Blogging, the current state of my practice

In this post, I am going to recap the current state of my blogging practice, and some improvements that I hope to make.

This is a long, technical post, mainly for the benefit of Future Me, and the benefit of Present Me as I solved these problems.

What I do now

Here’s the way things work right now.

Open my tabs

I start by opening the tabs that I’m going to use for writing a particular post. I blogged about that in this post.

Go through my checklist

My blog template contains a preflight checklist. It’s all the stuff that I ought to have completed before I start composing the blog’s content. In theory, I can march through the process without going around in circles, as I described in another post, written, but not published.

One pass through, and I am done.

The checklist is in Markdown format so that I can use this convention:

“`markdown

• [ ] this is unchecked
• [x] this is checked

`“

Which will render this way:

• [ ] this is unchecked
• [x] this is checked

Enough intention

The first item on the checklist is to make sure I have enough intention to finish the post. The test at each step is: do I predict that I will finish.

Clear picture

I need to make sure that I have a clear picture of the intended result. If it’s a long post (like this one) that means that I need to outline.

So do I have enough intention to outline?

Do I predict I will complete it?

Research as needed

As I’m writing the outline, I do the research I need and drop links and quotes in the Google Doc.

I’ve got a research inventory stashed in Dynalist, and Onetab, and Pinboard and Evernote.

During the research and composition phases, I can use a Chrome extension called TabCopy. It creates formatted links in the clipboard. I can choose to do it for the current tab, selected tabs, or all the tabs in the current window.

Then I paste them into the Google Doc.

If I want to clip some texts, with a reference back to the original URL, I can use the Dynalist Chrome extension, which will give me a linked quote like this:

Maybe there’s a connection. Perhaps not. But right now I’m going with maybe there is.
From 70 Years Old. WTF!: Search results for predictive processing

There are parts of this process I can automate later.

Compose in Docs

Now it’s time to compose the content in a Google Docs, using voice typing. Like I’m doing right now. Or was then.

As I complete each section, I’d like to review it and make sure I’m on track quickly. I haven’t yet developed the habit of doing that.

The check-in process will come later.

Clean up in StackEdit

Once my draft is complete, I copy/paste the entire Google Docs content into StackEdit.

StackEdit turns links in Google Docs into Markdown, using the format:
`“

text to appear

`“
Now everything is in plain text, and I can edit it in Grammarly.

I had been using the Chrome extension Copy as MarkDown to give me tab links in Markdown format, but StackEdit will convert the content that TabCopy puts on the clipboard.

Clean up YouTube links

YouTube links look like this when captured with TabCopy

“ [An interesting video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESNRgaCkiUA&t=756s)“
They won’t render on the page. To do that I need to use the magic number at the v= parameter in an embed embed URL in an iframe, like this:

<figure class="video_container">

<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/enMumwvLAug" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true"

width=100% height=300 > </iframe>

</figure>

### Check in Grammarly

Once I’ve got a clean post in StackEdit, I copy/paste the source into [Grammarly](https://grammarly.com) for spelling and grammar checking.

### Another check in StackEdit

In case I screw up some of the Markdown while editing in Grammarly, I can copy back into StackEdit for a quick visual check.

### Into blogger

Next, I copy/paste the content into the Blogger new post tab.

Once it’s there I do this:

1.  Set the title (and remove from the document)

2.  Set the tags (and remove from the document)

3.  Render as markdown using [Markdown Here](https://markdown-here.com/)

4.  (Optional) Schedule the post

And finally...

5.  Click Publish


## Some other bits

### Screenshots

To capture part of a screen, I used to have to crank up a Chrome Extension ([Nimbus Screenshot](https://nimbusweb.me/) for example).  After I’ve selected the area that I want, I download it. Then upload it to a shared folder

On my Google Pixel, I can use my Pixel Pen to capture the area that I want. I highlight the area and automatically downloads it to my Downloads folder.

Now I can upload it to my Blog Images Google Photos Album. [A link to it is here](https://photos.google.com/album/AF1QipOV8cTgthOV571-2hmuRzG74MFX9HJT2-Ad489D).

There’s probably an API for that. Later.

### Blog photos

To get the URL for a Google photo, I go to the Blog Posts folder, and click on the image I want and open it in the browser. The URL in the omnibar is NOT the one to use. Instead, right-click the image and choose “Copy image URL.”

If you put a photo in a Google Doc using Insert -> Image -> By URL and then use that URL. When you copy/paste the Doc contents into StackEdit, StackEdit will convert it to Markdown format:

```markdown

![](image URL)

with the text blank.

You can also paste an image URL into StackEdit using ctrl-shift-g. If you select some text, then that text will be used as the image alt-text:

![text you selected](image URL)

Modified image format

You can do that according to the rules in this postenter link description here.

Copying to blog photos folder in drive

I set up links between the Download folder and Google Drive Blog Post folder:

ln -s /mnt/chromeos/GoogleDrive/MyDrive/Media/Blog\ Photos/ blogphotos

ln -s /mnt/chromeos/MyFiles/Downloads/ downloads

So from the Linux shell, I can copy files. For whatever that’s worth.

Blogus interruptus

If I can’t finish a post in one session, I’d like to preserve the tabs without cluttering up my browser. So I can use the OneTab extension to save all the tabs, and then later restore them all at once.

What happens next

Here are some things I want to add to the project—in no particular order:

• Open windows for transcriptions
• Combined editing tool with
• Voice typing (with correction of words like quote/endquote and so on
• StackEdit (JS library)
• Grammarly
• Programmatic replacement of common spellings
• Timeboxing and time notifications

​