Windows Live Writer Beta 2 is Here!

writer_screenshot Praise the lord and pass the admonition, the new Live Writer is finally here! And of course I had to make a test post just to make sure it worked. The install went without a hitch although I uninstalled beta 1 before hand just in case.

The first problem I encountered was not related to the new beta but actually with my blog’s theme, Misty Look 3.2 that I have modified to my own personal tastes. In fact I remembered (belatedly) that I had run across this problem in the previous version of WLW as well in that WLW couldn’t detect my weblog styles so no Web Layout view. In WLW beta 1 it just told me it couldn’t download the template style and in the new version it seemed to download okay but the Web Layout view was locked out. To solve this problem I simply uploaded the previous version of Misty Look and switched over just long enough to let the weblog styles update in and then switched back to my original theme. Now I have the Web Layout view. No other problems seen so far.

I haven’t had any time yet to check out all the new functions yet but there seems to be a load of new features and a couple of major bug fixes like the infamous duplicate image uploads when editing and existing post that contains images. I’ll also have to check to see if those god awful long image names that the old version used to add are gone in this version.

And I’m loving the inline spell checking!

So good job all around to Joe Cheng and all the rest of the Writer team. My favorite blog editor seems to have made the grade. I’ll post a more “in depth” review at a later date just to add another to the pile of reviews I’m sure that will show up throughout the Blogosphere in short order.

Happy writing all.

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Advertise-a-phobia!

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The time has come to admit to myself this terrible personal problem that’s been holding me back in this blogging effort of mine. Time to stop pretending and just say it. I have ADVERTISE-A-PHOBIA!

Don’t bother to look it up…you won’t find it. It exists only here.

Why is this? Where there are tons of bloggers out there raking in everything from pocket change to whole portfolios (okay, I’m exaggerating a bit here) every month or so and I can’t even bring myself to leave the two basic Google Adsense type ads below my single posts. I pulled them yesterday fer chrissakes. I did leave the little Adsense link block in my sidebar out of sheer tenacity because it’s so unobtrusive. Of course that’s what you might call self defeating wouldn’t you say? An unobtrusive ad?

This stands to reason though. I’m an even worse salesman then I am an “ad-man”. I couldn’t sell somebody a bag of money for a quarter. I mean Kirby wouldn’t hire me even if I showed up singing the company song and told them I was rich and would work for nothing because I just loved their vacuum cleaners! They’d kindly show me the door and then most likely alert the authorities that a mentally deranged wacko just walked out their door.

Look, I like my readers. I don’t want to harangue them with obnoxious ads peppered throughout my pages and with embedded ad links in my posts. I’m not saying that those bloggers who do use ads don’t like their readers as much as I like mine, sure they do. Many of them are much more successful than I am at the moment (but not all of them are SOB’s! :P ) and they obviously have tons of happy readers so I suppose I’m just Advertisment Challenged or something of that nature. I’m sure those in the mental health profession will come up with a name for my malady sooner or later, they always do. And the pill for it will follow close on it’s heels I’m sure.

I can see it now. All the new names for helping those like myself. Names like AdsenseAmin, ViADra, Ro-ADrazole, Adacin, Adcedrin and even a pill for the ad obsessive who uses too many ads on their blogs—Adexatrim. Yes sir, they’ll have a cure for folks like me and then I’ll be able to throw ads all over the place and do paid reviews and embed all sorts of ad links into my posts for your reading pleasure and….

Well…maybe not.

I’m not particularly worried about it. Bloggers like myself can often live perfectly normal lives where no one would even think that that an advertisemental problem existed at all. It’s only when I’m in front of my computer looking at my blog and that stray Ad Thought captures my attention that I start having cold sweats and my hands start shaking. But I’m okay with that though. I can handle it.

So here’s to being (almost) Ad free for now and the rest can take care of itself. And I do believe it’s time to end this silly post and go to bed. Tomorrow’s another day you know.

Have a good ad-free night all.

 

Tired? From what?

Here I am at the end of the first work day after a mostly restful three day weekend, feeling like I’ve been beaten with a stupid stick. I’m pooped! The fact that there’s enough pollen in the one cubic foot of air to choke three horses and a couple of large dogs is completely irrelevant don’t you think?

So it’s off to bed then. Tomorrow’s another day and we’re suppose to have a bit of rain that just might take some of that irrelevant pollen out of the air. One can never tell.

Hoping you all have a wonderful day…G’night.

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A Couple New Plugins

I decided to relax today and spend some time tweaking the blog, loading up a couple of new plugins and the tweaking of options thereof. One which required about a good hour to set due to the instructions being located on a German site (with handy dandy images) and no English translation. Hello Google Translate.

The first of these two plugins is wpSEO (the German one) which hopefully will take the bother out of setting all the relevant meta data into the header.php by hand that isn’t handled by a standard WordPress install. This new plugin supposedly takes care of all that kind of stuff automatically once the few dozen options are set up. The author had kindly provided a screenshot of the optimum set up which of course was in German so using the Translator extension for Firefox in this case wasn’t an option.

The second one was much easier. The newly upgraded for WP 2.2 Samsarin PHP Widget hit the streets recently and I couldn’t wait to grab it. When I upgraded this blog to WP 2.2 I lost my King Text Widgets which allowed me the option of using PHP code in the text widgets it provided. Having 20 or so extra text style widgets besides the standard 9 built into the Sidebar Widgets plugin came in handy also. But with the upgrade I found that I was not only stuck with just those 9 text widgets that were now built into WordPress itself, but no way to use PHP in the sidebar at all unless I hard coded myself into the sidebar.php template of my theme.

Blah! You want to play with the code for the sidebar feel free. Me? Give me widgets any day. So I have an extra 9 text widgets at my disposal that allow me to use PHP calls if I wish. Life is good in WordPress land.

Now I just have to wait a couple weeks to see if wpSEO is doing the job or not. We’ll see. And if anyone happens to be using it and reads this post, please do me a favor and leave a comment as to how it’s working for you. It would be much appreciated.

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SOB, Official,1 ea

I am proud to announce that as of 12:07 PM today, I have been officially proclaimed an SOB by none other than Liz Strauss of Successful Blog. Came as a surprise to me I can tell you. And it was pure coincidence that I found out shortly after she must have published the announcement. I had noticed an incoming link from her site in my site stats and had wandered over to see what sort of horrible things she was saying about me (just kidding Liz). It turned out to be a list of Week 83 SOB’s and lo and behold…there I was! Believe me, I had to reload th page three times to be just to be sure.

These are the other lucky bloggers that made the list along with myself:

All Things Workplace

CK’sBlog

Heart of Business

Inner 88

Inspiration Bit

Invincibelle

Now, does anyone think that I’m going to display this big ol’ purple SOB badge in my sidebar? You’re darn tootin’ I am! And Liz…many thanks. Shucks…and I didn’t even know.


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Lose the Cable, Watch Movies, Save Your Sanity

meditation350.jpgFor many months now, during my usual digging into news of all types, one of the things that has stood out of late is that folks are just not taking enough breaks from reality. We all have to deal with reality all our lives and for those of us who are not taking some kind of drug, either prescription or non, to escape said reality, we sometimes can lose track of why we’re feeling so damned stressed!

We simply haven’t bothered to take that break.

I’m not talking about a vacation. Who has the time or the money for vacations these days? For the working class couples who don’t have an as yet, comfortable portfolio working for them or like the majority of Americans today, have none at all, vacations come at a substantial cost only to be taken once in every second century or the third blue moon in October—which ever comes first. So for the majority of us, we have to find a way to ease the daily stress of our lives so we don’t end up as raving maniacs and are seen in our local newspapers under a headline that might state:

Crazy Person Locks Himself In Bathroom Of Midi-Mart and Demands Salted Peanuts!

And so I am here to tell you of the winning formula that we use at home. Not all will agree of course, but then again…we’re all different now aren’t we.

Basically it boiled down to: Lose the Cable/Satellite and watch movies instead.

Huh?

Yup, That’s right! No more regular TV. Not a set top box to be found anywhere in the house. Our local cable company couldn’t believe it. They even kept lowering their sign up offers to the point they were almost paying us for the first 6 months of a new subscription. Some of their reps that came to our door toward the end were actually driven to the point of tears and we had to speak kindly to them and convince them that their life really hadn’t ended and that it was okay that someone really didn’t desire to be beaten to death with what passes for piped-in entertainment these days.

They finally stopped coming. Anyway…

My wife and I have quite a movie collection (hers actually) and occasionally we rent one when we want to make sure it’s worth adding to our collection. If it is, then we search around at Amazon and other such places and where we can usually pick them up for very low prices either new or slightly used. We’re the kind of people who like to watch our favorite movies more than once. And as I said previously, both of us had sworn off having cable or satellite ever again. In fact, both of us hadn’t had any sort of regular TV for about 7 years previous to when we first met. A match made in heaven if there ever was one.

So watching movies is our thing to ease the day’s BS. And the news and other such info we can get from the internet with out having to pay a lot of $$$ for the privilege of viewing Today’s Top Stories from some big city we don’t live in. Beats paying $75.00 or more we think, for the right to have 134 channels of “infomercials” and other such useless pastimes and hardly any other decent of content to chose from. If it ever comes to the point where you can pick and choose what channels you want and pay only for those channels, then we might think about it. Until then, when it’s time to just let our minds loosen up—It’s show time(!) and I don’t mean the movie channel!

Okay, we do do other things for relaxation but that is not what this post is all about.

And now we’re actually considering going to see a movie at our local theater which is something we don’t usually do either. Most movies these days simply don’t rate paying the price and they show up in DVD so quickly after their run is over it ends up much cheaper just to wait. Besides, you can’t put a theater on pause while you run to the bathroom can you? The last one we saw at the theaters was “Return of the King” (awesome!). This time, believe it or not, we’re thinking of seeing the third “Pirates” movie, “At Worlds End“. A pirates movie you say? Why not, I say.

To our way of thinking, we’re absolutely surrounded and very aware of the reality we live in on a day to day basis and occasionally, just for sanities sake we have to take a break from said reality and just go see a movie strictly for the entertainment value and basically, just for the fun of it. That’s why there are extravagant features like “The Matrix”, “Lord of the Rings”, “Star Wars” and the “Pirates of the Caribbean” series that just enable us to take a break from reality and let our minds unwind. That’s what fantasy is all about—pure enjoyment.

It used to be something special about going to the movies. Now, with new movies coming out every other day and disappearing just as fast (even the good ones), the home theater systems complete with some 5 foot, wide screen video monitor, 3000 watts of Dolby Surround Sound and all the microwave popcorn you can eat, it’s amazing folks go to the movies at all these days. Perhaps it’s an innate desire to walk on sticky floors and hold your water for 2-1/2 to 3 hours straight—beats me.

So there you have it. Lose the “box”, start your movie collection and make sure you have at least a DSL internet connection for your computer for all the other stuff and you’ll be a more relaxed, well adjusted person all around.

Works for us.

If anyone considers the above post complete hooey, please don’t hesitate to say so. :P


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Spring Cleaning the Blog

A few changes have occurred here over the last few days in attempts to streamline the backend of things. What most folks may not realize when they visit my little corner of blogdom is that there is a heck of a lot of content that has gone into Justhinkin’ over the last year and 4 months and a rather large database that backs it up. Along with this are the several plugins that I installed and have been using to make the blog function as it does and it was time to clean house. So for those that are interested, here’s what the “Spring Cleaning” has brought about.

Tagging:

After many months (and successful hacks) of Christine Davis’s, Ultimate Tag Warrior I came to the point where I had to finally bid farewell to the venerable plugin in favor of the newer Simple Tagging plugin by Amaury Balmer. Since I used UTW for the Related Posts only, a function that tied similar posts together, I had been on the lookout for some time for a replacement that wasn’t quite so “industrial strength”. The plugin isn’t perfect and has it’s own set of problems (but so did UTW) but the overall function works just fine and it imported all of my UTW tags and assignments without a hitch. Continued development of the plugin is also happening which is a plus. It’s also less of a load on the blog overall so the loading time is bit faster.

For those of you wondering what’s going to happen when WordPress 2.3 arrives and there is no option to import the tags from Simple Tagging into the new built in tagging system as there will be for UTW, fear not…there is a plugin already made for it. (only alpha builds at the moment).

Spamments:

I’ve dropped Bad Behavior finally and am just using Akismet backed up with Spam Karma 2.3 and the Simple Trackback Validation plugins to handle all my spam. The reason for this was to eliminate one more set of tables in my database. My database was getting rather large due to all the plugins that installed these additional tables and it was slowing things down to where it was noticeable. I could stand to lose at least one of my anti-spam plugins and Bad Behavior (which was occasionally blocked more than it should), was it. Nothing against this great anti-spam plugin, it just became rather redundant after awhile and since my host allots a huge amount of bandwidth per month, the extra bandwidth used by not having Bad Behavior installed is minor. So far, everything spammish is just fine and dandy and I’ve picked up even a bit more speed as well.

Text Link Ads:

And last but not least, I’ve removed the Text Link Ads: script and plugin from Just Thinkin as well. It never did produce anything since I installed it even though I have a PR 5 rating and an improving Alexa rank. Nothing against these guys but it eliminated yet another two tables from the database and things are breathing easier in all respects. Perhaps someone finding themselves with several hundred visitors a day will have better luck than I did.

Finally, I used my old WP-PhpMyAdmin plugin to bang into my database and cleaned things up by deleting these unused tables and optimizing all the ones that showed any overhead. The latter, like defragmenting your hard drive, never lasts but it never hurts either. The above plugin has been out of development for a while now it seems but it’s never failed to perform through the upgrades and beats the you-know-what out of having to go into my host’s Cpanel and getting to the database that way.

Anyway, the blog has a bit more breathing room now and it seems to have a much more solid feel to it much like your car does after a thorough tune up. And I have increased my level of experience in the ever changing world of WP blogging another notch.

That’s it for now. Because of the way I’ve been feeling of late it took me an unbelievable amount of time just to pound out this little blurb here. I intended to have three done while I was down and out today but it obviously didn’t happen. And I don’t see any improving on the health situation anywhere in the near future and I’m sure things here are going to suffer here because of it but until I and the good folks at the VA can get a handle on things, it’s just something I have to deal with. I’ll keep plugging along of course and there will be more of my amazing blurbs here for all to read but things are simply going to have to slow down for awhile.

Have a good night all.

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The Myth of Multitasking and the New Blog Owner

All my working life one of the few phrases that has always stuck out in my mind like the proverbial sore thumb included the word multitasking. How many times have I heard one person telling another or even myself; “You have to learn to multitask”.

Bah!

Don’t fool yourself. There is no such thing as multitasking. If you’re a human that is. If you’re a home computer or better, then sure, you can multitask. But if you’re flesh and bone—don’t waste your time. The simple fact is that you can do only one thing at a time. Period.

Yes, you can have five separate, open purchase orders on your desk that need doing and four phone lines going at the same time but you can only answer one line at a time and do only one purchase order at a time. If you have a headset you can work on one purchase order and talk to the associated vendor at the same time but you’re still only accomplishing a single task. You cannot work on one purchase order while providing customer assistance to some unrelated person over the phone at the same time. You’ll either screw up the purchase order by entering on line 2 that you need 42 Bob Andersons at $32.50 EA or be charging poor Bob Anderson $1842.95 for asking when he might expect his order to arrive and should he have requested UPS Overnight instead.

The same goes for blogging. Don’t try to multitask. It can’t be done no matter what some may say. The PC your sitting in front of has that capability—not you. So here’s some basic rules to help the new blogger out.

  • You can only write one post at a time. Even if you’re an accomplished typist and can turn out 55WPM, you can still only write one post at a time—just much faster. If you can write two or more posts at one time then I want a video and three witnesses.
  • You can only research one post at a time. Sure, you can collect links to possible resources for two or more possible blog posts in one session but when it comes down to sorting the links into the proper order and doing the research for a post it’s back to one thing at a time so focus on what you’re trying to accomplish. Don’t try to put together one post while thinking about the possible contents of another (See next item).
  • Keep a notepad within reach when working on your post. If what you’re writing triggers an idea for a related post or another subject entirely, jot down the idea in a way that you’ll recognize in case your mind is miles away when you come back to it (important tip there) and then forget about it. Unless you have that rare capability where you’re able to pay strict attention to what your currently trying to accomplish and be able to think about something else entirely while your at it, you’re whole effort will end up as an exercise in frustration.
  • If you fizzle out in the middle of writing a post and can’t get seem to get back in the groove then save what you’ve done as a draft and go on to something else. It will be there when you get back. If you’re trying to put out decent content, pushing the “burn out” is a sure way to a badly disjointed post. Ask me how I know this.
  • It’s not quantity, it’s quality. One good post full of great content beats ten pieces of bagged air any day. Don’t push your posts or yourself. Set a regular posting schedule and do your best to adhere to it. It can be one a day or one a week. Just as long as your readers can sense a pattern that can be looked forward to.

Whether it’s a personal or a niche style blog, the same can apply to both. Multi-tasking is a myth. One thing at a time is the tried and true rule here. Even the “Pro’s” know it. They just know how to do “one thing at a time” more efficiently than most.

So lay back and just do what you do best and set yourself a schedule that doesn’t stress you out, endanger your sanity and try your reader’s patience.

All the above will eventually end up at ABW as a side subject to the main series. Feel free to tell me I’m full of it. :P

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