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Kol Tregaskes

Kol Tregaskes

Used to work in games, a keen photographer: http://koltregaskes.com, likes music, movies, sport, computing & web dev, art, sci-fi/tech & cycling.
How do you write your blog posts? What apps do you use or do you write your post inside the site's page you are posting to or simply in your text editor? How do you source the images you use? Where do you search for pictures? Where do your ideas for posts come from?
Blog-writing-project[1].jpg
I'm prepping myself to start properly blogging on a regular* basis and just thinking of the most efficient way to do it. Some of the post ideas are posts that I'll need to draft over a week or month, some will be there and then. Lots of ideas atm. :-) - Kol Tregaskes
Currently write posts within the blog editor itself, in pure HTML. Sometimes prepare notes or a draft in a plain text editor first. Used to use Google Docs and other WYSIWYG editors, but wanted finer control. - Mike Chelen
* I hope so anyway. ;-) - Kol Tregaskes
I in pursuit of moving to the cloud I've started using Google Notebook a LOT! I'm finding this to be a pretty good place to draft posts and ideas. - Kol Tregaskes
I have been using Blogo on the mac lately, I like it and its easy - Kim Landwehr
I like Windows Live Writer for longer posts. For podcast notifications, I just write it on the website. - Derek Coward
Always liked Google Notebook, forcefully weaned myself since they announced it would no longer be updated. What features make it better than Docs now? - Mike Chelen
i use google dogs to write, it gives it a nice look and feel when I copy and paste. Ideas come when i am driving to the office ;-) - Rajeev kistoo
Mike, never really thought about using Google Docs to write in. I like Notebook as it's text only (well sort it) and I'm a huge Notepad user. Perhaps I'll look at Google Docs more. - Kol Tregaskes
I use the built-in blog editor in my browser. It allows me to post to multiple blogs without having to visit each one. The only downside to that is that sometimes my tags don't go through with the blog and I have to go fix it later. - Anika
Windows Live Writer. It is nicer to write them safely offline and it's easy to edit posts afterwards and all the other features are really nice, too. - Jemm
Docs has a feature to post directly to a blog, it might only work for a single site though. Adore plaintext after struggling with formatting in many different editors. It seems hard to find modern software that is truly text only. - Mike Chelen
I'm a fan of WordPress and use Zemanata to help find related link. For pictures I use Flickr and search for creative commons photos or I roll my own. I like to do most of my original copy writing with Word 2010 blog template and then post it as a draft to finish it off with formatting. - Marc Rohde
Mike, I can't seem to use Google Docs anyway, when I go to create a new Document I get a 'This web page has a redirect loop.' error every time. :-( - Kol Tregaskes
i usualy using microsoft writer for enterin my postes to ,y wordpress based blog. My posts are usualy about photography, graphic designs, science and other things in life... - ems from fftogo
Save early and often if you write posts in a browser. Things go wrong. I serve images from my flickr account rather than the blog site. - Todd Hoff
Kol, that is so weird! Maybe try a different browser? There is a Firefox utility called Prism which can launch a standalone process, used that comfortably in the past. Can't imagine what might be occurring. Google Docs is nice because it saves automatically. Always save compulsively when writing on my blog, and the full version history is saved in case I decide to revert edits later. - Mike Chelen
I've found that WYSIWYG editors focus too much on the appearance, and I want to publish blog posts that have more underneath. For example, the <abbr> tag might look just like <em> but it allows the title= attribute, which isn't directly visible. Microformats are another example of something that WYSIWYG editors don't usually offer. I also want to use markup so that I can update the... more... - Amit Patel
Depends on the platform at the time. Short stuff, I just use the WP editor from the Dashboard. If I want plain text and I'm in Linux or OS X, it's vi in a terminal. I rarely use Windows for anything personal. - teleken from BuddyFeed
WYSIWYG editors, particularly Google Docs, add a lot of extra HTML and CSS. It is a pain to look through if something needs to be tweaked manually. Writing from scratch by hand ends up being easier. Supposedly there are some more intelligent editors now that might be worth trying. When working with plain text my favorite editors are Gedit and Geany. Haven't learned yet how to do some basic tasks such as copying the text of an entire file in command line programs like vi or nano. - Mike Chelen
Mike - for the entire file in vi: (Esc) :w [new filename] - teleken from BuddyFeed
teleken: that would save the document to a file, need some way to put it in clipboard and paste into the blog post form. - Mike Chelen
That will depend completely on your terminal emulator. Some will let you write output to clipboard, in which case, save your file, enable that feature, then cat the file. - teleken from BuddyFeed
I use Windows Live Writer...love it! I either make my own images or get them from one of the sites on my list: http://cranialsoup.blogspot.com/2010... My ideas for posts could come from anywhere, be about anything, but I try to only post stuff on my main blog that will be just as relevant a year from now as it is today. - April Russo (app103)
Since I now have a site on Posterous, I now use my email client to compose my posts. I can then choose which of my sites on which to post. I can also save them as drafts, if I need to. I also use email to post to my private blog on Blogger. I used to use Windows Live Writer, which I loved for all the plugins you could use to add cute little things you are doing at the moment (like, listening to a particular song, feeling an emotion, et. al.), but it didn't work with all of my blogs. - Orion Rising
teleken: Mainly use GNOME Terminal or Terminator, haven't done much investigation so far about whether they support output to clipboard. Also need to find how to get HTML highlighting in vi or nano. - Mike Chelen
Yippee! I've found an old Word doc that contents a lot of my blog articles and pages. Bummer tho, the full About content is missing. :-(
I wrote a really long About page. I think I still have the WordPress database backup but can't seem to import it into the new MySQL 5, so I'm stuffed! :-( - Kol Tregaskes
16 of my domain names expired today, just a few left. Far easier to manage! :-)
The $10 yearly fee adds up with enough sites, especially if they are not all generating revenue. - Mike Chelen
I pay a lot less than that for each of mine but yes it adds up. - Kol Tregaskes
How do you get them cheaper? All the special $5 or $2 deals seem only to apply to the first year. - Mike Chelen
Correction, I'm thinking about co.uk names which are £2.99 a year. .com are £8.99 a year: https://order.1and1.co.uk/xml... - Kol Tregaskes
The Kol Tregaskes Daily is out http://paper.li/koltregaskes - featuring @digitalps @Zee @engadget
@SaraJDizzle Thanks for the RT. :-)
I'm writing a blog called 'A New Online Beginning'. Wanna guess what it's about? :-)
The New iTunes 10 icon: sucks or rocks? - http://thenextweb.com/apple...
Sucks, it's real ugly. - Kol Tregaskes
Seidio Triples HTC Evo Battery Life, Adds Some Bulk - http://blog.louisgray.com/2010...
New look BBC iPlayer set to launch within days - http://thenextweb.com/uk...
I liked a YouTube video -- AngryBirds http://www.youtube.com/watch...
I liked a YouTube video -- AngryBirds http://youtu.be/r-ZB0vU1Z38?a
Play
Google music service “to launch before Christmas” - http://thenextweb.com/google...
Can't wait! :-) - Kol Tregaskes
Google Simplifies Its Privacy Policies, Takes Effect October 3 - http://thenextweb.com/google...
UK consumers byte back at broadband advertising - http://thenextweb.com/uk...
Recommends: Grinderman and Tricky, 4th Sep 10 - http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcast...
Royal Mail's stamps can be read by iPhones, Androids - http://www.t3.com/news...
Very cool! - Kol Tregaskes
O2: UK broadband users wasting over £2m a day - http://www.t3.com/news...
O2: UK broadband users wasting over £2m a day
Speedpainting practice by *daRoz - http://vi.sualize.us/view...
Early Morning Meeting by =thrumyeye on deviantART - http://vi.sualize.us/view...
Face the future by ~daRoz on deviantART - http://vi.sualize.us/view...
How do you actually write the blog entry itself? Do you write the text in one go, in parts? Do you add the links as you go or all in one at the end? Formatting: during or at the end?
How many likes do you need for your Facebook Page before you can customise your URL?
1000 according to http://www.facebook.com/note... think it has since been lowered though - Mike Chelen
Yeah everyone says 25. - Kol Tregaskes
Yup that sounds right, quite an improvement! - Mike Chelen
Amplify Sidebar: What's in yours? And I'm not thinking of standard widgets.
I've selected my main social services. Amplify, Cliqset, Digg, FB, Flickr, FF, Google/Buzz/Reader,Last.fm, Twitter and YouTube. Missed any?
StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, Foursquare (if into locations) - Flavio
I've not used StumbleUpon for ages. LinkedIn perhaps is one to add but my previous/current work is not hugely relevant. 4Sq, no not really and if I did I've not picked one service over the other atm. Gowalla seems just as good as 4Sq? - Kol Tregaskes
excepted that 4sq has some 5 times the number of subscribed user than gowalla! - Flavio
Yeah but what about the quality of services? Is Gowalla as good as foursquare? - Kol Tregaskes
I never tried it - Flavio
That was easy, FileZilla is far better than CuteFTP purely because it doesn't give me connection errors every few minutes (and it's free!)
Clearing out my webspace. Sorted out MyBlogLog, Plaxo, FeedBurner and Technorati.
This is mainly aimed at my Tumblr and Posterous blogs - I will be clearing out these microblogs and tidy them up.
I've created a new blog on Tumblr but there is no Customise button like my main one. How do I edit new Tumblr blogs?
You mean for a 2nd blog on your main account or 2 separate accounts? - Outsanity
Well, i left you a video on my tumblr. check your twitter from me. I'm off to bed somewhat. - Outsanity
A 2nd blog. I'll check, ta. :-) - Kol Tregaskes
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