i have no idea why i suddenly decided to start working on this project again. i had about 42 different projects going this weekend. but why not add starting a blog book to the list, right? because that's an easy enough thing to do. NOT.
the blog book. it's a think of beauty, once it's done and sitting on my bookshelf. but the process of making one of these books? it can be frustrating and time consuming. i'm sure it can be easy and simple for some people. just never for me. i decided to start with 2009, and then i will do 2008 afterwards. my blog is HUGE now, so i only pull up about 3 months at a time. once i work on that, and finetune it, it usually cuts the number of pages way down. by at least a third, if not more. then i pull up another few months. i had 154 pages for just the first 3 months, and after working on it, it's down to 92 pages already.
but this time, when blurb went to slurp my blog, it slurped it all up wonky. slurping is the term blurb uses for it sucking up your blog info and spitting it into the book program. cute, right? well, this time it added in a bunch of symbols and numbers all throughout my posts. EVERYWHERE. i was so bugged, i can't even tell you. i put in a message to their customer service helpers. and i was told that they really didn't know why it was doing that, but that i could "find and replace" what shouldn't be there. so i sat down and really studied the wonky parts, and determined what it was. just like everywhere that i saw "&#quot;" there should have been a quotation mark. meaning of course, that that wonky code was on both sides of whatever i was quoting. lol! there was also a 6 digit mix of symbols and numbers wherever a comma was. and a 5 digit mix of symbols and numbers where a lot of the spaces should be. luckily, the "find and replace" feature works easily. and it will take care and fix the entire book at once. for 3 months, it fixed over 2100 wonky codes in a matter of seconds. but still a pain.
anyways, i have 3 months of my blog book all edited and fixed to my liking. not bad, considering that was just a day and a half of working on it here and there. i'll share more once it's done. but in the meantime, you can check out THIS POST, ANOTHER POST, and THAT POST for more info on how i made the books and some Q&A's about the process.
