I've been trying out the Windows Live Writer (beta) for a few days, to try and overcome some of the frustrating limitations of writing and editing blogs online.  I had some frustrations, especially in the realm of embedding photos, but the latest Update release seems to have solved those problems, so I'm ready to endorse the product wholeheartedly!

The first advantage of using a "rich" client application rather than a "reach" web site, is the availability of offline storage.  I've lost my work several times when "Save" falls prey to network issues.  I often write longer posts in an email message and paste them in so I have backup copy if something goes wrong.  Windows Live Writer has a Save Draft which saves it locally on the file system - much less likely to encounter problems.

Windows Live Writer integrates delightfully with Spaces.  One can create a post, publish it or post it as a draft with one click (minimal one-time configuration required), or open an existing post right of the blog for editing and reposting.  Sweet, an rich client experience no more complicated, and a lot more responsive without having to download all the fancy graphics, than the online experience.

You can view the content as you edit it in several ways: Web Layout, which shows you the content styled just as it will appear in the blog (it downloads the style of your blog and faithfully reproduces it in an editable fashion), or an HTML Code view in case you need to tweak the source (which I'm finding much less necessary now).  There also is a "Normal" view which isn't styled like your blog, but I honestly don't know why one would choose this option - maybe it makes more sense with non-Spaces blog editing.  There's a Web Preview view as well, approximating the entire blog page with the content in place - not terribly necessary since Web Layout works so well.

You can also edit some properties unavailable in the online version - like the date and time of the blog.  The HTML generated is much nicer than the HTML editing control too, namely it actually uses <P> elements instead of forcing everything to a <DIV>, eliminating much of my manual work after completing a post.

Image insertion in the online version is a major, major pain.  Did I say major?  One would have to leave the page (or open another and get into edit mode), choose a photo album, edit it, add a photo, browse to the photo, upload it, view the photo album, right click and get the property sheet, copy the URL, go back to the blog and edit the HTML to insert and <IMG> tag.  In fact it's such a pain that I mostly upload the photo to Flickr instead and copy and paste the suggested HTML fragment right from that page in.  Then you right click the image and go through a nested set of context menus to set alignment so the text wraps around the right way.  And then you edit the HTML to add hspace attributes

But image insertion is totally, totally awesome in Windows Live Writer.  You click "Insert Picture..." and choose your picture off the hard drive, and it appears.  Click on it, and you get a full set of image properties in the task bar - alignment, links, alt text, size (need little small/medium/large with a way to customize what those mean).  When you post or publish the entry, the photo gets uploaded to a photo album along with the post.  Trivial, as it should be.

There's a spell checker (which I miss greatly in the online version, and you probably miss it even more when I mistype.)  There are some new features I haven't really played with yet, such as a Flickr browser plugin and a tagging facility, I'll have to explore those later but they sound pretty cool.

So after all those praises, I have a few very small nits with the program and it's Spaces integration so far.  First, there is a neat facility for setting the margins around images - something I always have to do in HTML mode.  However, although it sets and shows the margins nicely, when posting the entry Spaces strips out the markup.  I have to go back and add in "hspace" attributes which are so obsolete they sneak past Spaces' defenses.  I hope Spaces fixes this soon.

There is a nice feature that automatically applies a blurred drop shadow to your image before uploading too.  However, when you apply it it shrinks the photo area so the photo + drop shadow is the same size as the original photo was.  The photo body is shrunk and gets blurry as a result.  It would be much nicer to add the border without changing the size of the photo body.

There are some nice useful image controls too like rotating, adjusting brightness and applying a watermark, but along with it comes some features I can't believe anyone would find useful like Gaussian Blur and Emboss effects.  Seems wasted to me.

All in all, Windows Live Writer rocks.  It is fast and lightweight just like the content one would use it on, and beautifully simple for simple things while having a smooth transition to more advanced features, and very little that you'd never find appealing.  Well done! 

If you love maps and GPS coordinates as much as I do, you'll find Flickr Maps irresistible.  I've become an avid user in the month or so that the feature has been available, and you can find many of my sets (especially those that are outdoors) sporting location information.  You can see a map of all my geotagged photos here.

First some history.  Flickr runs on "tags", or keywords that users give their photos.  These tags are vital for searching and grouping photos.  Flickr has some pretty advanced facilities for tagging, including third-party tagging (a user tagging someone else's photo), and tagging just a part of a photo.  For a while a growing set of Flickr users have added latitude and longitude tags to their photos, and developed some mash-ups for displaying their photos on maps.  Now Flickr has built this capability in, with geospatial metadata given the same status as time, licensing, and viewing permissions.

Here's a zoomed in view of part of my map with satellite imagery turned on.

Each geotagged photo shows up as a dot on the map.  Click on a dot and you get a series of thumbnails of photos shot in that location.  Click on Show detail and you get a larger view of the photos.

So, why is this cool?

First, for those of us addicted to photosets as a way to view photos in order (generally chronological) in order to tell a "story" documenting some event, the order that you view photos in makes a big difference.  And a map presents an interesting order in which to view your photos.  For instance, the dots imply that our circumnavigation of Echo Lake was part water and part on land.

Second, if you're addicted to satellite imagery, you probably have found that while an overhead view gives you some sense of a place, when you actually go there you find that it can be quite different from your expectation.  The ability to see some photos helps build a much better sense of what it would be like to be there.  And you'll find new places you want to see - like Desolation Valley's Twin Lakes as captured by malaparte, which I found while reviewing my Echo Lake geotags.

Third, for the historical addict, grouping photos by location, and not by time taken, can give you a sense of how a place changes at different times of day or night, or even different seasons.  Eventually I might be able to look back and see what a place was like a decade ago...  This is especially valuable as the collective historical record grows.  Click "Clear all" and the dots won't be limited to just your photos, but will mix in photos from everyone.

If you're a photoset addict, a satellite addict, and a historical addict, you had best resign yourself now to becoming a Flickr maps addict.

But what was unexpected to me is that the act of geotagging, rather than the chore I expected, is rewarding in and of itself thanks to the Flickr map/Yahoo map user interface.  To walk through a set of photographs, and map them up either through GPS logs, or just manually placing them on the map from memory (which is surprisingly easy even for photos a year or more old), is like a trip down memory lane.  You have to remember where you were when you took each photo in order to place it on the map.  You correlate your experiences with the satellite imagery.  You look more closely at the dates and times the photos were taken, and the relation of different photos in time and in space.  You compare your photos with ones others have taken at the same spot.

In the end, it's like reacquainting yourself with old friends.

I'm not a big amusement park lover.  I prefer stillness and contemplation to noise and excitement.  But my kids don't seem to take after me in that.

So when they want to go to the County Fair, I'm willing to take them, and enjoy their enjoyment.  Even better is for them to bring friends along to go on the rides with.  Then I just tack along and play with my camera when they're swinging through a constellation of lightbulbs in the dusk.

The photoset is here.  A couple of my favorite abstracts below.

[Pictures here.]

Since I didn't quite finish Section 6, we came up with a plan that was light on hiking (for those with whining tendencies) but high on views and interest.

First we stopped by the Taylor Creek Visitor's Center, to see if the salmon were running the stream yet.  The unique Kokanee salmon turn bright red and return to this creek to spawn each fall, and I thought we might see a few along the Rainbow Trail.  Alas, we were a few weeks too early for the salmon, and just saw a few trout and bluegill.

However, the path which winds through aspen groves punctuating a grassy meadow wasn't without interest.  I was especially intrigued by the aspen bark, not just the old carvings scabbed over until many are unreadable and delightfully abstract, but also the natural scars associated with old branches, shaped like Count Olaf's ankle tattoo.

After that, we drove up to Echo Lake to take the water taxi to the far end of Echo Lake, only to find that the season had just ended and the last boat was headed up the driveway towards it's winter storage.  A helpful resident named Steve agreed to give us a lift to the far end anyway, and we had a nice walk back only the granite massif constituting the north shore of the lake, admiring the diminutive cabins (accessible by water only) tucked in around the shore.

Again the air, sky and light were pristine, the terrain exquisite, and the ancient flora fascinating.  I could go on and on, but you really just had to be there - or as a poor substitute look at the pictures.

After that I did the short bit left up from Echo Lake to Echo Summit, where I started the previous day, completing the entire section, plus a little bonus mileage.

[Mileage: 142.0 | 4.5 (not including the boat ;-)]

[Pictures here.]

Fall temperatures come quickly in the high country.  We managed to set aside three days to do the Echo Lakes to Barker Pass section (Section 7), in which the four of us would do 15 miles, and I'd do another 16 on my own.  But nighttime temperatures forecast around 13 degrees stretched the limit of our gear, and exceeded the limit of our enthusiasm (except for mine ;-).

In the end we opted to try for day-hiking only, taking on the shorter Section 6, from Echo Summit to Big Meadow.  I would start at Echo Summit, make good time around to Round Lake, where I'd meet the rest of the crew coming in for an afternoon hike.

My "early start" by the time we got going, got bagels, got there, got the trekking poles I noticed I'd left in the car three minutes into the hike, turned into a "midmorning start" (10:30).  I took off at a good clip, and quite quickly found that acclimatizing a month ago doesn't do much good.  I was sucking air big time, nursing a headpounder, and going slower and slower for the first couple of hours.

Maybe it was my state, but the scenery wasn't much to distract me, though I found a few amazing trees and rock formations.  And it all felt pretty much uphill.

After 5 miles or so though, the trail emerges from the forest into the broad bowl of the Upper Truckee River, surrounded by ridges of volcanic conglomerate, with rounded granite outcroppings bubbling up through the meadows and low willow stands.  Still a few snow fields along the rims, feeding rushing brooks that cross the trail at regular intervals - some sporting evidence of recent freezing activity.

Until this point, my photographs were excuses for a few second breather, but now, with head cleared and breath returned, I had to slow down to take shots every few hundred yards.  The air was stunningly transparent, especially after living for a week in the haze of the Ralston Fire.  The profusion of wildflowers present earlier in the year has largely given way, to mature grasses fading to a bronzy gold, and the terrain and vegetation changed every few dozen yards, the incredible variety keeping me, and my camera, moving along.

I came upon Showers Lake at 10 minutes to two (putting me an hour or two behind my overly optimistic schedule.)  Not expecting much from the rather lame pictures in The Tahoe Rim Trail Guide (I've become convinced the photos they chose are intended not to inspire with the prime scenes, but not to give away the "endings"), I found Showers Lake surprisingly beautiful.  Although most of the lakes I've encountered on the trail have something special about them, this is definitely one of the worthiest of repeat visits!

I twisted my knee slightly just before reaching the lake, but only allowed it a 10 minute rest since I was feeling time pressure.  So on I went, this time gently downhill for the next five miles, much of which was through the broad golden Meiss Meadows, largely golden at this time of year, with the Upper Truckee bordered by willow patches meandering through them.  At the southernmost part of the trail (and of the whole Rim Trail) are a couple of "Cowboy Cabins", apparently leftover from the days of running cattle in the high country for the summer.  Now that would be a great summer job!

I pulled up to Round Lake at 3:30, found my kids swinging from a tree, and had a snack and (finally) a bit of  a break.  My plan to spend the morning making mileage and the afternoon with the kids had gotten skewed pretty badly, as the sun was already slanting ever more steeply into the west.

I made good use of my trekking poles in favoring my knee through bouldery patches, as we wound back down through Big Meadow, with it's remaining photo ops, and back to the camper.  Cleaned up a little and went out for fajitas - then made our way to a campground at Emerald Bay for a cozy night (the camper has a thermostat-controlled heater) of the game Settlers of Catan and a long sleep.

I can't quite call this section complete without the Echo Lake to Echo Summit bit, but I plan to do that in the morning.

All-in-all, after well over 100 miles, I'm still amazed at the beauty and variety of this trail.  And I suspect the best parts, through Desolation Valley, are still ahead.

[Mileage: 137.5 | 15.3]

Wow, amazing it's been over a month since my last post.  The end of summer and start of school have been jam packed with activity, making it hard to find time to do any writing.

Add to that the fact that my laptop gradually spiraled downward into an early grave, so we've had four family members competing hotly for computing resources solidly from dawn till midnight.  Only the essentials get priority!

But, I and my new laptop are back, with lots of summer news, photos and stories to belatedly post for my readers (or possibly reader, or possibly just myself.)