Weekend Semi-Tech Talk

For the past several weeks, I’ve been using Windows Live Writer to write and publish blog posts.

I switched from Word 2007’s blog feature because it had become unbearably unstable. The program would crash at inappropriate times, requiring in some cases a complete restart. If any of you use Vista, you’ll know that it’s slow on the uptake.

So I started scouting the Internet for an alternative, stand alone tool. Live Writer came highly recommended by a number of sites dedicated to reviewing a variety of software. Based in these recommendations, I downloaded the program for free on my laptop and desktop. I haven’t been disappointed. Here are some of the features I like.

• The ability to publish a post on on a variety of blog servers such as WordPress and Blogger, two of the most popular.
• Easy insertion and positioning of photos. The process is painless and virtually automatic.
• A feature called Live Search Maps powered by Virtual Earth. This tool is simplicity itself and permits the user to insert maps and adjust their size as desired. You can also add a red Push Pin to draw attention to a particular location, but I’ve encountered difficulties labeling the pin. I think it’s actually a hyperlink of sorts.
• The map below illustrates the map feature.  You can reduce the map’s size and convert it to a Bird’s Eye View if you wish. The Bird’s Eye View is an aerial photo.

San Francisco

• The ability to view your post as it will appear on your site. This feature gets your post about as close to WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) as I’ve encountered. Still, I’ve had trouble positioning the map above so that it appears properly when viewed in Web Layout mode.
• A handy side-bar for inserting hyperlinks, pictures, tables, maps, tags (Technocrati), and videos.
• An exceptionally simple method of setting your categories.
• A Paste Special feature that includes an HTML code thinning tool that removes extra HTML code such as that found in Word-prepared documents. Word coded documents tend to result in odd layouts when posted to the Internet.
• When everything is complete to your satisfaction, click the Publish button and viola! your post magically appears on your site.

Have I encountered any disadvantages? Yes, but the ones I’ve noticed are minor. Here are my pet peeves.

• If you need to squint to read small type, you may be unhappy with Live Writer. I found no means of magnifying fonts for easy reading as you type while retaining your default font size when your post is published. The only workaround I’ve found so far is to format your Font in, say, 16 point type and then return it to 11 or 12 point before publishing your post.
• I’ve also found that the spacing of bulleted paragraphs is perfect when I prepare my blog but somehow annoyingly inserts an extra line when published. I’m still looking for a workaround because I like my posts to look a little tighter.

Everything considered, the minor annoyances become irrelevant when balanced against the advantages of stability, ease of use, simplicity and speed. As a blogger who prefers a clean program without seldom used bells and whistles, this is the one for me at the moment. On the other hand, if you’re a professional blogger, Live Writer may not meet your needs.

Technorati Tags: Windiws Live Writer

Internet Addiction Anyone?

Do you suffer from a bunch of these symptoms?

• Neglect of basic drives, Loss of a sense of time, Withdrawal, Anger, Tension, Depression, Desire for more computer equipment, Arguing, Lying, Social Isolation, Fatigue

If so, you may have a psychiatric condition known as compulsive-impulsive spectrum disorder.

So says the American Psychiatric Foundation in a recent article that I fully agree with even though I can hardly spell the condition.

In fact, the symptoms named above fit me to a T. If someone else monopolizes my machine, I can go berserk. Violence is a distinct possibility on an exceptionally emotional day.

I’m probably not alone. Brittney of CBS Eye on Blogs has reported that she has about 700 Bay Area blog feeds pouring into her desk daily, and she expects that number to rise to 1,000 or more shortly.

The Bay Area is widely know for having the largest number of bloggers of any equally populated metropolitan area in the nation, so the figures provided by Brittney are hardly surprising. My guess is that at least 75 percent of the bloggers in her count have C-ISD.

Extrapolating the numbers, I firmly believe  many millions of people nationwide share my pathetic symptoms.

Maybe Dr. Drew will offer us a Bloggers’ Rehab program.

Technorati Tags: American Psychiatric Foundation,Symtoms,CBS5 Eye on Blogs,Jack Cafferty,Compulsive-Impulsive Spectrum Disorder,Celebrity Rehab,Dr. Drew Pinskey

This is one we missed

You’re way ahead of me if you know about Eye on Blogs. I found it referenced in The Ax Files. A quick look at the site turned up a treasure trove of information about Bay Area Blogs. In fact, the site has the most complete listing of blogs I’ve seen, and that’s a feature all good bloggers should like. Even this site is on it.

Eye on Blogs is featured on CBS-5. Brittney Gilbert, a native of Nashville, TN, where she wrote a community blog for WKRN-TV, is the brains and sweat behind Eye. She presently lives in Berkeley.

The site is chock full of interesting information, featuring Brittney’s running summary of newsworthy blog items from around the bay. Her extensive coverage is a factor that appeals to me because it isn’t centered on San Francisco. Sometimes people forget that places like the North Bay, East Bay, and Peninsula exist.

I’ve added this one to my blogroll. Now, I’m going to review some of Brittney’s indexed blogs.

Cindy Sheehan all set and ready to go?

Cindy Sheehan is now a resident of California’s 8^th Congressional District and preparing to challenge Nancy Pelosi in this year’s election, a long time in the future, but it provides Cindy with ample opportunity to devise an effective campaign strategy. She may already have done so and is merely waiting to set it in motion. Her move into a Mission District home is a positive clue.

Even so, what are her chances of unseating Nancy? Slim to none is a reasonable guess. Nancy has the power structure behind her, money to burn, name recognition, seniority, and a reputation as the first woman in U.S. history to serve as Speaker of the House of Representatives. She begins her campaign for re-election with a royal flush.

Cindy, on the other hand, has a mélange of cards adding up to nothing. What’s a person to do against such overwhelming odds?

Her strong point in San Francisco is her active opposition to the war in Iraq coupled with a fearless approach to calling Bush’s hand at every opportunity. She also has a few recent Pelosi criticisms to work with, most notably Nancy’s perceived inability to lead a Democratic congressional majority in concordance with Harry Reid against Bush and the Republicans.

Regardless of the arcane technicalities hidden in the rules of Congress that prevent a political party from accomplishing much of anything without an overwhelming majority, Pelosi is weak on one charge: she hasn’t tried hard enough, she should have done more. Cindy could well profit if she repeats that theme endlessly. Nothing succeeds like constant repetition.

Pelosi’s weaknesses are all well and good, but how is Cindy to approach the task of getting people to recognize them and vote for Cindy instead?

For starters, she would be wise to cultivate the real 21^st Century main stream media. The large, institutional media are losing readership and their editorial opinions and endorsement are widely regarded as serving an existing power structure, a configuration that fails to address the real concerns of real people.

Increasingly, the younger public gets its information from non-institutional on-line and print newspapers and magazines, from the blogosphere, and from social networks like Facebook and MySpace. Cindy would be wise to concentrate on this crowd, using on-line and off-line cadres to carry her message throughout the 8^th District.

If Cindy can successfully tap the younger generation, which in the past hasn’t voted in large numbers, she will increase her chances of either winning or making a showing respectable enough to attract more attention and more support on the way to future elections.

Possibly, she has considered all of these approaches and more. If so, she’s ahead of the game. If not, the time to start is immediately.

Okay, Cindy, throw the first pitch of the season.

Good writing is like porno

You can’t define it, but you know it when you see it.

We’ve been lurking in the blogosphere for several months now and we’ve seen a lot of good stuff. Much of it is comparatively obscure but still leaps and bounds ahead of some very popular blogs in quality. Check the Blogroll to the right to get a sense my favorites.

We’ve run across several sites that offer advice for aspiring blogsters. Some advise a coherent theme, such as humor, politics, cooking. Others suggest an eclectic approach. Our own preference is a combination of the two. We like a lot of different stuff and try to use a couple of threads to connect them.

One is humor. We find the seriousness of pompous asses to be so funny, we have to pop a couple of aspirin before watching a politician on television, especially the Texas Twerp. Humor and headaches often accompany one another.

Some topics defy humor, among them several of our “causes” if you wish to call them that. These are topics for serious contemplation.

• Domestic violence. Whenever a 190 pound male beats the crap out of a 120 pound woman, it isn’t funny.
• Child abuse. We cannot imagine humor in an innocent defenseless child who has been beaten to a pulp, limbs broken, cigarette burns everywhere, a child so traumatized it can only tremble endlessly. Or a child abandoned by its mother as she decides on another night of partying.
• Suicide. How can anyone laugh at or trivialize the premature and unnecessary end of a human life?
• Murder. 20,000 dead innocents a year in this country is an abominable number.

There are more but these will suffice to illustrate our leanings.

Another thread is cynicism. This is probably a natural outcome of working several years in and around politically charged environments. Politics by its nature is the practice of deceit and deception. These characteristics are aptly illustrated in two old adages by Rodney Dangerfield or SF’s own Mort Sahl or “anonymous.”

• Sincerity is the key to success in politics. Once you learn to fake it, you’ve got it made.
• How can you tell when a politician is lying? His/her lips are moving.

Or these, which happen to be original constructs of our own demented minds.

• Super Pol. Faster than a speeding ballot. More powerful than a loco voter. Able to leap tall issues in a single bound.
• We live in a democracy. We get to choose the gang we want to rob us.

We have many more original signs of terminal cynicism but they are for another day.

Anyway, blogging in our own case has been therapeutic (listen up Rube) because…well…it just is. And it’s a hell of a lot of fun sometimes. Met some interesting people in the blog-o-sphere; most are decent human beings.

Final thought. Ignore all advice. Write what you want. If no one responds, so what? You can always glow with satisfaction at the masterpiece you’ve created. It’s kind of like producing a porno flick.