Feedburner Replacement

If you write a blog using Blogger or you know someone who does, you might know that in July 2021 the Feedburner service is being terminated by Google without a replacement. This is the means by which people subscribe to your blog and be notified when you have posted a new blog entry. After much searching and watching YouTube videos without much success, I came across a simple solution using Mailchimp. Mailchimp is free to use until your subscriber list reaches 2,000.

STEP 1 - How to capture a record of your current subscribers

You need to ensure that you have a record, from Feedburner, of all the email addresses that are subscribed to your account.

This is how I did it, step-by-step:

1. Sign in to Google Feedburner. Chances are that your Gmail password will get you in.
   
   
2. Click on the number of subscribers.
   
   
3. You will see a page with a dashboard and a graph showing your blog activity over time.
   
   
4. Below the graph you will see a box showing the number of subscribers and the caption, "See more about your subscribers>>". Click on this then click on "Feedburner Email Subscriptions".
   
   
5. Click on "Manage Your Email Subscriber List". You will now see a list of all subscribers. A few rows above the table its says "Export: CSV". Click on the CSV.
   
   
6. You will be asked to "Open" or "Save As" the list. Do either, but save it to your computer.
   
   
7. You can then click on "Deactivate".

STEP 2 - How to create a method to subscribe to your blog

You need to create the means by which a new gadget (Blogger's name for what some call a "widget") is added to your blog so people can subscribe and be notified of new posts by email (the facility is also there to follow you by Facebook and Twitter but since I refuse to use either of these I have not explored this further).

This is how I did it, step-by-step:

1. Create a Mailchimp account.
   
   
2. They didn't ask me for any payment information. I am sure they would have if I had signed up to have more than 2,000 subscribers.
   
   
3. Once you have answered a few basic questions you will come to what they call the "Dashboard"(along the way they ask the usual questions about signing up for marketing information, etc. to which I answered "no" and was not asked again).
   
   
   
   
   
4. Down the left-hand side of the page is a menu with a series of icons, the top-most being a drawing of a chimp's face. Clicking on the chimp wherever you are on the site gets you back to the Dashboard.
   
   
5. Now to create an audience (your subscribers). I SUGGEST THAT YOU ONLY ADD ONE OR TWO OF YOUR PERSONAL EMAIL ACCOUNTS AT THIS STAGE. Once you have completed all steps below you will then be able to run a few tests to make sure everything works the way you want before adding subscribers.
   
   
6. Click on "Audience" on the left menu (the second one under the chimp). You will see this page:
   
   
   
   
   
7. Click on "All contacts" in the yellow bar.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
8. When you click on "Add contacts" you will be given a choice to either manually enter email addresses or to import a batch of them from a CSV file, such as the one created earlier by downloading from Feedburner. For now, I suggest you only add your own email address(es) for testing purposes.
   
   
9. Next click on "Tags" in the yellow bar. Here you can create any number of tags that you can assign to the email addresses. This will make it easy, later on, to send out emails to only those emails to which a particular tag has been associated. In my case, I created two tags, "Test Recipient" (which I assigned to my own email address) and "Blog Recipient" (which I assigned to my own email address and, later on when adding all the blog subscribers, I assigned this tag to all of them). Assuming you have only added your own email account at this stage, click on "All contacts" in the yellow bar. Click on the email address you added in Step 8. Click on the "+" sign beside "Tags" at the top-right of the page and select the tags you wish to assign to the email address.
   
   TIP: as it turned out, if you will always be sending out notifications to your entire audience, there is no need to bother with the "Blog Recipient" tag. As you will see when we create the means by which emails are sent, there is the option of selecting "Entire Audience". This avoids you having to sign in to Mailchimp every time a new subscriber is added and adding a tag to their email address. The "Test Recipient" tag is still useful if you want to do some tests later on using only your own personal email accounts.
   
   
10. We will now create the gadget for your blog.
    
    
11. Click on "Create" on the left menu (the next one under the chimp).
    
    
12. Click on "Signup Form", again on the left.
    
    
13. Click on "Embedded form" and then "Begin" in the middle of the page. You will see the following:
    
    
    
    
    
14. As you can see, you can select "Classic", "Condensed", etc. I stuck with "Classic". You can select a few basic things. I used "Subscribe" as my title because that is what I want to use the form for.
    
    
15. Next select "Settings" from the pull-down menu and select "Audience name and defaults".
    
    
    
    
    
16. You will need to fill in the obvious information, such as the email address that appears to subscribers to be sending the emails, an optional email subject and a default "From name". You can also enable reCAPTCHA which is a good thing to help prevent spambots from adding emails to your subscriber list. You have the option to "Enable double opt-in" which would send the subscriber an email with a link that they would need to click on to activate their subscription. I did not bother with this. At the bottom of this page, you can also enter email addresses where you would like to be notified about new subscribers. You can also select "Send a final welcome email" which is nice for subscribers to receive because it notifies them that their sign-up was successful. You also have the choice to notify unsubscribers that this also worked for them.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
17. Click on the browser back arrow to get back to the Audience page called "Embedded forms". On the lower right-hand side of the page, there is a large heading that reads "Copy/paste onto your site". Click anywhere in this box. All the HTML text will be highlighted in pink. Right click and copy this to your clipboard.
    
    
    
    
    
18. Open Blogger and ensure you are in Design mode (so you can edit your blog). Go to the "Layout" page.
    
    
19. If you haven't done so already, delete the "Subscribe to" gadget. This is the Feedburner gadget that is no longer of any use.
    
    
20. Choose where to add a new gadget (on the right sidebar, in the header or in the footer). I simply added it to the right sidebar where my old subscribe gadget was located).
    
    
21. Click on "Add a Gadget". Select "HTML/JavaScript" from the following list that pops open.
    
    
    
    
    
22. You will see this:
    
    
    
    
    
23. I didn't add a title because it became redundant, but you certainly may.
    
    
24. Click in the "Content" line and right-click "Paste". As long as you haven't done any other copy/paste functions since Step 17 above, all of the HTML code that you copied in Step 17 will paste as content. Click "SAVE". If you don't know anything about HTML (like me) this looks like gobbledygook but don't worry, you don't need to know. HTML is the computer code used to create websites.
    
    
25. While on the "Layout" screen you can drag the new gadget to be where you like it. Be sure to click "Save" after doing so (in this instance it is an icon of a floppy drive at the bottom right corner of the page).
    
    
26. In Blogger, click "Preview" at the top right of the page (to the left of "Publish"). If you wish to edit the wording you may do so, as follows.
    
    
27. Go to your published blog page and take a look at the gadget you just added. As long as you haven't signed out, you will still be able to make edits. An icon of a wrench with a screwdriver will appear just to the right of the new gadget. Click on this. Here is what this looks like in my blog:
    
    
    
    
    
28. After clicking on the icon, you will see one of the following. The one on the left is exactly the same as the one on the right except that the one on the left is in normal written English and the one on the right is in HTML (what you posted a few moments ago).
    
    
    
    
29. By clicking where the red arrows are pointing, you can switch from "Rich Text" (i.e., ordinary writing) to "HTML ".
    
    
30. If you wish to change one of the words (say you wanted the word "told" instead of "notified" just change the word in the "Rich Text" version and click "Save").
    
    
31. If you wish to make edits aside from the wording, such as font size, switch to the HTML view. I have no knowledge of HTML. However, if you take a close look at how the coding is put together you will see a place where it says "font - size: 80%". This was originally 100%. All I did was change the 100 to 80 and clicked "Save". It's easy. With some knowledge of HTML I am sure there are all sorts of things you could do. You can also change the wording in HTML view if you like. The red arrow below points to the font size and the yellow arrow points to the wording. If you make any changes don't forget to click "Save".
    
    
    
    
    
32. You now have a place on your blog where users can again sign up to be notified by email of new blog posts. When they enter their email address in the box and hit subscribe three things will happen: 1) their email address will be securely located in your Mailchimp account (in the "Audience" area); 2) the person will receive an email confirmation that they have signed up; and, 3) you will receive an email telling you that they have signed up - this is your cue to assign the appropriate tag to their email address (if your notifications are based on tags but more about that later).

STEP 3 - How your subscribers are notified of new blog posts

You need to create the means by which Mailchimp notifies your subscribers that you have loaded a new post to your blog.

This is how I did it, step-by-step:

1. In Mailchimp select "Campaigns" from the left menu (the third icon under the chimp image).
   
   
2. Select "Automations" from the following list. You will see the message "You don't have any automation yet", under which there will be a box to click named "Create An Automation"
   
   
   
   
   
3. You will see the following page, on which you should click "Share blog updates"
   
   
   
   
   
4. Give the campaign a name and select the Blog you are using (the name "campaign" is used because Mailchimp's main focus is to be able to send out marketing emails to email distribution lists to announce a sale, a new product, or whatever and each of these efforts would be its own "campaign"). Click on "Begin".
   
   
   
5. Insert the URL (web address) of your blog.
   
   
6. Select the time of day when you want notifications to go out. The comment, "We'll only send if there's new content", means that a notification is triggered by an entirely new blog post. From my testing, minor formatting or even corrections to existing blog entries do not appear to trigger email notifications.
   
   Note that the time is Eastern Standard Time ("EST") and can't be modified. That is why it says "New York" beside the time. Keep this in mind - everywhere that a date stamp appears on the site will be EST. In my case, EST is two hours ahead (one hour in the winter) so I have to keep this in mind when I am running tests (it took me a while to figure out why my tests were not working). I also selected the box, "Resize RSS feed images to fit template". After this and subsequent steps click "Next" at the bottom right of the page.
   
   
   
   
   
   
7. On the next page select which subscribers should receive the notifications based on tags or choose "Entire audience". There is a big advantage to selecting "Entire audience". Every email address that is added will be notified of a new post without you having to remember to assign a tag to the email address.
   
   
8. The next page is where you can tailor your email message, including the text in the body of the email, the "from name" and the email address used for the account.
   
   
   
9. The next page is called "Change Template". You need to create a template that Mailchimp will use to insert into the body of your email message. The page looks like this. The two I have marked "Free" are the only two that you can use with a free subscription - but that is not a problem if all you want to create is a simple notification email.
   
   
   
   
   
10. Select one of these and edit as you wish. I deleted almost everything except the body and edited the words to look like this. Save this as your template.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
11. The final step before setting this up to go live is to review your settings. Here is a partial view of the confirmation page:
    
    
    
    
    
12. Before clicking on "Start RSS" go to "Preview and Test" at the top of the page. Note that the free subscription limits you to sending 12 test messages in a 24 hour period. If you run into issues and try to send yourself several test messages and then the test messages stop working this is probably why (there is no warning or notification that you have hit your limit, which as annoying). 
    
    
    

STEP 4 - Testing and implementation

I ran a couple of live tests by setting my audience to those tagged "Test Recipient". I then posted a test post to my blog. It worked! Keep in mind that the emails are sent based on Eastern Standard Time and are only sent on the hour. If it's 10 minutes past the hour when you do your test and you set the notification time to the start of the upcoming hour you will have to wait 50 minutes to see if the test worked.

Once you are happy with how things are working remember to do four things:

1) adjust the notification time in your campaign to be your desired notification time and day (remember it's Eastern Standard Time);

2) in your campaign change the recipients to be either whatever tag you want it to be, in my case "Blog Recipients", or "Entire Audience" which will avoid you having to set the tags on all new subscriber email addresses;

3) Add your subscriber emails to Audience; and,

4) Click on "Start RSS" to go live with your subscribers.

I sent a separate email to my existing subscribers to advise them that I have changed my notification service. I did this because the notification email will look different from those sent in the past.

New Logging Area

I recently completed another industry on my model railroad - a small diorama depicting the edge of a logging area, where the cut logs are loaded on rail cars.

The small building is scratch-built and was featured in one of my blog posts in March.

The trees are made using the "furnace filter" technique.

The log loader was purchased from 3000 Toys, an excellent source of vehicles which they sell in many scales. The loader came with a red plastic light on top of the cab but it was not lit. I added my own red flashing LED. I purchased the red flashing LED from Evan Designs, my favourite source of very tiny LEDs (pico, nano). I dismantled the loader which was easy because it was held together with several Philips head screws and glued the nano-size LED into the red plastic fixture on the roof of the cab with canopy glue. The LED circuit is wired into the 12-volt DC accessory buss which runs under the model railroad.

The brown ground cover is made from dried leaves ground to a very fine consistency in an old coffee grinder.

The tree stumps were slices cut from the branches from pruning shrubs in the back yard of our former house.

Rust Effects Using Gouache

I have heard about the use of an artists' paint called gouache to create rust effects, both from magazine articles and when attending clinics at NMRA events. However, my earlier attempts were not successful.

Having constructed a couple of tanks that are part of my Cheers! Craft Brewers industry, which is located in a rather old building, I wanted some rust effects on the tanks so they are in keeping with the ramshackle look of the building. The tanks are made from white PVC pipe, capped with styrene and with styrene seams. The tanks were painted with a gloss spray paint which I then coated with a matte clear coat because the gloss was "too glossy".

Gouache is a water-based artists paint (sometimes called poster paint). It has one huge advantage over oils and acrylics when it comes to weathering - once dry, it can be completely removed simply by getting it wet. For a weathering project this is a nice feature because it is easy to start over if you are not happy with your first attempt.

I purchased a set of gouache paint tubes from Walmart Canada for under C$20.00.

I first applied dots of burnt sienna gouache randomly on the tanks, placing most of the paint under the seams, as follows:

The gouache needs to dry completely, which only takes a few minutes.

I then held a slightly damp tissue on a paint dot or group of dots for a few seconds to soften the paint and then pulled the softened paint downwards with the tissue. In the above photograph, you can see some stains in places where the paint was not applied. This is from my first attempt at this project which I was not happy with so washed all of the paint off. The gouache stained the paint I think because the white paint had only been applied the day before and had not fully cured.

This is the final result:

Ropewalk Design and Construction

A model railroad hobby colleague who is also an avid model ship builder recently described his experiences with a device called a "ropewalk". A ropewalk is what is used to create rope, of all sizes. My friend had purchased a neat little device from Syren Ship Model Company. syrenshipmodelcompany.com/ropewalk.php

After watching Syren's YouTube videos as well as many other such videos I became intrigued and had some design ideas which I felt would improve on the designs I saw.

The Syren ropewalk design is superior to many in that it makes use of a "headstock" that twists the strands of rope and a separate "tailstock" which is placed at the other end of the workbench and consists of a simple rotor that rotates the twisted strands around each other. My idea was to incorporate both of these functions into one device, requiring only a simple pulley and weight system to be located at the other end of the rope.

Rather than showing a series of still pictures I have created a 5-minute video that describes the design and construction of this project and shows the device in action: