Weekly Geeks 2009-40: Tools of the Trade

This week's Weekly Geeks task from Bookish Ruth asks us to disclose the tools that we use to make blogging easier.

Ruth is right when she says that maintaining a blog can get pretty complicated, and she asks us to reveal what keep us organised and motivated.

My blog lives at Blogger and I make pretty extensive use of the widgets they provide.
I also do a lot of writing posts and storing them for future publication. Blogger has this beaut facility where you can give a post a publication date and time in the future, so I often have lots of posts lined up. I write them in advance when I have time.
I have a database where I have been storing mini-reviews of books since the end of 2004. I have only been writing my blog on the other hand for 22 months. I consult my database often for records of previous books to supplement what I am writing on my blog.

Software that I use often is a free image manipulation tool called XnView. It lets me take screen grabs of images I come across, and I can edit them then use them on my blog.
I also make quite a bit of use of a digital camera to provide images to give interest to my blog.

Although I go outside book reviews for my content, I'm never really stuck for ideas.
I have developed a number of regular features such as Forgotten Books, Weekly Geeks, Sunday Salon, and just recently the Crime Fiction Alphabet, and Don't Always Hit the Mark.

I'm kept pretty motivated too by taking an interest in lots of other blogs (see Crime Fiction Journeys), and through my contact with other crime fiction bloggers through a Friend Feed room called Crime and Mystery Fiction. I've made some good friends in that room and for me it works a lot better than Twitter, where quite a number of the tweets really consist of personal asides between individuals, and mean little to onlookers.

So yes, blogging is time consuming and demanding, and if it ever gets a burden, then that will be the time to stop. Until then I intend to enjoy the sense of satisfaction and the cathartic effect that blogging brings. I wonder what other Weekly Geekers will say?