Well, I’m too lazy to begin the process of switching hosting providers (thanks for all the help though everyone!), and I’ve been too frazzled to keep working on The Cliffs of Kekekabic (but don’t worry, part three is indeed imminent), so I’ve done a little mucking with the features on The Dharma Blog.
If you look in the right sidebar and scroll down just a little, you should see a light blue box with my shared items in it. I’ve recently begun using Google Reader to subscribe to web feeds (RSS). If you’re not using a feed reader, I’d recommend it. I used Bloglines for the past couple years, but with the release of Google Reader 2.0, I couldn’t resist the switch any more.
Anyway, the new light blue box will display items that I’ve come across as I’ve perused the world of feeds and thought was interesting. As I’m reading items in Reader, I click one button (or one key, actually) and it’ll show up there. You can also subscribe to the feed to keep up-to-date on the things I think are cool. It still needs a bit of tweaking, but I think it should be fun.
The other thing is for those of you who don’t use a feed reader but would still like to know when something new is posted here. Scroll down that sidebar a bit further and you’ll find a subscribe by e-mail box. Fill in your e-mail address, jump through a couple short hoops, and all my new posts will be delivered to your inbox as soon as they are posted.
So there, I’m a geek. Hope you all find this useful. If you start using Google Reader, be sure to let me know the URL of your shared items feed. And let me know if you have any questions about any of this, I’m happy to help.
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3 Comments
Thanks for the intro to Google Reader!
I hate to admit it, but I hadn’t paid any attention to newsreaders until now…and am somewhat addicted.
Randy, glad you enjoyed the intro… I see you added a “shared items” feed to your blog… it’s pretty fun isn’t it? I’ve always tried to just post original stuff in my blog, but I’ve also always been tempted to just blog about other things I read. This is just a nice way to share without having to post or clutter up my actual blog with “cool stuff.” Know what I mean?
Anyway, just checked in on my comment on your blog and saw that you said you’re a family of four now! Congratulations!!! Name, rank and serial number of the new addition? Congrats to you and your wife.
Cheers.
I apologize for leaving you hanging here…
These days I tend to wander a bit between work, kids, TU stuff….anyway. I always come back.
We had our 2nd boy, Owen, July 24th. He’s doing very well, our son Drew is a big fan and loves to hug’m and kiss’m. Both boys are big and getting bigger every day. After having some sleep “issues” with our first, it’s refreshing that one of Owen’s favorite past-times is sleeping.
Take care.
I’ll hold you to some southeast Minnesota trout fishing this coming year.
One Trackback
[...] Not too long ago, the dharma bum posted about some of the new features on his blog (one I’ve always enjoyed reading), and through his genius I was led to Google Reader. It was a grand discovery…for me anyway. For years now I’ve glanced at RSS and XML on certain websites and never paid much attention. Pretty sad, for someone who considers himself “at least a little bit in touch” with happenings in the world of ‘puters and the internet. Oh how little I knew. For those of you who, like me, didn’t pay attention or could care less, RSS is short for “Really Simple Syndication” and truly is “really simple”. One of the primary reasons I paid so little attention over the last few years is due to the fact that only in the last 2 years have I been surfing the net in unbridled happiness with Mozilla’s Firefox browser. More on that creamy goodness in moments, but back to Google Reader. For those of you who, like me, are trapped in the internet surfing stoneage, just about every blog or news source on the internet has a feed and somewhere on the page you’ll see this button , this button , or this button . So, if there are a lot of sites you visit between news and various blogs, you can consolidate all of those sites on to one, handy page through Google Reader. Yes, yes, if you know about this already I’m looking like a total goober right now, but I know there are some of you out there who, like me, were basically feeding punch cards into a computer the size of a gymnasium. [...]