All blogs (at least as far as I know) have an RSS feed. Some authors choose not to make theirs public or to advertise it but I do. RSS seems like the easiest way to stay in touch with all the stuff you want to read, no way am I going to actually visit each site every day just to check and see if something new has been posted… that's ridiculous. Instead I just add the RSS feed for the blog to my favorite RSS reader and bingo, every time the author posts something I am sent a message. Simple, clean and burns way less calories.

A long time ago I discovered FeedBurner. How cool! So I immediately created an account, changed the RSS feed address for my blogs and forgot about it.

ASIDE – FeedBurner gives you statistics regarding your feed and you can also easily control and embellish your feed. All that neat-o gee wiz stuff that makes the Internet so cool in the first place.

Some time after I did this Google acquired FeedBurner. My blog (I use dasBlog) has this cool 'feature' where you can enter your FeedBurner username and it automatically changes the feed address. That was super slick until my FeedBurner username no longer worked. And no, I couldn't just plug in my Google account.

Not only that but I had signed up for this other nifty service I found called AddThis which added another layer of obscurity that I had to troubleshoot through when I finally realized that my RSS feed was not working.

ANOTHER ASIDE – AddThis lets people easily add and/or share your blog/web page with social networking sites and bookmarking sites and web based feed readers.

But now I'm all done and I learned a few things. Like:

• FeedBurner has some cool features since I last checked in! Stuff like SmartFeed which makes your feed compatible with any reader or device.
• I am now offering my feeds as email subscriptions for folks who just don't want to use an RSS reader.
• You can use MyBrand (another FeedBurner feature but only if you control your own DNS) to create a CNAME so that the URL for your feeds is something like feeds.yourdomain.com. How cool! Of course I did this.

Now that everything is all straightened out I can forget it all again. Here's hoping no more big changes happen to the free services that I use.

Son of a bitch…

I saw my PT last Friday and was made to realize that every single core exercise I have been doing recently is being done incorrectly. I felt so deflated.

I hosed my back about six(?) years ago and after ignoring/resting it did not help and after re-injuring it about three years ago I finally saw my doctor, had an MRI scan, discovered I had a bulging/herniated disk and sought the help of a PT.

As is probably the case all too often, patients are not meticulous enough and after time they start to get sloppy with their form and soon they are not doing themselves any good or even doing themselves some harm. I was no different. Not only was I no longer doing the good exercise incorrectly, I was also inadvertently doing 'bad' exercises meaning I was doing stuff that was aggravating my injury. F'ing hell.

So I went and found a new PT as my original one had moved on and we started from scratch. He looked at my scan and discovered that I had TWO bulging disks. Nice. He also made me acutely aware how weak the muscles were that I thought I was exercising these past two years.

Time to re-find the resolve to deal with the back and hopefully realize some improvement.

I have seen most of these pictures before but today when I heard a song by The Pogues on the radio I had to go back and check them out. Big mistake… These seem like the quintessential pictures that you would show your kids when they are considering hitting the road with a band instead of going to college. That or not brushing their teeth. I mean Jesus H, I had heard that Shane MacGowan had crap oral hygiene but it turns out he has nothing left to worry about - all of his teeth are f'n gone.

I'm not sure how this guy ever made it to 50 years old but damn it he did make it. How did he make it this far? According to him, it was all the drinking, smoking and partying. Case in point: