While chickens cluck and owls hoot

Did something strike you about that last post? It was profusely illustrated with pictures, even though published from a caravan in a field deep in the North Devon countryside, and therefore using mobile internet only, the kind you get on your mobile phone. And in fact I was using my phone.

This is actually remarkable, that it's now possible to upload a post heavy with digital photos using a phone. In past years I struggled to publish even a text-only post: pictures were impossible, because the upload always timed out. I suppose that Vodafone's coverage in rural areas, or at least here, has been progressively upgraded. It does say '4G', but presently only one bar of signal strength. But it must be enough. Well, it means that I can put out an illustrated post while actually on holiday, and not have wait until I get home.

Of course, the pictures are reduced in size before being inserted into the text, and it's easiest to do that using a proper Windows program on the laptop. In fact my writing and publishing procedure in the caravan is this:

1. With the text of the post in mind, I select a batch of suitable photos to use and copy them into a separate desktop folder on my laptop. Then, using a Nikon photo-editing program, I batch-process all these copied shots, reducing the file size to 30% of the original, which strikes a good compromise between small size and image quality.
2. I write the post on my laptop, in html, which is plain text with punctuation and paragraph-creation tags. Using Bluetooth, I send this to my phone.
3. Using Bluetooth, I now send the reduced-size pictures to my phone.
4. On the phone now, I open the html document, select all the text, and copy it.
5. Opening Blogger, I select the 'New Post' option and the 'html' choice, then paste my post into the writing area. This done, I convert the html into standard rich text by switching from 'html' to 'compose'.
6. Now I insert whichever photos I am going to use.
7. After a quick tidy-up on line spacing and obvious typos, I hit the 'Publish' button and examine the result. This invariably reveals further typos to correct, spelling mistakes, and examples of stilted phrasing. I deal with these.

And that's it. A distinctly more convoluted procedure than publishing from home, but perfectly doable. I imagine that having a powerful phone helps, also a reasonable signal. But I'm amazed that it's possible to put out a fully-fledged post from deep countryside.