Writing During Storms

I find it easier to write during traditional “bad weather.”

I love a gray sky — let a little rain fall and I’m thrilled. A day like today — sunny, early — sucks… if it stays like this all-day-long, I’ll be bummed.

Oakland, rated best weather in America.
[By both Rand McNally and Parade Magazine]

I find it easier to focus without fire in my eyes. I like staring out across the horizon and into the upper-atmosphere; there’s something soothing about low clouds and darker skies, a hint of relative-safety and a serene sensation.

I suppose, on a day like today, I’ll write a little blog post.

I finally shared some of my book-writing with my parents. If only I could honestly say that the project was “coming along nicely;” writing a book isn’t like math with an exact answer and repeatable solution, and unfortunately, it gets superseded by daily doings and goings-on. Real life often gets in the way — sometimes people get in the way.

Not that that’s always a bad thing. Life is filled with countless important people and things, and there just isn’t time for everyone and everything. Choices are made — sacrifices are made… and often, even important things get put-off.

On a day like today, I’ll battle the less-than-favorable weather with some down-and-dirty blogging!

WordPress versus Squarespace, part one.

I switched to Squarespace over one-year ago, and I’m quite satisfied with the service. The customer support is top-notch, and most modifications are a breeze. But it’s not all good — there are glaring and stunning issues making me reconsider the gargantuan beast, WordPress.

Because my blog is more than a hotspot for techies and not everyone reading this will know much about — or even care for — the specifications and details of the software and hardware involved, I’ll skip all of that and get to the meat.

The 500 pound giant.

Squarespace attempts to make their UI (user-interface) elegant, and they’ve succeeded in creating something elegant-looking. Unfortunately, a large-screen with high-resolution is required to really enjoy it. If the issue was only aesthetic, I couldn’t in good conscience complain; Squarespace’s clientele and prospects likely enjoy high-resolution displays, and I have one as well.

However, I also use a netbook (the iPad isn’t out yet!), and on it, Squarespace is practically unusable.

Critical functions are inaccessible on a small screen; Squarespace hasn’t built allowances into their main interface for low-res users, and there’s no backup. I could understand certain elements being off-limits — site-design (graphics) modification would be a good example, or adding new sidebars and widgets — but not being able to compose and post a new blog entry? Frankly, that’s pathetic.

At least Squarespace offers a free iPhone app, though composing an entire blog entry by thumb-tapping isn’t fun.

More to come soon, about WordPress, writing in general… and blogging.

Update on Sunday, February 28, 2010 at 3:02 PM by Bradtastic

I’m having some formatting errors… I wrote this post outside of the browser editor and pasted it in, and it won’t display properly. I’m not in the mood to go through and manually recode the damned thing at the moment, so it’s going to stay as it is… for now, anyway.

Ugh… another reason I’m thinking about sticking with WordPress. Not to mention, Scribe looks pretty cool — it’s a SEO Optimization tool for WordPress.