My Own Tool Box

I do most of my writing on my iPhone. It’s convenient, and I’m rarely without it. Sometimes I’ll use my iPad, but the iPhone does the bulk of the heavy lifting. Sometimes I’ll post directly to my blog, but usually I upload a draft.

Then I download the draft to my laptop, using Open Live Writer (OLW).This is a free, open-source version of Microsoft’s abandoned Live Writer. This is where I do the fine-tuning of my posts. It’s where I add graphics, pictures, etc., before finally publishing the final version here.
Because it runs under Windows, OLW takes advantage of the operating system’s tools, such as spell-checking. It also automates such details as resizing images, adding hyperlinks, and publishing the final product.

Uploading the draft also ensures that I’ve got a back-up version in the cloud, as well on my hard drive.

Which brings us to my next tool:

ROBYN’S FIRST RULE OF COMPUTING
Be Paranoid And Compulsive!

If you’ve used a computer for anything longer than a month, you know that it’s not a question of if you’ll lose a file, but when.

Hence the need for backup copies. In addition to using the cloud, I also run a backup every night, copying my latest work to an external SSD drive. Yes, I’m that paranoid, with good reason: I grew up on MS-DOS, where it was all to easy to type C:\DEL *.* then hit “Y” when I meant to hit “N” when prompted if I was really sure that’s what I wanted to do.

‘Nuff said.