It's just over a week since I launched the Change Begins at Home award, and gave it to three bloggers who don't tell others what to do, they just get on and do it themselves.I've been watching where it has spread since then, and I am surprised and delighted to see the big ripples made by this small pebble. Forty-four blogs have been nominated so far for the award, most of them I had never heard of before. As a result I have discovered some great gardening blogs I hadn't known about (such as the Green-Fingered Photographer), some sustainability blogs (including Simple Living in a Complex Society), and some frugal blogs (like A Frugal Living Blog by a Frugal Guy). But I didn't expect to see vegetarian and vegan cooking blogs feature, such as Vivacious Vegan). That was a nice surprise. The award also seems to be spreading in the Latter Day Saints community (amongst blogs like Dream A Little More), which would probably never have come to my attention otherwise.
I deliberately left the wording of the award open ended, in the hope that it would spread to places I would never normally go myself. I don't have to agree with all the beliefs of the people who get the award. I don't even agree with all the beliefs of the blogs I link to from this page. I treasure my friends at Lesbian Gardens, but I'm not one of their number. I enjoy reading about how Carlalynne's Christian faith has led her on a journey to simplify her life, because my own faith is central to my "greenness" as it is central to every other part of my life. But she and I differ in many of the ways we interpret and apply that same faith. It's groovy. I respect anyone who lives their life thoughtfully, even if that takes them to very different places than me. It's the sleepwalkers-through-life that I want to take by the shoulders and give them a good shaking.
9 comments:
Thank you for visiting my blog. I am so honored that someone gave me this award. I was starting to get obsessive about who was or wasn't reading my blog - especially since I started it just for fun. I am back to reality -- if someone reads it fine, if not, fine, too.
I do enjoy your blog and will be checking back frequently.
Thanks Melanie! Consider yourself linked. How do RSS feeds work?
Alice x
Oi, achei seu blog pelo google está bem interessante gostei desse post. Gostaria de falar sobre o CresceNet. O CresceNet é um provedor de internet discada que remunera seus usuários pelo tempo conectado. Exatamente isso que você leu, estão pagando para você conectar. O provedor paga 20 centavos por hora de conexão discada com ligação local para mais de 2100 cidades do Brasil. O CresceNet tem um acelerador de conexão, que deixa sua conexão até 10 vezes mais rápida. Quem utiliza banda larga pode lucrar também, basta se cadastrar no CresceNet e quando for dormir conectar por discada, é possível pagar a ADSL só com o dinheiro da discada. Nos horários de minuto único o gasto com telefone é mínimo e a remuneração do CresceNet generosa. Se você quiser linkar o Cresce.Net(www.provedorcrescenet.com) no seu blog eu ficaria agradecido, até mais e sucesso. (If he will be possible add the CresceNet(www.provedorcrescenet.com) in your blogroll I thankful, bye friend).
Wow, this award has truly spread, a diverse group of folk! You never know where these things are going to go eh? Fascinating! Talking of all things green, when I lived in Scotland we went to stay in this fabulous eco-run home, it was off the beaten track and the family were lovely, really gave me a fresh insight to a different and effective way of living - this said now with technology and electricity pulsing all around me! Was great to relive that memory though!
Hi, I saw mention of your blog and the change begins at home concept just the other day. Now I've found where it originated from... :)
Great idea!
The benefits of this award just keep on coming. I honestly didn't expect more new visitors, subscribers and commenters to visit Bean Sprouts as a result. That's great. Welcome, everyone. Hope you'll stick around.
Which brings me to Alice's question. An RSS feed sends out your blog's updates, Alice, without me having to visit your blog every day to see whether you've updated or not. People can subscribe via email (whenever the blog is updated, the new entry is emailed to the subscriber) but I have subscribed via www.bloglines.com, which is a blog feed manager. I subscribe to 155 feeds (that's a huge number, but most of them don't update very often) and instead of visiting 155 blogs regularly I just visit bloglines once a day and it tells me which ones have been updated.
All this is free. Your blog hosting service publishes your RSS feed as part of the package. Bloglines is a free service. There are other blog feed managing services. For example, people can subscribe to Bean-Sprouts via feedburner, which helps me keep track of who is reading. That's what the little green button on the top right of the page is all about, saying "Subscribe to bean-sprouts via email".
If you google for "what is RSS" you'll find more information than you ever wanted to know.
The RSS feed discussion brings up something I've wondered about. If I need to edit my entry for some reason (typo or formatting I'm not happy with), the only way I see to do that is to edit and then "publish" again. Does that send out another copy via RSS feed? I also recently started closing comments on older posts to help manage spammers and that also comes under "publish". Am I unknowingly annoying readers who subscribe to my RSS feed?
Chile - the easiest way to find out is to subscribe to your own RSS feed, then you can see what's coming through and what's not. Boosts your readership by 1 as well ;-). I do this and I find that early edits to a published blog post don't come through as repeat postings. In fact the RSS seems to arrive a few hours after the post, by which time it has usually stabilised. Activity on old posts does not appear. So you've nothing to worry about.
Thanks, Melanie. You are a font of knowlege, as always. :)
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