Category Archives: Uncategorized

I Never Liked Dressing Up for Halloween

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I admire my friend Morgan dearly. In so many ways are almost twins. We’re both left-handed and goofy, played first base, love high school students, and are quickly nearing a critical shortage of hair on our heads. The list goes on much longer than that, but you get the idea. These similarities are what make our differences all the more striking to me. Mo’s blog is a perfect example. In the few months I’ve been writing this blog I’ve written a lot of words, but I haven’t shared very much that’s personal. And when I have, it’s been a conscious decision to go out of my comfort zone. (The Ayrton Senna anecdote is a shining example.) Mo, on the other hand, doesn’t have the filter I do. This post is much more vulnerable than anything I’ve even considered sharing on my site, yet it’s pretty standard for Mo.

I don’t like advertising my vulnerability, because, well then people would know I’m vulnerable. I know, it makes a lot of sense… With Morgan the vulnerability is explicitly part of the package and I need to learn from him. So going forward I am going to make this blog more personal and I will share more about me in hopes that we will be able to build a more personal community in general.

So there we go, I’ve already gotten my New Year’s resolution out of the way early!

An Awesome Solution to a Problem You May Not Have

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I follow a lot of blogs, too many really. I struggle to be anywhere near up to date on most of them, and I’m regularly finding new ones I want to follow, but can’t because I don’t have the time to read them. To keep track of all of these blogs I use Google Reader, which makes it as easy as reading my email. If you do this too, I’m guessing you’ve also come across my problem. It’s not the Reader redesign that bothers me. The black hyperlinks are annoying, but not enough to be a big deal.

My problem is that some blogs only show you a snippet of each post on their main page so that you have to click to another page if you want the whole post. This makes sense for layout reasons, and it can make your site stats look better (especially for ad revenue). It also is really annoying in Reader because you have to open a new tab to read the post. This is most annoying when I’m reading on my iPhone (which I do a lot) and navigating multiple windows. Happily, I’ve found two solutions to the problem.

The first is the coolest. It’s Super Full Feeds for Google Reader™ and it allows you to switch between the regular Reader feed, the full feed, or the actual page from the original website, all within the post window in Reader. It works really well, is free and the only downside is it doesn’t work with Safari (and therefore on the iPhone).

This is where solution two comes in. It’s Full Text RSS Feed and all you have to do is go to the site, paste the feed link into the text box, hit submit and the copy the new link and add it as a subscription into Reader. I haven’t had any issues yet and because it changes the feed itself it works no matter what device or browser you’re accessing Reader from.

So there you go, a small problem you may or may not have is now solved. You’re welcome.

(h/t Incidental Economist)

Miscellany

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1. Ezra Klein sums up my feelings about our current situation in this country better than I can. The question I still don’t know the answer to is how we get the trust back.

2. So besides regaining trust, maybe we need to add some balance to our lives in this country? Talk about a depressing infographic…

3. Tony Jones has some thoughts on Rob Bell and the widening mainline-evangelical divide in this country. His thoughts track with my experiences. I found out about Rob Bell from a friend who grew up in evangelical churches, not from any of my mainline friends and sources. I know I’m skeptical of the TV show idea in general, but if anyone can pull it off I think it’s Bell. I wish him the best with it.