The Perdox Rant

About Perdox

Born in Katerini, Greece, I arrived in Port Melbourne and disembarked from the ship Patris in 1966. Like most immigrants, my parents came to Australia to escape the hardships in Greece and to make a better life for themselves and their children. The Australian Government in those days had intensive English learning classes for all children entering the country. I was a student at Dorcas Street Primary School and I didn’t see the inside of a classroom for 7 months. I, and many other immigrant children, spent all our days in the library with flash cards and other teaching aids to learn the language. I therefore learned all the swear words by lunchtime the first day. Ah, those were the days. We were given milk, in little bottles, at the beginning of morning recess back then. Do you remember that? Sadly, we now hear of children going to school without having eaten breakfast.

I am almost fifty years old now. Sad but true. I am happily married (so my wife tells me) and have two expense accounts. Oops. That’s two daughters. I lives in the wonderful city of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Yes, the weather in Melbourne leaves a lot to be desired but, hey, if you don’t like it, wait a couple of hours!

Having taught Physics and Mathematics to senior students, I got tired of being poor working as a teacher. So I became a typesetter and work from home, typesetting books for publishers. The typesetting industry in Australia, like all other industries, has been in gradual decline the last six years. This is because most publishers get their typesetting done overseas in places like India, Malaysia and anywhere else people can be exploited. So I am no longer a poor teacher. Oh no. I has made advances in my life. I am now a poor typesetter. But this is good in a way because it gives me time to run this blog. This of course should be a warning to my American readers. Yes, humour, colour and many other words do have a ‘u’ in them. This blog will use the Australian/British preferred spelling of words.

When you arrive at this site, you land on the ‘Rant’ page. The scenarios described do in fact piss me off. There are many times that I could just scream when something that is blatantly stupid, undemocratic or immoral comes to my attention. The idea to create a blog site promised an avenue to channel this frustration. I thought it would give me a means to vent my anger and to point out to others that ‘Hey! This is not right!’

As the idea to write a blog germinated, I warmed to the idea of giving others a chance to have their say on matters that concern them. Hence the personal blog transformed into a social blog. So unlike other blogs, this one is hopefully going to become one that creates a small community. All registered users are given the opportunity to comment on what I write, write their own posts and allow others to comment on their posts. But ranting, venting and musing about politics, corporations and life in general can get rather boring.

You have probably realised that I have a rather cynical, sarcastic and mean streak as a writing style. However, I also enjoy making people laugh and have many friends that bombard me with emails of jokes and funny pictures. Ding! The light bulb went on. I decided that humour would have a major part to play in my blog.

Acknowledgements

Creating a blog site and maintaining it is no small feat. Many, many hours have gone into the planning and launching of this site. Having decided which software program to use ( I settled on WordPress), where the site will be hosted and what the site will be about, it was time to put everything together so that it would, well, work.

If you know HTML inside out, then you have no problems. But I don’t so it was a hard slog. Thankfully, the WordPress community is full of people giving up their time to help novices. A great huge thank you to all those who have answered my queries in forums and in email messages. I greatly appreciate it.

Atahualpa

The theme I am using for this site is called Atahualpa. A theme is an integrated set of files that give the website it’s look and feel. It controls the look of the menus, the type style, the colour scheme, everything. It’s difficult to believe but it is a FREE theme. That’s right, you don’t have to pay for it though you can donate to the author, as I have done. The theme can be found here. A great big thank you to the author for making this theme available to all. Not only has the author created the theme, he maintains it so that it is always up to date. In fact, he maintains a forum specifically to answer questions regarding this theme at http://forum.bytesforall.com/. I have registered with the forum and from what I see the author responds to every single query. By responding, I don’t mean that he simply gives suggestions, he goes in to great detail to solve every query. He has done that on numerous occasions for me. Now that’s dedication.

Wordpress Modder

Choosing the theme was one thing, but getting it all together so that the site worked properly, was another matter. Not knowing too much about WordPress, I became dependent on help from other WordPress users and forums. But Adam is something else. He has taken so much of his own time to help me iron out the teething problems with the site that it would be remiss of me no to mention him. Not only did he reply to my queries in extreme detail, he has also, for the benefit of all bloggers who use WordPress, produced video tutorials to help people with the administration of their website. Adam’s website is here. Adam, I salute you!

Where to now?

If you know your way around sites such as this, simply head off to read the posts and enjoy (click on the ‘The Blog’ menu tab). Leave a comment. Write your own post. Get involved.

If you don’t have much experience with blog sites, head off to the Help menu tab. There isn’t much in the help section, yet. It will be some time before it describes every feature this site has to offer, so please be patient. Of course, if you need help before then, email perdox by clicking here or go to the Contact page. I hope to make the help section a very easy to follow set of instructions so that your interaction with this site is as enjoyable and hassle free as possible.

Happy reading!