Monday, June 01, 2015

Pondering Blogging Without Live Writer, and Wildlife Pics

Wesley Chapel, Florida (high 90, low 70)


We’ve been taking care of business since we got back from the Keys.  We miss the Keys, but right now we’re dreaming of the north Georgia mountains.  They have been having wonderfully cool weather, compared to the 90’s and stifling humidity that we’re dealing with here in the Tampa area.

We haven't done anything fun or blog worthy since we got back, but we have had some nice visitors in our back yard.


Al found this little gopher tortoise walking down the street in the campground on the hot asphalt. Gopher tortoises dig holes in the sand/dirt and make their homes there.  They do not live in the water and they don't live in parking lots.

We worried about him walking on the hot pavement.   That is not the usual tortoise habitat and since they are cold blooded, we worried that he could get overheated, not to mention get run over.

We debated where to put him because they usually are heading somewhere and we didn't want to disrupt his pattern.  We put him down in our friends site and he headed right over to some plants and crawled under them.  We think he was happy to be out of the baking sun.

He spent the night in the same place, and our friend saw him early the next morning walking back down the street.   I had considered taking him to the State Park or possibly calling a wildlife sanctuary to see what they thought.  They are a protected species, so we would have had to make sure we didn't break any laws.  I just didn't think a busy campground  was a good place for him.

A campground with paved roads is not exactly tortoise habitat.  It may have been at one time, but now it's people habitat and there are huge zero turn mowers running around all the time, as well as cars and rv's.  

Be safe little tortoise.  I hope you found a better place to live.   Notice the front feet?  You can see how adapted he is for digging burrows.



We've never seen one quite this small.




We have been seeing the otters again.  Last year there were four of them, and we think two were offspring.

This year, we only see two, so maybe some babies will be coming.

They were very cooperative and posed nicely for me.



They sure kept their eyes on me.








There has been a lot of talk in Blog land since the changes with Blogger have caused us to not be able to use Live Writer to write and post our blogs.  Sure, you can post directly from Blogger and it's do-able, but pictures take too long to load, and it's not anywhere as nice a program as Live Writer.

But since the Google gods are going to do what they want to do and since we may or may not be able to use Live Writer, I guess I will have to deal with posting blogs via Blogger.  This will be my first one in years, so I guess we'll see how it turns out.

It's been said that blogging is no longer in fashion and many people have migrated over to other social media options like Twitter, Facebook, and Google +.   I guess Google is encouraging us to quit blogging and use Google +.

I have explored Google + some but I don't find it suits my needs as well as blogging.  I started blogging to keep a picture diary of our RVing life and the places we go and the things we've done.

Before blogger, I actually typed journals on my computer and inserted pictures into those journals.  It worked just fine until I discovered Blogger and a better way to do the same thing.  Once I started blogging, it wasn't long before I got my first follower.  I found other bloggers via blogging and have made many new blogging friends.  I've learned a lot from other Bloggers and I for one will miss it if it goes away.

After thinking about what Rick said about Blogger's "time to shine is over",  I considered other options because I do see some value in Facebook and maybe if I explored Google + a little more, I could make it work for me.  I quickly realized that there are no other options, at least that I know of right now, that will give me the things that Blogger does.

I use Blogger to document our life.  I like the fact that others read my blog and comment.  I like the fact that I have other blogger friends, but even if no one reads my blog, I will continue to post it for our own use.   I like the fact that I can go back to previous times.  I like looking at my pictures and remembering fun times.  I like being able to refer back to things if I can't remember something.  I like going back and seeing what the weather was like at a certain time of year.  I like being able to refer back to when we did a repair and who we used.  I have a separate blog for our RV lots in Georgia and the Keys.  I use it to help me rent them out.  Facebook steers people there and Blogger gives them more information and pictures.

So Google, you can do whatever you wish with Blogger, but I'm going to continue to journal our life, with or without you.   Maybe I need to back-up my blog though.   :)


I just saved and did a preview of this blog post.  It seems to have turned out just fine, so other than it taking much too long to post pictures, maybe it won't be so bad.  They have made some progress because it's easier to resize pictures now and you don't have re-size each photo.   The paragraphs are staying separated when before they all seemed to run together.   Maybe it won't be so bad after all.



19 comments:

  1. You and I are totally on the same wave length when it comes to blogging. I am struggling with the pictures on blogger but I'm glad I don't try to do anything fancy. Your blog looks great and I love the otter pictures.

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  2. Because I never used "live writer", I don't understand the problem. Pictures would still have had to be uploaded somewhere, so why is it so much slower with blogger's platform? Usually, it's the speed of your internet connection that might make photo uploading slow, not the platform itself. What was it about live writer that made it so much faster?

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    1. When I found the photo I wanted to use, I just clicked and it was there. With Blogger it takes a minute or so...depending on my internet speed. After reading Rick's comment though that pictures are slower but publishing is quicker, I guess it's a wash. I did notice Blogger has made some improvements since the last time we used them, and I didn't mind using it at all this time. :)

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    2. The reason for the difference is that in Live Writer when you 'insert a photo' it is happening off-line. It's not until you click 'Publish' that the photo is uploaded to the server.

      With Blogger Editor it's the exact opposite. When you 'insert a photo' it is uploaded to the Blogger server immediately. Publishing is fast because the photos are already loaded and on the server - unlike Live Writer.

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  3. The Blogger Editor is actually quite improved from what it was initially. As for picture loading while it may take a bit longer using Blogger that time is saved when publishing.

    Using Live Writer when you publish your blog it can take some time ... that's because the photos are being loaded. With the Blog Editor publishing is much, much faster than Live Writer.

    Although I did say that many feel "blogging's time to shine" is over I don't think bloggers have to worry at all that it's going to disappear altogether. Instead, there probably won't be major upgrades to blogging programs like Blogger Editor and Live Writer but they'll be around for years so bloggers will be able to use them as is.

    Your blog looks great using Blogger and one thing that is a real improvement over Live Writer is the fact that you can click on any photo in your blog and a nice full-screen slideshow pops-up that's easy to scroll through.

    This slideshow feature sure beats the 1 at a time click for enlarging photos in Live Writer.

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    1. You're right Rick. LW did take a long time to publish so I guess the extra time Blogger takes to load pictures makes it about the same. I did not know by clicking on one picture, it would enlarge all the photos... That's a great feature and I wonder how many others know about it? Thanks!

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    2. It could be that many bloggers don't realize the automatic slideshow feature of photos in the Blogger Editor. I know Paulette didn't until I showed it to her yesterday.

      I suppose I could do a quick post about it to let everyone know that it's there and they don't have to do anything.

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  4. I think RV bloggers will outlive all the other bloggers just for the reasons you stated. We like to journal our travels and it's just an extra perk when others enjoy reading our posts. Keep blogging, I know we will.

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  5. LOVE LOVE LOVE those otters! I would have been ecstatic if they had been there when we were staying in your site. I'm thinking seriously about moving to Wordpress since they can still accept Livewriter. I'll send you an email about my experience putting up the Wedding post. Thanks again for the otters. I'm going to use your header picture as my desktop.

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  6. Sure hope that tortoise makes it.

    Keep on blogging!

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  7. I use blogger to post my blog and since that's all I have ever used, I am satisfied. Pictures post fast for me. I too saved a turtle here at the campground. It was a very large, plate sized turtle. I don't know what kind probably just a water turtle. I love the otters!

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  8. Like I said before have never used live writer just post right on Blogger with downsizing my pictures in Picasa they all load pretty quick , staurdays posting had over 50 pictures and they loaded in less than a minute and I do like ths slide show feature as well. Its just a matter of getting used to Blogger.
    Your post looked great by the way.

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  9. My reasons for blogging are similar to yours, and after looking around, have decided that Blogger affords me exactly what I need ... with or without LW. For now, the HTML pasting is getting the job done for me. I don't want to upload photos with Blogger's editor because it would put my photos somewhere other than SmugMug, where I prefer to keep my online galleries.

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  10. Thank for taking the time to get your post up. Your posts are always interesting and I look forward to each one. I'm back using Blogger and will keep using it until something better comes along.

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  11. ditto, ditto, and ditto, Karen. So many of us blog for those same reasons. I back up my blog and I also print the yearly books, so at least if google kills blogger someday, I'll still have my journals.

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  12. Last week I wrote a big long post in Live Writer, and then ran into all the problems when trying to publish it, and found out about the issue. Taking that post and re-creating it in blogger was a major pain, but I did my last post completely in blogger, and found the same thing you did. It has improved in the years that I've been using LW, so it's not the end of the world, and I can continue to blog!! Yea!! Still humid in the mountains! :(

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  13. Yes! If I didn't blog, we would have no idea where we have been or when we were there. I used to keep photo albums, but when we got the RV, there was no space for them all.

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  14. I haven't tried it yet but I read yesterday on Rick' s blog that they have Live Writer back up and running. I guess they are still having issues with pictures but they are supposed to have it fixed soon.

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  15. Love your otter pictures! They are so cute. I've used blogger since the inception, and never jumped on the Live Writer bandwagon, so I guess I don't know what I missed :)

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