Blogger changes…not for the better

I’ve long suspected that Google is trying to dissuade use of their Blogging platform (limiting compatibility with the excellent LiveWriter, and subsequently Open LiveWriter), this announcement on Blogger has done nothing to change my mind:

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And another...

Well, what fun!

The photos in my last post are visible on my computer, but not other computers....well not on Martin's computer anyway.

One thing I noticed: I hadn't made the album I took the photos from available for public viewing - that's now been changed.

This is a photo that I've copied and pasted from Google Photos straight into Blogger:




This photo is posted using the conventional Blogger method:

Blogger, LiveWriter and OpenLiveWriter.

I strongly suspect that work on OpenLiveWriter has stopped. I downloaded the most recent release which has supposedly fixed the problems encountered when trying to post photographs - it doesn't work, not for me anyway. Text only posts work fine, the brick wall appears when photographs are included in a post.  Things are very quiet on the OpenLiveWriter Twitter and Facebook pages, there's very little activity which more or less confirms my suspicions. I'm guessing that a major reason for this is because Google ultimately want to shut down Blogger (because they don't make any money out of it?) and they're making it more difficult to post. The original LiveWriter, a Microsoft product, provided an easy and very effective way of posting to blogs but Google, who control Blogger, appear to have moved the goalposts which effectively stopped full access via LiveWriter. Microsoft have since withdrawn LiveWriter which led to OpenLivewriter which is Open Source - although apparently still under the umbrella of Microsoft. OpenLiveWriter seemed to work for a while, but it wasn't long before it's access to Blogger was also blocked. Searching the web has uncovered a number of instances where it's been claimed that the problem has been sorted - but they're all beyond my limited technical ability. I'm happy to be corrected in my assumptions, but having spent a long time running round in circles I'm going to take some convincing. Anyroadup, here are a few photos from my first TGO Challenge, 2004.

Update:
This was originally posted using Blogger.
I then opened OpenLiveWriter and selected ‘Open Recent Post’ to open this post.
I then changed the font and font size before updating.
This seems to have been successful. So far.

Update 2:
Although the photos are visible on MY computer, others can’t see them….well Martin can’t.
I realised the album I took the photos from was private, I’ve now changed that to public….let’s see.
Update 3:
Maybe not...

P2P recce with Judith, a UFO, and a wild camp.

The reason for this test is the continuing problem I have with posting using Open LiveWriter….


The Plan (there’s sometimes A Plan) was to once again recce the route from Hope to New Mills.


Judith had been pressed into proof-reading my written route description, checking that the words on the paper bore some resemblance to the actual route on the ground. 


It proved to be nearly okay…..apart from the odd intruction to head East rather than West. Oh well.

Judith and I met up in Manchester and then hopped onto a train to Hope, arriving around mid-day.

.

Our route headed north from Hope station

September 2018 Pt2

Via de la Plata continued:

We spent the previous night in Silleda, in a hostal – a hotel type of place. It was wonderful, if you ignored the bed bugs.

Rob had the foresight to use his Permethryn-treated sleeping bag liner. Being a smart-arse, I didn’t use mine….and paid the price.

Oh well.

View from the kitchen bacony

The kitchen had quite a nice cast iron cooking range, redundant now, but retained as a feature I think.

Wandering off for breakfast I spotted:

A Galician Knocker

After getting over the shock of seeing such a big knocker we found ourselves in a nice little eatery where we feasted on coffee and egg & bacon barm cakes…although Galicians call them something else.

As we chomped our way through our breakfast barms we were disturbed by the sounds of fireworks going off, and then a marching band – it was yet another fiesta, celebrating somethong ot other.

Spaniards need little excuse to celebrate – anything!

Later in the day we came across two Russian (?) peregrinos (or should that be peregrinas?) who were cycling the same Camino.

It was another hot day, I recall that we didn’t push ourselves too hard.

Anyroadup, a few more photographs of the next couple of days:

We ordered beers which arrived…along with a lovely snack

A nice modern albergue

Always open, we arrived to find it closed.

A shrine in the woods

Another one for Alan R

A light snackette for Rob

Habitaciones para peregrinos may well have been desde 10€ – but for us in was casi 60€. So we didn’t.

Artist at work

Entering Santiago de Compostela

First view of the cathedral

Another one for Alan R

As we closed in on Santiago we passed a music shop selling traditional instruments from the region.

Well, we didn’t pass it really…

At 1100€ I was seriously tempted….but resisted

Rob splashed the cash on this Pandereta – it sounds brilliant!

Then there was the very long queue, and even longer wait, to receive our Compostelas – recognition that we’d walked a very long way.

Here you go…714km for this.

Oh look, more food. And beer. Tsk.

Later, whilst wandering around downtown Santiago we came across this lot, playing in celebration of a very local fiesta:

They were a bit good.

Somehow, and I *really* don’t know how, you’ll have to ask Rob, I ended up in a bar with this lovely bunch. I may have had a beer. Possibly more than one.

The rest of the afternoon was a bit of a blur.

Most odd. 

The cathedral

Classic cars in the cathedral square

Two excellent musicians, one on Gaita Pipes, t’other on Pandereta – think tambourine….but turbocharged. These ladies were busking under an archway, the entrance to the very grand cathedral square.

After all the excitement of El Camino it was time to move on. The next bit of this expedition involved exploring the Douro Valley in Portugal, playing loads of music, drinking tea (and other beverages), and generally enjoying ourselves…..that’s going to be in Pt3.

Another Open Live Writer update

…and this one works at the moment.

The ongoing Google / Blogger / Open Live Writer palaver has put many bloggers off posting of late – and that includes me.

A not-very-well publicised (and not entirely straight-forward installation process) OLW update seems to work – for now.

To update:

R Click on the existing OLW icon, select ‘Properties’

Click ‘Open File Location’ to open an Explore folder/

Rename ‘Update’ or ‘Update.exe’ to ‘OldUpdate’…keeping ‘.exe’ if present.

Go to http://openlivewriter.org/ and download the latest OLW.

To post photographs it is essential to first save them in Google Photos and then cope and paste from there.

That all works for me on Win7 using Firefox.

Once again, many thanks to Dave Burdick who has come up with this solution. 

Addendum:

This worked for a while today.

Photos were posted into my blog and the were successfully published.

A few hours later all the photographs had disappeared……and now they’ve come back again.

Is this Google deciding that they don’t want anyone to post photographs unless they use their ghastly Blogger?

Another test

Using the updated (?) OLW

…and it works!

For now.

Test: Black Leg Mining Man Pitmen Poets

Another test 1st April 2019 – not a joke

There’s supposed to be a piccy here…but it won’t upload

Blue plaque on Alf’s old house.

There’s probably a decent toothpaste to deal with it.

Breaking News… 21st Feb 2019

Open LiveWriter and Blogger are once again talking to one another

A blessed miracle!

Almost. Photographs won’t post.

This was better than last week when NOTHING would post.

Test Post, images added in Blogger

Test post to try to identify the latest Open Live Writer / Blogger compatibility problem.

Original post was text only and posted without problem using OLW.

If I try to post with images from OLW the post is rejected (Error 400).

Text in between two added images

Open Live Writer / Blogger problems....again

In recent times I've suffered various problems using Open Live Writer, nearly all resulting in the message:

Can't Publish Files

The remote server returned an error: (400) Bad request

I know some bloggers have had problems with posting photographs, removing the photos has resulted in the text being published - but obviously no pretty pictures.

I've tried removing photos but I still get the same error.

My last blog post was made with Blogger which I find pretty awful. Typically the text size varies and there's nothing I can do about it - I go back into Blogger, change the text size and repost, but the text size immediately returns to the uncorrected size.

Has anyone else had these problems? I've got a backlog of posts and I really don't want to be using Blogger any more than I have to.

Thanks in advance. 

Running around Rainow, Saturday 2nd Feb 2019

The morning was bright and chilly. Others, probably more accurately, would have said it was bloody freezing.

Runners of different shapes, sizes and ages gathered at the Robin Hood in Rainow, near Macclesfield on the afternoon of Saturday 2nd February.

White Nancy, from the Robin Hood

The car park at the pub was exremely slippy. It was also on a slope and I was warned by the landlady not to park at the top of the slope: the previous day 2 cars, unmanned (or unwomanned), had slid across the car park – on car had gone through the hedge.

Whatever…a couple of hours prior to the massed gathering of knees, Rob McHarry and I had arrived in order to lay a sawdust trail of around 8 miles around the lumpier bits of the area….the clumps of sawdust were (supposed) to be followed by the runners.

We had A Plan….that is to say ROB had A Plan. It was actually a very good plan. So we sort of changed it by going clockwise rather that widdershins as Rob had originally suggested.

Suitably armed with bags of sawdust we set off, well we slipped and slid off the ice rink of a car park, and wandered off north along a quiet lane in the direction of, well, north.

Leaving the relative safety of ice-packed tarmac we turned left to skirt Rainowlow where some brown squiggly lines on the map were crossed.

A short stretch of tarmac at Billinge Head Farm took us to a nice path that skirted the eastern edges of Billinge Quarries.

The Audience

Laying Trail

Turning east, we followed a nice path that descended to Mellow Brook, then up the other side of the valley to Harrop Fold Farm….where I have hazy memories of camping weekends where lots of beer may have been consumed. Or Martini.

I didn’t drink the litre bottle of Martini. It’s not the sort of thing I’d do. Obv.

Harrop Fold Farm

A little more tarmac followed, and very icy it was too. The was little warmth from the sun, but as the track was in the shade anyway it would have made little difference.

Our route slowly changed direction to follow a more south-easterly course.

I was a little concerned that the runners following our carefully planned and even more carefully recced <koff> route might lose the sawdust trail; pale sawdust on bright white snow doesn’t stand out particularly well. We needn’t have worried, although we probably went a bit over the top with the clumps of sawdust, nobody got lost. Well not VERY lost.
 
Another valley crossing followed, this time down to Moss Brook and up the other side by Saddle Cote, this was a bit of a pull and Rob was well ahead of me. In my defence I was taking photographs which slowed me down quite a bit. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

It was around about here that Rob spotted a skier doing what skiers do best. Our route turned hard right to follow the skier's tracks.

 Route planner, navigator, trail-layer and runner extraordinaire…

……………and his incapable assistant

 

Ski tracks. And my shadow. Tsk. 

 

Oh, and there were goats too...I almost forgot to mention them

 
Another short stretch of tarmac along Bank Lane and then Ewrin Lane took us to Waggoner’s Brow were another hard right turn delivered into more familiar Turkey Trot country, approaching Lamaload Reservoir.
 

The reservoir dam looked quite spectacular in the freezing temperature, all the buttresses were covered in frost.

A steep descent to cross the infant River Dean, by the waterworks, had me slipping and sliding like a very slippy-slidy thing. But I stayed upright. we continued littering our way in a southerly direction,

It was a bit of a tug up hill. We followed the footpath to the western side of the reservoir to a point just beyond Wickinford Farm. From there we trotted in a south-westerly direction to pass through Valeroyal and very close to the site of the Setter Dog by Walker Barn, and then north by Gulshaw Hollow and Hordern Farm, scattering sawdust trail as we went.

Manchester, with Winter Hill beyond

We crossed the icy Berristall Road and descended steeply to the bottom of the valley before climbing equally steeply to pass by Thornsett Farm.


The going became very easy (easy = gently downhill). The Robin Hood hove into view and after another slippy – slidy adventure across the ice rink of a car park we made it back to our cars.

14 runners sat down to enjoy an excellent meal of beef stew followed by fruit crumble and custard….lots of fattening stodge, just what’s needed after a cold day in the hills.

The day was marred by the news of John Potter’s car suffering the same fate as the sliding cars of the previous day. His unmanned car ended up colliding with two other cars in the car park. John, understandably brassed off with what had happened, didn’t stick around for the run.

My thanks to Rob for letting me ‘help’, and for his good company of course….and to Wells the Elder for buggering off to Brazil so creating a temporary Trail-layer vacancy.

GPS track of where we went (clockwise from Rainow):

Around 8.5 miles / 2,000ft of ascent. And descent. Obv.

More photographs here.

Created in Blogger, because Google / Blogger have done something to stop Open Live Writer communicating with it.

 

More on Blogger Comments problems

From the Blogger Help Forum, dated 31st May 2018:

(The forum can be accessed here)

“Hi everyone,
We are aware that there is an issue where users are not receiving email notifications for comments. We're currently tweaking our emailing system, but we expect it to be working again soon.
Thank you for your patience - we appreciate it!
Kelly
Blogger Community Manager”

So we’ll see…

Of greater concern, dated 15th May 2018:

“Hi everyone,

To make room for some exciting updates coming soon to Blogger, we’re simplifying the platform to enhance the blogging experience for all of our users.

Updates include:

- Changes to features: G+ widget integrations, OpenID, and Localization & Blogspot ccTLDS.

- Retiring features: Third Party Gadgets, Next Blog, Polls Widget, and Textcube.

- Introducing new features: HTTPS for Custom Domains, Multilogin, Spanner, Google Takeout, and Video Management.

Make sure to check out our latest blog post here to see more details on all of the changes coming to Blogger.

We realize these changes may raise some initial questions, so we wanted to address some of these questions upfront:

Q: Why are you making all of these changes now?

A: Blogger has been working hard to incorporate some exciting updates to the platform, so we thought it made sense to retire features that had very low usage and update some of our current features to coincide with these upcoming changes.

Q: Are you going to bring any of the "retired" features back?

A: At the moment, we do not plan to bring back any of the features we will be retiring. However, the team is working diligently to make sure Blogger has all of the necessary features and tools to make your blogging experience seamless - so stay tuned for more updates coming throughout 2018 and beyond!

Q: Where can I learn more about the new features coming to Blogger?

A: Make sure to check out the Blogger Blog! We'll make sure to post any important announcements there. Also, feel free to check out the Blogger Help Center for more detailed information on our tools and features. 

More questions? As always, please feel free to post here in the Blogger Help Forum.

Have a great day,

Kelly on behalf of your Blogger team”

I find that terms such as “Exciting updates”, especially when they comes from Google, to be rather worrying.

Why fix something when it ain’t broke?

Blogger Problems…again

Comments not publishing

Dawn mentioned to me that her comments weren’t appearing on this blog. She’d also had problems posting to another blog….perhaps it was something to do with wearing kilts.

After checking I discovered a back-log of comments awaiting approval. I’ve now approved all the outstanding comments and they have hopefully been published.

I’ve altered the Comments Settings and I rather hope this has resolved the issue.

My apologies to those who have left recent comments that weren’t published….it weren’t my fault. Honest.

Problems with Open Live Writer

I’ve been having a problem creating blog posts using the latest version of Open Live Writer, build 0.6.2.0

All seems swimmingly well when I enter text, images can be added with ease…..but then the problem raises it’s head:

I can’t put the cursor where I want it to be around the images.

Typically I’ll insert a couple of images and then try to insert a line above or below one of the images.

I’d do this by clicking the mouse at the point where I want the cursor to be. Normally the cursor would appear and I’d be able to Cr to insert spaces.

Except that it doesn’t do that anymore. The cursor ends up somewhere else in the draft…..certainly nowhere near the place I want it to be.

The mouse is fine – it works well using other software: M$ Office stuff, OpenOffice etc.

I can’t find any reference to this on openlivewriter.org

Anyone else having the same problem….or better still, does anyone have a solution?

Posting to Blogger without Live Writer

Exploring options for posting into Blogger

This is now largely academic, but it may come in useful in the future:

A spat between Gurgle and M$ meant that, for a short time, it was impossible to post to Blogger (Google) using Windows Liver Writer (Microsoft). Whatever, after a week or so Windows Liver Writer and Blogger started working together once again – once again all is rosy in the Blogger garden. For now at least.

These are the results of my various attempts at posting into Blogger:

Open Office 4.1.1

I copied and pasted text and an image directly from an Open Office document, saved in M$ Office format (.doc) directly into Blogger.

The text copied over without a problem, the image didn’t. There was an image window of the correct size but it was empty. Imageless. Blank.

Live Writer (okay, I lied – I didn’t really mean without Live Writer)

As above, but saved as HTML, and copied and pasted directly into Blogger.

A similar result with the added faff of all manner of HTML coding stuff appearing in the blog.

I went back into blogger and manually added the image. This bit worked fine.

I didn’t spend too much time exploring this option because by the time I’d rolled my sleeves up WLW had started to work again. Martin tried this option successfully.

Blogger

Typed text and added images directly into Blogger.

This worked but it’s not easy and needs a fair amount of juggling to get a half-decent result.

Libre Office Writer / email

Created the posting, text and images) in Libre Office Writer. Attached the doc to an email which I then sent to my Blogger email address.

Nowt. Bugger all. Apart from the header = the subject line of the email.

Email.

Posting created in webmail (Hotmail). Images added ‘inline’.

This worked although the images would need centralising in Blogger.

Bloggeroid

Created and posted from my Android tablet.

This worked quite well, just a shame that it’s Android only.

And finally…

Windows Live Writer is not perfect by any means but it’s certainly the easiest and most flexible way of posting to Blogger.

It seems that very recent versions of M$ Word have the facility to post directly into a blog. I don’t have a recent version of Word so I can’t comment. Perhaps someone out there in the Blogosphere could try this out.

Meanwhile I’m back with Windows Live Writer – whilst it still works.

 

And FINALLY finally: I’m no expert, these are just the findings of a fumbling, bumbling blogger. And, and I’ve said this before, it’s bad form to start sentences with ‘And’.

18th March 2015, Blogger: Strange Stats

Silly viewing stats

JJ’s Stuff isn’t the most popular of blogs by any means, but I regularly get around 100 – 120 viewings a day in spite of this.

Just recently I’ve had two ridiculously high daily viewing figures: one day last week I had 400+ viewings at stupid o’clock in the morning, and already today I’ve had 150+ viewings – and that was before 8am.

The odd times of viewings suggest to me that it might be an admirer / stalker / hacker or whatever from foreign lands – although delving deeper into the blogger stats doesn’t confirm this.

Has anyone else out there in Bloggershire had a similar experience?

Right, I’m off to eat Pie’s for a few day’s with one of my mate’s from Pielandshire. Were going to Wale’s.