Housekeeping Notes

It’s been a busy time over the past ten days or so, with four relatives staying with us at various times, a work project to complete, and two podcasts to record and post. It’s been a fun time, but it’s meant that I haven’t had time to talk about a few recent changes to this blog, so it’s time for a brief time-out to do that.

First, I’m trying to make it easy for people who are interested in my podcast to get to episodes quickly and easily, while still making it easy for blog readers to get at the content they want. So, I added the RSS feed from my podcast’s host site to the top right of this blog. If you want to get to the episodes, they’re just a click away.

I also added a Label, AmeriNZ Podcast, which groups together the shownotes for my podcasts and any other post where I talk about it (including this one). This was important because as I post new entries on the blog, older ones get pushed down and eventually disappear from the Index (main) page.

Which brings me to the subject of general posts. Obviously, I still post to this blog, but regular readers will have noticed that I’ve stopped posting on Saturdays, New Zealand time. This is a bit of a compromise. Because we’re in the first time zone, I feel I need to allow at least 24 hours for people to easily access my show notes before they get pushed down by new blog entries. However, I’ll probably often do as I did last week and post more than once on some days. The net effect is that I’ll probably produce the same number of posts per week, there just won’t be one on New Zealand’s Saturday.

In addition to the feed for my podcast, I’ve also added a Frappr map. This is just a bit of fun, nothing more. It shows the people who’ve recently visited the blog and where they accessed it from (yes, I know it doesn’t fit well, but that’s due to the limitations of Blogger as much as anything else). Feel free to add a pin for yourself.

Speaking of social networking (which Frappr is a limited example of), I’ve come over to the dark side: I’m now also on MySpace. Yes, I know, I’m far too old to be part of it, but MySpace is the world’s largest social networking site, so it’s something podcasters are part of to build audiences. Actually, this is really huge: Roughly ten percent of all Internet users are registered with MySpace. If you’re so inclined, you can go to my still-new MySpace here. When I went to bed last night, I had no friends. This morning when I got up I had three.

I’ve also been revising my various links. Included in that is an expanded section of fellow American expats in New Zealand, with lengths of residency ranging from a few weeks to more than a year. For some reason, all the people I’ve linked to so far live in the Wellington region, more or less. I think they offer interesting viewpoints from their varying lengths of time in New Zealand.

And finally, I also recently added a Bush “Days Left in Office” Countdown (found through the Jimmi Chronicles, though I picked a simpler version). This, too, is just for fun—and it somehow makes me feel better to actually see Bush’s time in office ticking down to zero. If only the clock would run faster—probably the only time in my life I’ve felt like that since primary school.

Update 8:50pm: The first person added a pin to my Frappr map (thanks!). One thing I forgot to say about it before is that if you have a blog or podcast you want to promote, adding a pin to my map is another way to do it. It's all a bit of fun, but no reason why you shouldn't get something out of it, too. Go for it.