Like most of us who hang out a bit on the internet, I read blogs (possibly too many blogs but that’s another post altogether).

I don’t use any sort of blog aggregator (basically, I cannot be bothered learning how to use one and setting it up etc etc). However I do love my RSS feeds and have the very low tech solution of when a blog I read regularly has a feed, I save the link to the feed in a folder in my bookmarks menu. So when I open the bookmarks menu and there are new posts it says something like:

Blogs I like (3) to let me know there are 3 new posts to the feeds. Open up the folder and each blog name has the number of new posts next to it if it has any ie:

Blog A (1) Simple. Who needs an aggregator, right?

Except, er, lately my RSS feeds seem to be toying with the laws of mathmatics. I’ve noticed a couple of times that when I’ve read all the blogs with new posts, the folder will still insist that there are Blogs I like (1) even though none of the blogs have any new posts. Which I figured was just an occasional glitch in the browser clearing the feed or something. Until I came home to day to discover that apparently my RSS has gone for broke and invented some entirely new system of mathematics altogether.

I opened the bookmarks menu to see “Blogs I like (23)”. Hmmm, thinks I, that seems like a lot of posts for one day (I don’t have heaps of blogs in this folder and those I do, I often read during breakfast as lots of them are written by people who live in places where it is daytime while I sleep and post then). So I go in and see something like.

Blog A (1)
Blog B (1)
Blog C (5)
Blogs E – N, say had 11 between them. So that adds up to 18, not 23. I thought maybe Blog C was being weird so opened it up to read it and clear the RSS count. The Blogs I like figure dropped to 17 (which you will note is not what 23 – 5 equals). Worse still, Blog C still said Blog C (5). So I click on Blog C again to see if it will clear. Blogs I like total becomes 15 (17 – 5 equals 12 last time I checked). Blog C still insists it has 5 posts. So I read a couple more of the blogs and the Blogs I like number dropped to 10. Which was then less than the total of what the individual blogs said. The math, they no like it. I know how they feel. As someone who often works with numbers in the day job, I can relate to the “math, I no like it” vibe. But that doesn’t change the fact that 1 + 1 = 2. Something appears to be rotten in the state of RSS (or maybe rotten in the state of Safari). As I type, Blog C is still insisting it has five new articles despite being opened several times, all the other blogs say they have none and the Blogs I like insists that 2 is the correct count. Maybe it’s using the same math that the financial systems has been relying on. Oy.

I think all this adds up to it’s time to have some dinner and a glass of wine while we put the browser in the naughty corner and threaten it with remedial arithmetic. Maybe it’s time to work out that whole aggregator thing after all….