It is easy to join in the chorus of lament about the superficiality of social media where many of our connections can fit into this category of people who have passed through our lives for very short moments in time. Twenty years ago the connection would have disappeared through lack of contact. Which is why I paused and reflected after posting my congratulations (which she “liked”)

I live in a world which is overwhelmed with busyness and noise – the pace of  my life frequently reaches the frenetic. Another friend of mine (a theologian) once told me about some research which suggested we achieve in a week a level of work that our ancestors would achieve  in a month. I admit to sometimes feeling wistful for a time when my children were young and my life revolved around a simpler type of productivity – even though I seriously believe that my effectiveness as a project manager is built not on PRINCE2 but on my ability to organise a five year old’s birthday party.

New life and the creative power which a woman’s body is blessed with in sustaining it and delivering it into the world is such an earth shattering magical thing. Even if the connection is tenuous  it still sparks in me a moment of pure joy, as if in that moment ,time and space collapse and it is as much about re-living my own moments of expectation as rejoicing in another’s. In the river of information flowing through my life – those sparkles in the water that for a moment sharpen my focus on people and life are precious and help me keep my balance. And for that I am grateful.

As if to prove that point before I left work yesterday I did a search on Cuisine for one of my favorite recipes so I could pick up the ingredients on the way home. I tried this search last year in  Australia when I realised I had lost the original, with no success, largely because I tried to use the ingredient advanced search. One of my NZ friends proved that simplicity is the way to go by finding it by just putting in the name in the recipe search, which is what I did yesterday. No joy – after several variations I gave up. The internet is not forever. Fortunately I did have a printed copy at home.  However next time I find a recipe online I’m also going to use that handy print to pdf function which means I have an electronic copy as well (note to self: remember to back up)

In terms of what I found that was interesting online yesterday – I came across a blog by Marco Zehe. The  post was about not hiding tags properly so they were still readable by screen readers even though they weren’t visible to sighted users. Marco works as a developer at Mozilla and just happens to be totally blind. His blog offers some great insights into accessibility issues including a great post about social media platforms .  A lot of the content is on the technical side for me but still very readable.

The other blog post I caught up with yesterday was the story of David Haywood moving his red-zoned house from Avonside to Dunsandel. David’s descriptions of life post earthquake and the difficult decisions they have had to make  about their home has been compelling reading over the last year or so but I had lost track a little. Now they are on the move and I can only wish them all the best for their new location (and pray the weather holds over the weekend)