Showing posts with label undo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label undo. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

AutoSave Saved Over Your Work? Recover Data Lost By Blogger AutoSave

The fact that Blogger autosaves your draft on a supremely regular schedule is incredibly reassuring. However, it's also a potential disaster waiting to happen, as I recently discovered. I accidentally deleted a huge chunk of my draft, and then watched in horror as the autosaver did its thing, thereby cementing my newfound problem, losing my work forever in the annals of internet ghostdom. You see, there's no way to revert to a previous draft (why, I do not know, but I assume this will be added in at some future date). Nor is there a way to decrease the autosave frequency from obsessive-compulsive to anything ranging from still too often but at least somewhat more reasonable to every five or ten minutes.

And so, one wonders if it is possible to disable the autosave. Well, unless some computing genius discovers some seemingly unintuitive workaround, the answer, for now, is no. So, no draft recovery, no decreasing the autosave frequency to something less....manic, and no disabling the damn thing altogether. Once you get in a relationship with the blogger autosave feature, you're not getting out. Funny thing is though, I don't recall taking any oath.

So what is a blogger to do?

Well, I have a solution for you. Unfortunately, I did not possess this knowledge at the time of my great loss. Which really sucked, as I lost some pretty damn salient points, and my ad hoc replacements for them were.....not as fulfilling or poignant.


Anyways, enough of my troubles. Let's get on with the damn solution already, shall we? Well, fear not, humble reader. Here it is:

Ctrl + Z.

Yes, that's it. Ctrl + Z is an all purpose Undo command, which works in quite a wide range of programs. I thought to give it a try a few minutes ago, after purposely deleting some text and then pondering my unfortunate recent loss of (salient) points. I was considering how easy it was to delete things, and lamenting the fact that it was impossible to undo such a disastrous event (I'm not over dramatic in the least, I know) when it dawned on me. UNDO!!! That's it!

Try the Undo command! And I did, and the rest is history. Well, of sorts.....kind of.....? Okay, fine, the rest is.....a blip on the pimple of history. Better

Anyways,  the idea behind the undo command is that you undo any recent mistakes at the push of a but-well, two but-, er, keys. Say you type a sentence and then decide that you do not like it. Or you add a number to a figure and then realize you did so erroneously. Well, you could hit that undo button at the top of your program toolbar, or you could hit Ctrl+ Z. The beauty of undo is that it works for any recently transpired event. Even deleting something. So, in some weird double negative faux pas je ne ce quais sort of way (what the hell did I just say?) you can undo a deletion. You're basically undoing your undo, or redoing your do. It's like a sneaky misuse of the undo command that can't get you in trouble with anyone, but probably won't get you a job or get you laid, either.

So, in a stroke of pure geniu-ah, okay, even I recognize that I'm going too far here.....in a stroke of ordinary but useful thought, I stumbled upon the idea of undoing your undo, and it worked!

I hope this is helpful to anyone who loses a part of (or their whole) blog. I know what that feels like, and it's not fun.

Bye, and happy blogging!

(and may you get more comments on your blog than I do on mine)