a note on feeds
It has come to my attention that Google Reader is perhaps not a true RSS client. Rather than hitting the actual address of the feed every time you tell it to refresh all feeds, it goes to a cached copy somewhere on the Google servers. This is fine for popular feeds, because that cache is itself updated frequently, but it doesn't for for less well-used feeds like, say, our comments feed (which has only one Google Reader subscriber: me). Such feeds simply don't show as being updated, ever.
Obviously, for our comment feed this doesn't matter because I don't need the feed to refresh: I get an email when someone comments. But other feeds have the same problem. I've started using the free RSS client Vienna (in addition to the Google-syncing NetNewsWire) to keep up with the blogs of friends, to make sure I'm not missing anything. For example, Google finally caught up with Theresa's blog the other day and showed me a dozen or so posts that I hadn't read when she wrote them because they didn't show up in my reader.
So. If you're using Google Reader to subscribe to some of our fine non-blog feeds, they may appear to not update frequently. That doesn't mean we're not posting pictures!
dying winter
rays of late sun
Winter seems to be finally giving up its grip around here. Yesterday was warm and rainy, with just enough sun at the end of the day to produce the scene pictured above. Today mostly sunny and breezy, just the thing for an outing to the Concord River to see the annual flooding there. The snow is melting fast, even if there are still piles in our neighborhood that exceed five feet in height. In celebration, we're planting seeds down in the basement where they'll keep warm in their little house.
I've spent the past couple hours reading about the earthquakes in Japan, which I hadn't even really known about thanks to my half-hearted news fast. Maybe I should have continued not knowing; one reason I'm off news (except as revealed to me through The Economist) is that there are a great many things happening in the world. They will continue to happen whether or not I know about them, and in many cases I will be better off if I don't. That being said, my thoughts and prayers are off course with the everyone affected by the disasters.
And even crazy snowy winters end eventually!
blooms are on the way