OMG!! There just isn't enough time in the day to get shit done and STILL have time to post stuff on this blog!!! To those of you who are loyal followers of my blog, thank you very much for continuing to come back for more! For those of you who have checked in, but haven't seen much posted, PLEASE keep coming back! I promise to dedicate more time to updating this blog in the very near future! Click here to find out more about what I have been up to!
Things have been bonkers lately! And, no, I'm not just making excuses for not posting here on the HelluvaCook blog!! Sure, it could be argued that I could make the time, if I really really wanted to do so, but most of you have no idea how much work goes into every blog post! For the curious among you, here is a brief list of the steps involved in putting up a basic blog post!
Generate content, aka cook something and take dozens of pics!
BTW, taking pics of the food you are cooking quite literally doubles the time it takes to make anything! Esp, if, like me, you have no help and have to stop to wash hands, snap pics, do the next step, wash hands, snap pics, do the next step... you get the point.
Sort hundreds of pics, literally.
Sometimes I take upwards of 1,000 pics before I get the chance to sit down to sort them into their own online albums. Pics from each meal, project, and party must be put into its own online album because no one wants to wade through thousands of images to see the dozen or so in which they are interested! Check out this example, this other one, and yet another!
Post-edit pics.
Unless you've got a professional light-rig, pics of food just don't look great straight from the camera. They almost always need adjustment to the brightness, contract, saturation, and temperature in order to make the food really look as mouth-watering as it was when I originally shot the photo. No, this isn't "cheating". Anyone who has taken food pics under fluorescent lights will tell you that the brightness is inadequate and that the narrow light spectrum makes the food look blah. See the example below!
Before...
and after!
Rough draft the post.
I go through the album about which I am posting and select the best of the pics to insert into the post. I choose the best from what I have available while still trying to show the method of how I put a dish together.
I go through the album about which I am posting and select the best of the pics to insert into the post. I choose the best from what I have available while still trying to show the method of how I put a dish together.
Adjust sizing and placement of pics within the post.
Each pic needs to be made bigger and aligned properly with the text within the post. You might think this would only take a few seconds per pic, but multiply that by the 75+ pics in a given post and this task quickly becomes a 15- 20 min chore.
Adding text!
Some of you may remember the epic posts that I used to spend hours writing when I first started this blog. You may or may not have enjoyed the long, detailed tales of shenanigans and goings-on that I had so carefully chronicled, but I certainly don't miss the hour or two it took to write such things! I now stick to less than 5 lines about each pic, and usually I stick to just one or two.
Editing HTML.
Google is great and blogger is but one of the many complimentary services that they offer! Unf, it can be a bit quirky, so some minor editing of the HTML needs to be done for things to show up just right for my readers. I have to add a particular line of code to each <DIV> tag in order to make the text show up when you view the post in detail. This is a royal pain in the ass that I wish Google would fix, but I'ven't yet had a chance to report this issue to them. This tedious process easily adds a half hour or more to each post.
Publish and proofread.
Things usually slip through the cracks and need to be adjusted after I've posted the article live, so I always try to double-check each post for problems.
That's it! Each post easily takes me an hour or more, minimum. I wish I had hour after hour to spend putting up new content, but I also have a full-time job and a life outside of work and the blog!
I truly intend to get more put up on this blog, but please be patient w/ me!! If you would like to see a post or two about a particular subject or would like to contribute your time/effort/energy to this blog, then please contact me!
Until next time!
Steve
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