Sephy’s Platzish

As you might know, I’ve been walking every day now for over a week, and part of the path that I take involves walking along the side of a road. Out where I live, we don’t have sidewalks, so I have to walk on the road. Most of the time, the road that I’m on has two full lanes, along with a decent shoulder (about three or four feet wide). There is also a part of the road that does not have a shoulder, but I’ll get to that in a bit.

What I don’t get - and it might just be purely a safety concern - is why people insist on going all the way over to the other lane when they encounter me (or anyone else) walking alongside the road. Do they seriously think that I’m going to suddenly jump out at them in some kind of bizarre attempt to take my life? Could it be that they think that I’m going to try to flash them (a very difficult task considering that I wear sweatpants when I’m walking)? Well, in that case, I don’t think that going to the other lane would solve anything anyway.

As it is, almost all of the time that I am walking along the road, I make sure that I’m at the edge of the pavement, something that comes in handy in that aforementioned shoulder-less section. In that case, I can totally understand moving into the other lane since there is little to no room for me to move over to clear the way for them to use the full lane. In that case, when I can move over, I do make an attempt to get as far over as I can - within reason of course, considering that at one point, there is a straight drop of about 20 to 30 feet into the floor of a forest.

So, my question is - why do you do that while driving? I would think that you’d make a more dangerous situation for yourself by going into the other lane - though there is good visibility down the road. Is it something that is advisable to do in general?

It used to be that I was scared of spiders, but now I’m not that afraid of some of them - at least the ones that we get right around here. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that I’ve seen pictures (and I’m not going to link to them) of the Huntsman spider - a spider that is quite common down in Australia, the land where they have some of the most dangerous spiders in the world - including the Sydney funnel-web spider, responsible for the deaths of at least 13 people. Just looking at a picture of some of those spiders creeps me out.

However, and it’s quite the strange however, there is currently a spider not more than four or five feet from my head and I couldn’t be worried in the least. In fact, I took a picture of the thing, and looking at it gives me no concern at all. Judging from the picture I took, the spider that is there is from the Pholcidae family - sometimes known as the Daddy long legs spider. Quite literally, all it’s doing is just sitting there, upside down and for the most part not moving much. However, its web has managed to ensnare quite a number of small insects.

Now, I must warn those of you who have a well-placed fear of spiders, below is a photo of this spider. While it might seem big in the picture, its size is no more than a couple of square inches. I’ll even upload the picture and display it in the smallest size so that y’all aren’t totally freaked out if you happen to see it in passing.

This week’s Hump Day Hmm discusses something that bugs me quite a bit, and I’m not that old - Political Correctness. Naturally, it doesn’t bother me that it does actually exist, but I feel that there is a sense of paralysis that results from the supposed need to be PC.

The paralysis comes in one of two forms - either you change what you say to practically negate any true meaning you’re trying to achieve, or you just don’t say anything at all for fear you might offend someone. I know that I’m guilty of doing both, more the second than the first. However, it’s not all concerns of offending anyone that would keep me from saying anything - I would always assume that someone else would come along and say exactly what I was thinking.

I’ve now learnt that this isn’t always the case and that there are usually people who are in the same spot as me - they want to say something, but are afraid to do so or just don’t bother because they assume that someone will pick up their slack. However, there are some circumstances - such as when the person you’re speaking to just doesn’t like you, or they think that you have some kind of secret agenda - where it is best to say nothing because if you do, you know that the discussion will likely wind up being one of the past and of the present.

In fact, that was one of the reasons why I started blogging again - so that I could say whatever I wanted whenever I want. There isn’t the worry about my words having direct consequences over my participation in one site or another. I’ve also found that, more recently, I’m not visiting the same sites that I used to before I started blogging - for example, I find that I’d rather be reading through various blogs in my Google Reader where I have a wide variety of viewpoints, rather than in forums where it’s seemingly always the same four or five people posting their ideas.

However, where you really see the paralysis is out in the political world. However, it’s not the bloggers or the talk show hosts that show the paralysis - it’s the politicians themselves. A lot of the blame for that probably should be shifted onto their staff as the reality of politics now is that it is a show run behind the curtains. It’s best shown toward the end of season 6 of The West Wing, where the election is ramping up and all the candidates are getting their names out there. In a couple of episodes, there are situations where a candidate chooses to say what he is thinking and gets raked over the coals for actually saying it. Unfortunately there are a lot of people who will never have seen that episode as they felt that the whole show was just a vehicle to promote “liberal” ideas. I’ll admit that I thought the same thing myself, but once I watched three or four episodes, I was hooked and haven’t looked back. In fact, I even found an old episode on a VHS tape and watched it (at least until the tape ran out because it was part of the overrun recording that I had done).

The reality is different of course for our politicians today - they are all concerned about polling numbers, and making sure that they vary their message depending on who they are talking to. There is an element of this as well in the West Wing, but the writers did give the characters the opportunity to speak their mind.

Where do I stand on being PC and saying the right thing? I certainly think that if you’re comfortable with saying something, you definitely need to. Otherwise you might not have another chance to say it. Even if you don’t think you’re comfortable, you should write up what you want to say and possibly run it past a friend - they’ll likely give you tips on how to improve your message and possibly remind you of things that you should include as well. I also think that you should, within reason (as in not making a direct personal attack or resorting to racial or ethnic slurs) say what you want to say in the manner that you wish to say it.

There’s a lot more that could be said, not only for the words we say, but also for the actions we decide to take - especially when it comes to shielding ourselves from things. However, that’s a discussion for another time.

This is the first in a series of how-tos that I’m writing up for various blogging subjects. If you have anything you’d like me to untangle, let me know. If I know how to do it I’ll post about it; if not I’m willing to take a shot at learning how to do it, and then post about it.

Many of you have seen that you can now integrate your Blogger feed with the services of Feedburner so that you can get detailed stats about your blog’s feed. This can also be known by a variety of terms, like merging your feeds, or (the logical choice IMO) combining the feeds, or (officially) “Post Feed Redirect”. To make things simpler, I’ll just use integrate or its variant when talking about it.

While both sites have how-tos on putting it all together, it might get a bit, well “heady” if you’re not used to working with technical instructions. What I plan to do is show you how to do it, with screenshots, and using straightforward English.

In order to use this service, you will need to have registered your blog’s current feed with Feedburner. To do this, you need to go to the Feedburner homepage, and put your website’s address in the big yellow box. If you are a podcaster, then you should click the box saying that “I am a podcaster”. Click Next » to proceed.

You will then be taken to the “Identify Feed Source” page - basically, it tells you the feeds that were found on your page, and you can choose the one you want to use. For Blogger blogs, you can just stick with the first option and then click Next » to move on.

Now, you will be able to give your feed a title; it will automatically fill the Feed Title in with the title of your Blog. Also, you can customize the address that will be for your feed - generally, you should keep it as the title of your blog, or you can change it to something shorter if you wish. At the bottom of the form, if you do not already have a FeedBurner account, this is the time to create one. Simply fill the fields and then click Activate Feed » to put your feed on FeedBurner.

Now, your blog’s feed is on FeedBurner. You will see this screen which has your feed’s address, which you will need for integrating with Blogger. Also, you now have the option to add in stats to your feed, or move directly to managing your feed. I’d just go ahead and click Next » to add in the stats, so that you don’t have to go back and do it later.

This is the Enhance Your Stats page - here, you can add in options for tracking how many clicks you’re receiving on your feed with Clickthroughs. Note that this will change the formatting of the address in posts from “http://yourblog.blogspot.com/2007/” etc. to “http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/FeedTitle…” etc. You don’t need to worry about the enclosure downloads section unless you’re a podcaster. Also, and this is something new for FeedBurner, the Pro functions are now free, so you can add them or not. What you choose on this page is up to you, but when you’re done click Next » to move on.

There’s a lot more that you can do with FeedBurner; feel free to check them out. You can change pretty much whatever you want - how your feed’s page looks, get the code for the RSS button you see all over the web. This is something that I’d recommend you do right away - it’s under Publicize, then Chicklet Chooser. You’ll be able to add it directly to your blog from FeedBurner if you’re on Blogger or Typepad.

Right now, however, what we want to do is integrate it with Blogger, and it’s a fairly simple process. From your Dashboard, go into your Blog’s settings, then into Site Feed.

Now, you will see the screen below. If you’ve worked on your feed before, you will be familiar with the Allow Blog Feed and Feed Item Footer items. What we’re looking at now is the Post Feed Redirect URL line. All you need to do now is paste or type in your FeedBurner address in the line and click Save Settings.

And that’s it! Your Blogger feed will now be redirected to your FeedBurner feed.

Important note: Any of your readers on bloglines might notice that your feed will start to go nuts - I don’t know why that happens, but it has been happening. Hopefully they get that problem sorted soon. Otherwise, everything will be good to go.

Update, 2nd August: There is currently an issue with the integration that is causing some major problems. Blogger are aware of the issue and have issued a work-around -

The workaround for now is to add an “?alt=atom” parameter to the feed URL in your FeedBurner settings.

Essentially, that just means that, in my case, the feed URL I am now using for Feedburner is - http://www.sephyroth.net/feeds/posts/default?alt=atom - you just add the ?alt=atom to the end of your feed’s address.

It’s been a week of change around these parts; in fact I’m a little late with posting the update today as I was out getting a new recycled grill from a friend - it needs a bit of cleaning, but it’ll be in shape in no time. It’s a gas grill and when I make the first meal on it, I’ll definitely post about it.

Posts I liked -

• Thiru posted some Simple Facts of Life, something worth setting aside and looking at from time to time
• Nate Balcom (whose name makes a pretty swift domain hack) posted a video from the old Digital Electronics Company showing The Web in 1994
• From the Fitness and Weight Loss blog, is an article about How to Worry less and Accomplish More; again, some very useful tips to follow
• The Beef Jerky Blog gives some insights on How to Crash your server within 24 hours
• It seems that every week mention something from one of Duncan’s sites - this week is no exception. Those of us over here will know the Chevy ad that starts with “Baseball, hotdogs, apple pie and Chevrolet”. Well, Down Under, Holden used the same ad campaign, using Aussie things - Football, Meat pies, Kangaroos and Holden cars.
• From Neatorama is this graph which shows that what’s old is new again, how at&t is mostly all the old AT&T.
• Lastly, Anaglyph from Tetherd Cow Ahead has been receiving mails from Prophet Peter Popoff (if you watch tv early in the morning, you’ll have invariably seen his infomercials religious programming), and has replied, in a manner that definitely befits the Prophet

New Blogs I’m reading in Google Reader; again, I’ve had a big week with the Bumpzee RSS feeds, however this week, I did add the Nofollow | DoFollow | iFollow group’s RSS feed to my reader as well.

• Live Berlin, a photoblog featuring Berlin

New blogs this week in the US Blogs community at BumpZEE -

• BIOBLOGS: CREATING THE BRAND OF YOU
• Net Hustlin’
• Philaahzophy
• Jude’s Online Marketing Info

Around here, it’s been a slightly less busy week, with 115 visitors stopping by. Some of the more interesting keywords included -

• dilana nude - yeah, I’ve got a picture of her nude. Partially. Then again, most people keep their faces out in the open all the time…
• photos pictures rv bumper free highway jam - uh, ok. You do know that if you’re looking for highway cams, you might want to start with your local department of transportation. Otherwise, I’m not of much use to you…
• realime equivalent - you can get little squeeze bottles at Wal-Mart (and most other stores) for like 79¢. Otherwise, you can just get real limes

As I mentioned in the beginning, it’s been a week of change, mostly personal change. It all started Tuesday with my discussion of Changes that are coming. I then discussed how I was going to start to let the old me go, and then gave a bit of an update on Thursday talking about letting it go. That post was crossposted to Snoskred’s blog, which, if you weren’t aware by now, is on a new address

This week, I’ll get around to that movie review; I fell asleep while watching it and haven’t had the chance to get around to rewatching it. I’ll also have one or two how-tos to post about various blogging subjects. If you’d like some help with something, let me know by leaving a comment; if I know how to do it, I’ll get a post up in a short amount of time; if now, I’ll look how to do it and then post how I did it.

Also, if you’re using Bloglines, I’m curious if you’re getting tons of posts from my feed; I seem to be getting tons of them on mine; also I’d like to know if you’re seeing the “Feedflares” at the bottom (things like Email this post, Stumble it, etc.). Thanks!