#pneumatised!

Ah... Darkover. After having read eleven Darkover books, reading the next two (Stormqueen! and Hawkmistress! in the omnibus The Ages of Chaos) feels like returning home, albeit to a fantasy home. This was surprising since The Ages of Chaos takes place in early Darkovan chronology, before Darkovans meet with the Terrans. The previous Darkover books I read, with the exception of Darkover Landfall have the underlying theme of the clash of Darkover culture with Terran culture. In The Ages of Chaos, this underlying theme is missing. However, there are still aspects of Darkover culture that are familiar from previous novels (although the setting is an earlier time period). What makes the two novels in The Ages of Chaos stand out is the sacrifices that are being made in order to bred and keep laran (Darkovan psi powers) within the ruling families.

In the first novel of the omnibus, Stormqueen!, the story centers around a young woman (a pre-teen more accurately), Dorilys, with a special type of laran to call forth lightning and storms. Stubborn, willful, and terribly spoiled as the heir to her father's domain, Dorilys has killed twice already before her father decides he needs more help training and controlling his daughter and her powers. From one of the Towers, a trained monitor is sent to help along with another who has his own laran to fear and to conquer as well as his own personal worries - worries that affect not just him, but the whole of Darkover. The story is told primarily through the viewpoints of the two who are sent to help Dorilys.

In the second novel, Hawkmistress!, the story is told through the main character, Romilly, who eventually runs away from home after being told she must marry a man she finds absolutely repulsive. Fed up with being told what she could and couldn't do (as a 'Lady'), she disguises herself as a boy as it is safer than to travel as a young woman alone (she is 14 in the beginning of the story) only to find that she rather enjoys the freedom she has disguised a boy - more freedom than she ever had as a girl. The story is set against the background of a civil war, and Romilly finds herself in the company of exiled men and others who are loyal to the exiled King Carolin. Romilly's laran is the ability to share minds with hawks and horses (and other animals). As her father's daughter, she learned to train hawks and horses, but at the age of 14 was being told it was "unseemly" to be doing such things (things she loved to do). Such is the impetus for her leaving her home (even her prospective husband would not let her continue training hawks and horses). Romilly's only real desire is to be herself and to train hawks and horses. Her laran seems harmless enough, but there are consequences and side effects she hadn't thought of. As time passes and as she сontinues to use her laran (without Tower training), she finds her powers aren't really all that simple to deal with and that they could put her own life at risk.

Although I initially thought I wouldn't enjoy these two stories as much as the previous Darkover stories, I was surprised to find I enjoyed them just as much. Part of this, I think, is how Bradley writes. I find her style engaging. As for the stories, you are hardly bored as something is always happening and the characters are always doing something (unlike other books I could name, but won't since they are probably mentioned on this blog somewhere already). This makes for good pacing in a story. Need I say that there were a few twists here and there? How could there not be, these two stories are set in the 'Ages of Chaos' after all. ;)

Overall, a good read. The omnibus gets 5 out of 5 on my Goodreads account. :D

P.S. I agree with Jo Walton's review of Hawkmistress!. "Romilly’s rapport with animals is done brilliantly."

The Ulysses Quicksilver Omnibus by Jonathan Green My rating: 0 of 5 stars

I started this omnibus containing three books a while back (maybe over a year ago). It looked vaguely amusing, a mix of steampunk with a bit of Holmesian (not sure about the Bond influence, it feels more Holmesian to me). The book was entertaining through Act 1 of the first story, then the obvious references to modern day's political issues (i.e., anti-terrorism acts) felt a tad trite.

Since I was also still in the midst of plowing through a few other series that were quite good, I put this book aside for later. I'm now in the mood for a bit of the Holmesian, so I'll give this book another go. At the very least, I'll try to finish reading the first book, Unnatural History. If this story proves to be more adventurous than political by the end, then I'll decide whether or not to read the other two books in this omnibus.

View all my reviews

Review of Sleep Bot Tracker Log (also see Sleep Bot app on Android Market):

I've been using this app for the past few days. I like that it lets me know how much sleep I'm missing ("sleep debt") because then I'll try to catch up (I guess it's almost a game to try to get rid of your sleep debt). It also charts and graphs your sleep data to help you understand your sleeping patterns. The past few days, I've been waking up after about 6 hours. I do better with at least 8 hours a day. Some days, 9 hours are good. I configured the app for 8 hours optimal sleep. You can make notes on your sleep entries. Back up to SD card as text file is available as are share options to share summarized data. It also offers sleeping tips including stuff like get better mattress to stuff about what you should or shouldn't eat before bedtime. Some tips you may have heard before, but maybe forgot about. I forgot tryptophan helps with sleep because it's connected to melatonin somehow. Tryptophan is in dairy products, but also in shrimp (yummy! explains why I get sleepy after eating shrimps) and other foods.

If you have sleeping problems, you might want to check out this app. (If you have a sleeping disorder, you probably need to see a sleep specialist. I think I have Non-24 from trying to fix DSPS, and I haven't seen a sleep specialist, but that's just me. I have no problems trying to diagnose myself, but I am not qualified to diagnose others. So go see a sleep specialist if you're concerned about maybe having a sleep disorder.)

˜˜˜C

Canadian

Great White North: Beer Nog (featuring "Bob and Doug McKenzie" as seen on SCTV)

"You hoser! Take off to the Great White North, eh? Get some smokes and beer while you're there, eh?"

American

America Fuck Yeah! (a fan-made video featuring theme song and clips from the movie, Team America: World Police)

"Team America, fuck yeah! Coming again to save the mother fuckin' day, yeah!"

Hmmm...

Anyone else have allergies and also do running in the winter?

I've noticed for a while now that when I haven't been running regularly, then start up in the cold months, my allergies just kick my ass for running. It's not that I'm tired or my cardio is bad (I have allergies year round, but in the late spring and summer, running is easier even if I haven't been running consistently; and I generally do fine indoors during the winter at taekwondo), it's that I have to keep stopping to blow my damn nose. The only problem with the breathing is that it feels like the congestion is frozen in my throat, so I end up brisk walking and doing deep breathing to clear up the congestion.

Otherwise, if I have been running regularly, running in the winter hasn't been a huge problem for me. I avoid it when there's ice (because of the dangers of slipping, twisting and aggravating a pre-existing injury) and slush (because I am susceptible to getting a little sick from cold, wet feet) though. Otherwise, if it's not icy and the roads are clear I don't mind winter running anymore than running on a hot, humid summer day. I just feel like I have to be more disciplined with running in the winter than the summer because my allergies will just kick my ass in the winter.

Anyway, I mention this in case anyone else has the same issues with allergies and winter running.

Here's a link to an interesting discussion about winter running - I Hate Winter Running.

This article says to take your allergy medication before heading out for a run - Tips for Running with Seasonal Allergies. (I actually was thinking about taking my allergy medicine before heading out to the gym, but I wasn't feeling particularly stuffed up from my allergies today and I wasn't planning on running tonight. I only just felt like it after I did 20 minutes of cycling.)

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I've been reading astronomy all weekend. I've kind of missed it since I first took astronomy in university (and with all the changes in spaceflight going on - space tourism, woohoo! - I think I'd better brush up). Somehow I got an A in astronomy (no, not just staring at stars all year long) and nearly flunked accounting (even though I aced accounting in high school - university level accounting and high school accounting are NOT the same). Okay, well, I was under "extenuating circumstances" the year I was studying accounting. Still had to re-do accounting though because less than a C grade was not acceptable for the program. :( (The business school was actually wondering why I didn't just do a math degree. Lol. I did get accepted into the math program, I just opted for business for some insane reason.)

I've been wanting to go back to school (for the third time now), but have been torn between law school overseas (because all the law programs in North America now seem to be business focused, but some law schools in Europe have programs on international human rights law) or maybe astrophysics (if I can hack the science now that I'm older and not lazy like I was in high school). Then again, I'm not keen on going into debt again to pay some institution for subjects I can learn on my own, so I might not go back for anything at all.

Lately though, I've been leaning towards studying astronomy and astrophysics because law (particularly human rights law), for the most part, seems too easy in a way. Not to sound conceited or arrogant, but a lot of the issues in human rights seem to have straight-forward, logical, sane solutions. The problem though is that people en masse aren't sane or logical or straight-forward necessarily. Work in human rights dwindles down to plain and outright politics (which I understand, but don't love; frankly, I think politics is b/s, and I never even played office politics when I was working). Funny enough, as a teenager my family told me I should probably go into politics because I'm passionate about some issues and I have strong opinions on most things. My response was "Hell no". ;) It seems like with human rights, being involved in politics is unavoidable. At some point, you get dragged into it. Human rights work is also terribly emotionally draining and exhausting. Even just reading and writing about it can zap you for a few days. I can only imagine what it's like if I was dealing directly with a human rights case. As rational as a person can be, some cases will just get to you because you will feel helpless at times and you will feel frustrated because you feel that you just can't help so-and-so or some group of people.

Why astronomy and astrophysics? For me, it's clear. It's time for humans to be able to get off this planet. It's time to colonize (moon, Mars, Jupiter's moons, etc.), and I really plan on being one of the first to go. (Leave me to my dreams people!). Sure there's some politics involved with convincing governments to fund space programs, but those politics are arguably less stressful than the politics in most (probably all) human rights cases.

I'm not saying I'm going to ignore human rights issues. Even if humans do begin to colonize other worlds, inevitably these issues will come along for the ride (get too many people in one small boat and inevitably some will start fighting). It's important to understand these issues, so we do not make the same mistakes over and over. In some distant future, if we manage to be able to travel "to the stars", I also think that space travel should be a human right (so long as it is feasible, as under our current economic system, it may not be feasible for a long time). This idea stems from the opinion that travelling today should also be considered a human right. Human rights law as it exists now allows nations/countries to have border controls. I think this is an obsolete idea today. Border controls are tools of nationalism. Nationalism has no place in the today's world - certainly not in a world where we can communicate all over the world in an instant making friends who live on the other side of the world; and also travel to anywhere in the world in less than a day. People should be able to freely travel with no fear or chance of being unreasonably held in a foreign country; and to properly ensure that, border controls need to be eliminated. World travel should be a human right and, in the distant future, space travel should be a human right.

In my opinion, if humans want to survive and if we want to see our civilization last, it's important that we look beyond Earth as a place to live. Not saying that everyone has to race to get off the planet. Certainly, there are some people who might want to stay here; and definitely, there should be a population remaining on Earth, but I do think the option to live elsewhere is important for our civilization. As our world population continues to grow, we are more pressed for space to live than when humans first landed on the moon 42 years ago. (You'd think humans would have landed on Mars by now! But well... it was really politics that got us to the moon... another rant, another time.)

Throughout history, humans have proven to be adventurous and there have always been explorers. What happened to this sense of adventure? Where are the explorers now? Are some people (*cough* politicians *cough*) just self-satisfied with life as it is that they don't want to know more about the universe? Have some people just given up on the idea of space travel? Why don't we put more pressure on our governments world-wide to emphasize space programs? (Note: has anyone else besides me noticed that there are no political parties devoted to promoting space travel and continued studies and research in the relevant fields? I may not like our political systems, but sadly you have to work within the framework that's already in place to make the changes you want. I dislike politics and I don't want to start my own political party, so someone please start a "Space Party" or something like that. "New Millennium Party", maybe? Something!)

That being said, space programs like NASA's should be open to everyone, not just U.S. citizens. More accurately, it should be turned into an international program. Failing that, we need to start an international space program. The European Space Agency (ESA) is a good start. Maybe they could merge NASA and ESA and start including other countries. (Note: It looks like they may have started this process. See "International consensus on joint space exploration".)

There is also commercial spaceflight and space tourism. As pessimistic as I can be about putting the future of human civilization in the hands of a few corporations, I think that commercial ventures in spaceflight will get us into space sooner than government ventures alone. Governments no longer have to contend with other governments, but also with other corporations - corporations that have more money than governments to spend on building spacecrafts. My hope is that the corporations and the governments will be able to co-operate on space ventures in order to bring the reality of space travel to humans sooner. (If you read various articles on space.com, it does look like this process is starting.)

In the meantime, I'm going to refresh my knowledge of basic astronomy and physics. My personal home study curriculum now includes anatomy, physiology, astronomy, physics, some languages (Korean and Spanish; for Chinese, I've decided to concentrate on the reading and writing instead of the oral language) and a few other subjects of personal interest. All this on top of taekwondo training right now and my other personal goal of writing at least one novel in the science fiction and fantasy genres (oh yeah, another reason why I should refresh my knowledge of astronomy). Eek! Loads to do.

˜˜˜C Your local knowledge junkie

Link: A Review of Paper.li: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

While the reviewer in the above link seems to be fair in listing the pros and cons, I think the cons far outweigh the pros (I think the reviewer was thinking of the number of pros versus cons while I'm thinking about the value of each pro and con). It's not just "buggy" if something is attributed to the wrong person, it's an issue of "moral rights" of the author/creator. (Side note: Do people not remember the ban on plagiarism in school? It's closely related to moral rights.)

"Promotes the paper as something you created"

I have a problem with this. The "newspaper" created by paper.li is done using your Twitter account (people can also sign up using their  Facebook account, which I think is cause for great concern considering that most people do not post publicly on Facebook), but the paper itself isn't your creation as you didn't write the content (if you're lucky, maybe some of your tweets will be in it) nor have you personally selected each "article" in the paper. Paper.li calls its users "publishers" and "editors", though the job of a newspaper editor is more involved than just selecting a feed. An editor has to actually read the content first before publishing (also editing the article for typos, grammar, spelling, and appropriate content).

To be fair, I did set up a paper.li account. I don't like their Privacy Policy, but seeing as I don't have a lot of information about myself on my Twitter profile, I don't have much to worry about really. Since the review (see link above), paper.li did put in the ability to remove content off of a paper as well as add some additional content filters in the initial setup for a new paper. An example of a paper.li "newspaper" is one set up by HBO for the series Game of Thrones (which I have seen before, but didn't bother reading since I was more interested in following @GameOfThrones on Twitter directly) - see Game of Thrones. As you can see, most of the "articles" are related to Game of Throne or A Song of Ice and Fire.

Despite the added controls, I still don't see a good reason to use paper.li. Paper.li can dress itself up and call its aggregated feeds "newspapers", but they really are still just aggregated feeds, albeit published feeds versus private feeds like in Google Reader. I guess that's where my problem really lies with paper.li. It's just a glorified content aggregator, especially now since they've added the ability to include RSS feeds into your "newspaper"; however, unlike something like Google Reader, people aren't reading these feeds before they are published in aggregate as a "newspaper".  I have to question why I would want to read someone's paper.li "newspaper" if chances are they haven't read everything that's being put into their "newspaper". Removing content from the "newspaper" after it's been published still doesn't help because I could have read the content before it was removed by the "publisher".

At least when I see stuff on someone's Tumblr, I know that that person has monitored what he/she posted. Even if some people get a little carried away with reblogging pictures and animated gifs, at least I get a sense of what that person likes.

It just seems that the content on any "newspaper" created on paper.li can be found elsewhere. Paper.li would like us to think that it's a great way to share stuff that you're interested in, but how is it actively sharing when technically its users are passively sharing stuff they haven't necessarily even read yet? Paper.li just feels very impersonal and hardly social. As nateonthenet.com commented on my Google+ post about paper.li, "yet another service trying to make money on the back of an existing service without bringing anything particularly new to the table." Paper.li does indeed put ads on every "newspaper" that's created.

The other thing about paper.li that is unsettling is this feeling that I could be spending huge amounts of time on that one site setting up different "newspapers" hoping that people will actually read them, but the truth is that the users on there are busy setting up "newspapers", not reading them. Paper.li makes no distinction between a user who's a "publisher" versus a user who's a reader. Like I said, paper.li feels very impersonal, but on top of it, I feel like there's no real audience. (And I feel like I wasted some time today, but then again I ended up writing a blog and me writing something is always a good thing).

I'd much rather blog and micro-blog. :D Yay for blogging, where bloggers can be publishers, editors, writers, and promoters of their own content; and for micro-blogging where you can actively share stuff with others.

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See also an older review of paper.li: Paper.li: Create your own Twitter newspaper.

As mentioned in my previous post, I failed to find a decent replacement for Google Reader. Honestly, I didn't think there would be a feed reader that would do what I wanted it to do (but I still wanted to look around). Thus, I had to keep in mind alternative solutions for maintaining an archive of interesting items I've found in Google Reader.

One option that some people seem happy with is a web browser extension called Reader Sharer. There are two versions of this extension. The second version is Reader Sharer (Original Style), which retains the styling of the new Google Reader. Other than the styling differences, Reader Sharer (Original Style) does exactly the same as Reader Sharer. You can install either version of Reader Sharer depending on which style you prefer.

ReaderSharer Restores Sharing Options For New Google Reader [Chrome] reviews Reader Sharer, which includes styling changes to the new Google Reader. There has been a recent update to Reader Sharer since that review, so I'll note what you can expect to see if you install Reader Sharer.

Quickly, I'll review what you see in Google Reader's new interface. On the left-hand side, there are links to 'Home', 'All Items', 'Explore', and 'Subscriptions'. Using the drop-down arrow on 'All Items', there's links to 'Starred Items', 'Trends', and 'Browse for Stuff'. Click the drop-down on 'Explore' to see recommendations. Clicking the drop-down on 'Subscriptions' will let you see your subscriptions. On a new item, you'll see a star, the +1 button, the Google+ share button (this is new as of writing this blog article - see Send Stories from Google Reader to Google+ with the New Share Button), 'Email', the 'Mark as Read' checkbox, 'Send To', and 'Add Tags'.

Installing Reader Sharer will add these links back to the left-hand side of Google Reader - 'Your Shared Items', 'Notes', 'Your Liked Items', and 'People You Follow'. The first three are found between 'Your Starred Items', and 'Trends'. 'People You Follow' appears before 'Explore'. Click the drop-down to see the people you were following. A link to the 'Sharing Settings' is located there as well. On each item, Reader Sharer adds back the 'Like' button, the 'Share' button, and the 'Share with Note' button. Using 'Share' or 'Share with Note' will put the item onto your 'Shared Items' page. Thus, you have your archive of interesting items back.

While some people are happy with Reader Sharer installed, I see this as a temporary fix. Reader Sharer is a good extension as it does what it says it will do. However, I do think that this 'fix' will work only as long as Google maintains the archive of 'Shared Items', 'Followers', 'Liked Items', etc. As for the public pages, there's no guarantee that Google will maintain those.

Regarding the new Google+ share button: There is one glitch I've noticed. After marking an item as 'read', I can't go back to that item and uncheck the box. The 'Mark as Read'checkbox is there for unread items only. Basically, I can't mark the item as unread. Problematic if the automatically marking as read option is on for expanded view or if you just marked the item as read by accident.

Although Reader Sharer adds back the old 'Share' button to Google Reader and I can continue to add items to my 'Shared Items' public page for now, I've decided to find another way to publicly archive interesting items. I realize that since the +1s show up on my Google+ profile page, this is actually a public archive of things I've found interesting all over the 'net. However, I want something that just publicly archives the interesting items from my Google Reader. Basically, I'm trying to find a way to replace my 'Shared Items' public page in case Google does eventually take down those pages. I decided that my best options for a replacement were blogging sites.

I currently use a WordPress blog, so naturally I thought I could make another WordPress blog. I also thought of Blogger since Google owns Blogger. I wasn't interested in Blogger before because I've been pretty happy with WordPress. I should point out that my WordPress is not hosted on WordPress.com, but it's the downloaded WordPress on a server that I use. I use a Linode server to which I have admin access. Basically, I have pretty good control over my WordPress blog. I decided to check out Blogger in comparison to WordPress. Blogger does allow you to export your blog as well, but it's still not as good as WordPress in many ways. For one thing, WordPress has plugins you can install to do a variety of things. While Blogger has a layout and design interface you can use to help you skin your blog, actually writing CSS to skin your blog gives you more flexibility than any layout and design interface. However, the layout and design interface has the benefits of being fairly quick in comparison to writing code for a web page. I note that Blogger allows followers, which makes it a social blog, while WordPress is more of traditional blog. Since Blogger is owned by Google, I wouldn't be surprised if it's integrated into Google+ at some point. Maybe it won't be, but I just wouldn't be surprised if it is.

Lastly, I could set up another Tumblr blog. I've been using Tumblr for a while now as something in between traditional blogging like I do on here versus micro-blogging like I do on Plurk and Twitter. Tumblr offers features that WordPress does not have and that's followers and reblogs. Tumblr is a social blogging site like Blogger, but the reblogs like the retweets on Twitter adds a more social environment. Thus, I've found it useful to have both a WordPress blog and a Tumblr blog. Via a plugin to WordPress, my blog posts to Tumblr when I publish an article on here. Tumblr does have a way to export your blog posts, but it's via a Mac app they've created. I do happen to have an old MacBook, so I do have a way to export my Tumblr posts.

I decided to set up another Tumblr blog to use as my public archive of interesting items from Google Reader. I decided to use Tumblr because like WordPress, I can skin the site with my own CSS. I still need to get around to skinning my WordPress blog and my main Tumblr with CSS. For now, I'm using Tumblr themes, which are frankly nicer than the themes on Blogger. My main Tumblr is Pneumatic Blogging and my new Tumblr for feed items is Pneumatise Your Brain. I posted a few items onto 'Pneumatise Your Brain' that I had already shared on my Google Reader.

A lot of people have been upset about the 'Shared Items' archive and not having access to it. With Reader Sharer, they do again for now. All of the data on a Google Reader account is available to the account holder to download. Unfortunately, aside from the subscriptions, everything else is saved in json files. I spent some time looking for a way to output the json files as html, but the best I could find was json to html. The output wasn't pretty. The information is there, but then again the information is in the json file readable along with the code in a text editor. Plus, I didn't see how to copy the html into a file I could save (it really wasn't pretty). I ended up just going to my 'Shared Items' public pages and manually saving each page as html files onto my computer. It actually took me a shorter amount of time than trying to find a way to output the json files in a way that was nicely readable. Tedious as hell manually saving each page, but at least I have the information in a format that is easier to read.

Back to Google Reader. With my new Tumblr set up as my public archive, I can now send items in my Google Reader to my Tumblr. This won't be as easy as using the old 'Share' button. It really was convenient. Just one click and presto, the item in my Google Reader was on my public 'Shared Items' page.

Normally, I share items in my social media sites by copying and pasting the url of whatever it is I'm wanting to share. Thus, I've never really used the 'Send To' button, but I probably should now as it is more convenient than copying and pasting the urls of dozens of web pages (depends on how many items I read in my Google Reader each time). The 'Send To' feature isn't new on Google Reader, it's been there for a few years now. It's also customizable. Google has some sites set up on there already such as Blogger, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. The other sites I don't use. MySpace I haven't signed into in ages. You can check mark the ones listed already to have them appear in the 'Send To' drop-down menu. Other sites you have to add manually.

Since I was considering using a WordPress blog as an archive, I checked to see how to add a WordPress blog to the 'Send To' in order to show my blog as an option in the drop-down menu. Follow the instructions on Using Google Reader Sent To with WordPress. It works. :D Since Tumblr and Blogger were already listed, I didn't have to add them manually.

If you have other sites you want to send to, you can use 'Add to Any' as mentioned in this article, Google Reader's Send To Feature.

I tried adding Plurk to the 'Send To' as well, but I'm not sure what the post url would be. If anyone knows, please comment!

With the 'Send To' feature set up, I'm ready to share stuff from my Google Reader again. (Hopefully they'll fix the missing 'Mark as Read' checkbox or I might have to use Feedly instead.)

Here's a quick review of my sharing options now:

1. +1 the item (the item will show up on my Google+ profile +1 tab; all +1s are public) 2. +1 the item and share on Google+ (can select Public, Extended Circles, Circles; or can list names of Circles; or can list names of people) 3. share the item on Google+ (like #2 above) 4. send the item to my WordPress blog (I can save the post as a draft) 5. send the item to my Blogger blog (if I ever decide to use it; I set one up while checking out Blogger's features; can also 'save as draft') 6. send the item to my Tumblr blog (if you have more than one Tumblr blog, the pop-up window has an option to select which blog; you can also 'save as draft') 7. send the item to my Twitter account 8. send the item in email to a person or persons (note that you can email the item to yourself at another account if you want to privately archive it; why is it people seem to forget about email?)

I didn't bother checking the box to add Facebook to the 'Send To' drop-down menu since I'm not planning on sharing on Facebook.

With Reader Sharer installed, I have the option again to 'Share' or 'Share with Note' for now, but I think I rather like sharing on Tumblr.

(There is an alternative to using Reader Sharer and setting up a blog as an archive. Lipsumarium has written a script, called Google Reader Share, that will add a 'Share' button to Google Reader as well as allowing people to follow their friends again by typing in their email addresses. I haven't tried this script and I'm not entirely sure I would trust just anyone on the 'net. I mention this only in case others are willing to try it. I don't necessarily recommend it.

I was never a big user of 'Following' others on Google Reader, but I know some people were. In the old version of Google Reader, your 'Shared Items' did not have to go onto the public pages. Some people opted to share their items with specific groups of people as set up in their Gmail contacts. With the new Google Reader interface, they couldn't do this anymore (not unless they install Reader Sharer). How to Share Privately With the New Google Reader briefly discusses this issue.

Here are the ways you can share privately from Google Reader:

1. Email. I'm guessing this is a not-so-attractive option for some people because they might know people they want to share with, but they don't have the email addresses for those people. People are still generally private about their email addresses which is one reason why social media sites are popular.

2. Share on Google+ to a specific Circle, Circles, friend, or friends. (You can create a Circle of just your Reader friends and share only to them.) To be clear, +1s are always public. So, if you want to share privately with someone, don't use the +1 button. Unfortunately for people who weren't already signed up with Google+ when Google Reader's interface was changed, people were actually missing a way to share the item aside from the +1 button and the 'Send To' feature. The 'Share' box in the top black bar was missing since they weren't Google+ users. That likely explains the trouble for most people. Google has made it more obvious how to share on Google Reader now with the new Google+ share button shown next to the +1 button. Some people might still be miffed at having to use Google+ if they weren't intending on using it. They will have to privately share using email or the 'Send To' feature.

3. Use the 'Send To' feature to share to a social media site that your followers are using.

Another way you can share items privately with others is through IM. Like email, it seems like people have forgotten about IM. If people are using Google Reader, they all can use Google's chat feature in Gmail. Copy and paste the url into your chat window to share privately with someone.

Next, I'm going to look at Feedly again in comparison to Google Reader - just in case they don't fix the missing 'Mark as Read' checkbox on already read items. Maybe I'll also play around with the layout of it. I do admit it looks prettier than Google Reader. Makes reading fun. :)

I'll also go through some more 'Shared Items' on my Google Reader and post some of them to my new Tumblr blog. Note to self to find time to do some CSS for my Tumblr blogs.

˜˜˜C