yourself.

My blogging activity has recently dwindled to the trickle of a faucet in a drought. Work has been keeping me on my toes during the day, and wide awake at night while the toes are resting. In addition my core website, Vincent Mounier Photography where the photo galleries are hosted, is due for a refit. The script I used until now, Koken, was abandoned by its creator yet again – he had done it to me once before and I should have known better than to stick around – and was sold to NetObjects whose support so far is as deficient as its knowledge of the new acquisition.

The transition will somehow have to take priority over most blogging as my URL’s are currently messed up after a failed software upgrade and they are not matching Google results, however meaningful this might be. After a forty-plus email exchange with incompetent support who rather than offer suggestions and troubleshooting, stubbornly requested FTP access to my website, saw it refused at first than granted out of my desperation, managing to then erase a critical settings file on my server and apologizing casually by saying “oh yes, we should have backed it up”, I have finally decided to pull the plug and seek a replacement. Since my blog is powered very efficiently by WordPress, I will go with it for the galleries too, despite a serious handicap in back-end media administration.

But I do have more to write and show about our last South Africa trip, so please be patient, if you read it, it will come.

Now regarding the title and subtitle of this post, simple: it all starts within. Changing the world might not be possible after all. Been tried. But we sure can change our perception of it. Being tried. The question is, can we live without worry, fear, shame, violence and prejudice? Because these five liars rule our world today, but they are not world characteristics, they are neither taped to the world map nor written on worldwide post-its, they do not make up the atoms of the keyboard I am typing this on, nor craft the headlines of the New York Times. These five plagues are what we, the thingies, the fleas, the tidbits inhabiting the earth, project upon it. Our world, our fault.

[Content sigh] There. Are we feeling enlightened yet? My invoice is on its way.

Next, How to quit blogging in five easy steps. If I make it there before quitting.