Damien at the Speed of Life – DATSOL

I started “blog hopping” this afternoon and there were so many loading and spelling issues I just had to stop. The great thing about blogs and self-publishing is that I have access to every Tom, Dick, and Jane out there writing content. That is also the not-so-great thing. Because anyone can publish a blog and get it “out there” there are some real eyesores that I have to bellyache, I hope I don’t offend anyone:

1. Homonyms misspelled: to=preposition too=Modifier of degree two=2 / there=place their=possessive they’re=contraction they are You/You’re: Your is possessive. “Is that your hat?” You’re is a contraction for you are. “You’re wrong.” Then/Than: “Then you’d like to go over this later rather than right now.” Its/It’s: Again, possession is the name of the game when it comes to its.
2. Too much on sidebar=long load times. Do you really need all that stuff? Take inventory and dump the stuff not helping you achieve your goals.
3. A completely untouched free theme. Come on now, can’t you at least put a feedburner brick in there to make it your own? How will we know it’s not spam? Take a little time to read a tutorial on Wordpress, html, php, or tweaking themes in general.
4. Less than 60 word posts. Why waste my time?
5. Poorly designed. Columns overlap etc. Take your writing serious enough to put it in a nicely structured theme.
6. Cussing. I just don’t like it. I think I have one cuss-word in my blogs and it’s like damn or something. Dooce can bite me if she doesn’t like it. I’m me, she’s … well, her.
7. Flaunted, unbridled, giddiness. Ever catch a load of this in your travels and assume you accidentally became a member or something you weren’t invited to read?
8. I apologize in advance for this one but I just have to say it because it bothers me in an irrational way: When I just did a paid OPP and come to find the same person did it with 1/2 the quality and probably got approved and paid the same as me who spent a long time. (I’m a grouch huh?)
9. Angry posts with no real point.
10. and finally … my last gripe about blogs out there is: pop-up-blog-newsletter-subscriptions (esp. seo ones) !!!!
11. Okay, I lied … one last gripe: Bloggers in Southern California who have motorcycle accidents and don’t call motorcycle accident lawyers Los Angeles. Why not use the best? ;)

Got any gripes about blogs these days?

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+ = ? About a month ago, I followed Google’s advice and transferred my Feedburner feeds to Google Adsense.  Apparently Google will be dissolving Feedburner altogether mid February.  Since I did that it has been one problem after another and my 4 feeds have been inaccessible. I have a workaround, sort of.  It is based on the concept that you can always redirect your own url but you can’t do anything with one of Google’s.

This is a real problem when you value feed subscribers as I do.  It proved especially troubling to me when I started broadcasting my podcast recently through iTunes and the feed address Google gave me was completely dead.  After I explain a little more, I feel I have a workaround that may help:

What happened exactly?  Well, since Google is offering no support as far as I can tell, I figure I’d lay it out in a post and see if we can figure it out together.

Basically, my original feed is:

http://www.damienriley.com/feed/

Way back in the day when I satrted with Feedburner, they assigned it the feed:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/damienatthespeedoflife

When they asked me to migrate they told me to change my code to reflect the new feed which would be:

http://feedproxy.google.com/damienatthespeedoflife

Then, when that came up with nothing in a few days, Feedburner showed a different address.  It was the same as the original Feedburner feed except with a 2 after the “feeds” subdomain name:

http://feeds2.feedburner.com/damienatthespeedoflife

Yesterday I was told my latest posts as of three days ago were not updating in this feed.  I have to tell you, I was furious.  I decided on a workaround that gives me better control over my own feeds:

1. Search and replace all the above feeds in my database and theme to the original raw feed:
   http://www.damienriley.com/feed/
2. Take off any plugins or 301 redirects in my .htaccess files and let the raw feed be my only feed I advertise.
3. Wait for Google to get its sh** together and when/if they do
4. NEVER AGAIN change anything in url code for my feed.  Keep it raw and if I like the new Google feed system, change it through a simple 301 redirect in the .htaccess files.

One more reason to love Google folks.  In all seriousness though, I’m sure they will get feeds together eventually.  It will probably rock and then you don’t want to be locked out of the party for some reason.  The 301 .htaccess redirect will get you right back in.  I do love many Google services but PageRank and now this feed mess are definitely two of its shortcomings.  Your current subscribers will miss some posts but hopefully it will work out in a happy Google ending.

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