 Sherwood has told me how to beat the blasted disappearing archive number problem that's been plaguing me since day one. Just add a ?/ as I've done in that last link.
One thing I've learned from all this—the interconnectivity of the internet isn't quite seamless. My blog looks just fine to me, the links work and the quotation marks look like quotation marks. Apparently this isn't the case for some of the readers, however. And it's bloody impossible to fix a problem you can't see or recreate. Especially if you don't know you have a problem.
My original goal for today was to set up a hit counter. I'd been reluctant to do so. I don't know whether I'm more afraid to find out that no one reads this drivel, or that everyone reads it. But I've signed up for a hit counter through Bravenet, I think..
If my signup with Bravenet works I'll have learned three new tricks in one day. Not bad for an old 'yote.
Now I'll probably find out that my "fixes" have caused a whole slew of new problems somewhere else. Computers. Gotta love 'em. But why is it that we seem to love the things that cause us the most aggravation?
Update: Drat! I notice that getting rid of smart quotes doesn't do a thing for the "smart hyphens" or whatever is causing that little black box some of you are probably seeing right after "One thing I've learned from all this.. Tsk. If you're expecting perfection you'll have to look elsewhere. But please do let me know if you see any more problems!
Many many thanks to those who've emailed with comments and suggestions.
Update Dux: Ah! I get rid of the smart hyphens the same way I got rid of smart quotes. Of course. Now I need to know why I would want a hyphen smarter than I am..
Ask and you shall receive!
Reader Matt Harris writes: "This may seem like a simple question, but if Publisher is giving you such a hard time with smart quotes, why not turn them off? I checked the help files for MS Publisher 2000 for "smart quotes" and turning them off is fairly simple."
Cool. I've just tried it, let's see if it works..
It works!! Outstanding! Thanks, Matt Harris!
This morning I'd never heard of a smart quote. I guess you can teach an old dog the occasional trick.
Sigh. As you can see in the post below, I have enough trouble with the Queen’s English, without fighting with computerese. For the time being I’ll try to eschew quotation marks wherever possible, and fix those I must use. If anyone out there sees any other problems with this blog, other than my shitty attitude, please let me know! Please.
Let me know if you don’t like my attitude too. Although I doubt there’s much I can do about that.
Finally, someone tells me!
When I started this blog I had the very devil of a time trying to figure out how to create links. I dutifully typed the HTML code character for character as Steve Den Beste had explained them to me, but they didn’t work. Finally, I did a "View Source" to see exactly what I was sending Blogger and discovered that the quotes characters I was sending to Blogger appeared as little squares in Blogger’s text editor. The only way I’ve found to correct this is to manually retype the quotes in Blogger’s text editor before publishing to BlogSpot.
Almost two months later I’m still doing that. A tiny nuisance, but it works and given my magico-religious approach to computers, I generally don’t mess with what works. Until now. Anton Sherwood informs me that my "smart quotes" don’t look so smart from his point of view:
"I decided not to bother urging you not to use "smart" asymmetric quotation marks in your blog, because it would be mere whining about the incomplete font in which I read the stuff. But
(you knew there had to be a 'but')
Then I found your link to A Boy and His Blog, which is broken because - ta daa! - the tag contains "smart" q rather than dumb ones."
Oops. I forgot to retype the quotes in Blogger. They're fixed now. And apparently, although the non-HTML quotes marks in my text look fine to me, they don’t look so good to some folks. I don’t wish to give up composing in MS Publisher. I’m working in Publisher all day a