I'm in the process of switching over from Blogger to Wordpress.com now. They are both free, but each has pros and cons.

I think Blogger is easier to get started on and you can do a lot more tweaking to the look of your site (for free). You can use CSS on Wordpress, but you have to have a paid account, otherwise the basic themes are extremely inflexible. And WP doesn't always play nice with basic html in your posts. For example, it will strip out extra lines between paragraphs. That's why I say I'm in the process of transferring my blog. The importing of the posts worked okay, but I have to re-edit the html on each post for spacing etc. with some work-arounds I've found. If Blogger wasn't Google I would probably stay there.

That said, although the Wordpress dashboard was very intimidating at first, I'm getting used to it. But I think that's mostly because I'm more used to blogging now. When I first considered using it, it seemed far more complicated.

I also think I like the WP combination of categories and tags for labeling posts and the comment system, which allows for specific replies to comments as well as some threading. I've had people have problems leaving comments on Blogger. And when the new Explorer came out in late summer, I felt like Google was purposely not supporting it and staying logged in was a problem, even as host. It's the main reason I switched to Chrome.

I didn't know they hosted. I guess they'd be stupid not to.

The relationship between the two is actually a little more complicated than that -- (warning! possibly pedantic and tl;dr stuff ahead!!)

WordPress (the software) is open-source, and (like most ridiculously large open source projects) is developed by a huge shit-ton of volunteer coders (including me! holy shit!), and wouldn't be as good without even more volunteer testers, translators, support types and such. It's a whole big community thang, with barbecue.

WordPress.com, the blog hosting service, is a commercial service founded by the dude who invented WordPress-the-software. It (surprise!) uses the software for their blogs, and the corporation also donates both cash and developer resources to the open source project.

Neither one is a subsidiary of the other, although neither would really be much without the other, either. I'm a (critical) fan of both, and I seem to have this compulsion to go all teal-deary when they get mixed up, which happens all the damn time in the tech press. It's like the Tim Worked On Buffy of lazy social media reporting.

Huh. I didn't know that! Thanks for clarifying.

If Blogger wasn't Google I would probably stay there.

So you don't like Google?

It's the main reason I switched to Chrome.

So you do like Google?

Very funny, smartypants.

And I can continue to use Chrome without a Google account. For now...

Google is awesome, everyone should use Google services as much as possible. Especially after April.

I have a couple intermittent problems:

1. My Windows 7 box networking. It seems to go to sleep and never wake up. The simplest way to get it back on the network is to switch the port in the hub with another cable. Nothing I can do *at* the computer gets me back onto the network, as far as I can tell. Manually trying to stop and start networking, ipconfig, all that stuff, nothing. But it can take days for it to drop off the network.

2. My Powerbook webcam. It stopped dead again right now. If I restart, it'll be working again, but it's dead to Photo Booth and Skype right now I can't work out how to google this intermittent problem usefully.

Any ideas for what I could be missing?

I finally got the last of the copyright permissions I need for my graphic book - which means I can now start soliciting bids for a graphic designer. Right now I'm thinking of just asking the for bids on a print version, maybe with some e-book friendliness (for instance in font choices), with the idea that I will pay later for development of the ebook. (There are issues that will require layout changes between ebook and print layout - an electronic image of the print edition won't work well .) Is making this a separate process an expensive decision? Of course this will cost me more than doing both at the same time, but is it likely to cost a lot more? Cause if the difference between doing both at once and doing the two versions separately is less than $100 it is worth the money to separate the two processes. Much more than that, and I probably should bite the bullet and ask that both layout versions be done at once.

I'm just discovering that TV show renaming apps work. Now I can't find the right one! I'm trying to automate two things--converting into a mkv format after a remotely-triggered upload (I can do the triggering fine), and then renaming it to something more human readable would be great, including putting it in the right folder.

Everything I've found so far is drag and drop with the renaming and moving to correct folders. Does anyone know anything (PC preferably) that would poll a directory and move and rename (god, and convert format would be brill) video files?

And now I need to search the thread for DVD ripping suggestions. I always think "Oh! I have Handbrake!" forgetting that's not what it's for. Okay, I do have Mac The Ripper. Anyone prefer anything else for OS X?

(I've had a sudden craving for a portable version of TPB)

I've used RipIt. But I don't use it much so it's not the loudest rec I've ever made. It's been effective though.

Also I always try to use Handbrake first too. I feel like it should rip dvds for me.