Feed Me

No, this isn't another food post. If the number of blogs you read is getting a little high and you frequently check them only to find no new posts since your last visit, it's time to look into setting up a feed reader. I only had the vaguest idea what it was all about, but I managed to get it going on my own, and it is pretty cool. I didn't go the popular Bloglines route because it provided too little information for my liking and I didn't want to create yet another account somewhere. So because I already have a Google account I am using Google Reader. There are several ways to subscribe to feeds:
(1) In Google Reader, hit "Add Subscription," type in the URL (I haven't actually tried this. It probably works best for blogger blogs).
(2) Click on the link or button within a page that says RSS or subscribe.
(3) Click on the feed icon within the address bar.
Options 2 and 3 may require some setting up in your browser. It was easy in Firefox 2.0.

You can subscribe to more than just blogs. Find out when your Flickr contacts add new photos or when someone comments on your photos. Sign up for newspaper feeds (NYTimes or Washington Post). I've gone a little crazy and have 54 73 subscriptions, the majority of which I never visited regularly before, when it was more work. I may cull the list later. One knitting blog I read does not have a feed, and I've already forgotten to go to her site a few times. I don't know about Bloglines, but Google Reader can take its time to update the feeds, so if you want to be alerted of any current traffic jams while they're still current, you're better off visiting the site directly and not relying on your feed (likewise with the hot yarn deals you can find at Destash and Good Yarn Karma--a lot are already claimed by the time I see them).

I'm not crazy about being logged in to Google so much, but it is very cool to see your Reader tab update when a new blog post comes in.

I don't have a shared list yet but maybe I'll share it someday. Like I said, I may drop some subscriptions.

Mini knitting

The New York Times site is being wiggy right now, but through it yesterday I found out about an art exhibit featuring knitting and lace. Here are some tiny gloves. I knit some mini Jaywalkers last night, not that you can tell what the pattern is.The new Blogger won't resize my photos to fit the browser window anymore. I wrote to the help people and have received nothing.

Update: OK, if you click on an image and it's huge and you want to fit it all on one screen, right click the huge image and select "view image." This takes you from a huge image hosted at blogger to an image that will resize to fit the window, hosted at google. No idea what you should do on a Mac. And bloggers having this problem should remove the "-h" from "s1600-h" in the html code per these instructions. Fix this please, Blogger!

Why I can't comment

Several blogs won't let me comment. I think they're all WordPress blogs. I get an error message saying "this file cannot be used on its own." I could probably fix the problem by disabling my firewall or anti-virus software, but I am not willing to do that, for obvious reasons. The bloggers could fix the problem themselves, but that's unlikely.