The worst thing about being offline is that most of the things I do such as gmail and blogging require that you are actually online to do them. At least that was what I thought, until a friend told me about the new Gmail Offline option which means you can Read, Reply and Compose emails offline and then when you connect to the net everything gets synchronized. Just being able to use email offline has been a real lifesaver.

So I thought, surely there must be an offline editor for posting to a wordpress blog ? And this morning I found one. It’s called Blogdesk and runs as a client on your PC. I have only just installed it so this is my first test run. You can configure as many blogs as you want, it seems to support most common blogging platforms (not just Wordpress) and when you configure a blog it downloads all the categories for you so you know where the posts will end up. Other options (for WP) are to allow comments, allow pings, Publish after upload, change the date and time and add in Trackbacks. It seems pretty damn good so far.

Of course there will still be times when I’ll need to be online to do posts, for example if I want to reference other links or find other information, but as a stopgap until I get a proper internet connection BlogDesk looks like its going to fill an important gap in my life.

Then one day I woke up to find that hackers had used a flaw in php-nuke to deface my wonderful site, they had deleted my database and filled the site with junk… unfortunately the only backup I had was a very old one and so although I rebuilt the site, the experience kind of put me off continuing the site. So I basically retired it. I did keep the domain though by switching to wordpress and over the years I have kept the version of wordpress on there updated to keep up with any security patches etc.

Anyway, several years later and I now find myself in a bit of a tough situation. I’ve just lost my job and I am practically flat broke… so I’m desperately looking for things to do. Not only things to make money although that is priority number one, but also things to keep me busy so I don’t just slide into depression and negativity.

One of the things I’ve decided to do is resurrect my old site, so I’ve begun taking the old mysql dump of the content and I’ve been manually adding it as content back into the wordpress site sitting on the original domain. I’ve got a theme on there that isn’t really what I want, but will do for the time being, at least until I have all the old content in there and am ready to start adding fresh new content.

If you are interested the site is called Flog-on ( http://www.flog-on.com ) its not really safe for work and some of the content could offend some people, but it was moderately successful at one point and I’m sure if I’d kept it up all this time instead of quitting on it a few years back then it would probably be making me a reasonable income by now.

I guess it’s another of those life lessons that I’m so good at missing or ignoring.

Idiot out….

So today I’m looking for a suitable host where I can install wordpress and various other scripts I need to run.

Next problem… I’m not very good with Photoshop… solution ? A free online logo creator of course !

The one I used was this web 2.0 logo creator its very simple to use, has loads of options and worked better than some of the others I’ve tried in the past. So if you are ever in need of a quick logo try this generator out.

If you know of any others I may not have seen please let me know in the comments, thanks !

So to help me stay on top of things I’ll post snippets here telling you all what I’ve got to get done and hopefully I’ll embarrass myself into actually doing them a bit quicker !!

The thing is I’ve created so many profiles on other blog services and tools with my real identity that although I’m not really trying to remain anonymous, if I were then I’ve already failed. So the other day I decided that instead of continuing to use an alias I would just say who I really am. As you may have noticed I’ve been using Twitter more so it’s very easy for you to see who I am from my Twitter page. Of course I could have created a matching anonymous identity for Twitter and linked this blog the that identity but who wants to manage multiple identities anyway.

It is important when you start blogging that you decide whether to be you or to use an alias. People use aliases for various reasons, The Rich Jerk does it so that he can come across as an arrogant moron which seems to work pretty well as a marketing angle for him, when in reality he’s probably a really nice guy. Of course he could really be a jerk but I doubt it. Other reasons might be that you are doing stuff that you don’t want other people knowing about, your boss for example, so having an online alias is useful for that.

Whether you use an alias or not the next big challenge is maintaining your identity. If you only have one then its pretty easy, but as soon as you add another that is when trouble starts. The problem is that so many of the web services for social interaction now share data. When I post something here my Twitter feed gets notified, then my FriendFeed gets notified of the Twitter post, my FriendFeed then updates my FaceBook page and goodness knows where else my various updates go. If you don’t want certain people to know certain things you either have to be careful never to mention them online, or be very careful which services you signup for, which identity you use when you sign up and which ones you allow to share data. Having even one online alias means have 2 separate accounts at each service… imagine having to manage 2 Facebook profiles, 2 Twitter accounts, 2 FriendFeed accounts and then making sure you don’t accidentally post something that links them to each other.

For me its already too late, I haven’t been careful so there are already things out there that maybe I should have kept secret from some people, but I’m pretty open about what I’m doing and how well I’m doing so I’m not too bothered. So from now on my identity is open, warts and all. Expect to learn more about me as time goes on

Timon Weller, the webmaster over at http://www.buyers-web.com is offering to create a free professionally designed personal Twitter Counter for your blog. You can see an example below of what it will look like.

Unique and different counter to make your blog more Unique..!

What Timon has done is spruce up the standard (boring) twitter counter and give it a much more personal touch by including your avatar. Actually you don’t have to use your avatar you can have anything you want in that space.

Before Standard Twitter Counter Banner Button

Spuced up Professional Twitter Counter Banner Examples

Before…

After Examples..

What do you Need to do to get this Twitter Follower Counter Free Offer..?

Basically to make your personal twitter banner it will take Timon around 10 to 20 minutes per banner so in return all he is asking for is a small blog post (2 to 3 small paragraphs or more) with a link to his blog. It does’nt matter if your post links to his homepage or to the offer page, and you only need to tell your readers that Timon created a free Twitter Counter for you.

Writing a short review won’t take you long so its a great deal that Timon is offering.

So how do we get Started on your Twitter Counter..?

Simply visit Timon’s site and you can read the simple instructions to get your own unique Twitter Counter.

Oh and don’t forget to Tweet this post by clicking the Tweet This Post link below!!

I have tried all kinds of onscreen rulers and until today I thought the best was Jruler which is available from http://www.spadixbd.com/freetools/ Jruler is good (and free), it lets you measure horizontally and vertically (not at the same time - for that I run 2 copies and set one to vertical and the other to horizontal). I pretty much use it several times a day whilst creating sites and as I said I thought it was the the best I could find.

This morning however I was shown MeasureIt - a plugin for Firefox which totally blows all the other onscreen rulers out of the water. Its integrated into Firefox so I no longer need to navigate elsewhere to find Jruler and launch that (don’t forget I launch 2 copies), instead I can just click a small icon in my Firefox status bar to turn MeasureIt on or off, and because I now no longer have 2 copies of Jruler running I have 2 fewer running programs tabs in my windows status bar.

Once you activate MeasureIt you can click and drag any area of the screen to immediately see not only the horizontal distant between 2 points but also the vertical. Here is an image of MeasureIt in action.

MeasureIt in action

As you can see from the image above MeasureIt clearly shows the dimensions of the area selected, making it super easy for you to know the perfect size for any object you want to include in your pages.

You can download MeasureIt from - http://www.kevinfreitas.net/extensions/measureit/