Last night I made my first swap at http://www.swaptree.com/, a website that allows you to swap specific books/cds/games that you have for others that you want. At a whim, I entered the collection of books that I want to get rid of, and after a week or so got my first offer of a trade: Crafty Girl: Cool Stuff
The one negative thing about this swapping thing is that I have to actually mail the book. Which means I need to find some sort of packaging materials for it. Mailing it is only $2.80 or so but mailing it is a hassle (one that I’m passing on to Mike). If you think about the fact that I can much more easily donate the books I have to the library and then buy the ones I want, probably for about $4 each, including shipping, from an online vendor, perhaps this swapping thing doesn’t make that much sense. But… how cool is it to have found someone who wants to trade a book on girls’ crafts for one on medieval prayers?
Category: Cool Stuff (Page 4 of 9)
Giant pyramids? Human Sacrifice? Class struggle, environmental degradation and the ultimate collapse of a great North American civilization? It sounds like the tale of the Maya – but it turns out to be that of Cahokia, a great city which achieved greatness in the Mississippi river valley during the 1200’s. Within a span of two centuries, it arose, it flourished and it disappeared.
I’m sad to say that before reading this book review in Salon.com I had never heard of Cahokia or had any hints that any pyramid-building civilization had arisen within what is now US territory. It’s a fascinating concept, and I would love to read the book (Cahokia: Ancient America’s Great City on the Mississippi
I’m a little perplexed as to why I’ve never heard about Cahokia, and any similar sites that might exist. According to the book review: “There are several mound complexes in the Deep South that predate the time of Christ, and one in Louisiana has been dated to 3,400 B.C., well before the building of the Egyptian or Maya pyramids.” Do “we” know anything about those civilizations? Are children learning about them at school? (I know I wasn’t twenty+ years ago).
Anyway, I’ll get the book (not available at our public library) and tell you later what I think 🙂
If you look at the column next to this text, scrolling down a couple of screens, you will find a section called “In my other blogs” with links to the latest entries on my Food Blog and my Human Rights Blog. The feed is there thanks to Rss Include. It’s the same service I’ve been using for a while, but now they have a new and improved version which is easier to use and more sleek. Now, they also offer a paid version (~$37 a year) that allows you to 1) combine all your blog postings into one entry and 2) don’t have the “RSS integration by RSSrssinclude” disclaimer after each feed (which I found very annoying, as I often have several feeds per page). So I happily paid the money (and did not tell Mike 🙂
One of my first challenges was to incorporate the feed for my status on Facebook. I’ve had it for a while, but I wanted to change it to the new system, so that I could get rid of the “RSS integration by RSSrssinclude” phrase under it. Well, let me tell you, that it did not prove easy to do – and I’m still not satisfied with the hack I used. But, in case you are looking to do the same, here are the three choices I found:
-If you want an rss feed to all your notifications, all you have to do is go to
Inbox -> Notifications , look for Subscribe to Notifications and then copy the link that says “Your Notifications”. That’s the url of your notifications feed. You then go to a service like RSS Include, and use it to create a script that you can copy and paste to the page where you want to have your Facebook feed.
The problem with this, is that it includes your notifications rather than your status – and why would you want a feed to that?
-Your next option is to go to http://apps.new.facebook.com/newsfeedrss/ and create a feed there. It’s fairly easy to make, BUT, it will show on your feed not just what you are doing, but also what your friends are doing. And not only I have no interest in broadcasting what they are doing, but it seems like quite the invasion of privacy.
-The workaround that I found is to have a friend (or another account) create a Friends List that includes only you (go to Friends, chose “make a new list”, make it, click on edit and then add your name). Once your friend has done that, have him select the name of the mailing list, then click on “Status Updates” and then copy the link at “Friend’s Status Feed”. Then you go to rss-include.
The one thing I don’t like about this solution is that it includes my whole name – I rather it just include what I type. But until there is a better solution, that’s what I’m using.
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