Torley Lives

You may know I had a busy day at work.

My inbox is stuffed. For this, please pardon me for taking a long time to get back to you, whether it's for business, pleasure, or a hybrid of both.

Plagued by some really unseemly, annoying bugs in both Zoho Writer and Google Docs as of late, I'm test-driving Windows Live Writer, hoping it'll play better with my flow. My style just can't stand to be cramped by HTML quirks or code-stealin' deficiencies — I detest pasting a snippet in, only to have it disappear or mess up other elements later. Thus, I'm here.

I'm using 1.0.1 (6), and setup was a breeze. What's even nicer is how it autodetected my WordPress settings, so I now find myself writing in a preview box which very closely resembles how the post would actually appear on my blog. It even looks like it's retained the exact column width. Smooooth.

Quirkiness thus far: it appears to make Google Desktop's sidebar flash annoyingly, even when I'm not doing anything. I also may miss my ability to easily style text's background color.

Test

Hmmm… let's see how that blockquote turns out — it shows as Georgia here but should be Verdana. Still, a closer fit overall than what's come before.

What's also nifty is the interface is overall like the MS Office suite, with the familiar gradient bleu blue bars with extra options, but this feels more responsive and tactile. (On a tangent, I've long lamented the painful lack of antialiasing when making Excel charts, I'm hoping the next version solves that.)

I'm eager to test the Insert pane…

OMG (funny how that acronym tends to elicit so much emotion), that's near Linden Lab!

Now what happens if I insert a picture from my hard drive— I wonder how it'll get uploaded…

Time to publish!
 

Post-publish observations:

• - Inserting a map aligns it to the left, even if centered in Windows Live Writer.
   
• + Nice! Images I put in here automatically get uploaded to my WordPress storage. Purrhaps I should use it more, in addition to Flickr and Photobucket and ImageShack and gosh knows what else I'm into.
   
• + Retention of Categories from my blog is golden. I can check 'em off without having to type their whole names, and can select multiples too.
   
• - Can't see an easy-click way to indent without making it a blockquote. Understandable, tho.
   
• + Retains my extra spacing between lines. (WordPress's own TinyMCE richtext editor doesn't do this.
   
• + Firefox-friendly! I was actually motivated to use Live Writer after hearing that the Blog This extension for Firefox became available, and feel some of the ol' IE-monopoly cliches are already dead.
   
• ++ Republishing a post seems like it's going to make a new article, but updates the old one. This is wonderfully convenient for me!

Overall, a really nice experience. I'll keep using it and see what transpires… and inspires.

One of the greatest thrift shop finds in my life to date has been a reasonably-kept copy of Future Shock, the seminal classic. I'd heard of it well in advance because of author Alvin Toffler's influence on techno music, as related by the term "techno rebels" in a Detroit I'd never been to, but wondered about. What was it like there? Did the people eat differently? Are the automobile factories as dominating as I've heard?

Perhaps silly-sounding questions from some perspectives, but to a young boy weened on the sounds of sci-fi, I couldn't help but wonder.

Some years later, I found that Toffler didn't write Future Shock and his other texts alone. Far from it — he was accompanied by another Toffler, his wife of — by now — well over 50 years. I presume she didn't have a byline on the covers because perhaps women futurists weren't taken so seriously in the 70s, which we know now is utter shittake, as Heidi Toffler's proven. And yet, there still seem to be so few… where is the female equivalent of Michio Kaku, or Malcolm Gladwell? All oft-cited heroes (and I do I really need to "make do" with the word "heroine"?) of mine.

Not being able to help but wonder about their long-lasting marriage, and keeping in mind it's not my business to pry, I went on Google, scouring for public tidbits. I'm able to find some photos of them @ their official website — like this:

Awww, isn't that sweet?

However… for all their many visionary words, forecasts as plentiful as vultures in a desert, and their pictures too, I've yet to locate the Tofflers' "Guide to a Happy Marriage".

Why does this bother me so much?

First, I consider them exceptional people. And marriages are difficult to hold together in this day and age. A dull, listless "marriage" without passion and spark is only a marriage in name, not in meaning. But looking at the Tofflers' photos, I feel a rare energy, a creative devotion that only comes when two people really care about each other — for the Tofflers, for decades with no end in sight!

Second, the Tofflers have charted so many exceptional sociological insights. They've written at length about technological change, and have never, ever missed the human elements in the midst of being alive. It's thus a natural conclusion that in addition to being experts on that field, that they could easily connect it to marriage counseling —

is a Tofflerian romance advice column sacrilege? Only to a techno-snob of the lowest order, because as a writing team, whether they're scribbling about Revolutionary Wealth, The Third Wave, or War and Anti-War, it's likely they wouldn't be so effective without each other.

Love is wholesome.

Love is synergistic.

Love — in addition to various electronic gadgets — is what millions upon millions of people want to know, "Will I have this in my future?"

Thirdly, staying true to the principles of their own texts, the Tofflers are an inspiration: they've continued to be together despite accelerating change and the stresses which tear apart many couples. For instance, stressful jobs and lack of time which causes burnouts and makes for scarce romance, and consider the Internet, which has rendered unto us a minefield-laden ground for cheating behind your spouse's back, not to mention unhealthy sexual activity, like porno addiction, which doesn't involve your husband or wife.

Some have accused the Tofflers of being overly utopian, but they miss the point; they cannot see the possibilities, because love is not on their side. As the Tofflers themselves have quoted:

So many wonderful creations have come to be in the name of love, and they needn't be restricted to the classical arts.

In my green opinion, Alvin + Heidi Toffler's love story, granted they're comfortable, should be the topic of their next book.