The Big Switch

I've switched over to the new version of Blogger, and this move has forced me to re-examine some of the staple parts of my blog.

About Me… or someone like me

I made several attempts at biography for the "About Me" section. Some involved mentions of fleeting fancies, like Ninetindo Wii or Stephen Colbert. I decided that was just too ephemeral for the "about me" section. Although, now that I think about it, ephemeral and blog aren't exactly antithetical.

I then decided I'd stick to a strict geographical description. I ended up with a dry, "I lived in the U.K. for some time but I'm now back in the East Bay, and loving it!" That last bit, "and loving it!", was just a smidge too self-satisfied. However, when I cut it, the para lacked any personality.

Maybe a straight bio on what I wrote about would be more useful to a fly-by visitor. But actually I haven't written in quite a while -- most of my stuff is linking out. I'm one of those linkers.

Sounds a bit Seinfeld.

I'm not sure if I want to stop being a linker, but it hardly warrants mention in the "about me" section.

Then I thought about bloggers I admire who don't bother with a bio at all. Maybe that's the way to go.

For now, I've bunged in a Mark Twain quote. We'll see how that feels after a week.

Another quote I considered that I really like:

"Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others." — Virginia Woolf

Just change "literature" to "blogging" and it fits like a glove.

The Blogger Move

If any fellow Blogger users out there are curious about what the move is like: it went fairly smoothly and painlessly for me. Some of my pictures are cut-off by the decreased main body width, and there are some other minor things, but overall I'm happy with the move.

If you have a customized template, you can switch without changing the blog template. But when you go to the template tab you'll see an orange button that asks if you want to upgrade your template. If you do that, you'll lose all your customization, so save your template to a Word doc or Notepad before you click on the orange button. (Update: more information here.)

Once you've upgraded your template, you have drag and drop design and a number of other nifty features. I would recommend it, even if you love your template. A change is as good as a rest and all that cliche stuff…

Instant publishing!

The best aspect, by far, is the instant publishing. Before it would take a long time for my post to publish -- now it's hey presto! You're done. Very quick and whizzy. Well done Blogger team for improving the user's experience.

Dashboard: oranger, uglier

The main dashboard is even uglier, if that were possible. They've sort of added "Blogger Buzz" at the bottom. I don't want to see that, get it off my real estate! I experimented a little with WordPress last year, and it does have a more elegant dashboard to work from. But, as they say, meh; I can live with a clunky-looking dash.

Incidentally, I went a little label crazy; I'll probably prune some out. While it was initially fun to add labels to previous posts, it because tedious quickly, and I sort of gave up after a while. Probably best to tackle in stages.

Anyone else had a good Blogger switch?