If you're reading this post directly on my blog, you have probably noticed that the top section in the sidebar is “George Reilly’s shared items”.

[This post is describing how this blog worked when it ran on DasBlog]

If you're reading this through an RSS reader, let me tell you that that section contains various items that I'm sharing through Google Reader. Mostly these are items that I've read from blogs that I'm subscribed to in Google Reader, but I'm also using the Note in Reader book­marklet to share arbitrary webpages. If I choose, I can add a note to each item that I share.

Formerly, I would oc­ca­sion­al­ly summon up the energy …continue.

From Scott Hanselman, I learned about Mi­crosoft­'s new blog posting client, Windows Live Writer. I've played around with it and it's definitely the nicest free blogging client that I've used.

Here are in­struc­tions on con­fig­ur­ing it to post to dasBlog. I'm showing how to set it up for Emma's blog, since she's running dasBlog 1.8. I'm running a recent build of the as-yet unreleased dasBlog 1.9, which supports Really Simple Discovery, which makes the first part of this exercise simpler, as WLW can infer that it's dealing with Metaweblog API, just by pointing it at the root of the blog.

Launch WLW and Add a Weblog Account. Choose Another weblog service.

Next, …continue.

I've been hanging out on the dasBlog de­vel­op­er­s' mailing list for the last couple of months, and I've made some minor con­tri­bu­tions to the code.

I sent the following email to the de­vel­op­er­s' list last night.

My wife has decided to start a blog for Team Ireland in the 2006 Knitting Olympics, and she asked me to install dasBlog on her site. I decided that this was an excellent op­por­tu­ni­ty to do some usability testing on the in­stal­la­tion in­struc­tions for dasBlog. I asked her to try installing dasBlog, while I watched. I promised that I would bail her out if she got mired too deeply.

Emma has worked as a black-box …continue.

I finally updated my blog to run on dasBlog 1.8. Not too painful. I unzipped the binary dis­tri­b­u­tion, downloaded the content folder from my server to my local drive, ran the provided upgrade utility, and used WinMerge to update the con­fig­u­ra­tion files.

The most obvious change is that I'm using a new theme (skin), which gives the site a very different look. The previous default theme had problems if your browser window was too narrow, due to some hardcoded table sizes (I think).

I also figured out how to post to dasBlog via w.bloggar. I looked for info on con­fig­ur­ing w.bloggar a few weeks ago, and couldn't find it then.

Followup: the …continue.

I've set up a new personal blog at www.georgevreil­ly.com/blog. I'll be posting non-technical stuff there and I'll be cross-posting on technical matters to Weblogs @ ASP.net. Here's how I ended up running dasBlog on the new blog.

In the spring of last year, I attempted to install both .Text and dasBlog on my XP Pro laptop. I failed, signally, to get either one working. The details have mercifully faded with time, leaving me only with a residue of frus­tra­tion.

I've been meaning to put some photos of mine up on the web for a while. A week ago, I went to download nGallery, as I remembered hearing good things about it …continue.