Testing Permanence

Last week I went to a lovely gathering hosted by Ms.Woo which included many other bloggers, and those who read them. I am in fact fascinated by the ability Ms.Woo possesses which is in fact, to have actually met many fellow bloggers and readers- or in other words to have 'moved beyond' the electronic medium to create something that is more lasting, and real, and substantial. It is no small feat I tell you. I'm sure she doesn't recognize it as something unique or special at all, but I say it is. So there.

At any rate, in hanging about with people who blog or read blogs, I shared an annoyance with the Hitchcock Blonde that it is ridiculous and annoying that it is very difficult to actually get a copy of ones blog hard copy printed. This is something that pops up in my mind periodically and annoys me. For me, blogging has replaced a lifelong dedication to journaling. I have a special box I made filled with chronological journals/diaries that came before the Internet and started when I was six years old. And I still struggle along with my last paper journal- though the entries are truly sporadic. I wrote one this morning and realized it had been over a year since the last.

But I write here you see. Everything that I would journal for the most part, goes here. But I don't want it to stay here in electronic limbo. It belongs with the other hand written versions, so that my life, as written by me, is whole and complete. Hence my desire to print it out. A book for every year. That seems appropriate.

So with this conversation recently on my mind, I decided to look into this whole fiasco again and see what I could find. And I found two things that are better than nothing, but not that great necessarily. The best looking option I found was from a company called Blurb. I like that they have multiple editing options and formats available. Unfortunately, they seem to have an issue taking data from blogger and it's currently disabled. I could of course cut and paste every single entry but I know this is time consuming and horrible since I've been attempting to set that up as an InDesign template for a couple of years now. An automatic feature that I could then edit after the fact seems the only way to go at this point. Until Blurb can fix their blogger issue, I can't see how I can use them even though their product is the most attractive.

The second company I am eyeballing is Blog2Print which did manage to automatically transform my blog into a book with minimal fuss, but the formatting options and printing options leave something to be desired. It looks like you can only get a soft cover in one size while I'd prefer a hardcover and I'd like to see some sizing options. Why they seem to be able to do this with ease and Blurb can't is beyond me, but so be it. All I know is, here are two options, neither of which is ideal.

So basically I need to ponder this for a bit. There are other considerations that throw this all into a tizzy. It all looks good initially, but once you start to read the user agreements how you can't publish anything 'obscene' and you must have copyright permission for all of your content it gets tricky. Obviously I don't really have all that for every image I've used, or even for some text I've probably lifted. But this is just for me- not for anyone else. I don't see it as any different from making a scrapbook out of clippings and glue. You don't need copyright permission for that! Not to mention that I obviously write about a number of things that would probably be considered 'obscene'. At any rate, we'll see what happens. I've more made this post so I don't have to find those sites again. If anyone has any other links or suggestions on the best site to use to get a printed copy of a blog, let me know in the comments. It's appreciated.