Updated note to email subscribers

 In June I posted a note to say that the Feedburner system that sends out automated emails from this site was "going away" (ie stopping working).  I was expecting this to take effect from the end of June, but the date seems to have now been pushed back to mid-August, and most of my posts seem to have still been sent out via the email system in the meantime.  There may be further changes and at this stage I cannot be sure that the existing email feed will stop working altogether at any time.  

In the event of the Feedburner feed stopping working (ie I am still posting articles but subscribers are not receiving emails about them) then I recommend that email subscribers sign up to other services that will allow you to enter your email address and a site name and receive an email feed of that site.  You may want to bookmark this post to come back to it should you realise you haven't heard anything from me for more than a few weeks and wonder why.  Anyone who wants to be sure of getting any article I write may want to sign up to such a service right away.

In comments to the previous article commenter Et3e! mentioned two example feed sites: feedrabbit.com and blogtrottr,com.  I have tested these and find that they work in more or less the same way except that Blogtrottr includes ads with the email of the article text. 

I've considered maintaining my own email list about the site and decided not to do it - too labour intensive and fiddly.  (I edited an email newsletter for a few years once and have no desire to repeat the experience.)

I should caution that both Feedburner and Blogtrottr are very fast in sending out emails (depending on the options chosen).  Initial release versions of articles are often sent out when an issue is fresh and information is emerging - they are more likely to contain typos, unfinished sentences and other errors.  I often say that I only have time to write this stuff, not to proofread it! I view all articles on this site as like a one-person Wikipedia - often I get them out as quickly as I can, but the articles are polished and more content often added later.  So what you get in the initial email and what the article looks like 24 hours later are sometimes rather different.  

I also recommend that anyone wanting to sign up to a feed of this site starting from now uses one of these services or find another similar service.  I've taken down the link to the Feedburner feed signup because I am not sure if the signup system is still working.  If Feedburner reverses all these mooted changes and does so in a language I can understand I may restore it.