OK, Luddites, how many blogs do you follow, besides this one of course? What’s a blog anyway? Blog is a contraction of “web log” and it is a way to post things on a regular basis on the internet so others can follow what you have to say or see what you are making. I just counted and I follow 19 mostly woodworking blogs. I really enjoy keeping up with other people on what kind of work they are doing and picking up suggestions on something I might want to make.
You might well ask “BigT, with all the other work you do and the busy schedule you keep building buildings and making stuff and going to classes, how do you have time to check 19 blogs every day?” The answer is I don’t, so I use a Blog Aggregator to keep tabs on the blogs I enjoy. The particular aggregator I use is called “Shrook” and it is free and non-subscription. You can purchase a paid version which will work across all platforms and synchronize all your devices as to what you have read or not. Since I use a Mac, there may be others which are better for other machines, but I am no expert in those matters so you may have to search a little bit or ask your grandchildren. Just Google “Blog Aggregators” and a bunch will pop up.
How do you find Blogs you like? Well, you might start with a really popular one like Lost Art Press. Then the key which you may not know is to go find the initials “RSS” usually hidden somewhere down in the bottom right corner of the page. RSS stands for “Rich Site Summary” or my preference “Really Simple Syndication”. On the Lost Art Press Blog, it is in the bottom right under “Subscribe via RSS”. Click that after you have Shrook or something like it loaded on your machine and you will get a window asking if you want to subscribe to this blog. Tell the window you do want to subscribe and it will set up your subscription for you. Add as many subscriptions as you want and then when you open Shrook, it will show you all the blog entries that are new and you haven’t read. If you aren’t subscribed to the High’s blog yet, scroll down and you can enter in your email or press this button:
Many bloggers have a blogroll over on the side of their entry to show the blogs that they follow and enjoy. If you go to Popular Woodworking’s Blog Network page you will find a list of around 40 blogs. You can pick and choose the ones you like. Click on some of those and dip in and get the flavor of a few and then subscribe if you like. Or not. Many of those will have their own blogroll and it just compounds and multiplies and pretty soon, you will not even have to time to cut the grass and your spouse will leave and your kids wil desert you and the house will start falling down around you, but as long as you have the computer running, that just means you have more time to read blogs. Enjoy!!
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And don’t forget to add Hackney Tools to the list when you get it all working!