Busy elsewhere…

I’ve been slow to write here of late, largely because of a job change and a lot more blogging at other sites – both of my own and other hosts. I’m now writing on the main page of AMERICAblog, which is pretty great. I’ve been reading AMERICAblog for at least six years and it’s pretty cool to have regular posting privileges at an A-list liberal blog. I’ve been blogging on politics since 2004 and this is my biggest regular platform yet. Definitely stop by and see what I’m up to over there.

All that said, I am long overdue for a bunch of bag reviews. I’ve been using the MEI Executive Overnighter, Tom Bihn Checkpoint Flyer and Tom Bihn Tri-Star for a number of months now and have plenty to say about each bag. I also should probably do a review of the GoLite Jam2.

The point is, even if I’m busy with my other writing projects and professional life, this blog represents a good piece of what I’m interested in when I’m not focused on those other endeavors, so I like to keep it updated. When I don’t do that, I feel like I’m neglecting a part of myself.

Google Reading Level

Google recently launched a new feature that allows you to include the reading level of a given website’s text in search results. I did searches for the three blogs I write – Hold Fast, A Jigger of Blog, and Blogger Hamlin – and the results were surprising.

My writing on politics seems to be an even balance between the levels of reading levels. This is probably a good thing, though I would also guess that each one is determined by the type of post I write. I would imagine shorter posts highlighting video clips are in the basic category, while most other posts are intermediate, with the exception of wonky posts on economic or foreign policy. Obviously, though, I write a lot of those, hence the even balance. I would guess this even mix makes for a readable blog, but my traffic numbers belie that theory.

I’m really surprised there is any advanced reading material being created at my cocktail blog, let alone almost a third of the posts. I’m not immediately sure what causes that to happen, other than lots of ingredients and cocktail names are foreign.

I’ve done a bit of long form writing here at Blogger Hamlin and I would have guessed that it would have lead to a more uniform level of reading complexity. But I guess it’s a mix!

I really wish I knew what this fairly balanced mixture of reading levels across three different blogs means about my writing style. It seems that it’s more a statement about my writing than the blogs themselves, if those things can be separated. I’ll poke around and see what Google has to say about what these levels mean.