Blog Changes.

You may have noticed that I have made a few small changes to this blog - some weeks ago, I have added the "quick response" tick boxes at the end of each post. They have actually been used already!

Depending on how much use they will see during the next weeks and months, they will either stay or go. And you are, of course, welcome to comment on them - including suggestions for other reaction boxes (like "that was so boring I fell asleep" or "I see pink ponies dancing now").

Another change, one more important for me (and one that will be much more obvious) is that I will insert jump breaks into long posts in the future. This means that to read one of the longer posts, you will have to click for it. Those of you getting this blog via RSS feed will also have to click on the link to read the full post.

Why?


Because Germany has a really, really cool copyright collection society (called VG Wort) that accepts Internet texts.  Submission of texts involves adding a tiny picture to the text that serves as a counter and then waiting if the text will get enough hits during the year. If it does, the author will get a little money. (There's long and elaborate texts in the 'Net, explaining how to do the registration process and how to build in the counters. It's not that hard, though it does involve a few extra steps.) However, the counting will only be done if the text is read from its own proper page, not from a digest page like the front page of this blogspot blog.

So if I'm offered the chance for some money for something that I do anyway, I am of course going to jump at it - and jump break for it. Fortunately, Blogger has added the jump break as a feature recently, so longer texts will be truncated by a jump in the future, just like this one here. If you clicked on the link to read the full text, you are redirected to the page of the post, with its own specific URL - and thus your visit will count for my visit stats at VG Wort. (I hope so. At least all German visitors will be counted.) For shorter texts, nothing will change - you will be able to read the texts on the blog front page as you are used to, without extra clicks required.

(And should I find out that English language texts are not eligible for the process... you will get a message and no further jumps.)