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authorBill <bill@billserver.senders.io>2022-12-31 21:14:51 -0500
committerBill <bill@billserver.senders.io>2022-12-31 21:14:51 -0500
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tree892d12491371353e35702de396a12b82bb57f580 /www/blog/2022-12-31/index.html
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RSS Blog and Generate RSS Feed!
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+ <article>
+ <h1>RSS - A Follow-up</h1>
+ <p>Get an RSS reader and connect everything to it!</p>
+ <p>Between switching to Mastodon for my social media allowance, and using
+ a dedicated RSS reader has really cut down my overall consumption and
+ wasted PC time.</p>
+ <blockquote>
+ <p>this blogpost is originally posted to my gemini gemlog: <a href=
+ "gemini://senders.io/gemlog/2022-12-31-rss-a-follow-up.gmi">gemini://senders.io/gemlog/2022-12-31-rss-a-follow-up.gmi</a>
+ which is where I do most of my writing, converting some useful to share
+ things over here. It is also where the original RSS gemlog this is a
+ follow-up to was posted. For context, I wanted to cutback on a lot of
+ my web consumption, wasting time and just being mindless online. So I
+ looked to RSS to help centralize and solve this issue.</p>
+ </blockquote>
+ <h2>Recap</h2>
+ <p>So I am using <a rel="external noopener noreferrer"
+ target="_blank"
+ href="https://tt-rss.org">https://tt-rss.org/</a> as my RSS
+ aggregator. It’s a self-hosted RSS aggregator that, using profiles,
+ allows you to subscribe to multiple feeds and have them “synced”
+ between multiple devices (they’re not synced, you’re connecting to a
+ central server). I like this because I don’t ever have to worry about
+ dismissing, reading, or marking anything on my phone to have it still
+ present on my PC. And I don’t have to worry about feed subscriptions
+ or my phone pinging a bunch of feeds, or obviously, any third-party
+ hosting.</p>
+ <h2>How I’ve been using it</h2>
+ <p>So as always, please send me interesting RSS feeds! Or even your own!
+ I am trying to read more blogs, and if you have something you enjoy drop
+ me a DM or email! I’ll share what I am following throughout this section
+ &lt;3</p>
+ <h3>Blogs</h3>
+ <p>Obviously, I am following blogs, one of the last holdouts of RSS. I
+ have a few that I follow, mostly other transfolk on Mastodon that I found
+ had their own blogs. Most non-trans folks I follow are using gemini and
+ still rely on the feed aggregators for that.</p>
+ <p>If you’re interested the two main ones I am reading right now are:</p>
+ <ol>
+ <li>
+ <a rel="external noopener noreferrer"
+ target="_blank"
+ href="https://erininthemorn.substack.com">Erin In The Morn
+ (substack)</a>
+ </li>
+ <li>
+ <a rel="external noopener noreferrer"
+ target="_blank"
+ href="https://www.selfawaresoup.com/">Selfaware Soup</a>
+ </li>
+ </ol>
+ <p>Which have been pretty insightful. Erin sharing a lot of US
+ transgender news, which is good since I have dropped off using Reddit
+ which is where I “got” my “news” from.</p>
+ <h3>Podcasts</h3>
+ <p>The other mainstay in RSS is podcasts. Some even say if a podcast
+ can’t be consumed via RSS, is it even a podcast? I would agree.
+ Everything else is just a show. I don’t <em>need</em> the content to be
+ consumable from my reader, but I’d really appreciate it if were. I am
+ always on the lookout for more podcasts though. With the only two
+ consistent listens being:</p>
+ <ol>
+ <li>
+ <a rel="external noopener noreferrer"
+ target="_blank"
+ href="https://www.relay.fm/penaddict">The Pen Addict Podcast
+ (relay.fm)</a>
+ </li>
+ <li>
+ <a rel="external noopener noreferrer"
+ target="_blank"
+ href="https://www.relay.fm/cortex">Cortex Podcast (relay.fm)</a>
+ </li>
+ </ol>
+ <p>And currently off-season:</p>
+ <ul>
+ <li>
+ <a rel="external noopener noreferrer"
+ target="_blank"
+ href="https://www.relay.fm/backmarkers">Backmarkers Podcast
+ (relay.fm)</a>
+ </li>
+ </ul>
+ <p>Which has a YouTube video format. Though, I honestly really don’t care
+ for Austin Evans, I just enjoy consuming some F1 content and pretending I
+ have friends I can talk to about motor racing.</p>
+ <p>While writing this section I added:</p>
+ <ul>
+ <li>
+ <a rel="external noopener noreferrer"
+ target="_blank"
+ href="https://inside.java/podcast/">Inside.java Podcast</a>
+ </li>
+ </ul>
+ <p>I have yet to listen, some of the topics seem interesting and being
+ infrequent gives me hope its quality over quantity. (And I like having
+ podcasts for chores to distract my brain)</p>
+ <h3>Tech News</h3>
+ <p>Right now I follow two main news sources in tech:</p>
+ <ol>
+ <li>
+ <a rel="external noopener noreferrer"
+ target="_blank"
+ href="https://www.debian.org/News/">debian.org/news</a>
+ </li>
+ <li>
+ <a rel="external noopener noreferrer"
+ target="_blank"
+ href="https://lwn.net/">LWN.net</a>
+ </li>
+ </ol>
+ <p>Running servers using stable debian - it’s good to know when security
+ updates come in, as well as distro updates. And LWN is fantastic, I’ve
+ been a subscriber for many years and while sometimes (Jake) can focus a
+ bit heavy on Python news, has been always interesting to read.</p>
+ <p>This is the section I plan on adding more and more to. I had other
+ tech blogs that just felt like clutter and were pushing out daily
+ articles that I couldn’t care less about (opensource.com cough cough).
+ But that’s just me. Tech news is mainly where I want to focus - since
+ fluff blogs are rarely my cup of tea.</p>
+ <p>LWN has some links in their weekly editions for other news feeds I
+ might consider directly subscribing too, but for now I have these.</p>
+ <h3>Music News</h3>
+ <p>Some folk have an RSS feed for their site updates, which I appreciate.
+ Some use sites like Squarespace but don’t properly connect up the RSS
+ feed which I do NOT appreciate.</p>
+ <p>So right now I have two bandsites that DO update it seems (as their
+ site aligns with the feed) - but the only one I’ll mention is: <a rel=
+ "external noopener noreferrer"
+ target="_blank"
+ href="https://raisedbyswans.com/">raisedbyswans.com</a> I’ve spoken of
+ this artist in my Music Spotlight MANY times and is one of my
+ favorites. His site, while entirely simple, is setup with RSS and has
+ been publishing his updates consistently. I appreciate this. Always a
+ strong rec from me!</p>
+ <p>I’ve been toying with Music Review sites that talk about new releases
+ in the genres they specialize in, but I haven’t settled on anything that
+ is helping me discover new music.</p>
+ <h3>YouTube</h3>
+ <p>This is probably where the biggest change has actually come in. Having
+ my YouTube feed fed through RSS has been fantastic. I am able to not only
+ refresh and not miss any updates (since YouTube sometimes likes to pull
+ updates in out of order than I don’t see it because it’s buried between
+ some other videos that I’d already seen.</p>
+ <p>But this also allows me one further level of filtering on my YouTube
+ subscriptions. I can stay subscribed to channels I am interested in
+ watching <em>occasionally</em> but not every video, and keep those off my
+ RSS feed. And for the “I like to watch most if not all the new videos” I
+ can subscribe to those via RSS. So it’s like the “bell” but without the
+ app basically. And since on Mobile I do NOT use the YouTube app (so I can
+ take advantage of the Ad Blocker in Firefox) that’s great!</p>
+ <p>What sucks / is tricky is actually subscribing to the RSS feeds
+ because YouTube buried that feature now. You just need the channel_id or
+ the username and you can subscribe using the following URL:</p>
+ <pre><code>https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id={ID}
+</code></pre>
+ <p>And you can obtain the channel_id either using the URL (though with
+ aliases now (@channelname) its rare to see a channel_id in the URL) if
+ present otherwise a little console JS can print it out:</p>
+ <pre><code>ytInitialData.metadata.channelMetadataRenderer.externalId
+</code></pre>
+ <p>A note however - you’ll need to clear the console if you navigate to
+ the next channel, at least in Firefox, it caches the result otherwise and
+ you’ll print out the duplicate value. There are some tools where you can
+ print your subscribers list into these feed URLs and bulk subscribe. I’ve
+ lost the link (and it’s what I did initially) but I recommend doing the
+ manual add at least to focus on the channels you WANT in RSS, since you
+ can always fallback to the main subscriptions page on YouTube.</p>
+ <p>But what this has given me is the ability to effectively ignore
+ YouTube almost entirely. Ideally, I’d script something with YouTube-dl
+ but I don’t REALLY care that much, and I’ve gotten into the habit of
+ closing the tab after the video so I don’t stick around and get sucked
+ into the algorithm.</p>
+ <p>What my morning looks like is sitting down, switching to my tt-rss
+ tab, seeing what’s fresh, and watching a video with my coffee maybe, then
+ just moving on and doing something else. I still lurk Mastodon, or get
+ sucked into my computer in some way or another, but it’s been really
+ positive! I can count on one hand how many times since dedicating to RSS
+ I’ve just clicked around YouTube.</p>
+ <h3>Hobby</h3>
+ <p>The last section which really is an extension of Blogs/News is “hobby”
+ RSS feeds. These feed a bit into the consumerist side of life and why I
+ keep them separate. Right now it’s almost <em>entirely</em> fountain pen
+ related (Who&#39;da thought this community would still be writing blogs
+ :P) but since most of the blog posts are either about products or reviews
+ in some way, I try and limit how much I expose myself to them. I have
+ been working on a draft about consumerism for quite a while now and just
+ haven’t really worked it into a post that isn’t just DAE consumerism BAD?
+ low-effort Toot level. (But basically, I kinda hate how all my hobbies,
+ and hobbies in general rely heavily on a consumerism mindset, GAS, and
+ such). So I’ve been trying to be more appreciative of what I already have
+ and such.</p>
+ <p>But these blogs are nice, and often keep in the know about my hobbies
+ and can react to anything meaningful that’s being released. A good video
+ sorta on this topic was by Adam Neely(<a rel=
+ "external noopener noreferrer"
+ target="_blank"
+ href="https://www.youtube.com/v/mHoljbkyAEs">Adam Neely - How In-Ear
+ Monitors are Making Better Musicians</a>), and how his band spend
+ $6000 on gear for their tour, but what it did was eliminate stress and
+ enable them to more easily fine tune and control how they monitor
+ their live performance. He touches on the fact that gear videos feed
+ into the consumerist mindset of music making, but gear is often
+ necessary to facilitate certain things, and setting up a portable
+ in-ear-monitor rig for their entire band is well… unavoidable. It’s
+ just a minor aside in a much deeper video about IEMs and touring and
+ FEEL. And quite the departure from his usual music education content.
+ But it sums up the main thesis of my consumerism gemlog quite nicely I
+ feel (or at least I am projecting my thoughts into a brief aside he
+ makes).</p>
+ <h2>tt-rss - in retrospect</h2>
+ <p>So tt-rss is <em>fine</em> honestly, I think I need to setup a better
+ theme, something that has a bit more contrast. I don’t REALLY read in it,
+ I just use it as the aggregator and then open the links directly. I don’t
+ mind the way it renders the full articles with images, but I do mind how
+ GREY it is by default (in “night” theme). It looks totally customizable
+ and I bet I can download a decent theme for it if I look. But I may spend
+ some time doing that and try and read more in application.</p>
+ <p>But other than that it’s been quite the improvement over my internet
+ experience. More RSS!!</p>
+ <h2>Conclusion</h2>
+ <p>I need more feeds, as I do enjoy reading. So I’m always on the look
+ out. I hate to throw in engagement-y things like “let me know” stuff but
+ I am genuinely looking for interesting suggestions for stuff you might
+ subscribe to over RSS. Even if it’s just “this is my webblog” :) I always
+ like reading people’s things. I should troll the aggregators and look at
+ folks capsule landings to see what is linked!</p>
+ <p>Anyway, you should look into getting an RSS aggregator setup. It’s
+ been really impactful on cutting down on internet scrolling and
+ mindlessness.</p>
+ </article>
+ <div id="footer">
+ <i>December 31, 2022</i>
+ </div>
+ <div id='copyright'>
+ © 2023 senders dot io - <a rel="license external noopener noreferrer"
+ target="_blank"
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