left biblioblography: FOUND A NEAT, NEW POSTING SOFTWARE

Monday, April 03, 2006

FOUND A NEAT, NEW POSTING SOFTWARE

Let's get off the beaten path here. I'm now using w.bloggar.
While I'm something of a technophile, I'm currently avoiding installing SQL, Wordpress and PHP on my PC. Why? A few reasons:

  1. It's a 750 Mghz slogger, &

  2. I'm trying to save on disk space, &

  3. If I do install these neat programs, I'll spend way more time learning them than posting, &

  4. I'm trying to streamline my blog.

As to 4, well, it's all well & good to fine-tune one's blog, but I find advertisements, flashing lights, & other bells & whistles very distracting. Luckily, I'm not epileptic, but I am gettin' on in years, & Occam's razor is playing a role in my life more & more, it seems.

Originally, I was using Blogger for Word, as MS Word is my favorite word processor (yeah, yeah, I know, 'Leper, outcast, unclean' & all that: it's all a matter of taste, really).

In a prior post (here), I talked about screwing with the jackals who try to hijack your stats. After doing so myself, I flushed my cache, cleared out a pile of detritus (using Norton Cleansweep), & guess what? Blogger for Word started giving me login problems (error #401, which Blogger doesn't have an answer to). Performancing had issues over the weekend (couldn't get 'em to accept my password, got an answer today, another issue resolved).

So I started to hunt around for a freeware alternative this weekend. Found this: http://wbloggar.com/

Easy to use. The spell-check didn't recognize 'blog' (which is a minor amusement, but no big whoop), but is fairly simple to fix.

Downsides:
It doesn't do the 1-2-3 bulleting thing very well. It also doesn't seem to update the prior post (if you make changes to the post: Blogger for Word did this nicely).


Thus far, 2 thumbs up: custom-made for those of us who'd rather spend more time writing and less time fiddling with the default configurations so many software programs seem to come with.

Try it out. It's a little bit of all right.

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9 comments:

Anonymous said...

This confirms that I am MUCH too lazy to start a blog.
I wasn't doing it when I thought all I had to do was try to find interesting crap to write about and then answer any responses.
Maintenance? Bleah.
k.

Krystalline Apostate said...

karen:
Well, you can indeed do the try to find interesting crap to write about and then answer any responses by itself. It can be done. But then you find other bloggers, discover they've linked to you, you need to link to them back (as courtesy), then you want to display particular interests (like linking to Amazon), provide pictures, etc.
IOWs: there's almost always more beneath the surface than it 1st appears. In all things in life, not just blogging.

Krystalline Apostate said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Mark said...

Thanks. I started having the blogger for word problem you described with my most recent "bipolar" post. I thought it was the blogger web service. I was rushed when I posted, so I didn't bother debuging BFW and posted via the dashboard... - yuch!

FYI, Noticed in your profile that you are an Ellison fan. I am too. I have over 35 books on my shelf and about a dozen of them are signed by him. I met him in boston years ago and attended a writers workshop taught by the little guy - and I even got directly insulted by him :-) (who hasn't) I made a joke in the workshop, it made everyone laugh - I dont think Harlan liked being upstaged so he told me not to quit my day job...

Krystalline Apostate said...

RB:
Thanks. I started having the blogger for word problem you described with my most recent "bipolar" post.
Well, figured I'd speak up. Squeaky wheel, & all that. I think BFW is fairly new, which is why there's little enough on the net. I googled that #401 error, de nada. I even emailed blogger w/it, got a pat form letter, test logon, etc, yadayadayada. Worst part is, the macro's attributes are set to read-only, so no stepping, or tracing in VBA. Gah.

I am too. I have over 35 books on my shelf and about a dozen of them are signed by him. I met him in boston years ago and attended a writers workshop taught by the little guy - and I even got directly insulted by him :-) (who hasn't) I made a joke in the workshop, it made everyone laugh - I dont think Harlan liked being upstaged so he told me not to quit my day job...
Color me green w/envy, then. Which workshop? Was that Aspen (that's from memory, correct me if I'm wrong).
Anyways, I'm jealous.

Mark said...

It was a one day workshop sponsored by The Boston Center for Adult Education. It was more of a lecture than a workshop...

I'm not enough of a fiction writer to consider a writers workshop with any real reading of my stuff :-)

It was the best of the worst dark and stormy nights

Krystalline Apostate said...

ARB:
It was the best of the worst dark and stormy nights
No, not Bulwer-Lytton, noooooooo........!
Still, Ellison is the only 1 left living on my hero's list, so I'd best be crackin' on meeting him soon.
I don't think I can fit my collection of hardbounds into 1 backpack.
Have you read Troublemakers? S'alright. But Slippage is better, by far.
The Dark Prince of American letters. & I still cry every time I read Paladin of the lost hour, even after all these years.

Krystalline Apostate said...

udonman:
Cool. It did post a blank post on me (yesterday), so there may be a glitch or 2 I'm unaware of.

Krystalline Apostate said...

udonman:
I've noticed bloggar doesn't handle multiple blogs too well: it still posted to my other blog, but it only allows 1 account configuration.