You’ve heard that “nothing good happens after midnight.” Are you willing to risk it? Are you ready to be plunged into email darkness, unable to read A Fresh Perspective without a cheap flashlight?
Don’t worry, I have no plans – now or ever – to turn off the lights here or to charge you to read my absolutely charming, insightful, incisive, occasionally witty, occasionally baffling, usually random, never plagiarized, and frequently caffeine-deprived thoughts, unless they come on dead trees or insidious whispers through your Kindle reader.
I’m posting this to make a point or two:
1) We’ve reached a major milestone, here at A Fresh Perspective. I’d serve up champagne and last week’s decadent lunch to celebrate, but it’s hard to upload that through the Internet. You’ll just have to imagine it, go into the kitchen and play with your own food, and throw a little party for yourself. I insist. We now have sixteen subscribers! Seems like only yesterday, it was twelve.* Watch out, New York Times…
2) Did that hyperbolic, fear-of-imminent-shortage and vaguely suggestive deadline headline capture your attention and get your heart racing, just a teeny, tiny bit? Oh, go on, you can admit it here. You’re among friends. Beware this kind of pitch. The only real time limit for most such offers is how long it takes the person making them to go out of business if they can’t close a sale. Unless we’re talking about fresh, seasonal produce. There’s nothing funny about rotting carrots. Or these hot little numbers, plucked in their prime and saved from a second unseasonal blast of Arctic iciness in Houston:
Christmas Bounty! Festive Red & Green Pequin
Peppers, Freshly Plucked
3) I would love it if you’d subscribe. Because that makes it easier for me to sneak into your inbox, climb up the mountain of spam, and say, “Hi!” You’ll never have to check for updates – and I know what a pain that must be, given my erratic, fits-and-starts, spur of the moment “publishing schedule” – fresh posts will be delivered on a shimmery electronic platter, by the deferential butler bot. And that’s all I’ll send you. No, “Please, please, please, for the love of all that’s good and holy, buy my books!” Nope. It’s not that kind of subscription thingy. It’s also not my personal contact list (if you’re a Friend on Facebook, you should have found that link on my page by now). If you missed the memo about me leaving Facebook, that’s okay – just go look for it on my profile page. I’m not leaving here.
What’s the Catch?
The catch is that after you subscribe, you’ll need to watch your inbox and your spam folder for an email from:
A Fresh Perspective <donotreply@wordpress.com>
The subject line is this:
[Subscribe] Comments on A Fresh Perspective – please confirm
Much as I would love to make this easier for you – clickety-click, lickety-split, and you’re in like Flynn – quenching the flames on the burning hoops or allowing you to just walk around them would be risking non-compliance with various international laws and privacy best practices. (Sorry, Mitch!) Oh, don’t look at me as if to say you know I could tweak a snippet of code, flip a bit, whip up a batch of bat files or something – I won’t do it. But just to prove my inner child, my adversarial advocate, the little voice that wants to cry, “But he made me do it!” isn’t dead yet either, I did the due diligence and got the good folks at JetPack and Automattic to say they’d happily take the cred–er, blame:
Hi Holly,
Thanks for the follow-up question! As my colleague mentioned, this feature is opt-in due to requirements of spam and privacy laws to prevent anyone from being able to subscribe anyone else without their consent. Feel free to blame us or the laws we’re following for the opt-in requirement 🙂
Don’t hesitate to reach out if we can help with anything else, and have an awesome Friday!
Chase L
Happiness Engineer, Automattic
They’re very responsive people. We’re going to do this their way.
* If you’re very observant, you’ll realize I’m gently mocking JetPack’s claim over there in the right sidebar that says, “Join 5,704 other subscribers.” No, if you’ve subscribed, you’re one of the Special Sixteen. It’s only 5,704 if you add in Twitter followers, and I know for a fact that at least two of mine are deceased. 3,201 for sure never read anything I post here or on Twitter, and at least 8 are Russian bots and 19 are “Buy Twitter Followers Cheap!” bots. You may wonder why I don’t block those. I’ll confess: It amuses me to throw them keywords and make them talk to each other. If you’re one of the “Founding Feedburners,” you’re extra special. Try not to gloat. Do be glad that you got in on the ground floor, as rumors of Feedburner’s demise abound, and Google could pull that plug at any time.
In Case You Think I’m Joking…
I never joke about Hell freezing over. Here’s the proof:
My Son’s First Real Snowman
My son’s 21. The snowman was tall enough to last three days in Houston, where it never really got below freezing during the day.
Ahh, Sweet Sixteen. No wonder you are afloat. Or maybe you came unhinged during the Macy’s Parade? 🙂
I wish you and the snowman the best in longevity!
Cheers,
Mitch
Afloat, unhinged, bit of both! Like the movie “Up!” Or something. 😀 Rereading this, I think I should try a bit of poetry this weekend. I seem to be having a thing for alliteration and meter. Except that my next-door neighbor, the one who ruined all my plans to quietly turn out the lights and deactivate my Facebook account, just reminded me it’s Christmas cookie and wassailing season (okay, gotta google this one – I’ve sung about it often enough, pretending to have a clue what it was, but now have to admit I don’t). I do, however, have an awesome recipe for Bourbon Balls. (Nilla Wafers are just the glue that holds the booze and chocolate together in a perfect suspension. You do not nibble and drive with these things.)
Ahh, Sweet Sixteen. No wonder you are afloat. Or maybe you came unhinged during the Macy’s Parade? 🙂
I wish you and the snowman the best in longevity!
Cheers,
Mitch
Afloat, unhinged, bit of both! Like the movie “Up!” Or something. 😀 Rereading this, I think I should try a bit of poetry this weekend. I seem to be having a thing for alliteration and meter. Except that my next-door neighbor, the one who ruined all my plans to quietly turn out the lights and deactivate my Facebook account, just reminded me it’s Christmas cookie and wassailing season (okay, gotta google this one – I’ve sung about it often enough, pretending to have a clue what it was, but now have to admit I don’t). I do, however, have an awesome recipe for Bourbon Balls. (Nilla Wafers are just the glue that holds the booze and chocolate together in a perfect suspension. You do not nibble and drive with these things.)
Got the email of this post via feedburner, but have just subscribed via WordPress too, Wouldn’t want to risk missing any of your “absolutely charming, insightful, incisive, occasionally witty, occasionally baffling, usually random, never plagiarized, and frequently caffeine-deprived thoughts”.
Does that make me number 17? I would have thought that with your writing as described so wonderfully above by yourself, I would be joining a very long list of subscribers.
Even counting my RSS subscribers, I could fit y’all into my living room for wassail and cookies. Being the introvert that I am, I kind of like doing that virtually, but you’re all so nice, I’d make the stretch outside my comfort zone to do it. #17 would depend – you may be much higher on the list than that, as I think you’re one of the “Founding Feedburners.” That goes back a ways. (I think I converted the old list to the new blog, and there were actually about 20-40 there (I didn’t count, and I am pretty sure Alan J is still on it, so… you get the picture.) It’s not a LONG list, any way you look at it. But it is the BEST list. 🙂 The 16 are via WordPress and counts both Reader and Email subscribers. Counting Twitter subscribers feels like cheating, but honestly, if I let JetPack show numbers WITHOUT “Social,” people would take one look and think it was just too pathetic for words. I can’t have anyone subscribing out of pity…
Feedburner subscribers = 25. (49 are still subscribed to the old blog. Won’t they be surprised if I suddenly point that feed to this one? LOL “It’s ALIVE!!”)
I just did it. Muahahahah… okay, so the only problem there is going to be that 25 of you MIGHT get two copies now.
The NEW one is “A Fresh Perspective.” The OLD one is “It’s All a Matter of Perspective.” And only 25 people are going to come after me with pitchforks. I suspect that those 25, since they bothered to read my note about re-upping on the new feed and DID it, will forgive me. I hope.
Got the email of this post via feedburner, but have just subscribed via WordPress too, Wouldn’t want to risk missing any of your “absolutely charming, insightful, incisive, occasionally witty, occasionally baffling, usually random, never plagiarized, and frequently caffeine-deprived thoughts”.
Does that make me number 17? I would have thought that with your writing as described so wonderfully above by yourself, I would be joining a very long list of subscribers.
Even counting my RSS subscribers, I could fit y’all into my living room for wassail and cookies. Being the introvert that I am, I kind of like doing that virtually, but you’re all so nice, I’d make the stretch outside my comfort zone to do it. #17 would depend – you may be much higher on the list than that, as I think you’re one of the “Founding Feedburners.” That goes back a ways. (I think I converted the old list to the new blog, and there were actually about 20-40 there (I didn’t count, and I am pretty sure Alan J is still on it, so… you get the picture.) It’s not a LONG list, any way you look at it. But it is the BEST list. 🙂 The 16 are via WordPress and counts both Reader and Email subscribers. Counting Twitter subscribers feels like cheating, but honestly, if I let JetPack show numbers WITHOUT “Social,” people would take one look and think it was just too pathetic for words. I can’t have anyone subscribing out of pity…
Feedburner subscribers = 25. (49 are still subscribed to the old blog. Won’t they be surprised if I suddenly point that feed to this one? LOL “It’s ALIVE!!”)
I just did it. Muahahahah… okay, so the only problem there is going to be that 25 of you MIGHT get two copies now.
The NEW one is “A Fresh Perspective.” The OLD one is “It’s All a Matter of Perspective.” And only 25 people are going to come after me with pitchforks. I suspect that those 25, since they bothered to read my note about re-upping on the new feed and DID it, will forgive me. I hope.
Jetpack doesn’t count RSS subscribers, so I’m not one of the 16 or the 5,707. Almost all of the blogs I follow are via RSS. Your post reminds me, though that I need to do something about the never-ending coming demise of Feedburner. It’s not a big deal for me, but Karen has a lot of subscribers on her (mostly) quilting blog. http://karensquilting.com/blog/
Snowman in Houston!! Cool!
I never saw it get anywhere near cold enough for that in the 5 years I lived down there. I didn’t even have a coat — just a windbreaker and some long sleeve shirts.
All that white wet stuff went south of us. We have been dry, dry, dry in west central Arkansas for several months now, though we got 1/2 inch of rain last night. There’s a rumor of winter precipitation around the holiday weekend, but that’s too far out to count on.
Best wishes for Christmas and the New Year!!
Good point! (I mentioned the “Founding Feedburners,” and forgot there ARE other ways to subscribe via RSS. What do you recommend? I think Mitch M uses Flipboard (which I have on my phone and still haven’t figured out how to customize with friends’ blogs – I need to do that).
I don’t quilt. I barely crochet. Karen’s blog is lovely, and I guess we’re ALL in the Christmas cookie spirit right about now!
I hope you get fluffy snow, no dangeously icy roads, and have a Merry Christmas, Mike! (And that goes for the rest of your family, too.)
I used to use Google Reader, but it was shut down in 2013. I tried Feedly, but didn’t care for it. A “new” RSS feed aggregator — The Old Reader — had appeared shortly before Google announced the closure of Reader. I subscribed to that only to find a few months later that, with the overwhelming influx of new subscribers, the public version was going to close with a private version to be available to a limited number.of people. A few days later, though, it was announced that there was new support from an unnamed corporate entity and that Old Reader would stay open. There is a free version and a premium version — which I use. I don’t have any experience with any other aggregators, so can’t make comparisons.
Jetpack doesn’t count RSS subscribers, so I’m not one of the 16 or the 5,707. Almost all of the blogs I follow are via RSS. Your post reminds me, though that I need to do something about the never-ending coming demise of Feedburner. It’s not a big deal for me, but Karen has a lot of subscribers on her (mostly) quilting blog. http://karensquilting.com/blog/
Snowman in Houston!! Cool!
I never saw it get anywhere near cold enough for that in the 5 years I lived down there. I didn’t even have a coat — just a windbreaker and some long sleeve shirts.
All that white wet stuff went south of us. We have been dry, dry, dry in west central Arkansas for several months now, though we got 1/2 inch of rain last night. There’s a rumor of winter precipitation around the holiday weekend, but that’s too far out to count on.
Best wishes for Christmas and the New Year!!
Good point! (I mentioned the “Founding Feedburners,” and forgot there ARE other ways to subscribe via RSS. What do you recommend? I think Mitch M uses Flipboard (which I have on my phone and still haven’t figured out how to customize with friends’ blogs – I need to do that).
I don’t quilt. I barely crochet. Karen’s blog is lovely, and I guess we’re ALL in the Christmas cookie spirit right about now!
I hope you get fluffy snow, no dangeously icy roads, and have a Merry Christmas, Mike! (And that goes for the rest of your family, too.)
I used to use Google Reader, but it was shut down in 2013. I tried Feedly, but didn’t care for it. A “new” RSS feed aggregator — The Old Reader — had appeared shortly before Google announced the closure of Reader. I subscribed to that only to find a few months later that, with the overwhelming influx of new subscribers, the public version was going to close with a private version to be available to a limited number.of people. A few days later, though, it was announced that there was new support from an unnamed corporate entity and that Old Reader would stay open. There is a free version and a premium version — which I use. I don’t have any experience with any other aggregators, so can’t make comparisons.
I have your feed in Flipboard, but I also have it in my Feedreader program (it’s actually called Feedreader lol). This means I shouldn’t miss anything you put out… but I did, since I just added your new feed to my phone & I don’t open the other program all that often. I wonder if that means I’m counted twice… hmmm…
I have your feed in Flipboard, but I also have it in my Feedreader program (it’s actually called Feedreader lol). This means I shouldn’t miss anything you put out… but I did, since I just added your new feed to my phone & I don’t open the other program all that often. I wonder if that means I’m counted twice… hmmm…