Admin

If you follow your favorite blogs in Google Reader as I have, you no doubt know that it is going away at the end of the month - yes, just a few days away to decide what to do if you have not already. There have been lots of suggestions for alternate readers; I looked into several, but they were more on the order of Yahoo's reader that I'd quit using because Google's was just so much quicker and visually pleasing to use. However, a new reader arose phoenix-like from the soon to be ashes of Google reader and dubbed itself The Old Reader...because it has basically cloned the old google reader. I found the transition from Google to The Older Reader easy, quick, nearly seamless. I highly recommend giving it a try if you miss the features of Google Reader that simply aren't being offered anywhere else.

I've also added a widget to the sidebar allowing you to sign up to follow my blog via e-mail. Have no idea how this works, but I decided to provide that option after talking to a few readers who prefer to follow blogs that way.

As far as comments go, I've always had that set for me to review them before they are published to the blog post. Blogger has a pretty good spam filter for errant comments but lately I have been flooded with anonymous spam comments that somehow are bypassing the filter. I rarely get a legitimate anonymous comment anymore, so I am changing the "who can comment" setting to exclude anonymous users. I know how much I hate the word verification thing which would be my other option to stop these spam comments. If this new setting is causing problems for any of my regular commentors, please e-mail me and I will reconsider this change.

And yes, the picture above has nothing to do with all this, but I know how much we all expect lovely pictures accompanying blog posts. This was taken at my ArtWalk opening reception last Friday. There were lots of people, great food, live music and heartfelt feedback on my three pieces. Ample reward for pushing myself to complete them in time.