Welcome back, AT&T ISP customers! I think. So far the reports are good. Can you see this post? If you were unable to load the site this past week, I mean.
Of course, now I’ll have to think of something interesting to say. 😉
(I still don’t know for sure why AT&T was blocking access to my site. My only guess is it was that jokey spam poem I posted last week just before the trouble began? If so, joke’s on me!)
Can you see this post? I’m hearing that some folks can’t get my site to load. Has been a problem all day; we’re looking into it. I’m bumping the Ballet Shoes post yet another day until I’m sure the problem (whatever it is) has been resolved.
Meanwhile, noooooo! Google informs us Reader’s days are numbered. Those of us who rely on a good RSS aggregator to make the web manageable are crushed—there’s no better feed reader than Google Reader.
Some alternatives, none of them quite perfect (but I’m confident someone will rise to fill the void):
Feedly—this is probably what I’ll wind up using. Not quite as streamlined as Reader, but it offers many options for customizing the look and function. In “Full Articles” mode, it’s a decent Reader substitute:
(I subscribe to way more book blogs than are visible in that list. I think it only shows the top twelve.)
If you click on the gear icon, you can toggle to different layouts: mosaic, list, magazine-style, etc.
You can export your subscriptions at Google Reader and import them to Feedly, or simply connect Feedly to your Reader account, which is what I did. For now Feedly runs off Reader’s API but it is going to “seamlessly transition” to another source before Reader bites the dust in July.
A Feedly plus is that it has mobile apps as well, with syncing between your desktop, iOS, and Android devices. And if you connect it to your gReader account, it’ll sync with that, too, as long as gReader lasts.
You can share posts from Feedly directly to Facebook, Twitter, G+, Delicious, and other platforms. Diigo isn’t one of the preset share options and I really hope you can add it manually—haven’t figured out how yet but it’s early days—because Diigo is how I share links in my sidebar here. I suppose I could switch back to Delicious if I have to.
Here’s Feedly in “magazine” view:
Other options: Bloglines (what I used before Google Reader came along). NewsBlur (after a certain number of subscriptions, there’s a fee). NetNewsWire for Mac. The Old Reader. Pulp (a paid app for Mac). Flipboard for iOS devices (no good for me, as I need a desktop interface).
What’s your poison?
Related post: Sending Web Content to a Kindle for Reading Later
I get asked that question a lot, and variations thereof: how do you have time for Twitter and Facebook, how do you find time to read so many books? If you’re reading this post, you probably get asked the question too, since odds are you read many other blogs in addition to mine.
My answers used to tend toward the self-deprecatory, as if I were making an admission of guilt. Well, see, Scott does all the laundry and most of the cooking. This is at once a true statement and a completely worthless one. It conveys no useful information. It’s true that Scott and I—both of us work-at-home writers—have a well defined division of labor that puts the laundry and cooking solidly in his chore column. But I handle the bulk of the homeschooling (and even during our most unschoolish times that means a lot of planning and creative focus—arguably MORE so during our most unschoolish times), the considerable clerical and therapeutic tasks involved with nurturing a special needs child, the bills, the taxes, the scheduling, the medical and dental appointments, the overseeing of the housework, the shoe-shopping and sundry other tasks necessary to the running of a household and the raising of a large family. Deflecting the question with an explanation of what I don’t do isn’t really an answer. Or, to put it another way, Scott does all the laundry and most of the cooking, and yet he manages to read a staggering number of blogs and books too. More even than I do. (more…)
Luckily, my pal Melanie reminded me—her blog shares an opening day with mine: January 21, 2005. EIGHT YEARS, CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?
I have two children younger than this blog!
Eight years I’ve been havering* here!
Here’s why that makes me very happy. You. Many of you, over the years, have become real true friends, and I can’t imagine the world without you. Thanks for your visits, your comments, your many contributions to the joy that fills my days. Thanks for clicking, when there is so very, very much out there to read.
Feels like we should celebrate! I was already feeling quite celebratory after a VERY GOOD PHONE CALL with my Knopf editor. The kind that moves a book forward and makes you feel a thousand pounds lighter. And a morning in the sun, wrestling bermuda grass into submission, and deciding where the sunflowers will go this year. And Scott made my favorite ginger salad dressing for dinner. A very good day.
Knowing you’re out there reading makes it even better. Thank you, friends, for stopping by. I had no idea how much fun I was letting myself in for when I hit send on that first post, eight years ago.
Have been busy rearranging the sidebars and working on my perpetually-in-progress book recommendations master list. Looooong way to go on the latter, but it’s coming along.
Is there anything you’d like to see in the sidebar? Anything it would be useful to have an easy click for?
P.S. One more day to get your Cybils nominations in!
A thing I love to do, when I encounter a new blog I like, and sometimes with blogs I’ve been reading for years and years, is to go back to their very first posts and read all the way through the archives. Blogs are like memoirs, but rougher, less polished, wonderfully raw. It’s like poring over a photo album from the ’70s—our photos now may be cropped and filtered, beautifully lit, but our blogs reveal the messy business of life just beyond the frame. And I love that.
I love experiencing the development of a voice, reading along as day by day a writer grows more confident in her manner of expression, her point of view.
I love the conversations, the small-town feel of some comboxes, a warmth and familiarity that grows from people meeting up in the same place week after week.
I love watching how things change over time—the toddlers become teens, and the blogger’s interests and concerns shift direction; or there’s a move, a new job, an upheaval. Sometimes there is a tragedy, and I grieve invisibly for people I’ve never met, people I think of at odd moments because a bird or cloud or phrase reminds me of them.
That’s another piece of it, the associations. Reading a blog for a long stretch means you form connections between people and the things they love. The word ‘knitting’ brings specific people into my mind. Or: Quiet. Skipping. Selkie. Choir. Butter. Valentine. Crows. Homespun. Trillium.
Sometimes, the best times, there’s a reciprocity, and a blogger—or commenter—becomes not simply someone you read, but someone you know. A friend.
So I’ve just discovered I have the option to do threaded comments now and I thought I’d solicit your opinion on those. Personally, I tend not to prefer threaded comments on sites I visit, since it makes it harder to scan the page for new contributions to a discussion. But I know many, many readers vastly prefer threading. Thoughts?
It also seems I now have the option of enabling email notifications for commentors when I reply to a comment, which might be handy; I always worry that if someone asks a question and I answer in the combox, the questioner won’t see that I’ve replied—but if I answer via email, no one else gets to see the answer.
Got a feeling about this? These Matters of Grave Cosmic Importance? 😉
(Re the email notifications, there’s also a setting that would send you a notice when anyone replies directly to your comment. Would you like that? Or feel spammed? It doesn’t seem to be an opt-in setting. Either I turn it on or I don’t.)
While I’m at it, let me ask you about the sidebar! I know most people don’t click directly to the site except to comment—I’m a Google Reader-reader myself, so I’m the same way. But for those of you who do regularly click through, what would you like to see in the sidebar? I have all this lovely space to play with now.
With a trio of new books coming out in just a couple of months, it was high time I overhauled my website. I loved my girly pink home page, but it didn’t exactly fit Fox and Crow and Inch and Roly, you know? Thanks to Emily Carlin of Swank Web Style and my genius artist friend Chris Gugliotti, who drew the swoony bee illustrations you’ll see all around the site (including this little bookworm bee, whom I adore), my internet home base has a brand new look.
Unlike the big changes we made to the rest of the site, we kept the new blog design similar to the original. Mostly I wanted more room to stretch out in this text column. Now I’m itching to go back and resize all my photos. All. Ha! Seven and a half years’ worth, now. Methinks some of them will just have to stay small.
Tinkerer that I am, I’m sure I’ll be making lots little tweaks and adjustments over the next few weeks. (Especially to the sidebar. I have many plans for the sidebar.) If you spot anything wonky, do let me know. Emily did a check across many browsers, but sometimes things look different on different systems.
Whee!
Whoa. I totally missed Bonny Glen’s seventh anniversary. Seven years! Jiminy crickets!
I meant to do something retrospectivey. I meant to do something, period. But I forgot all about it until I saw Melanie’s anniversary post—our blogs share a birthday.
Well, I’m forever sending birthday cards late. Maybe I’ll rustle up something next week. Right now I’m too busy putting the finishing touches on my GeekMom post for tomorrow—we’re a stop in the Wrinkle in Time 50th Anniversary blog tour; do stop by tomorrow and take a peek—and squeeing over interior sketches for Inch and Roly. So: my big nostalgic stroll through blog-memory lane will have to wait.
But, golly, seven years. Thanks for sticking with me, gang. You’re still my favorite part of blogging.