A new year...

...and I've missed the first four hours of 24? Crapola! At least they have the full episodes on their website, and I'll try their "new player" to see no stuttering and no buffering.

I've got a lot of catching up to do, so grab your mantyhose and let's go!

RSS Feed for comments

I'm not sure how I can merge these two feeds, if it's even possible, but by clicking here you can subscribe to my blog's comments feed.

If anybody has done this with blogspot, let me know.

Technorati Tags: Blogspot,comments,RSS Feed

Windows Live Writer, finally!

I begrudgingly tried Windows Live Writer while at SIGGRAPH. Think of Writer as a word processor that uploads to your blog. Before trying it, I was fine going online to my blog, writing updates and uploading pictures. If I couldn't get online, I just didn't blog. Connection taking too long? I got frustrated and didn't blog.

I didn't know what I was missing!

What I like: offline post creation, WYSIWYG, easy tags and formatting.

So far the only thing I don't like is that there seems to be a bug that un-centers images when I upload a post. I have to redownload the post, center the images again, and reupload.

I wasn't sure I could do this, but I just Alt-PrntScrn'ed the window and pasted it into the body text. Nice! I figured it would, but nice to know it works like expected.

I'm using it exclusively for blogging moving forward.

Thanks Dave!

Technorati Tags: Windows Live Writer,Microsoft,blog

Posting with Blogger Buddy

Every once in a while I check to see if there are any interesting Vista Sidebar gadgets available. I mean, how many clock utilities do we really need?

One I just found is Blogger Buddy, which lets you post from your Sidebar without having to load your browser or editing app.







Well, this might be the first and last post from Blogger Buddy for me! Clicking on the Image button has a space to fill in the image tag, but it wants an html link, and it won't let you browse your drive for images.

No thanks. For quick text-only posts, I can see the advantage, but I prefer show and tell. Another problem I just found - I tried to select the following text and click the Italics button, and instead of bookending the text with the italics tags, it just put the opening and closing tags after the end of the text. That's useful, said nobody.

This is actually my second attempt - I think I messed up the gadget trying to move it off the Sidebar.

Also, I had to post the text of the, uh, post, with Blogger Buddy, then open IE, log in, edit my post and manually upload and add the images.

200 Posts!

Wow - this is my 200th post! Here is my first post, for that trip down Memory Lane.

I started this blog because I was going to Singapore for business, and we finally decided that it would be too much trouble to bring my wife and kids with me. I wanted to document the trip for anyone that wanted to see.

Naturally, it's morphed into "my blog," where I document stuff that I think is interesting...for posterity? Kicks? Who knows, but I like it.

Back from vacation

Wow, I'm finally back online. Taking a vacation for us can be tricky. Sometimes we have "working vacations," where I take time off of work and we work around the house on projects. Even with the best of intentions we seem to have less time for projects than we expect.

My time off has also let me experience purchasing my first box of wine.




All in all, not that bad - I think we may just have it too cold. Great for cooking, though, and the no-mess...spigot?...is great. I agree that a lot of the "wine experience" is the presentation, uncorking, and pouring from a glass bottle. Cardboard storage may be a buzzkill for purists, but for my special spaghetti sauce, box wine is fine by me! At least there are games built in to your purchase....

We also started Phase 2 of our playscape, watched a few movies and are preparing for our youngest's third birthday, which will be Toy Story-tastic!

If I'm so "rested" from being off, why haven't I been getting up so early? Unfortunately we found a Jackass marathon just about every night this week.

Full sized images posted...FINALLY!!!

I've complained about images I post to my blog not being clickable, that is, clicking on them did not link to the original/higher resolution images.

I've been searching Blogger help files, help forums and sending email to Blogger with no response. I checked other blogs on Blogger and their images don't seem to suffer this same fate.

I checked the HTML of my posts and I couldn't see any alternate upload paths for the high resolution image...it's like my blog lost the functionality to upload fullsize images.

Blogger lets you work in a WYSIWYG environment or an environment that displays all the HTML code. In the WYSIWYG environment, you can drag uploaded images around to the correct spot and the layout code was smart enough to make everything how you want it.

Well, almost how you want it.

It turns out that moving an image in the WYSIWYG space gets rid of the original resolution code (image name, path, pixel count, etc) that is in the HTML. It just disappears. All that is left is the code for the thumbnail image.

I stumbled on to this while flipping back and forth between the an older post that still had clickable links to full size images and a recent post.

Why does this happen? I can find no other reason besides it being a bug.

If you go to the HTML environment you are able to cut and paste ALL the image-related HTML code to another place in your post, and everything goes with it. I've reuploaded the image to the post below and it works like a champ.

I'm relieved that I've found the solution, to say the least. Am I going to go back and fix everything? Probably not.

Not that there's anything wrong with my blog....

I just previewed my blog after posting the Snipping Tool entry, and I happen to check out the Ads by Google area.



Thanks, Google.

Housekeeping

It looks like more than a month has gone by - time for blogging!

Fixed wishlist.
Fixed movielist.
Removed musiclist.

Too...Many...Books!

Wow. Yesterday I added a bunch of books that I wanted to a List (Blogger Page Element) and I guess I didn't realize how many books I wanted. Now I have a huge list on the right that pushes my other Lists down into nigh obscurity.

I'll switch those over to a Froogle Wishlist, which Blogger can accomodate easily, but I believe it is only in my Profile. I started a Wishlist but never did much with it. I wanted to add these books to my blog so I could access the list from anywhere (current softcopy of the list is on my work PC).

It's been a long time, baby!

Hey, I'm back! I know it's been weeks since I've posted last, but sometimes life occurs. I have a lot of content to upload too, and I'm embarrassed to say that some of it is still Christmas-related! Wow...at least a month late, but sometimes that's how I roll.

One more thing...

I added a Google Adsense box to see what all the fuss is about.

By the way, the Labels don't show as a drop down box, but I have a "Show/Hide all" link that can show all the Labels and clicking on them updates the contents of the box.

I've switched...

...to the new Blogger beta program. Why? There are a good amount of reasons, but the biggest one for me is now I can label my posts. I'm not sure why Blogger didn't contain labels originally - maybe it was in place and acquired by Google before labels were The Next Big Thing in blogs? Who knows.

As I'm typing this entry, I see a spot for me to enter a Label. Hopefully it will remember all the labels that I make so I won't have to recreate the wheel each time, but I don't see it as a drop down box. Maybe after I make a few Labels will I get to select them? Hopefully.

Another big hope of mine is that I can go back and Label all my old posts. I've been wanting to show people all the posts about my Singapore trip, but without labels I have to point them to the archives and a certain date.

I'm not sure if My Sweet Blog will have many growing pains transitioning to the new beta, but I'll try to break as little as possible at a time.

Remember me?

Dear Blog,

Hi! Remember me? It's been a long time since I've talked to you. How have you been?

A lot of stuff has happened since I've been away. Don't worry - I've been accumulating data and keeping it. I'll send it to you when I get some time.

Do you want to know something interesting? I've missed you! When I see something interesting or funny, or something happens to me, I want to tell you about it. I've missed our semi-confessional relationship. Am I showing symptoms of blogging withdrawal? Has information sharing become so pervasive that once I've started it, I need to keep it up? Maybe.

I'll try to do better - I promise. You'll be hearing more from me soon.

.trey

Nature preserve and an experiment

Here are some pictures from a nature preserve place outside of San Marcos. I can't remember the name, but we passed by a walkway over a swampish area and there were these cool...things. There weren't descriptions around them, so I don't know if they are supposed to collect water or what.

Also, I'm blogging these photos directly from Picasa 2. This may be a way to post photo collections, but if it comes out like I think it will, there won't be a link to the photos but all the photos will be there. This may not work if you want to have a link to a published photo collection elsewhere than on your front page.


 

Feast or famine

It's been a while since my last updates. A lot of stuff has been going on, so prepare for an onslaught of content, or something like that.

I'm planning to start working on the blog more often and not have my typical glut of content bookended by a vacuum.

100th post!

Wow, this is my 100th post. I'm really enjoying writing this, especially with an event like going to Singapore.

Speaking of Singapore, I stayed up all night (well, I think I fell asleep from 2:15am to 3am) trying to get acclimated to US time, and I felt fairly chewed getting ready for the flight. The flights were all uneventful, which is good, and I worked on having less wine on my return than on my arrival. I watched part of The Constant Gardener, which looked really good. I like just about everything Ralph Fiennes is in, and I definitely want to finish it.

I plan on keeping this blog going to record as much as I can, so thanks for coming this far with me. I can't promise you'll get anything out of it besides pure, blogtastic entertainment, but I'm hoping for a ride.

Back in ATX

I'm back in town, but it might be a day or so before I get the rest of my pics up. I'm pretty backlogged, though.

The Big Time (or How I Enabled RSS Feeds On My Blog)

So when is the best time to check a blog? Hourly? Daily? Let RSS feeds do the work for you. The feeds basically tell you when there is new information on a blog so you won't waste your time. Check out David's writeup, as he has spent more time on the description than I will, and he urges you to syndicate your blog!

Since I'm using Blogger, I have to use an external RSS site, but the setup is trivial - a few clicks later and I have an orange RSS icon at the bottom right of my blog (check your browser status bar). Now I need to see if it works, and that's where y'all come in - drop me a comment if you can't see the icon, or if the feed doesn't work.

Update: I put an RSS icon on my page, with a link to my atom.xml. It's on the right side in the index portion. Hopefully this will get the ball moving, as I know everyone is champing at the bit to get my feed.

Dropping posts - republish site vs. index?

I found out that some of my posts aren't being updated, and they are disappearing. What I think is going on is I may be required to republish entire site instead of republishing the index only. Luckily I can get to the content, so I think I'll post in a different way.