For the longest time, I used Bloglines to manage my RSS feeds. I'm not sure why I chose Bloglines, maybe Trillwing recommended it. I think I read some positive reviews.
Back in those olden days (2006) I started out manually adding other blogs to my blogroll. Then I discovered BlogRolling. BlogRolling makes it super easy to add blogs to your list and for a while I was happy. But soon, I discovered another problem...The blogs I was reading on Bloglines and those I was linking to on BlogRolling often didn't match. Periodically I would go through and match them up, but often I would forget to add some nice person's blog that I was enjoying.
I haven't research it, but I think different folk have different philosophies about their blogrolls. Who you include depends a lot on what you are trying to do with your blog. Are you trying to make money? Become popular with the "in-crowd"? I just wanted to write about my struggles in academia and hear about how other academics were doing. My graduate program was so without community that blogging about my troubles really helped me get through difficult times. (You guys, if anyone is still reading, helped me survive to get my M.A. and get into a better program! Yay!)
The point is, I wanted the blogs I read and the blogs in my blogroll to be the same. Now I could probably do some pruning, since I'm sure some folks I don't really read that often, but it was nice to just sort of keep up with the events in lots of folks' lives.
Then I discovered that I could create a blogroll using Bloglines and specifying only the blogs in my "academic blogs" folder. "Hooray!" I thought. This all Bloglines system lasted me for quite a while. But this summer I was tempted by Google Reader. Certain internet "experts" recommended Google Reader because it has a feature called "list view" which allows you to scan just the titles of the articles. "The Expert" claimed that this would save you hours each day and so I exported my subscriptions to Google Reader and tried it out. Unfortunately, I haven't been keeping up on my blog reading this summer and so I'm not sure how I like this new system. It seems that I'm back to my old problem- with Google Reader I have to maintain a separate list as a blogroll.
Then there is Bloglines Beta, which seems to have many of the same readability features a Google Reader. Now I'm just not sure what to do!
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Bloglines vs. Google Reader: How to Manage the Information Overload?
I'm Alive!
In case anyone was wondering, I am still alive. I haven't felt much like posting since I spent most of the last six months doing web design for the office I work for on campus. This summer was my break from academia and with it a break from my reflections on the academic life. I have been considering the future of this blog, as I'm now a wordpress expert and not sure I want to stay with blogger. Any thoughts my webby friends? I think my blog could have a much nicer look and be more usable if I moved it to wordpress. Actually, I don't think I would move it so much as start a new blog there and link to it from here. Make sense?
In other news- We are all settled in our new home in Crunchy Town. At least all of our stuff is moved and the piles of boxes have been whittled down a little. I'm going stir crazy here with Beorn and our new roommate, Beorn's buddy and best man, who I will call the Viking Boy. Neither Beorn nor the Viking Boy have jobs here yet, so they just hang around the house watching sci-fi. Orientation for Crunchy U. doesn't start until next week and our bank account is down to its last $40, so I'm pretty much stuck in the house as well. Viking Boy will be stay with us for a few months at least, maybe longer if he can find work. Luckily we have gone from paying $790 for a one bedroom apartment, to $775 for a three bedroom townhouse. Too bad my TA salary will also be smaller. The point is, all geek boys all the time is driving me a little insane.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Chris Abani on TED
If you haven't seen the TED talks, watch this now. It's Chris Abani, an African writer talking about his experiences in Nigerian prison and growing up with his British mother in Africa. Only watch out if you have mascara on. I love it when men are feminists.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Climbing Cats
This summer I'm staying in a rather nice townhouse or row-house type of place with some roommates. Beorn is away learning his new trade so I'm staying with roommates. Our kitties have been staying inside, but there is a lovely courtyard type backyard. The problem? The princess likes to climb. The courtyard has a sort of trellis or pergola over it, made out of wood. The cat can climb straight up six feet and then get onto the top of the pergola. Then she wanders around on the top rails and sometimes disappears. My fear is that she will see something interesting in someone else's courtyard and jump down. This evening BOK followed her up to the top. Since he weighs twice as much I was somewhat concerned that he might not be able to get down or might hurt himself. Now I have a nice big scratch on my arm. He wasn't too confindent in my ability to safely hold him while standing on a step ladder. I had to forcibly drag him down. Damn cats!
Friday, July 18, 2008
Dr. Horrible
Just paid $4 for a "season pass" to Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along, Joss Whedon's latest project. What a bargain!
FYI, I also paid $5 to This American Life, as I listen to their podcast all the time.
I can't wait till I can just pay for the media I like rather than paying $60 a month for a bazillion cable channels I don't watch. If I have to pay $60 I would rather it all went to support quality programming.
FYI, I also paid $5 to This American Life, as I listen to their podcast all the time.
I can't wait till I can just pay for the media I like rather than paying $60 a month for a bazillion cable channels I don't watch. If I have to pay $60 I would rather it all went to support quality programming.
Nellie McKay at TED
Thursday, July 03, 2008
A break from Academia
Since I graduated (yay!) I have been filling my life up with getting ready for our move in the fall and avoiding any academically oriented work. Since this blog is often about my struggles with academia, I have been avoiding posting here. But that's just silly! Kitties and I are all settled in to our summer gigs. We are sharing a largish townhouse with two roommates, who are also somewhat crunchy, so it works out well.
Beorn survived his first three weeks of field school, but just barely. Monday of the second week they were directed to hack through some vegetation to get to a survey point, only no one had brought gloves. Guess what happened next? About a third of the class ended up with poison oak! Beorn had it pretty bad and so was miserable and rightly pissed about it. Beorn is a computer geek, not an outdoorsy type and grew up in the Midwest, so wasn't familiar (enough) with poison oak. That stuff can be really tricky, it grows in so many different forms and vines itself into the growth of other shrubs and trees that it can be easy to miss. Frankly it never occured to me that the field school organizers wouldn't have it together enough to help him ID poison oak, that kind of seems like lesson one in these parts.
Luckily he is mostly through it now and we are enjoying his break. Field school starts again on Monday. Until then we are relaxing and heading to the beach for the weekend. I'm trying to get in as many min-vacations as I can this summer. We rarely have enough money saved to take trips and it can be difficult to get Beorn interested in leaving his comfy home and computer. Other than our honeymoon I can't remember the last time that we have taken a vacation. I do take days off here or there, but those are more like mental health days and involve catching up on laundry or lying in bed with a migraine.
Don't worry though, our regular schedule of complaints and bitching about how much academia sucks and how crazy everyone is will return in September. Just kidding, I'm very hopeful about my new program.
Beorn survived his first three weeks of field school, but just barely. Monday of the second week they were directed to hack through some vegetation to get to a survey point, only no one had brought gloves. Guess what happened next? About a third of the class ended up with poison oak! Beorn had it pretty bad and so was miserable and rightly pissed about it. Beorn is a computer geek, not an outdoorsy type and grew up in the Midwest, so wasn't familiar (enough) with poison oak. That stuff can be really tricky, it grows in so many different forms and vines itself into the growth of other shrubs and trees that it can be easy to miss. Frankly it never occured to me that the field school organizers wouldn't have it together enough to help him ID poison oak, that kind of seems like lesson one in these parts.
Luckily he is mostly through it now and we are enjoying his break. Field school starts again on Monday. Until then we are relaxing and heading to the beach for the weekend. I'm trying to get in as many min-vacations as I can this summer. We rarely have enough money saved to take trips and it can be difficult to get Beorn interested in leaving his comfy home and computer. Other than our honeymoon I can't remember the last time that we have taken a vacation. I do take days off here or there, but those are more like mental health days and involve catching up on laundry or lying in bed with a migraine.
Don't worry though, our regular schedule of complaints and bitching about how much academia sucks and how crazy everyone is will return in September. Just kidding, I'm very hopeful about my new program.
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