Yikes, it took me almost the whole weekend to get caught up with the items in my RSS Reader. Are you prone to these RSS lag periods? My wife and I are starting to get the feeling it’s time to go for an away from keyboard and kids (AFKK) experience. Maybe tomorrow or Tuesday. We haven’t taken any significant vacation time out for ourselves in awhile. We’re both feeling it. It’s time.

Hmmitorial note: This will be the first week (ever, I think) that two Hmm quickies have been posted the same week. If this is your first one then these are typically posts that cover many different things where I only have brief commentary to add.

To better automate the cycle, I could be using del.icio.us with a Wordpress plugin like many others are doing, but:

1) I don’t use del.icio.us for bookmarking that often
2) I prefer to keep notes while I’m reading in a single post window and if I have enough content to make a full post from an item/link/news, then I’ll copy that info to a new post and get to it.
3) I don’t like jamming posts that are too automated-looking in front of readers. I like to read and write original content, or at the very least content with an original or creative slant.
4) Lastly, those del.icio.us add-in posts in Wordpress all look the same with the “Links from date” format.

If I was going to use the delicious/Wordpress plugin then I’d want to hack up the output so it was different or unique If you are a blogger reading that uses the plugin please consider modding the output and making the format of your del.icio.us bookmarked links unique. With a sea of blogs and bloggers out there, it’s important to strive to be original/unique. Some minor output customization can show you took the time to be different for your readers. It will also help readers visually remember your site over others who used the same format rolling across their RSS reader.

Normally you won’t get my extra commentary in front of these Hmm quickies posts. If you should not care to see these type posts, no problem, you can create a feed without them using something like Feed Rinse and filtering the words “hmm quickies.” Bye bye Hmm quickies. However, since this is the 35th Hmm quickies in over three years, you can rest assured I won’t be doing these too often. I kind of see these type posts as appetizers instead of main courses.

Anyway, probably could have expanded more on a few of these but sometimes brevity is the better choice, enough of hmmitorializing, let’s get it on, Mills Lane style:

- No more E3? Could be according to next-gen.biz, that claims the major vendors aren’t getting enough return for their investment. There are too many tech/game/blog conferences these days.

- Want an aquarium but tight on space in your pad? Fish ‘n Flush ($450) to the rescue.
- another spoiled actress, Lindsay Lohan, slammed by exec over her actions during the filming of Georgia Rule
- Mel Gibson goes to Mad Max-imum of the DUI limit and then does something very unhollywood as Cinematical notes by making a statement saying his actions that night were despicable. Respect for owning up to mistake. Good thing nobody got hurt. Doesn’t always turn out that way with DUI.
- Yet another reason not to use a TypePad hosted blog: censorship. In the past I’ve had problems with TypePad not allowing me to comment on my own TypePad blog (the issue was ultimately resolved).
- iScoot allows calling your online Skype contacts from your cell phone.
- And should one ever need to fake a phone call, just check out popularity dialer.

If you’d like to read more of these type posts, just do a search for Hmm quickies.

• Wordpress and TypePad add ‘widgets’
• Wordpress Plugin and Mod Competition
• Please don’t go Feedburner promo link crazy like this
• The 8 different types of blogging in 2008
• How to add a dynamic digg vote this button, show related posts and more using Wordpress
• RSS Feed cleanup part deux, 250 feeds target