How do you read blogs?

Teaching grandma to suck eggs warning - if you know all about blog reader/amalgamation applications this will not be very exciting - otherwise, do read on.

If you read a fair number of blogs by ploughing through a list one after another, it can be more than a little tedious. But there is a way around it.

It's called a blog reader - I briefly mentioned these a few weeks ago, but I've been asked to expand a bit. These are free bits of web software that amalgamate all the latest from your favourite blogs in chronological order, so you see just what's new from your favourites.

I personally use Google Reader (click more from the menu at the top left of the Google home page (UK or US) and select Reader) - it's straightforward and has the bonus that if you use the i

Google home page (click iGoogle in the top right hand corner of the Google home page), you can pop in a reader widget so every time you go into Google you see a list of any new posts from your favourite blogs.

The image at the top is the reader list in iGoogle - it looks a bit dull and texty, but if you click on any of the items, the whole post pops up including pictures, as in the example on the left.

Alternatives include Bloglines, Netvibes , Newsgator and Yahoo. To make things even easier, you can add many blogs to one of these readers with little more than a single click, once you've got a login.

If you look in the right hand column on my blog, near the top and under the link to my website, it says Subscribe To, then there's Posts and Comments - if you drop down the Posts list using the little down arrow at the end of it you'll see all these readers listed. Choose your pet reader and click to add the blog to the reader... and it's done.

You'll never miss another entry on your favourite blog.

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5. However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense

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