Journal - Blogger Woes

Well, I’m not having much luck with this. As I mentioned before, to put hyperlinks in a post, I use the keyboard shortcut, Ctrl-shift-a, but last Friday it stopped working. Since then I’ve discovered that other shortcuts are acting funny too. Ctrl-b for bold and ctrl-I for italics are not working right either. I've posted questions in the Blogger help forum three different times but no one has answered.

I can’t really figure out if this is a problem with Blogger or with Internet Explorer, but I’m kind of leaning toward the latter. I’ve tried some different settings in Blogger with no success. I've tried some settings in IE, also with no success. I tried upgrading IE to version 8 to see if that might help, but my computer wouldn’t take the upgrade. My computer is about 8 years old and doesn’t always work real well. Some people would call it an “oldie but a goodie.” Others might call it a “piece of crap.” I’m still undecided as to which group I am in.

Anyway, after that I tried rolling back to IE version 6. I was able to do that easily enough, but it didn’t solve the problem so I reverted back to version 7.

After that I tried using system restore to revert my settings back to a previous time when everything was working. I knew the problem had begun last Friday approximately, so I was going to roll everything back to last Wednesday or so. Well, when I got into the system restore utility, the oldest restore point available was last Thursday at 8:52 pm. That restore point was labeled as the time when Windows sent through an automatic update for Internet Explorer and every restore point before that had been removed. Coincidence?

So, I’m left with a few options. Like Ro said, I could type out the html code by hand everytime I want a hyperlink. I’m semi-familiar with html tags from my eBay days and I could do that, but honestly, it’s a really big hassle and I’m not sure I want to go to that much trouble. I’m planning on having a lot of links in my book reviews and typing out all that code would take forever.

My second option is to switch from IE to Mozilla Firefox, which is what Joni uses. I tested that, and the hyperlinks work okay, but it makes the code visible in the compose screen and I don't like that either. I could probably live with it though. I tried a couple of other browsers, the new Google Chrome and Opera, but neither of those work with a screen reader apparently.

A third option is to switch to a new blog host. I’ve been checking out WordPress and I kind of like what they have to offer. One of the first things I found at WordPress, is the built-in stat counter. It automatically keeps track of the hits on each page of your blog, tells you which search engines are sending you the most traffic and lots of other stuff. There’s a whole page of statistics. Why Blogger doesn't do that is a mystery to me. In Blogger you have to use a third party counter. I tried that with no success.

Next, I looked at the Wordpress widgets. They have some that sound very useful. Some of them are powered by the built-in stat counter. You can display your most popular blog post titles and things like that. There’s one large problem, however. The only way to put the widgets on your blog, is to click and drag them into place on the sidebar. There's no "add this widget" link like Blogger has. My heart sank when I discovered that. I sent them an email to let them know why that was a problem, and asked them what kinds of accessibility options they have for blind and low-vision users. That was late last night, so I haven’t heard back from them yet. I hope they answer.

Well, there’s a couple of other things I’ve been working on this week, but this post is long enough. I’ll tell you about Audible’s affiliate program, and Statcounter.com next time, okay?

See you later!

Luke 18:1-8 Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: "In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, 'Grant me justice against my adversary., "For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, 'Even though I don't fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually wear me out with her coming!' “ And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?"

Journal - Critical Mass

Well, I haven’t written anything for a while, as you can see. I’m starting to get a little bored with the whole blogging thing. That's how I am, I find something new that interests me and I put a lot of time and effort into it for a while, but I always end up getting bored with it eventually. That’s one reason why I always found it so difficult to settle down with one job for very long.

This time it has been kind of weird. I’m bored with the blogs, but I don’t want to be bored with them. I want to keep doing it because it was really fun for a while. Bonus points to anyone who can explain that. So anyway, instead of just giving up on the blogs altogether, I decided to try and shake things up a little bit.

What I decided to do is come up with a new name for my audio book review blog, “Reviews From The Deep.” But that was too easy, so instead of just renaming it, I decided to create a whole new blog with the new name so it would have a new URL and everything. And that’s just what I did. My new audio book blog is called “Critical Mass Media, Audio Book Meltdown.” Since it was an all new blog, I wanted to put some different gadgets on it and do a few different things with it. So far, it has proven to be very challenging, which is a good thing because that will keep me interested for a while.

The first step was creating the blog. A simple enough task, unless you happen to be blind. To create a new blog, you have to complete a verification. It’s a little box with some letters and numbers in it and you have to type out what you see there. It’s called a CAPCHA I think, although I don’t know where that name comes from. Maybe Ro will tell us. They do that so you can prove that you are a human being and ot some auto-spammer. They have a little thing you can click on if you’re blind so you can hear the numbers instead of seeing them, but they never work. Until now, that is. When I got to the CAPCHA, I clicked the listen link and I could actually hear the numbers and type them out as it played. It really worked! I was very pleased about that and was off to a good start on my new blog.

The next step was to export all of the book reviews from my old blog, and then import them to the new one. That step was pretty easy, there are links to click on to export and import. Basically it’s just saving a file to my computer’s hard drive, and then opening it back up from the new blog. No problem there, all of my book reviews showed up with the comments still attached and everything.

Now I wanted to put some fancy gadgets on my new blog, namely a counter, and a drop-down list box for the labels. These are not standard gadgets that are available through blogger, but can be added by adding some raw html code. I ran into some trouble there. I spent about five hours working on those two things and got absolutely nowhere. That’s pretty frustrating because things like that used to be pretty easy for me. Not to worry, I’ll keep working on it.

Also, I ran into another problem. About the time I created my new blog, something that I use a lot quit working. To create links in a blog post, I use the keyboard shortcut "ctrl-shift-a." Suddenly that stopped working and I get some funny warning message when I try it. I think that some security setting in Internet Explorer has changed, but I haven't found out which one yet. I put a message in the help forum about it but haven’t gotten a reply yet. I'm going to do some research on that as soon as I'm done posting this. Anyway, that's why I couldn't provide a link to “Critical Mass Media” here. No big deal, the blog isn’t ready to be looked at yet anyway.

So those are the things I need to figure out. After that, the next step will be monetizing the new blog. Monetizing is a fancy name for using your blog to make money. Since I’m writing audio book reviews, I want to link them to websites that actually sell the books and get a percentage of the sale in return. That's called an affiliate partnership and both Audible.com and Amazon.com have affiliate programs. I'll have to figure out how that whole thing works, that's kind of new to me.

So that’s what I’ve been doing for the last several days. So far so good, my interest in blogs has been rekindled. For now, at least. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

Ecclesiastes 1:3-9 What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again. All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.