The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

THE LAST DITCH

Housekeeping

Published by Tom

on

I have been with Typepad for a while now and I find it more elegant and easy to work with than Blogger. As it should be. It costs money. Blogger is free.

I have had complaints from readers who find it hard to comment here. That's bad. Reading my own blog is boring, because I know what I am going to say! My contributions are the price I pay to hear your views on issues that I care about. Many Typepad users have taken this up with the company and improvements are promised. In the meantime, it all gets easier if you can take a moment to register. The blog will "remember" you and commenting should become simpler. If you are a regular commenter, I would be grateful if you could take a moment to do it.

The Last Ditch has just moved to the latest version of Typepad. I may try some new features in the coming weeks. It's tempting to go to town with all the gizmos on offer, but I am aware that's not why you come here. Many readers visit the way I do other blogs (when I occasionally exit the wonderful Google Reader); scanning the post to see if it's of interest and moving on before the page has finished loading. I have rearranged the layout so that you should not have to wait for fripperies to load before you get the text. I hope this is working for you.

Please let me know in the comments if there are improvements I can make to your experience here. I began my blogging career thinking a blog was an electronic soap box. In fact, hard to believe, I first blogged before even reading another blog. Such arrogance! I have learned that blogging is a conversation and I love it. Anything I can do to help you join in, I will.

As for other bloggers reading this, I have just one request. If you are a wordy sort, please set your RSS feed to deliver a short extract, not the whole thing. Some of my favourite blogs are eclectic, which means some posts are fascinating to me and others are, erm, not. Scrolling pages of Google Reader to get past the "erm, not" posts is a waste of my waning life. Thanks a lot.

4 responses to “Housekeeping”

  1. Young Mr. Brown Avatar
    Young Mr. Brown

    Well, I’m about as untechnical as it is possible to be, and I’ve never had any trouble commenting on your blog.
    I’m interested that you think that Typepad is worth the money. I must confess that I am simply amazed that Blogger is free. It’s a wonderful bargain.
    It’s interesting to read about the way you began your blogging career – since your blog was one of my inspirations to start blogging!
    p.s. RSS feed? What’s an RSS feed? 🙂

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  2. Tom Paine Avatar
    Tom Paine

    If I have inspired you to start, then my blogging career has not been in vain. Even if the inspiration was along the lines of “I could do better than that.” Thanks for the feedback. I am glad to hear you have no problem commenting. Please keep doing so.

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  3. www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawnPURfysCPFfTXVmpg88Vode0givXEDL8M Avatar
    www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawnPURfysCPFfTXVmpg88Vode0givXEDL8M

    Shades here, although it looks like I might have a gobbledygook name as I was signed in via Google.
    I prefer to read RSS untruncated in Google reader as I find that NEXT ITEM button a handy way to scroll past eclectic rambles. Shame the wheel doesn’t scroll when the mouse is over the button though.
    (Your mileage may vary).

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  4. jmb Avatar
    jmb

    You are the only blog of the many I read (319 on my reader) which uses Typepad. I did register but could not get my avatar photo to upload so tend not to sign in on the occasions I leave a comment. Perhaps the new version will allow it now. However your blog now seems to remember my details, although it did not for quite a while.
    Unfortunately in Bloglines, the reader I use, your posts are truncated to a bare couple of lines, words all jammed together and so I have to hop over here every time to see what you are writing/ranting about. 🙂 I always assumed it was something you did to the feed, since very few of my other blog reads do this. I actually prefer a full post feed myself. Bloglines delivers all the posts, since you last checked that particular blog, one after another in one long page for each blog and it is easy to whip down multiple posts quickly and look only at the ones which are of interest. Unlike Google reader where you have to click on each title to expand it, unless there is a simpler way which I don’t know about. What is Shades talking about?
    The good thing about Google reader is that it keeps the posts whereas once you have clicked on the blog in bloglines the posts are gone after you leave the feed page. So I do have Google reader set up too, for handy reference. But I started with Bloglines very early in my blogging and when I compared it with Google reader actually preferred to keep using it.
    So far I have been lucky with Blogger, although I was closed down as a suspected spam blog for a couple of days. People are only too willing to trash Blogger at every opportunity they can but it has made it very easy for a lot of people to get started with blogging and surely that is a good thing.

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Tom is a retired international lawyer. He was a partner in a City of London law firm and spent almost twenty years abroad serving clients from all over the world.

Returning to London on retirement in 2011, he was dismayed to discover how much liberty had been lost in the UK while he was away.

He’s a classical liberal (libertarian, if you must) who, like his illustrious namesake, considers that

“…government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.”

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