My blogroll

If you read my blog through syndication, you won't know what I'm talking about. However, if you read it from here, you have probably noticed the long list of blogs cluttering up the right side of the screen. I use newsgator to read blogs, and also to generate my blogroll. Unfortunately, although the list seems organized in the newsgator interface, the dump on my web page is just an alphabetized list of the blogs I read. I do like that the list is dynamic - if I drop or add a blog, my blogroll is updated in a few minutes, so if you're curios what I like to know about, all you have to do is look. I add blogs all the time, and drop them just as often (My rules are simple. If a blog looks relevant or interesting, I subscribe. If I catch myself selecting the "mark all as read" link without reading anything other than the headlines, I dump it). Sometimes, I catch myself skipping the second part of this rule. In fact, I realized this last night when I dumped Scoble's feed to the ether for the umpteenth straight day. As a blogger, I feel like I'm supposed to read Scoble (he's like the king of blogging :}), but I just can't justify ignoring my rules anymore.

I would be happy to comment on every blog I read, but I'll just give you the highlights and exceptions (I'm leaving out hyperlinks - you can find the subscription link on my blog).

If you work with software, I can't recommend joelonsoftware and codinghorror enough. Larry Osterman's blog, Scott Hanselman's blog and secretGeek are excellent tier two (and relatively low output) supplements.

I read a ton of testing blogs. Other than Bj's imtesty blog and (occasionally) testingreflections, none are very prolific nor highly interesting (to me), but I keep reading waiting to be inspired. Joe Strazzere and Keith Stobie almost always have some great things to say, but they post even less than I do :}

I also read blogs of personal interest. I read Kevin Smith's blog because I love his movies (maybe not Jersey Girl), and I"m a huge BNL fan, so I read their blog too. I, of course, also read minimsft and the other "MS is going to fail" blogs...probably for the same reason I read Dilbert, Ctrl-Alt-Delete, bug bash and user friendly - I like to be entertained.

That's only a dent in the list, but I've been thinking about writing a post like this for some time, and wanted to do it before I got back to focusing on testing and quality.

I'm always happy to comment on what I read, or give suggestions on what to read to find out more