Post 1099 – The Joys of Windows Live Writer!

I’m gratified by the feedback I’ve received from the Gary Tredwell interview.  Please keep it coming, because it’s not like anyone’s paying me to type my fingerprints off doing these interviews.

More interviews are in the works.  I have yet to begin to transcribe one, and another was sent off to the person in question just yesterday, mere hours before I published the interview with Gary.

The Gary Tredwell interview was composed and produced using a tool called Windows Live Writer.  I have used it for some other posts, including the Tom Bedell interview, but I have learned more about the tool since then, so the result should be better. 

This post is being written in WLW as well.  I am getting the hang of this tool more and more as I go along.

WLW allows me to compose a blog post offline, and then know exactly how it will look prior to publishing on the blog.  I can do some neat things with it that I can’t do in the (ugh!) Blogger editor, like tilt a picture or modify it such that it resembles a photograph or has rounded edges. 

I can embed video with it as well.  However, the official way of doing it doesn’t let me make that video be able to go to full screen mode.  I learned a trick yesterday that lets me paste the source in the blog post like I used to do in the (ugh!) Blogger editor.  It’s easier, and lets me make the videos go to full screen mode, so you can see me and Greasy Gary in our full glory.

I figured out today how to add labels to a WLW post, using the “set categories” feature. 

The (ugh!) Blogger editor doesn’t like the stuff that WLW sends to it.  As I just stated, I didn’t know how to add labels to a WLW-produced post last evening when I published the Gary Tredwell interview.  That meant I had to go back and add them to the blog post using the (ugh!) Blogger editor.  I did that, and discovered that the line spacing on the interview was screwed up.  I just spent 30 minutes or so manually adding line breaks to the post, using WLW.   The Tom Bedell interview was similarly messed up a few weeks ago.  I am still not happy with the line spacing in Tom’s interview, and will be finding faults with the line spacing in the Gary interview for a while yet, too. 

My asus eee pc runs linux, ubuntu notebook remix, karma koala, if you must know.   WLW doesn’t work on that machine because of the os.  But there are blogger development tools in linux, so I selected bilbo (bloggins), which offers nearly all the features of WLW.

What does this mean for you, my gentle readers?  Well, less frustration for me should mean a faster turn around time and a faster publishing schedule on these interviews.  The advanced features of WLW (and Bilbo) will let me try new things with layout I could never have accomplished before using the (ugh!) Blogger editor.   And, if I’m having fun writing these things and don’t have to worry about the (ugh!) Blogger editor getting in my way, I’ll have more fun writing these posts, which should come across in what you read.

Windows Live Writer.  Bilbo.  They are changing the look and feel, for the better, for Bevboy’s Blog. 

G’Night.

Bevboy