A blog on blogging, computers and such

I have previously written a very positive posting about using Windows Live Writer as desktop editor for Wordpress.

I have installed and used Live Writer on my WordPress installation. It works beautifully, but has created huge problems for me. As it turns out, the program for some reason uses ISO code representation of extended characters instead of “standard” HTML (I have the Norwegian version of the program, and I am not certain whether this is a problem in other versions - but it probably is in non-English versions).

That is, « is represented as & #171; (ISO Latin-1, with a blank space inserted after & to prevent from not displaying) instead of  & laquo; (HTML). And so on, for all the extended characters.

So why is this a huge problem: Because in WordPress, plugins like “Sensitive Tag Clouds” and the like assume standard HTML. And WordPress 2.3.x tags seem to be generated on this assumption as well. So my Wordpress installation generates tags that include these odd ISO-code numbers into my Google sitemap. But when that page comes up in a search, and the users wants to open my page, the page can not be found, and generates a 404-error.

So I am losing a traffic due to this program. I have gone through the documentation for Windows Live Writer, and as far as I can see, this is not at all documented. And there doesn’t seem to be any way to configure this. Also, you can only see the representation when you switch from normal to HTML view in Live Writer.

The only solution I have so far found is to write the text directly into the HTML-view instead of using the ordinary views. Then the characters will be correctly represented in WordPress.

So for me this has meant: (a) I have stopped using Live Writer, and (b) I have had to go back and correct all the post I had written using it before I detected the problem.

Be warned! This is not a good program to use with WordPress installations!

– Peter

Yesterday I lost about half an hour of my work time, thanks to Adobe. As I have stated before, I am a great fan of Adobe. I love the functionality of their software - Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Photoshop, and so on. All excellent software.

But all is not well in my relationship to Adobe. A little program that comes with the Adobe software, apdproxy.exe, is really annoying. When I boot up my machine (a new Dell XPS with 2 Gb RAM, running Windows XP), this little program sometimes makes my machine grind to a halt. When this happens, and I eventually get into the Windows task manager (this takes a while because all CPU is taken up by this annoying program), I most often can observe that apdproxy.exe is eating between 95% and 99% of my CPU. Then it is a matter of closing it down. With this done, my PC comes alive again.

Also, I frequently experience Dreamweaver crashes when I am working on my Web sites. In the middle of editing something, often simple copy and paste operations, Dreamweaver simply freezes. Sometimes it recovers, sometimes not.

I wonder why Adobe doesn’t do anything with these problems. They are well known. I am not the only blogger who has expressed dis-satisfaction.

I am getting quite grumpy over this. At this point I have started to wonder what to do? Should I discontinue using software I otherwise love? Or should I simply start sending bills to Adobe for my lost time?

– Peter

Blogging is great fun. But it is messy. For a number of reasons. There’s so much of it, and so much hype about it, especially about making money on blogging. Thousands of new bloggers are opening up new blog sites, or starting new blogs on some or other of the thousands of sites now offering free blogs and web hosting, many of them to get their share of the big money flying around. New business models are invented, and new opportunities open up for bloggers to make money all the time. Partly bloggers are inventive people, partly there’s inventive companies and individuals out there seeking to get a share of the action, that make opportunities available. But a lot of the bloggers will experience that it is tough, and many will not ever see their expectations met. It is tough to succeed. It’s a jungle, and only the fittest survive.

This blog is about blogging. It’s about the fun of it, about some of the nice experiences, about some of the great zen of blogging, and such. However, it is also about the hardships and the pitfalls of blogging, and about the many things, big and small, that makes blogging unnecessarily hard or difficult, and, of course, ways to deal with those problems. I am not even above a little bit of ranting, every now and then, about software and computers. In sum - it’s a blog about the small and large stuff that is blogging, and seeking to give hints and ideas about how to deal with or overcome challenges.

My ambition is to contribute primarily by asking some of the right questions, maybe at times even, if I get lucky, by looking in the right direction for answers. But my hope is that we - people interested in and concerned with blogging, together - collectively - can come up with solutions or apply pressure for change. There is so much experience, knowledge, and expertise out there that can be brought to bear on almost any issue that poses a challenge. I hope some of it can be mobilized right here, for the common good of bloggers around the world. So SUGAHS, wherever you are, join in!

Let the blogging begin!

– Peter –