May 16, 2008

Really Simple Stalking

I don't know if any of you have been following this like I've been following this, but Slyde has had about a month-long lime jello wrestling match with setting up an RSS feed for his site. You see, Slyde is a particular kind o' sonuvabitch. He likes to do things his own way. He decided to forego the easy way to blogging (Blogger, WordPress, etc...) and he used Front Page to create his own site. It allowed him some freedoms and it hindered him in other ways.


Like setting up an RSS feed.


To be honest, I don't know too much about the subject. I know that Blogger automatically sets one up for you and that people use it to read your blog, but until about 2 weeks ago I didn't even know what it stood for. Really Sexy Santas, right?


But watching Slyde persevere in the face of this daunting challenge got me to thinking about it. You see, the way that I knew that any of you had posted a new article or funny picture or graphic porn video (hope, hope, hope) is by scrolling down my blogroll, visiting your blog and then hitting the back button on my browser to get back to my blog/blogroll to visit the next blog.


Exhausting, right? But that's how I always did it. Truth be told, I'm stil kind of a novice at this game and I don't really work at it as hard as I should. It's all for fun and I thought it was just too difficult to do anything with RSS feeds.


Boy, was I wrong? Today I plugged all of your blogs into Google Reader and a whole new world has been opened up to me. I don't have to visit your blog to see if you posted something new. Google Reader does it for me! I feel so liberated. I'm going to use the extra 10 minutes in my day to write my novel, masturbate or do something equally as cool. I feel like a new man!


And I found out that a bunch of you are very popular with the Google Reader crowd. Some...not so much, but I've started four of you (you know who you are...maybe) out on the process by subscribing to your blogs. Now you have one subscriber...me!


There is one big winner in the "who has the most Google Reader subscribers on my blogroll" contest. Well, it wasn't really a contest. More of an idle waste of time on my part by looking at the site stats for y'all. But the winner is....


Avitable!


With 137 subscribers on Google Reader. Congrats, Avi! I only have 10.


Mother-fucker!

PS - Fucking Blogger with the fucking extra spacing whenever you fucking add a fucking picture. I'm so fucking done with trying to fucking fix the extra fucking spacing whenever I fucking do it. FUCK!!!!

25 comments:

Seals said...

Yeah, I hate going back into the post to delete the extra spaces. It's sucks.

You have 4 additional subscribers on Bloglines (including me). I have no idea how many I have with Google.

Avitable said...

You can tell how many subscribers I have on Google Reader? I had no idea.

Verdant Earl said...

ajooja - You have an additional 2 subscribers (including me) on Google. And fuck the fucking spaces!

Verdant Earl said...

Avi - yeah...there is a "show details" option which shows the average number of posts per week for you and the total number of Google subscribers.

limpy99 said...

I don't even know what Google reader is. something else to do besides work today.

Kaye Waller said...

I did the FrontPage do-it-yourself blogging thing for about three years, but it was way too much work. And the feeds were only part of it. There's also the fact that there's no automatic archiving. That's a biggie.

I lost some freedoms going over to Blogger, until I learned their markup. Now I have just as much freedom as before, and less work to do.

That gives me time to drink beer in my hammock...

Kaye Waller said...

And as for knowing when my favorite blogs are updates, I built my blogroll in Blogrolling. When you post a new blog entry, a little "-->" shows up by your blog's name.

Now, that's easy!

elizabeth said...

I'm lost...

Verdant Earl said...

Limpy - any welcome diversion, eh?

Steph - I can tell you have some serious web page skillz with your past two templates. I don't know how to do anything, so when I figure out something extremely simple, like this, I pat myself on the back for about a week.

Liz - S'okay. How do you visit your various haunts/blogs? I just noticed that you don't have a link section on your blog.

That Hank said...

That's funny. I just added you to my reader this week.

Bruce Johnson said...

Since you raise the history of ineptitude on your post. My history started with Blogger, but it sort of langished for the first 2 years. Didn't really know what to do with it.

Then I went to MySpace. Great blogging community, but the interface just sucked to high heavens not to mention a few too many adolscents hitting you up with spam constantly.

I figured there had to be a better way. So I started hunting around and figured out the RSS / Google Reader connection and shazaam! I felt like I had found the holy grail. Been using it ever since. (although I have still not figured out how to see how many subscribers I have [maybe none], but I know I subcribe to about 20 blogs currently.

Slyde said...

With the extra 10 minutes you have each day, you could probably save even MORE time by writing your novel ABOUT masturbating....


yes, i am still fighting the good fight and coding my own site... but i DID register slydesblog.blogspot.com a few years ago, so who knows? if one day i decide to go the easy route and pack it in, im ready.

I had been using feed demon, but now that im getting into rss, i see that google or bloglines is by far the better way, and i plan to add my blogroll to google this weekend.

Suzi Q said...

Hooray! It took me a while to figure out exactly how to use the Reader but sure makes things easier eh? Just make sure you're not lazy and when you want to comment you go to the person's actual blog!

RW said...

I think I have two readers! And for Blogger, I don't use the new "widget" stuff but the old fashioned template and html posting so I can back the text right up to the last > and get the text to crawl down the side of a picture...

...if that's what you're talking about there dude. uh...

badgerdaddy said...

Aw, I never knew if anyone subscribed to me or anything like that... Gah!

Verdant Earl said...

Downtown Guy - ditto.

Lotus - Don't understand Myspace...don't wanna.

Slyde - how did you know what my novel was about?

Paige - Don't worry...commenting on blogs is what makes me happy.

RW - You would think the "new stuff" on Blogger would be better than the "old stuff", but there ya go...

Badger - even though you no longer blog, you still have 5 subscribers on Google. Good job.

Artful Kisser said...

Since having a kid life really is way too short. I don't visit any site unless I need to comment. Hooray for Bloglines.

Kaye Waller said...

Yeah, but I don't get readers. I just don't get 'em.

Verdant Earl said...

AK - I've got cats. Much easier. ;)

Steph - Ah sweet mysteries of life, and all...

Seals said...

Slyde's feed isn't a complete feed. I'm not subscribing yet.

Verdant Earl said...

ajooja - You have to stick to your principles. ;)

FourLeafClover said...

"Truth be told, I'm stil kind of a novice at this game and I don't really work at it as hard as I should."


That really, really spoke to me.

Verdant Earl said...

4leaf - I look at other blogs and briefly wonder why I can't do it right like they do. Then I look for porn. ;)

Ginormous Boobs said...

I would drive myself insane if I didn't have google reader.

But then again, it lets me know how many blog posts I have to read and things get scary when it's over 500.

Verdant Earl said...

G-boobs - I've cut down recently on the number of blogs I read (don't worry...still reading yours) so I rarely get too far in the "unread feeds" category.