It's been How Long?

Yes, It's been nearly a calendar month since I've put anything up. There is method to my madness. In this case, I wanted to allow plenty of time for people to hit the blog and review the daily photo sequence that documents my figure-eight vacation over the continental divide and back. Many though the trip foolish. It was in more ways that one, but that's a pun that will have to be explained later.

I've seen enough traffic in Analyitics to know that I have visitors that are checking in, now and again, perhaps looking for the Pizza blog to make it's debut. Keep checking back. Having several projects in progress is the norm for me, and since this is the no-rules blog, well, it's here that you're going to see schedule slips appear, etc.

-.\\

Hardcore Spin-Off

I like my new camera more than I like this pizza.

Chunked chicken does not belong on a pizza, so, I had to make another.

Any chicken here? Sure is. Plenty. I took a breast, grilled and shredded it. Mixed it with some Thai rub and a bit of BBQ sauce just to make it smokey and sweet. I used the shredded chicken-and-rub-BBQ as the sauce. Spoon it on and spread it around. The cheese here is a hard-to-melt English Coastal Cheddar, and some quality Mozzarella.

Olives were cut with a new sushi knife. Rings are forever gone. These things work much better.


Cooking is going nicely and the shape is going bowl-o. I had not expected this, but I have repeated the result many times. Here is a cooked and detailed ultra-thin dough. I've taken 1/8 of a recipe and made a 12" pizza. My neighbor loved it. I got one slice.

This was declared a paper-plate crust. Want one?

I don't deliver pizza anymore, but I will make a deal with you.

I've got enough pizza stuff to make a whole new blog, and there are some that have pestered me to purchase dough balls so that they can make their own gluten-free pizza. This tells me that I really need to make a blog just for the pizza thing. Therefore, I will do so.

Once the pizza blog is ready to go on-line, the first post will be the recipe for the classic gluten-free pizza crust that you see above. It works like a pastry and has a bit of forgiveness. Do me the honor and come back to this blog and check the "Links" section to find the haphazard, semi-live pizza blog.

Cheers!

Edit Pages - A New Wrinkle

I didn't get an update e-mail from my other blog about the new Edit Pages tab that popped up in the display bar. It's highlighted in orange.

Clicking on it by mistake lead to the discovery that I can add up to 10 pages to the blog. An "about me" page was the example, but my first thought was to create a page for the copyright notice and the privacy policy, and get them out of the sidebar. The sidebar is getting crowded with stuff and I'd personally like to get a little more space for maybe one more advertisement. Of course, we're not talking about this blog, since I've not lit up ads over here yet.

Since I am talking about my other blog, which is currently under scrutiny from the reading public, I'd like to make sure that everything works properly. I'll do the job here first, make sure it works, and then take that new knowledge in hand and make the proper edits in one fell-swoop.

I have also found a workaround for the bug in the editor that causes hard returns to expand each time you come back to edit. The solution is to use the Post Options and set the publication of the post at a future time and/or date, and hit the Publish Post button afterward. This will change your status from Draft to Scheduled, and when you come back to edit your post, it will finally be WYSIWYG - and when you hit a hard return in the editor, it will automatically give you the blank line between paragraphs that I am accustomed to. I've already talked about the fact that the indent has been replaced by the blank line in Electronic writing.

So, I used Tabbed Browsing to open the Edit Pages dialog in another browser tab, letting me switch from one to the other. The options are fairly intuitive, and you're just creating what amounts to a permanent post entry. It will have a title, which will be used to create the URL for the page. It will have the format of:

http://YourBlogName.blogspot.com/p/TheOriginaNameOfThePage.html

You will then be asked if you want the gadget to be a bar below the header, or if it should be in the side bar. This can be changed later. I chose to have it below the title. Since my original name for the page was "Privacy/Legal/©opyright" it ended up as "privacylegalopyright" and stayed that way even after I changed the name of the page to "Legal" just to make it fit in the under-bar gadget.

It is like editing any other post, except that it forces you to use the new editor. You can get in and tinker with the html directly if you need to, and since I use an e-mail obfuscator, I do have to get into the html. For those of you that are wondering what and why and e-mail address needs to be obfuscated, visit the link and ponder that a machine can craw the web and look for things like a "mailto:" directive that says that "an e-mail address follows" and then harvest the address.

The obfuscator will take the entire mailto: directive and turn it into a random hodgepodge of escaped ASCII codes that every browser interprets immediately, giving you clear text. Because the bot acts on the stream of HTML code directly, not the browser output, the harvesting bot will never see a "mailto:" directive to harvest. Of course, if you've taken compiler design, you can make a smarter bot, but with those skills, you're not likely to be living life as a spammer.

So, the returning reader will discover that there are "Home" and "Legal" buttons under the title now. I will probably move the Coffee Break Blogs section from the sidebar to a "Links" page, which will have sections for various links. I think that it will make a cleaner looking blog, and should reduce the bounce rate by giving readers some place to click on, once in a while.

I've already removed the Copyright Notice and Privacy Policy display gadgets from the side bar. I already like the idea that the privacy policy is now no longer out in plain sight. I'll be making these changes, and another more important one, to the daily blog, real soon now. Because I know what to expect, it will be real clean and real neat.

/grin

Treasure Chests and Coffers

Now I get the chance to tinker with a video upload. I've owned a small ball-camera for some time, and have been accumulating some interesting bits of video. While many of the files are much larger than the 100 Megabyte limit for video files here on Blogger, I do have some short clips like this one:

This is all in camera, no editing, and surveillance quality. Note, there is no viewfinder on this camera, so it takes some time and attention to guess at the shot you're getting. Regardless, it's a little movie, akin to the old Super8 movies that the upper middle class of the 70's used.

[Editor's note: after the upload, it was not available for a short while, and now somehow it's 1/2 as long as it orignally was. There are some edits. The gist is still there, and this compression was quite unexpected. Was this done by machine or human?]

Just a note, that via cable-modem, this 20MB file took a few minutes to upload. The nice thing is that I was able to keep writing while the video was uploaded. Now, the Blogger site is "Processing Video" as I continue to write. Pretty cool. After a little while, I expect that the frame will appear frozen under the Play Icon.

Now, I've never done this before, so we'll see how this goes. Looks finished. Yes, the date in the corner is accurate. Normally, on the 5th of July, the alleys in my beach community are overrun with "canners" that have no compunction from stealing from city owned recycling bins (the blue ones) and from the private refuse company containers that also accept recyclables and separate them at their facility.

After several complaints and gathering some grass-roots support, we got our end of the alley cleaned up, and we no longer have stinking, loud, poorly exhausted vehicles with cigarette smoking, urinating in the alley people rummaging through the cans, climbing in the dumpster and using our shaded parking spaces to crush cans at 0530.

Frankly, it's bad enough that I have to listed to the trash going into the cans in the evening, I prefer not to be awakened early on a Sunday morning loud clinking glass and crushing cans coming out of the bins and into hand held trash bags, that have been harvested from the cans too. Most people are aware that all trash in this city must be bagged before disposal. The canners don't care - they see the empty bag as valuable, and they have emptied the contents just to get one or two redeemable bottles or cans.

After you see the video, you'll know how it got handled. Today, things are not this neat, and we have to get the neighbor to put their single family cans back after they are emptied on Mondays.

Formatting tip: Upload the video, write the text, drag the video down to where you want it, and while it is selected, hit the "center justify" icon to move it to the center of the post window. Grab a corner of the video image to adjust the size. I messed up the aspect ratio, so I had to upload the video a second time. Gaak.

On the second upload, it is at the end of the post, so I will drag it upward to where I want it. I am going to leave it in the default format, since I think my camera is 320x240. Being able to control the magnification and aspect ration would be nice. Yes, you can re-position the video in the post while it is uploading and processing.

On another note, the upload policy was not displayed when the link in the upload dialog box was clicked. I am pretty sure I know what it says, and I am in compliance since I shot the video, own the copyright, and there is nothing obscene. Trashy, yes. Obscene, No.

I shot another short video with the same kind of camera, and donated it to another blogger, since it pertains directly to their blog. Feel free to click the link you just read over and look for it.

Have fun!

Small, Medium and Large

The Mountains of Sierra Vista

I followed my rule, and uploaded the images in reverse, order, selecting small (left), medium (right) and large (center) as my placement options. I put the banner at the top because I know someone who wants a copy. I plan to make a better copy of it. I selected the best 400 pixels, since I know that the Large size is 400 pixels wide.

You have to hit the down arrow to get to the region to the right of the photo below. It appears that I have found the space to the right of the second image. Yes, this is making the final image go downward. The image at the left is a small left placement at 200 pixels wide. The image uploaded was 640 wide, so it got a bit crisper as a result.

This line will be to the left of the medium 320 pixel wide image. This one was also 640 pixels wide, but I did crop out some of the upper and lower portions. From these dawn photos of the desert just west of the 92 Highway in Southern Arizona, there are some elements of beauty to be had, but you have to look close and through the bushes to find it.

I managed to make a few mistakes along the way, one of which was using the delete key to delete forward, which deleted one of the photos that I had uploaded. This may be why the small one is in the middle. They are of dessert, so it really does not make much of a difference what the order is.

By allowing for such a mistake to occur, I can keep the time to a minimum. I did this, and now, I know that the resolutions are 200, 320 and 400 pixels for small, medium and large photographs. Handy information to have, and from the quality of the images I've been able to eek from my security camera, I have to say that the small image looks the best. While the camera shots 640x480 images, they're not the clearest images in the world.

Now that I've tinkered with photos, I have to say I like them allot. It is now going to be a challenge to get photos of the quality that I believe necessary before I really start using them in a blog. Some of the photo blogs out there are very high quality images.

Uploading Photos

I'm sitting here with another blogger, who is quite interested in getting photos into their post pages. Since I've only done it once, and saw a number of options, I've decided to write a tutorial so that I really only have to explain it once, at the time I do it.

Since my blogger friend was nice enough to have me over, I shot a few photos in the back yard that give me enough material to write about, so that we can experiment with the different sizes and formatting options.

Yes, I know you were expecting a post about the final "W" in the 5-W's and 1-H series, called "Why" but it's pretty safe to presume that you already know why you want to write a blog in the first place, therefore, I leave this one up to you unless you scream, yell, and absolutely insist that I put my two-cents out there for all to critique. Comments welcome.

As for the photos, there is a simple little photo icon that allows you to upload a photo right into your post. If you're using the "old editor" here on Blogspot, its located to the right of the spell check icon. Once more spot to the right looks like a piece of movie film. They tell me that it's the video upload button, and perhaps I'll get to it one day. For now, we focus on the photos. When you hover over the correct button, the "tool tip" will read "Add Image."

The Blogger Add Image function accepts J-Peg (JPG), graphic interchange format (GIF), bitmap picture (BMP) and portable network graphics (PNG) formats. You can browse your hard disk and upload an image of 8MB or smaller, or you can browse the web and link to an external URL that points to the image. Uploading an image will prevent a broken link from wrecking your page, so I suggest this option. The limit on image uploads is controlled by your Google Picasa Images account. Click on the question mark icon in the Add Image dialog to learn more.There are four option for formatting your image. None, Left, Center and Right. I'll play with these a bit, but the left and right options allow the text to flow alongside the image. There are also three size options available. Small, Medium and Large. Details now follow, but for now, let's just use a centered large image and see what we get.


Unexpectedly, the image uploaded at the top of the page, and activated the line-spacing bug in the old editor. I was able to hover my cursor over the image and get the four-way arrow icon, indicating that I could drag the image to where I wished within the post. I pulled it to the bottom, and from the Preview screen, determined that my 640x480 image was reduced to a 400x300 pixel image. It is suggested that your horizontal image size match the image size (in this case, 400 pixels) so that resolution reduction artifacts do not spoil your picture. Here is the best 400 pixels from the same image.

This time, I selected the left formatting option. This time too, the image did not upload at the expected cursor position, so I had to drag it down to where I wanted it to be. Uploading the image activated the spacing bug again, so I've decided to call this part 1 of 2 (or more parts) and give you more details in the next post.

From what I've just discovered about this interface, It is best to select your image(s) first, crop them to the desired size and then upload them into your post, in reverse order, last image first, first image last. Get the images in place and then add the text. You'll save a lot of time a frustration.

Note that there were not too many resolution reduction issues with the first image. I'm actually happier with the clarity of the original image that was reduced, that the best 400 pixels that I selected. Based on this, go with what you need, pick the formatting options, upload the picture and then start writing.

The formatting in this editor is driving me nuts, and more experimentation is necessary before a good multi-image posting method is created. I will share it with you as I have the opportunity

Have Fun!

(Note: I had to edit the HTML directly to correct the spacing formatting, and the "div" tags were unexpectedly replaced with "p" tags when more text is added. If you have any advice, I'm really ready to read it, as is my blogging friend.)

How

Fast forward a few years to the end of Grammar School, which for me was my 6th grade year and in a different school. Moving between the 5th and 6th grades is not recommended. I really hated to write, and I was just clumsy. I was defiant. I took the zero on that 3rd grade story, and began my downward slide in the field of spelling. Writing was no longer fun. It was a chore. Writing a final draft of an essay or a paper with a ball point pen and a bottle of white out is tedious, if nothing else.
　
If I could only use a typewriter, it might help take some of the pain out of the task. I even got the task of typing up the program for a 6th grade play. I was given three ditto-masters, which did not allow the use of white-out. I goofed up the first one badly, and this was after typing a corrected draft to work from. The ancient IBM Selectric that Mom had was an awesome machine, and it was like firing a gun every time you pressed a key.
　
It took a long time for me to re-embrace words, and the whirring of that Selectric was became hypnotic. Every time I sit in front of a keyboard, that whirring becomes the sound of the engine in my brain that spins out words. I got exposed Video Display Terminals in Junior High though a special after-school program, and learned a bit of BASIC in the 7th grade.
　
I quickly learned where the backspace key was. The ability to correct a mistake told me exactly one thing: paper is for artists and printers, not typing on with a typewriter. The backspace key — called Rub Out on some terminals — quickly became my favorite key. Aside from the space bar, it was the only key that I knew the exact placement of. Later, the ability to backup, insert, remove, copy, paste, etc., all re-enforced my silly notion that composing at a keyboard was more efficient and effective than using pencil, paper, typewriter, etc.
　
Getting to High School and into the computer programming class a year early as a Freshman, my time-on-keyboard began to increase, as did my skill at pounding the correct keys on a QWERTY keyboard. The special keys still made me look down, but I was quickly learning the finger patterns that correspond to the keywords of the Applesoft BASIC language. It was somewhere along the time when I was writing tons of code in BASIC and my teacher came along with a barbed compliment in the form of a five point deduction on a working piece of code.
　
"You can solve lots of problems with code, but you've got to give accurate instructions. Spelling matters."
　
I began to work on tools that would let me take my programs and stuff them through a spell checker. It was not easy, but I made it happen using Applesoft and disk I/O. I came up with a way to spell check my code. I figured that if I could get close, well, I should get a chance to correct it, and I did, but it was extra work. Punctuation was another matter entirely, and over the years, I've had to work to get it up to par. I edit out way too many comma-splices, but that's what a dynamic editor is for.
　
I got through College on a copy of WordPerfect if I remember correctly. I even re-used my old Epson FX-80 from my Apple //e. Where a current laser printer could print several pages per minute, the FX-80 ran for several minutes per page, so finding a typographical error on a document that takes so painfully long to render, helps make you be a slightly better proof reader on the screen.
　
Of course, I have a standard office mini-tower machine at work now, and I use other regular size computers once in a while, but the bulk of my key pounding is on a portable computer of one kind or another. Having been slapping the backspace key for three quarters of my life, I've gotten used to learning a different keyboard now and again. You are truly best-off if you don't get frustrated easily and take a good look. It can take up to two weeks for me to get really familiar and up to speed on a new keyboard.
　
Because I use portable machines allot, I tend to favor the short-throw scissor mechanism that is found in quality laptops. Full size is a big plus, and is not to be underrated. Because I play Final Fantasy XI, on Consoles, Laptops and Computers, I've acquired a number of keyboards that litter my living room, and accompany me on travel as a backup, just in case. Go ahead an laugh, but a serious rider has his own saddle, and I have my own keyboard.
　
When it comes to work, I still use a full size, monster keyboard with a throw so long you can almost get your fingers permanently wedged between the keys. While not my idea of a good time, I usually limit my interaction on these junkers to running diagnostic tests, etc. I'm not planning to write a book on a junker, just run a machine now and again. When I am done, I toss said junker keyboard underneath my lab bench until I need it again. Somehow, when you're getting paid, things are a little different.
　
The How of Writing includes not only the physical act of writing, but the placement of words on the page, or on display. With varying tab widths, and little need to worry about the cost of paper, the indent to begin a paragraph has been largely replaced by a line break. This gives an electronic composition an almost road-stripe appearance when you look at the forest and not the trees. More white space means more time to think, and in an e-mail, the presence of additional white space invites the reader to read even more "between the lines." It is for this reason that I struggle to keep the single line of white space, and treat it as a punctuation mark.
　
Like a comma, white space influences the cadence of the reading experience. I've never been a speed reader, but I am sure that you need to pay attention to punctuation, and sometimes, you need a clue to slow down and spend an extra moment. In the case of extra space between paragraphs, it gives the reader an opportunity to reflect or briefly create a new realm or context of consideration, such as a comment or an inset quote that requires special attention. The block formatting of text helps when display widths are uncertain, or there is a difference between the width of the entry window and display window.
　
It was during the update of this entry that I encountered and unfortunate error that lost some inspired work. While it may have been possible to recover the work, I did not record the error code, and when I pressed the back button, the text in the entry window reverted to when I originally opened it. Navigating forward to get the error code did not work, and I got a page expired error. Talk about a blogging experience? Here it is live and real. How will I prevent it? It's called WordPad folks. It was included in Windows XP, and it is a Rich Text editor just like the blogger post entry window, so I should have little difficulty with a cut an paste operation.
　
By using a simple external editor, you can save yourself the loss of a hour or more of precious work, if you are doing the written-word thing. It might be worse when I go forward with experiments and other techniques, we shall see. Like I did in the past, I will now be moving work from one realm to another to accomplish the spell check. I'm such a spell-check addict, that if spell check were a pay-per-use on some editor in the cloud, I would go broke or learn to spell better really quick. To protect myself from going broke, I claimed the idea beforehand in the original post. Is it a coincidence that my original recording of the idea of pay-per-use spell check was swallowed by Google? Time will tell. I made a timestamped file right after the event with the idea, so I'm covered. I am sure that I can subpoena the records if necessary. There were many successful saves in the session, and I have confidence that there is plenty of storage space at Google for the log file with every differential update.
　
This is the first data loss that I have encountered in the three months since I started using Blogger. The only other problem that I encountered has been with the hard-return expansion setting. I never came to peace with that setting, and every time I open a draft for re-editing, I have to take out all of the line breaks. This is not a problem for my short update daily blog, which is designed to be a minimum of one full window, if slightly more. It works out to about 250 words. This blog is a different story, and it is more than annoying to have to collapse the paragraphs every time.
　
I am sure that I am in for a new set of problems using WordPad. You probably have other solutions, perhaps even using a full-blown publishing application to crank out html code that you just post via direct update, and you'd never consider using the editor provided for fear of the unknown or some other equally valid reason. I just know I got burned and I don't like the feeling at all, and it's all part of the blogging experience. I'll write more as I try the copy-paste method of using the spell check in the still open Blogger window, after I finish re-recording the lost keystrokes.
　
This brings to mind the experience I had when working on a term paper in High School. Having finished the paper at a friend's house, and writing a tidy summation and nice ending, I leaned back in satisfaction and stretched. My foot hit the power switch on the power strip, and I had not saved the file to the floppy. Then, like now, I am recovering. The only loss event that I can compare to these are the disappearance of five years of outbound e-mail at work. 95% of what I said survives in the form of reply messages or carbon copies as my reply filters through the chain of command, so it's fairly recoverable. In this most recent case, we all benefit from my unfortunate experience.
　
Regardless of the media you present on your blog, a general format or structure for updates can be helpful. I just did what I normally do when confronted with a subject and message box, I started writing like it was an e-mail in an existing conversation that did not need an address. I also leave the title blank until the end, at least on my fictional blog. This blog is a bit more directed, and as you have guessed, you can expect to see all five H's and I think you already got the W. For now, the title is coming first, and I am apt to shuffle the order due to the importance of the new information contained herein.
　
I admitted earlier that I like to work ahead, and since this is a new project, I am going forward to get the pipeline filled. This is the reason that the data loss was only a minor annoyance. While it is a rarity, it does happen, so please be prepared, and used the appropriate tool for the job you are doing. It's always good to have a backup, and every minute of good writing time is valuable. In the case of writing these long format updates, the use of an external editor is a good choice, I still like the immediacy of the regular post editor, and the fact that the cloud can support publishing applications through a standard browser. The internal editor is also adequate for minor edits and spell check, but be sure to take the edits back to your external editor before you save.
　
For the record, the paste operation into the Blogger editor box worked as expected, and what was displayed with the line breaks in WordPad was displayed in the online Old Editor with no breaks between paragraphs. This paragraph is going in via the Editor, just to tempt fate. An autosave occurred 1 minute ago. It brings up a missing comment, that if I were to go from Blog to Book, I would insist on the paper saving re-formatting of the single blank line to an indented paragraph. I am sure a professional editor would agree.
　
The paste-back for the save did not work exactly as expected the first time, but using WordPad as an external editor will work if you remember that WordPad uses the line break as a paragraph indicator, and that you have to add an extra one if you want it to show up on the blog. If you do this, it appears when you paste it in, and it is stable going though the normal draft process. As long as you do not add more paragraphs, you will not affect the spacing. Do the paragraph adding in WordPad, and fix the innards in the internal editor. Rough cut and polish. The cycle of writing.
　
The tools available today are useful and effective, allowing a myriad of expression types to blossom and flourish. For those that can and do read the manuals for their gear, and experiment with all of the settings and adjustments to expand the creative palate, there is an infinite canvas of expression and communication, with the potential for synergistic growth to be explored and populated. How you adapt your skills and bring you own brand of blog to the world is your gift. Explore it. Express it.