BTW, the "Commonplaces" album has its own feed if you want to follow it:

http://unbecominglevity.blogharbor.com/blog/Photos/Commonplaces/index.xml

Those of you that enjoy the thoroughly wonderful blog Aces Full of Links (which is written by my friend James) have probably noticed it seemed to be down for most of the day today, and now although visible is not available for commenting.  James is having server issues and asks that you please bear with him while he gets things back in order.

Here's to you Aces Full.  Get well soon!

So the other day I was commenting on a blog where the authors were working on a new layout.  I spotted some strange wrapping issues and uploaded a screenshot of my browser window for them to look at.  Repeatedly, whenever the screenshot was on the screen, I caught myself trying to click the browser's back button in the screenshot.  Needless to say, each time I did this was followed by a disjointed moment of confusion where I wondered why it wasn't working.  Is my browser locked up?  What's going on?  After a second or so the realization would come.  You dummy, that's not your browser, that's a picture of your browser.

I think it served as a reminder of how much we do automatically once we've "learned" to do it.  The entire metaphor--hand to mouse, mouse to cursor, cursor to back button, click--all automatic and interpretted by the brain as "go back".

Anyway, next time I upload a screenshot of the browser, I think I'll leave the menu and toolbar out of it.

Well apparently somebody really liked my "Why I am an Atheist" post yesterday because they linked me up over on StumbleUpon.com.  The end result?  Last night my blog had over 3,700 hits on that article, and 860 hits on another article I linked to from within that article.  Total bandwidth consumed 319,389,696 bytes.  That's about 304.5 Mb, or a tenth of my monthly bandwidth.

Not that I mind!  I'm excited that my hits have temporarily tripled... always nice to have readers.  (Hopefully we'll get some new regulars here at ULev.)  But I was a little worried about my bandwidth, so I ordered up another 5 Gb from BlogHarbor just for this month, just in case.  In all likelihood I probably won't need it, but better safe than sorry.

The last time something like this happened was when I entered a submission to one of FARK's photoshop contests. That time the graphic I had linked to got so many hits I had to delete it... like 9,000 in the first hour.  Crazy!

As of a couple days ago, Unbecoming Levity has joined Planet Atheism as a contributing feed.  You might have spotted the new link in my sidebar under "Badges and Doodads".  Planet Atheism is a feed aggregator for a large number (75 at present, and counting) of atheist-themed blogs.  This makes it a very nice source for catching up on atheist bloggers and seeing what's going down in the non-believer blog-o-sphere.

ULev regulars will no doubt be thinking that people reading Planet Atheism will not want to hear about my new teeth or the funny thing my cats did the other day.  I agree.  That's why there's a new topic in my topics sidebar called "PlanetAtheism".  The Planet Atheism aggregator only subscribes to that topic, so not every article on ULev will be dumped onto Planet Atheism's feed (much to their relief I'm sure!)  This is possible because Blog Harbor offers category-driven blogs, where each category can have its own RSS feed.

Belonging to Planet Atheism has already caused an uptick in my hits, and brought new commenters to Unbecoming Levity, for which I am very grateful.  I encourage anyone who has an atheist themed blog (or a category-driven blog with occasional articles of interest to atheists) to contact the proprietor of Planet Atheism and see about inclusion.  (If you're curious, here's their FAQ.)

Even if you don't, at least drop the Planet Atheism feed into your aggregator (Google Reader, Bloglines, whatever...) and you will never run short of articles of interest to atheists.