I’m posting this entry from Flock, just to test the blog function in it. Believe it or not, I hadn’t done that yet (although I’d say the only real interest with it for the moment would be to get the WordPress.com account, if there’s still someone around who hasn’t gotten one). So far, things seem to work well, except that… “where are my categories?!” I wonder if I’ll be able to pick one later on. Hmm.

The other new of the moment is that I think I’ve finally set on a non-web RSS feeds reader. To be honest, SharpReader and FeedDemon, as hyped as they are, don’t cut it for me. I don’t know why, perhaps it’s a question of looks, of “feeling” with them. A software can be extremely powerful, if I don’t have the right feeling with it (and this has nothing to do with “looking like an OS X interface” or anything of the same kind), I won’t be at ease with it. Alright, I also didn’t want to settle down with something I needed to pay, I admit; there are way enough pieces of software I’ve paid for, and I’m starting to grow broke.

Thus, I’ve been using RSS Reader since the beginning of the week, and it seems to do the job well enough for me (BottomFeeder was nice, but getting on my nerves, with some new posts it’d pick ten times a day and crashing every hour or so). It’s also been able to read feeds that BottomFeeder couldn’t; don’t ask me why, I just know it couldn’t. The only not-so-funny thing is that there hasn’t been any newer version in the past months. However, I don’t know if this is really a problem per se.

I think I’ve pretty much toured enough readers as of now. I’ll still keep an eye open, though.

EDIT: Indeed, no way of choosing categories. Argh.

Y Tags: blogging | flock | rss | rss+reader

What I’m going to point at today is LJ Book.

I’ve discovered it earlier on this morning, and thought it’d be interesting to share it. While one of the aims of this tool is to generate a PDF of all the posts on a LiveJournal blog (in order for the blog owner to publish it using LuLu or another POD service), another one is the backup of one’s posts. Yes, I do have a small blog on LJ, that I really use for personal purposes only, and it’s good to have a trace somewhere of what I’ve written, in case it someday disappears—which will surely happen sooner or later: nothing on the Internet is truly immortal.

If you’re anything like me, you probably dislike not having this level of control on your own words/webpages. With WordPress or any system that you host on your website, it’s of course easy to backup the database, but what about LJ or other services that don’t offer this function? No more worrying or saving the HTML pages one by one! The output isn’t schmancy-fancy nor full of user pictures and colors, but the text is safe, and it’s what matters.

Y Tags: backup | blogging | livejournal | PDF | POD | writing

Via Blogging Pro: if you go to the WordPress.com page, you’ll see the following message: “Want WordPress.com? Then download Flock”. The necessary link to do so is provided, but just for the record, here’s where to find the download page directly. Once you have installed Flock, just click “Getting Started”, right under the standard navigation buttons, and choose “Get yourself a blog”. There, you’ll have access to the WordPress.com, which will take you to asignup page.

Currently perusing and comparing webhosting services, I went off a tangent in my head about how my perception of the internet has evolved since I started using it…

I’m not one of the early children of the web, but I’m not too new to it either. My first contact with it was in 1997, when our teacher in Applied English class decided that we had to be open to the world, and dragged us at the school library for a few sessions on the computers. From 1997 to 1999, I went on accessing websites sporadically from college computers, when I had some time to surf; my main researches at the time were on the Sefer Yetzirah, the Book of Enoch, and websites related to Mage: The Ascension, so my use of the internet was a very basic one. Later on in 1999, the friend who was to become my boyfriend convinced me to take an e-mail address at the university, which I did: I had discovered the joys of e-mailing! From there, my horizons expanded, and by year 2000, I would access the web everyday, or almost.

I suppose that all of us who went to gradually use this tool had our little lightbulb moments, as well as stupid beliefs on which we stood corrected later on. Here are some of the things I remember, mainly from these 1997-1999 years. In a way, it’s very funny:

The need to write is constantly growing in me, and I’ve been pondering working on one or two more sites, preferrably blogs. Nothing’s sure yet… simply, ideas are boiling more and more, and I need to let them out somehow. I know I could take some kind of free account at Blog*Spot or similar services, but let’s be honest: I’m used to having “my” hosting and “my” domain names now, and this kind of services usually don’t fit my needs anymore.

While I’m very happy with Paradygma (I know, I need to update it!), it’s starting to get a little cramped in there, and I found myself considering other webhosts, more adapted to my needs, preferably not expensive. I’m just hesitant, given that I’ve worked with one host only so far.