Category Archives: blogging

say #%*@! to the new wordpress block editor

29 Friday May 2020

Posted by in blogging, internet

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block editor
When the new Worpdress block editor became available (maybe a year or so ago?) I gave it a spin and immediately HATED it. It was so faffy, unintuitive and frustrating that I opted to install a classic editor plugin on my websites with WordPress installs, and continue using the classic option here. Then the other day I got an email from WP with the chirpy title Say Hello To The New WordPress Block Editor and my heart sank. Turns out that as of June 1st, WP is retiring the classic editor and that even now it shows up as the default editor. Gaaaah.

I suppose if I wanted to do all that fancy stuff then I would find the new bells and whistles interesting, but in fact it makes just putting up a regular post with a photo or two much harder, takes way longer, ruins the experience for me. Happily they still have a “classic editor block” that I can choose, but again it’s extra clicks just to get to where I want to be to start. I’m not sure if or how this will affect the other hosted sites but here’s hoping the plugin keeps working after June 1st. What do you think of the new editor?

moving on from picasa…

20 Monday Aug 2018

Posted by in blogging, photography, work

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Moving on from Picasa… but where to?? Actually, this change came about in early 2016, which basically meant that there would be no more updates or support for Picasa, but it didn’t affect the existing versions. In fact, Peter downloaded the last version for his new laptop last month and it’s been working fine. That is, until Saturday.

I uploaded some photos from the day out, planning to do some editing and hopefully get a couple of review updates posted (my massive backlog is ALMOST cleared!!), but while the photos were uploaded properly into the file, they didn’t show up on Picasa. I thought it might just be a glitch and so I just shut things down, thinking that things would probably be back to normal after a reboot. But nope.

It occurred to me to reinstall Picasa, but then I thought I might screw up my present Picasa “library” which is showing everything I uploaded before Saturday. I also checked with Peter and his Picasa also wasn’t showing new photos he uploaded, so the possibility of losing everything seemed likely. Damn.

The thing I have always liked about Picasa was its simple editing options, and also that it was easy to scroll through the library that showed all my photo files. It also had a text option, so I could add my watermark, a collage maker, plus I could export the edited photos to other files at smaller sizes, keeping the originals in the original files. Google Photos, the recommended substitute for Picasa has only basic cropping and filter features, so it’s useless for me.

What to do?? I mean, photo editing is a HUGE part of my job, and I’m really stuck if I don’t have some means of doing this. I tried downloading the Windows Live editor, but that one doesn’t appear to be working either. I also tried GIMP and have just spent the last two hours totally frustrated with it, which is the same experience I had with it a few years ago. I’m sure it does wonderful stuff if you know how to do them, but it is not a user-friendly platform at all, and is very “clunky” in terms of finding the uploaded files and then exporting them.

I honestly don’t know what to do next. Any ideas?