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I’ve been a faithful Bloglines subscriber for years now, but I’m finally breaking down and trying out Google Reader to see if it clears up a problem I’ve been having with indexing new items. I hated the Reader interface before, but they’ve sped up the AJAX-y effects, which makes it a lot more tolerable. Anyway, the one thing I noticed immediately is that there doesn’t seem to be a way to share feeds like in Bloglines, just individual items. I’ll have to see whether I like that or not. In the meantime, maybe it’ll be like a linkblog for me. So, News From Afar, which used to require the reader to work to find interesting content, now changes over to me having to work to keep interesting content. :| ...

This blog is largely just for me, and a few folks who stop by because they know me, or they’re searching for information on Jackie Manuel or the Google Teahouse Fox. So, I’m pretty used to low traffic numbers. However, I was floored when I suddenly received ten times the usual number of incoming visits over a couple of days, and was curious as to why. Ah, Jeremy Zawodny’s linkblog. Wow, it’s amazing what can happen when you get linked off a popular site. I know I read it most days. ...

You know, just recently it occurred to me that I’ve never used my full name on this blog. This seems like a good time to come out. (No, not like that.) ;) Most folks who read this blog regularly know who I am, which is why I hadn’t really thought about the decision I made a few years ago to not link myself too publicly with this blog. I originally thought I would talk more about work, and I knew that might cause some distress due to the large number of people involved. However, looking back, I’ve normally thought of blogging as a break from thinking about work, so I didn’t write very much about it at all. ...

I was checking the comments flagged as spam by Akismet, and I found one authored by Shakira! Now, I’m not sure why she wanted me to know more about mortgages and insurance – by including 25 links – but I am so flattered she found my blog interesting. ;) I should point out that Akismet is amazing. It’s picked up more than 4,000 spam comments since install, and I haven’t found a false positive yet. ...

Well, I’ve just upgraded this blog to the “Ella” WordPress 2.1 release, named after Ella Fitzgerald. The process went fairly smoothly, although the upgrade instructions leave out the usual one-step database upgrade, so I was a little surprised to see my installation immediately break. However, when I logged into my admin, the first thing I was presented with was an opportunity to run the database upgrade. I don’t see a huge difference on the admin side, even with a modified interface, but I do appreciate the autosave feature. Hopefully we won’t run into any bugs. If you do, let me know at admin (at) thephantomcity.com. ...

Just to start out, I should point out that I leave my car outside at home because we have what appears to be a 1.95-car garage. Since the sun comes up on that side of the house, I haven’t had to scrape my car in the morning after light frosts, because the ice has already melted. Now, to get sappy. :) When I went out to the car this morning, as usual the ice had melted and the water was rapidly steaming off the roof of the car. It’s always interesting to note, but I hadn’t really seen it until this morning. As I started to get into the car, I turned my head and saw sunlight filtering through wisps of steam rising off the car, diffuse threads intertwining and dancing to the increasingly chaotic motion of the molecules, only to disappear from my vision a few inches from the pool of mist and reflective water that created them. ...

The True Neurotic You scored 63 anxiety, 64 awkwardness, and 72 neuroticism! Congratulations, you are The True Neurotic, you nail-biting, conflict-avoiding worrier, you. You’re plagued by self-doubt and anxiety, which makes social activity hard–even though you may be well-liked, you feel under a storm of silent criticism. It doesn’t help that people give you funny looks for organizing all your pens by color or sharpening your gnawed pencils to a delicate point. ...

I got tagged, so I must comply. Herd mentality, you know. These are five things you might not know about me, depending on who you are. 1. My favorite playlist in iTunes is an accidental (party shuffle) conglomeration of 25 great songs to listen to while working that I had to save permanently. It includes Toxic by Britney Spears, which is there for purely ironic reasons, and Crazy in Love by Beyoncé, which is not. ...

I was glad to see this blog post from Scott Adams, in which he describes thinking about topics in the form of hypothetical conversations with people he knows. I was glad to see it because it’s how I do a lot of my thinking, and it’s hard to describe to others. (Except in my head, I guess.) The point where our experiences differ is that Adams concentrates on particular people in the role of hypothetical listener, while my listeners tend to either be particular people for the day, or people who make sense depending on what I’m thinking about. It is one of those things that’s hard to explain to others, though. Adams says it best: ...

My score on The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test: Modern, Cool Nerd (86 % Nerd, 52% Geek, 47% Dork) For The Record: A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia. A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one. A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions. You scored better than half in Nerd and Geek, earning you the title of: Modern, Cool Nerd. ...