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diff --git a/posts/rss-a-follow-up.html b/posts/rss-a-follow-up.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4e73012 --- /dev/null +++ b/posts/rss-a-follow-up.html @@ -0,0 +1,234 @@ +--post-date: 2022-12-31 +--type: blog + <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 + <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'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> + |