First entry

Hello, this is Guido (ADB on Blogger, pharmolo on AOL) with the very first post on Magic Smoke @ Blogger. I have been given permission to write on this journal, and will continue where I was cut off on Magic Smoke @ AOL 2 weeks ago.

The transfer of AOL blogs to Blogger is hitting snags, and it seems to affect blogs with large numbers of posts in particular. If the troubleshooting does not help you, leave a comment here or on Magic Smoke @ AOL. The Journals Team is on the case, and will ensure that anyone who has problems will see their blog migrated.

I have made it my business to ensure that as many dormant blogs as possible are transferred or saved. I have repeatedly posted about this, but will once again raise the flag: do you know a journal, written by someone who is away, has died or for any other reason will be unable to migrate their journal themselves: please leave a comment.

A first technical tip for Blogger:

GRAPHICS
Do not host your graphics on Blogger. Storage space here is limited, and you'll very rapidly run out. Use an external host, e.g. photobucket.

When you put in the image, switch to Edit HTML (top right of entry window) and enter the HTML tag: < i m g s r c = " [spacing deliberate], followed by the URL of the image and the closing tag ">. If you do this through the Blogger equivalent of Add Image, the URLs can sometimes not work (no fault of the URL!) and you get a heck of a lot of unnecessary garbage-HTML added to it all, which throws your journal's lay-out sideways.