diff --git a/docs/settings.rst b/docs/settings.rst
index 9c596da3..482a5350 100644
--- a/docs/settings.rst
+++ b/docs/settings.rst
@@ -51,7 +51,7 @@ Setting name (default value)                        what does it do?
 `PDF_GENERATOR` (``False``)                         Set to True if you want to have PDF versions
                                                     of your documents. You will need to install
                                                     `rst2pdf`.
-`RELATIVE_URL` (``True``)                           Defines if pelican should use relative urls or
+`RELATIVE_URLS` (``True``)                          Defines if pelican should use relative urls or
                                                     not.
 `SITEURL`                                           base URL of your website. Note that this is
                                                     not a way to tell pelican to use relative urls
diff --git a/pelican/__init__.py b/pelican/__init__.py
index 7112fcec..4b743d52 100644
--- a/pelican/__init__.py
+++ b/pelican/__init__.py
@@ -152,7 +152,7 @@ def main():
         else:
             pelican.run()
     except Exception, e:
-        log.critical(str(e))
+        log.critical(unicode(e))
 
 
 if __name__ == '__main__':
diff --git a/pelican/utils.py b/pelican/utils.py
index 8e48c2e9..2fb76670 100644
--- a/pelican/utils.py
+++ b/pelican/utils.py
@@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ def get_date(string):
     If no format matches the given date, raise a ValuEerror
     """
     formats = ['%Y-%m-%d %H:%M', '%Y/%m/%d %H:%M', '%Y-%m-%d', '%Y/%m/%d',
-               '%d/%m/%Y', '%d.%m.%Y', '%d.%m.%Y %H:%M']
+               '%d/%m/%Y', '%d.%m.%Y', '%d.%m.%Y %H:%M', '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S']
     for date_format in formats:
         try:
             return datetime.strptime(string, date_format)
diff --git a/pelican/writers.py b/pelican/writers.py
index 1f560c01..13ab9647 100644
--- a/pelican/writers.py
+++ b/pelican/writers.py
@@ -111,7 +111,8 @@ class Writer(object):
             localcontext['SITEURL'] = get_relative_path(name)
 
         localcontext.update(kwargs)
-        self.update_context_contents(name, localcontext)
+        if relative_urls:
+            self.update_context_contents(name, localcontext)
 
         # check paginated
         paginated = paginated or {}
@@ -166,24 +167,23 @@ class Writer(object):
             """
             content = input._content
 
-            hrefs = re.compile(r'<\s*[^\>]*href\s*=(^!#)\s*(["\'])(.*?)\1')
-            srcs = re.compile(r'<\s*[^\>]*src\s*=\s*(["\'])(.*?)\1')
+            hrefs = re.compile(r"""
+                (?P<markup><\s*[^\>]*  # match tag with src and href attr
+                    (?:href|src)\s*=\s*
+                )
+                (?P<quote>["\'])       # require value to be quoted
+                (?![#?])               # don't match fragment or query URLs
+                (?![a-z]+:)            # don't match protocol URLS
+                (?P<path>.*?)          # the url value
+                \2""", re.X)
 
-            matches = hrefs.findall(content)
-            matches.extend(srcs.findall(content))
-            relative_paths = []
-            for found in matches:
-                found = found[1]
-                if found not in relative_paths:
-                    relative_paths.append(found)
+            def replacer(m):
+                relative_path = m.group('path')
+                dest_path = os.path.normpath( os.sep.join( (get_relative_path(name),
+                                    "static", relative_path) ) )
+                return m.group('markup') + m.group('quote') + dest_path + m.group('quote')
 
-            for relative_path in relative_paths:
-                if not ":" in relative_path: # we don't want to rewrite protocols
-                    dest_path = os.sep.join((get_relative_path(name), "static",
-                        relative_path))
-                    content = content.replace(relative_path, dest_path)
-
-            return content
+            return hrefs.sub(replacer, content)
         
         if context is None:
             return