Thursday, 22 April 2004

Administrivia. Blogroll updates, RSS feed changes, search engines and more. I've more or less raided the blogroll of (Southern Cross) Words and "borrowed" (ahem) several of his links: Yet another American in Oz, an Aussie in Paris, an expat group blog, and an exciting collection of authentic Aussie blogs.

I discovered Kevin Drum's blog (formerly known as CalPundit) when he became the in-house blogger for Washington Monthly magazine, and since then he's become an indispensable voice of reason from the middle. I've also updated my link to Howard Bashman's How Appealing, since he's now become the in-house blogger for Legal Affairs magazine. (Hmmm. I'm still waiting for the phone call from Highlights for Children inviting me to write their in-house blog, but until then….)

Another new link goes to the Australian chapter of Democrats Abroad, which is on the verge of becoming a real live organization down here. Greg has already blogged about yesterday's meetup, so I'll just say in passing that I've never been this politically active either. (Well, not since college, anyhow. And that was an accident.) Until this election cycle, voting was the full extent of my political activity — but between Howard Dean and the slow-motion train wreck called the Bush administration, I've gotten my act together and started getting involved.

Syndication-wise, you may have noticed that I've switched back to including the full content of the article in my RSS feeds, instead of just the first sentence. As the newsfeed-readers get more sophisticated, they're starting to act more like web browsers than clipping services — so it probably makes less sense than it did a year ago to serve up only part of the article. I've also retired the blog's Tech category and RSS feed; after 18 months of blogging I apparently have very little to say about technology. Or, at least, I have a lot more to say about travel and politics.

And, finally, the search engine that quietly appeared in the sidebar two or three weeks ago is available for your browsing pleasure; if you want to find everything I've written about Ayers Rock, now you can. (It only shows the most recent six articles, though, so you may not be able to dig up everything I've ever written about Iraq or George Bush in one pass.) Enjoy!

- Posted by Scott Forbes at 4:52 am. comments.