I'm An Artist Too (141)

If you don't get this, maybe the below video will refresh your memory.

I'm An Artist Too (140)

I thought I'd draw a bath.

How To Read 120 Blogs

I love blogging. I love reading friend's blogs. I have an obsession with reading the news. Perhaps I love these things because I get addicted to checking things that change often - like blogs and news sites. Some sites update several times a day - like news sites. Others might go months without an update - like this blog. Isn't it really annoying to always keep coming back to check on sites again and again and again? It takes a lot of time, and it chews up bandwidth - which in Canada is very expensive. (Not only do you have to load the article, you have to load all the templates, ads, etc.)


Too bad there wasn't a way to know when a blog/site/comic gets posted, so you only read them when they get published so you don't have to keep going back.  Too bad there wasn't a way to read those sites easily and efficiently without loading all that extra stuff. Wait! Maybe there is! (Cue cheezy infomercial visual wipe.)

I keep up with 120 blogs/news sites. How do I do it? I use a feed-reader. A feed-reader is a piece of software that keeps track of all your blogs and news sites. It keeps track of what articles you've read, and which ones you haven't. Instead of going to every blog individually (which takes a lot of time and bandwidth), the feed-reader does the leg work for you.  It tells you when a new article, comic, blog post, or whatever is published.

It's kinda like Facebook.  When you log into Facebook, you see your friend's status updates.  It would be a big pain in the neck to go to each of your Facebook friend's profile pages to see if their status has updated, or if they posted pictures.  Instead, Facebook tells you what your friends have done recently.  It's like each person on Facebook has a blog, and by adding someone as a Friend you're subscribing to their blog.

I use Google Reader. I always keep Google Reader open in a tab in my browser at work and at home. When I find a blog or news site I want to keep up with I subscribe to it using Google Reader. That's how I keep up with 117 of my 120 sites. (The remaining 3 sites are made up of 2 work blogs that aren't available on the Internet, and one friend's blog who has seen fit to disable his RSS feed so I have to remember to check it all the time. I don't often remember, so when I do I end up reading about a month's worth of postings at a time.)

Whenever I explain the concept of a feed-reader to people they usually shake their head and say something like "It sounds really complicated." It's not.  It's about as complicated as making a Peanut Butter and Jam Sandwich.  Maybe I'm just doing a bad job of explaining it?

Here's how to do it:

1. Go to Google Reader (http://reader.google.com).
2. Sign in to your Google Account. If you don't have a Google account, click "Create an Account" on that page and follow the steps.
3. Optional: Bookmark Google Reader and/or make it your homepage when your browser opens. You'll want to go there a lot.
4. Go to a blog (like this one) or a news site and look for the RSS logo ().  It may be in the address bar of your browser, or somewhere within the site. (Stinkin' Mozilla took that out of the address bar of FireFox as of version 4.)   Click on it. It should give you subscription options. One of them should be to use Google Reader. Select that option.
   
   Or
   
   Copy and paste the URL into the textbox that appears when you click "Add a subscription" in Google Reader.
5. When you go to Google Reader to read your feeds, make sure you have "All items" selected on the upper left menu under "Home", and just the "New items" at the top of your feed list.
6. Play with some of the settings. There's lot of key strokes you can learn to make things go faster, like "v" opens the feed that you're currently reading in a new tab or window, and "r" refreshes the list. Even without knowing all the ins and outs, it's a very efficient way to keep up with your favorite blogs and news sites. As you learn more, you'll discover all sorts of wonderful things (starring, sharing, liking, emailing directly from Google Reader, etc.), you'll wonder how you ever lived without it.

There, now that wasn't so hard, was it?  I listed 6 steps.  One of them is optional.  The first two could really be counted as one.  The final two are really about the settings of the reader.  Really, its:

1. Log in to Google Reader,
2. Subscribe to Feeds,
3. Read feeds in your reader, and
4. Learn to speak Swahili with all the free time you now have on your hands.

Here's a video (from RSS Day.) that explains everything in a bit more detail:

There Are No Anchovies

A little while ago I blogged that I don't believe in Anchovies; I'm an A-Anchoviest. Things have changed.  Now I'm a believer.  I feel like my sole has been saved.

This is the bassic story of my conversion.

A friend at work saw my blog and told me he has had anchovies. Then we walked through Costco and he tried showed me some.  But they didn't have any.  He assured me if I went into any Italian grocery store they'd have them.  I thought he was just throwing me a red herring.  I mean, for cod's sake, did he think I was some kinda sucker?  Or, maybe he was just being koi?

My next clue was when someone at the office came into my cubicle one morning and plunked down a jar of anchovies onto my desk and walked away.  Walleye thought something smelt fishy after that.  I started to trout my beliefs.

I took the jar home and decided to make a pizza with anchovies.  I invited three friends over to share the anchovies.  I didn't want be shellfish, after all.

So, we made the pizza.  (In fact we made two in a roe!)  It felt like it took forever to make.  We waited with baited breath.  Anchovies are reel salty. The pizza was loaded with other toppings: peppers (green, red, orange, and yellow), onions, tomatoes, olives, cheese, and pepperoni. When I took a bite of a slice that had anchovies, the taste of the anchovies over-powered the taste of everything else.

Here's a picture of the pizza after I put the anchovies on it (and before I put everything else on it).  As you can see, the anchovies are on three quarters of the pizza.  There were four of us that night.  The pizza would be divided by four.  I asked "Should I make two slices with anchovies?"  They said "Two?  Nahhhh, make it three... just for the halibut."

Well, it was a fun night.  You might even say it was like salmon chanted evening.

Incidentally, I didn't eat any of the anchovies raw.  I was afraid I might fall eel.  Then I would have needed some real professional kelp.  I might have even needed a team of sturgeons to trawl through my system to cure me.

My experience is that anchovies aren't very common, so if you'd like to try them and you're in a store and you see a jar of anchovies, you'd better snapper up before someone else does.  But, if someone else tries at the same time, you might get in a fight.  Then it will down come to mussel.  Who knows, in a thousand years anchovies could be extinct.

And now, as the French would say: La Fin!

(PS:  Sorry for the crappie puns.  They didn't serve any great porpoise and I'm sure you've just about haddock with them.  I suppose I should have warned you.  Oh whale.  Caviar Emptor.)

My Haunting Dreams

The rapture was supposed to happen on Saturday, and I, for one, am glad it didn't. Here's why.

As a Christian, I'm looking forward to the rapture. I'm not entirely sure I believe in the rapture, but if there is one, then I'm looking forward to it. Of course, I'm assuming I won't be left below. It's about the only way you can never die.

I figure that Heaven is going to be really busy right after the rapture. There's going to be lots of administrative work to be done. I imagine that there will be long lines, and insane waiting times.

One of the things I look forward to when I die is getting my haunting license. I'd like to come back and haunt a family in a big, old house. But for that I think I'd have to wait for my Family-In-A-Big-Old-House tags. Otherwise, I'll be stuck haunting schizophrenics in an asylum. The patients will tell the nurses they're being haunted, and the nurses will just say "Of course you are." And no one will believe them, not even Agent Mulder.

But after the rapture, Heaven will be way to busy for me to take haunting courses, let alone applying and waiting for the license. It could take decades. As you read Revelation, you can see that stuff gets more and more surreal as the tribulation continues. Haunting won't be as fun anymore. Then after the seven year tribulation period is up, haunting will be pointless.  People will have a better understanding of the after-life.

But, since the rapture didn't happen, I can continue on with my haunting dreams.

I Hope I'm Not Left Below!

As I write this blog, the Rapture is supposed to happen tomorrow. Then, the world will end in October. I have figured out how the world will end. The universe will be ripped apart by a giant paradox.

Here's my syllogism:

1. The Rapture is a Christian Doctrine concerning the end of the world.
2. If the Rapture happens, then it proves that Christianity is the correct religion.
3. If Christianity is the correct religion then The Bible is infallible.
4. The Bible says that neither the angles nor Jesus - The Son of God - knows when the end of the world would be. "Only The Father knows." - Math 24:36, Mark 13:32
5. If the Rapture happens tomorrow, May 21, 2011, then it has been predicted. Someone other than The Father knew about it.
6. If someone other than The Father knows when the end of the world is then The Bible was wrong, ie: fallible. (See points 3 and 4).
7. The predictor of tomorrow's rapture predicts an end of the world in 5 to 6 months - much shorter than the 7 years predicted by The Bible.
   
8. Point 3 contradicts points 6 and 7. It's a paradox. POW! The universe is ripped apart.
   

My recommendations:

1. A this point, crossing the streams might work.
2. DON'T PANIC

I'm An Artist Too (139)

If this doesn't make any sense to you, this video should help, specifically 3 min and 26 seconds.