whining about web 2.0 software

Blogger is based on web 2.0 (interactive online) software, and so is my main blog, wordcurrents. Both seriously let me down today, causing me to lose hours of work, and making me rethink the way I blog.

Let me explain: yesterday, I saw Copper Thunderbird, in the English Theatre at the NAC in Ottawa. I rose this morning at 5 am to start writing my review in wordcurrents, which is based on WordPress, which has an automatic backup feature, which backs up your work each time you stop typing. An hour and a half later, I discovered a typo, backspaced to correct it, and inadvertently deleted everything. When I stopped to back up my browser to reclaim the work, it had already backed up the deletion over my work. Everything was gone.

I took some time off to stop screaming (or whatever I was doing that passed for a reaction), then came back to platinum river, here, to complain under the title above. At one point, I thought it would be neat to post a photo of my irate face with the article. I opened my photo editor to find such a shot, the editor froze, requiring me to reboot, and I came back to Blogger discover that the only part of the article that still existed was the title, which you see above.

Moral: from now on, write articles in WordPerfect, which has appropriate backup routines, then post. (Now, repeat, one thousand times . . . .)