Catching Up

I have spent the past 2 hours clicking around your extensive blog and I am quite impressed.  Is there a good place to start or is a random trail just as likely to be fruitful?

There’s a post called “Guided Tour” which will give you an overview of all the main sections and features; it also explains how I schedule things (which is extremely regular by blogging standards).  My post “IF” explains my very thorough indexing system, “House Rules” lays out my comment policy, and “How Not To Get Your Comments Posted” elaborates on that further.

But if I’m reading your question correctly, what you really want to know is how I suggest a new reader tackle the back-catalog of almost 1100 posts.  It used to be possible to start with the old ones and slowly catch up, and a few brave and dedicated (and perhaps a bit masochistic) readers still do that.  But if hacking your way across the Amazon Basin with a machete is not your idea of fun, there’s a way that’s probably less daunting.  First, subscribe to the blog and read the new columns as they come out; most of them contain links to older columns, which you could then read as they come up.  Every Saturday I publish a news column entitled “That Was the Week That Was”, made up of about 16-20 short subsections; each item has its own title, and the vast majority of those titles refer back to older posts (each containing a link to the referenced post).  This will lead you to a lot of older columns every week, assuming you have the time!  Also, every Sunday I publish a “Links” column, and the bottom section, “From the Archives”, contains links to the posts from that same week for the past two years; you could click on and read any that sound interesting.

You can also follow me on Twitter, where I share lots of interesting links (many of which later end up in the TW3 and Links columns) and also remind readers of my columns from that same day one, two and (very soon) three years in the past.  Furthermore, at the end of July I’m introducing a new monthly blog feature (as yet unnamed), which will look briefly at all the columns from that month three years before.  Finally, this autumn I plan to put together an e-book where each chapter will be a synthesis of several important columns on particular subjects; this will let newer readers catch up on some older posts in a more convenient format.  I hope to have it ready before Christmas, and I’ll announce it in a special column when it’s ready.

I hope all that helps, and that I continue to impress you and all my readers for a very long time to come!

(Have a question of your own?  Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)