An online notebook
Dave One of the frustrations of not sticking with FeedDemon was that I forgot to export my blogroll so I could update Bloglines with all the cool feeds I had come across. Frustrating.
So I could start pulling some together, I had a look through Robert Scoble’s blogroll. It’s huge! Lots of good stuff on here, though, I’ve subscribed to loads.
Have used the free blog available on Bloglines to set up a link blog. Basically for stuff that catches my eye and I might want to see later, but which I can’t be bothered to comment on properly over here.
One thing I would like to have in my ideal blogging tool is a client that sits on my PC, enabling me to write posts and things, which could then be uploaded when I connect to the internet. WordPress doesn’t offer this, sadly, but given that I spend all day at work, where I can’t install software anyway, it’s academic. Oh, to work from home!
Anyway, I have come up with a modest solution, which is to have a Notepad file open all the time called ‘blognotes’. I type in my posts as I think of them, along with the time that I wrote it. It’s then a case of copying and pasting them into WordPress when I get the chance, altering the timestamp as necessary.
This also has the advantage that posts get reviewed, which means I don’t end up posting something really stupid. Possibly. One thing I have noticed though, is that when copying and posting from Notepad, turn off word wrap before you do it (from the Format menu). Otherwise your line breaks can go a little crazy.
I am really getting settled down now with the various systems I have put together. I really like using gmail for, duh, my email, and the Yahoo! calender is coming in very handy. I am pretty confident, having thought about it, that I am going to put the webmail notes hack into place, and of course I really like WordPress as a blog engine, and am settled into Bloglines for my RSS feeds for now.
The only difficulty with all of this is the fact that none of it is available without a PC. I really need to get some sort of handheld device, if only to take notes and things whilst offline. But even better would be if I could email, access my calender and post to here from an online PDA type device. Is this possible? I don’t know much about them. Plus, I haven’t any money for this kind of thing. Perhaps I should just forget about it all…
10.15 Am now on page 132 of The Wasp Factory now, roughly the half-way point. It isn’t getting any more normal! Banks’ writing, though, is superb. He keeps it full of dark suspense, and the black humour is hilarious and horrific. I wanted to read this partly because I knew it to be somewhat macabre and it certainly hasn’t disappointed. I can imagine it being a book I would want to re-read, though obviously not exactly for pleasure…