Bloglines beta, and other people’s blogs…
I’m not sure how many of you folks use RSS readers… if you don’t, you should. Unless you, like, actually want to be productive at work. It makes blog reading very efficient. I know a couple of my friends use Google Reader; I use Bloglines (go figure). They recently released a beta, and it’s got some nice features that I really like. It’s still in beta for a reason tho, so once they work out some of the kinks, I’ll talk about it some more. For now, I’m really glad they mark threads as read as you scroll down, and it seems to check for new threads more often. I also really like their keep-as-new feature, named “Pin” (I heard Kelvin helped come up with the name!). Anyways, I don’t have much else to add, but I wanted to comment on a couple blogs I check regularly (through Bloglines! PLUG!).
One blog I enjoy reading is Elyse Sewell’s blog. If you don’t who she is, well, that means you don’t watch America’s Next Top Model, so good for you. She was the second runner-up first season (a couple seasons before the show started becoming completely mind-numbingly retarded), and she’s one of the few not-stupid ones. She could have gone to med school, but she held it off to try out modeling. Even though she didn’t win ANTM, she ended up becoming a model anyway, and now she travels the world plastering her face and figure in ads and magazines. Her blog chronicles her international adventures, and she writes very humorously and intelligently… I’m so envious of her exciting life! Anyway, she recently made a request to her readers to send her postcards. She promised to send a postcard back to anyone who sends her one by the end of this month, so I’ve got to get one ready! If you guys have any interesting ideas on what sort of silly postcard to send her, I’m all open ears :)
Having recently eaten cake on several occasions, I’ve been thinking a bit about cake. Having also recently remembered that I’m going to be getting married next year (most likely), I realized I’m going to have an opportunity to present a fabulous cake! So I checked out popular bakeries through Yelp. I liked the La Patisserie cake I gave Rodney for his bday, so now French bakeries are an option alongside Asian bakeries. One French bakery in Campbell called Margaret’s French Bakery got great reviews for wedding cakes, and what better way to advertise your cakes than by blogging about it! Their blog, The Cake Blog, is usually updated the beginning of every week after a busy weekend of making cakes. I’m hoping to get some ideas for my own wedding cake from their updates (I’d like to eventually do a cake tasting with them). Until then, I’m just going to drool at their gorgeous cakes through pictures.
Right now, I’ve got my Bloglines list public (which apparently not working in beta yet), if anybody is curious as to what else I keep track of.
New thing I learned today: Those silver balls found on pastries (i.e. Christmas cookies) are called dragées. They’re covered in metal, so the FDA considers them inedible and for decoration only. However, they’re non-toxic and (unofficially in the US) safe to eat.
Because of some lawsuit-happy grinch, dragées have been banned in California since 2003. So if you’re wondering where those silver-y treats that you enjoyed as a kid went, well, there ya go. (Factoid courtesy of The Cake Blog.)
