google shared items

i finally gave in—about a year after everyone else—and started using google reader. the main reason was so i could add one of those nifty "shared items" boxes to my sidebar like everyone else has. often i will find interesting articles that i want to recommend, but don't have the time or inclination to write a whole blog post about them. for months i've been coveting those shared item boxes, so today when i had a few minutes to spare, i finally set one up.

my sidebar was already pretty cluttered, so to make way for the new box, i got rid of the "greatest hits" box (nobody cares about those stories anymore anyway) and replaced it with a much-smaller "databending" box for links to my databending primer. at some point, i might also turn the "archives" and "background" boxes into drop-down lists to further cut down on space, because it's still pretty cluttered over there.

naturally, none of the default styles for the google reader clip match my design, but using the info on this page i was able to totally reformat it all to match my blog design. if you don't know javascript, though (and i admit my javascript is rusty), that page won't make much sense to you. ¶