A better way to blog

Well, I’ve been wanting an offline blog editor for quite sometime, and hadn’t really seen anything out from Google, owners of Blogger.com, that fit the bill.

Then, I found Microsoft’s Live Writer.

This free utility is part of the Live Essentials library of tools that Microsoft has out on the net for free. It works seamlessly with just about every major blogging website out there, including blogger.

This entry, for example, was written with Live Writer.

I’ve discovered thanks to its layout system that I can write journal entries 4x as faster than I was before using Blogger’s online editor. Case in point, I just posted a four part trip entry about the Mt. Hood Railroad in the time it normally takes me to write up entry using the on-page editor.

The blog entry looks like its finished product as you compose it.

Plus it has one thing I’ve always been after, an offline editor. It caches everything from your blog and any pictures you’ve linked locally so that you can continue to compose even when the Wi-Fi is not working.

One button publishing to effortlessly post your newest work to your blog.

So, my fellow bloggers, I humbly recommend trying out this free tool. It may take a little getting used to, but the learning curve is low and once you experience it, you won’t want to to blog via browser again.

Kitchen Project: Adding a Stainless Steel Stove Backsplash

Well, once again, I'm doing a project post :). This project was done probably back in May or June of last year, but I can't remember the exact date, and I didn't take pictures of it until about ten minutes ago as I was baking a pizza in the oven.

When I originally bought my camper and for most of the time I owned it, the only back splash the stove really had was the three-inch tall piece of Formica that went with the counter top.

The rest of the wall was just the standard oak-wood grain paneling that made up all of the walls and cabinets in the camper.

This is okay, until you start full-timing in the camper and like to cook bacon or sausage, or anything that uses or produces some kind of grease. Even with a spatter screen, the natural vapor that comes from the cooking process gradually builds up on surfaces.

Trying to clean bacon grease build up out of porous wood paneling is a pain in the butt.

So, I was looking back one day through some of my photos I've collected of the Rociante, when I noticed a piece of regular sheet metal behind the stove in Steinbeck's camper.

That got me to thinking, and luck would have it, my original neighbors here at the park, the husband works at a sheet metal shop.

A little measurement and a bit of discussion later, and I now have a nice piece of heavy duty mirror polish stainless steel lining the wall behind my stove.




Clean up is a snap with a little bit of windex every now and then.