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RSS – the Simple Guide

RSS is a means by which you can easily keep up with updates to your favorite websites, all in one place.

You will often see the term “RSS Feed” or see this image associated with it…

RSS logo

When you click on that link, you will usually see a scary page of gobbledygook that looks like this (click here). What you are seeing is the RSS Feed, the content of that website crunched together in a certain format that can be read by your new hero – the RSS Reader.

You don’t need to worry about all that scary code. All you need is the address of that feed.

So, how do you use this?

You download an RSS Reader app to your phone, tablet or computer. Sometimes you’ll see them called RSS Aggregators.

If you are on a computer you can also use a website like Feedly.com.

You just copy the address of that RSS feed, hit the “add” button on your reader, paste in the address, and you will now see every single fucking update to that site. And you do this for every website you want to follow. And you can read the articles in the reader, which means it usually strips out all the ads and bullshit.

If you have not used RSS before, something like Feedly is a good way to get introduced to it. I prefer using a standalone RSS app, even on my computer, to avoid tracking and adverts.

Note: almost all blogs have RSS feeds, even if you don’t see the link. That’s because a lot of blog theme designers suck and don’t make them apparent. With most modern RSS readers, you don’t even need the exact feed address. You can just enter something like “https://bobsawesomesite.com” and the reader will find the feed for you.

As a MacOS/iOS user I use Reeder on my devices as my RSS reader. I also like NetNewsWire. Reeder seems to sync well across all my devices. If I follow a site from my phone, it shows up in Reeder on all my devices. Some web browsers have built-in RSS readers, which is cool.

There are similar readers available for PCs and Android. Just search for “RSS Reader” or “RSS aggregator.”

Here are some screen shots of Reeder, on my phone. You can see how many unread posts are on each site that I follow. For example. The Twilight Sessions has one new post.

Reeder app screenshot

If I click on the Twilight Sessions, it shows me the most recent posts. I can tap one and read it from within the Reeder app.

Reeder app screen shot

Now for the fun part.

Why can’t you find an RSS feed for your friend’s Instagram or Facebook account? Because there’s not one. Those social media silos don’t provide RSS because they want you trapped on their sites and apps. It is that simple. So fuck them. If a site does not have an RSS feed, they are not worth your time and fuck them and the horse they rode in on.

 

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Sick Report

Well, it is now January 3 and I am feeling somewhat better. Still have a few days of antibiotics, but I think it will take a while for the snot to go away. We are expecting an “arctic blast” in the coming week, which means we’ll have some real cold nights. So essentially the goal is to stay warm, not overexert myself, and get fully well.

During this illness I’ve been mostly working on some web-related things, like the test Jekyll blog. Also working with two Facebook skateboarding groups to move the groups, gradually, to other platforms. Been reading a lot of articles about things like “re-wilding” the internet. News stories this week have revealed Meta’s plans to insert AI “people” in the “user experience”, thus popping the final nail in the coffin of those platforms. I suspect it’s been going on for a long time. There is no way many of the commenters and accounts I see are those of real human beings.

Having built my first site in 1994, it is weird for me to think that that are now generations of people for whom the internet is apps. It reminds me of the film Logan’s Run (and the book). People raised in a domed city, unaware of/afraid of the outside world. There was a time when one of the main gateways to the Web was the Yahoo! index, which actually curated websites. You’d start down the rabbit hole and find the most amazing things. That part of the web is still there. But it is outside the walls. Time to escape. Time to run.

domed city from the film Logan's Run
The domed city from Logan’s Run.

 

 

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Still sick

Well, went to the normal doctor yesterday, who extended my antibiotics a few days and added a second one. Overall I feel better, but with the double-whammy of sinus infection AND flu, I know it will be a couple of weeks before I really feel normal. Taking the rest of this week off sick.

When not sleeping I’ve been working on that static site test version of Concrete Lunch. Just playing with it, embedding skate videos into blog posts. I think it looks like an art museum, which I kind of like.

My plan for the rest of the week is to start 2025 by reading a couple of science fiction novels. I feel behind on my reading back in June 2024 when I started my D&D campaign, but now that it is going well I can re-devote myself to reading again.

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Still sick, freestyle, and rantings

Well, after coming home from Christmas in the Houston area I got sicker. I went to the urgent care place and was tested, and I have the flu. That would explain the 101.6 temperature. They started me on Tamiflu. Today, 2 days later, I am feeling somewhat better but still shitty. I think I did have a sinus infection, and probably still do, and it opened the door to the flu. That can happen, right?

I’ve had all sorts of ideas of long blog posts to write, about different things that few but me care about, but have not had the energy to really organize my thoughts. I am taking notes.

The following disorganized rant was composed while hacking up mucus.

Been talking to my friend Tony Gale, freestyle skateboarder supreme, about various issues of the freestyle skateboarding scene and how it is presented and organized online. He and a few (meaning me) other enlightened humanoids wish to take it AWAY from social media, and re-center it on actual websites that are not owned by corporate scumbags. I support this. I think this will be difficult to pull off, but excising the social media cancer from freestyle is a surgery that must happen.

I have been as active as most on social media since it started gaining a foothold. I had no special enlightenment. It just seemed like a fun way to share skateboarding. But over the last 15 years we have simply fed the beast too much, and now it is out of control. From deciding what you see on your timeline, to tracking what you do, to sending your info to third parties you don’t even know, it is all 100% bullshit.

Edit: Conforming to corporate overlords and bending over like submissive humps for them is EXACTLY what skateboarders are not supposed to do. Everyone needs to get the corporate dicks out of their mouths.

I feel like we need a set of webpages for freestyle skateboarders (or skateboarders in general) to clearly explain the options.

This is not really complicated. Here is where we might start.

  • RSS feeds — allow you to subscribe to any fucking site that has an RSS feed. You can get the feed on a reader on any device you have. It strips out all the fucking advertising and bullshit code too! This blog, for example, has an RSS feed. With modern RSS readers you don’t even have to know the feed address. Just type in the URL and reader will find it for you. If you are too dumb to read a short article about RSS, just look it up on YouTube and have some hipster explain it to you. I’m not providing all the links here because I can’t spoon feed y’all everything!
  • If a site has no RSS feed (like IG, FB, TT, or whatever) then it is beneath your  notice. Fuck them.
  • iCal — you can subscribe to calendars and have them show up on YOUR calendar. You do know what a calendar is, right? There is approximately a 100% chance you have one on the phone in your pocket.
  • Fediverse – look it up. I’ll do a post about it soon-ish. I have the flu right now and I really can’t muster the energy to solve all the problems.

Folks, the hard truth is that we handed our valuable identities and cool shit over to the big silos in exchange for convenience. I too am guilty. GUILTY. But now they have made us their bitches, and it is time to not be the bitches anymore.

There are only a few reasons I can think of for continuing to give them your life…

  1. You haven’t thought this through – start thinking
  2. You are dumb – I have no solution for this
  3. You don’t care  – start caring
  4. You enjoy the narcissism and dopamine hits – you are an addict and need to stop
  5. You are running a business and use, for instance, Instagram, to market your stuff. This is valid. You can start helping by transitioning to other ways of doing things – websites, RSS, Fediverse. Here’s an example. If you have a company and an IG page, when you post something to IG, post that video to your website too! Not connected to IG. Put it in the blog section of your site so we can subscribe to it. If you post a clip on IG, then post a really nice long clip ONLY on your website. Seriously, no one is buying your shit from IG. You have to get them to your site.

More later…

Lord Bob

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Christmas Report 2024

Well, I got a new iPad Mini for Christmas.

Part of me, for years, has considered acquisition of an iPad to be a huge waste of money. I only really want it for reading blogs and reading RPG rulebooks and supplements.

Then a few days ago I decided that as a now 60-year old man with sufficient income, who is a law abiding citizen, public servant, and all-around nice guy, I should have a fucking iPad if I want one.

So I went over to Best Buy, bought a 256 gig iPad Mini and one of those little covers for it, splurged on AppleCare, and handed it to my wife, who’d been scratching her head as to what to get me for Christmas.

Then we crammed our car full of stuff to the point you couldn’t get another toothpick into the trunk, heading to Houston, where I promptly got sick with a sinus infection.

Side note: As we drove into Houston around 8pm, we passed untold car dealerships with untold acres of cars on the lots, with untold measuring units of electricity keeping those lots lit like the surface of the sun on a cloudless day. So is my ownership of the iPad wasteful? I don’t even care. When they shut down those lights call me back on this.

This is the first time since the start of the pandemic that I’ve been sick. Right at the start of the pandemic I had a sinus infection, and I have not been sick since then. Until now. So that’s a pretty good run.

I spent Christmas Eve day and evening in bed, with a 101.6 fever. Finally took some meds around 8pm and got the fever down. Felt better today (Christmas Day), but still have had a bit of fever off and on. Going to the NextCare Urgent Care in the morning to get checked out and see if I can get some antibiotics. Sinus infections and me have a long history. I know the drill.

Being sick away from home sucks. Being sick as a guest in a house where the extra beds all feel like concrete slabs does not, in fact, make it better. It is hard to sleep, even after taking Benadryl, when you wake up because the bed is killing you. Oh well, another day and I’ll be home to our super-luxurious bed with actual springs in it.

Between sleeping, laying around being semi-miserable, and reading today, I’ve been setting up the iPad.

NO ONE does a smoother job of welcoming you back into their ecosystem than Apple. I am typing this on my MacBook Pro. I have an iPhone SE and an old 16gig iPad Air I inherited from my mom that is basically useless. I turned on the new iPad Mini, held my phone up to it, and the damned things talked to each other. A meaningful conversation in which the phone gave the iPad all the information it needed to set itself up. No fuss. No cursing. So, so good. I swear if I had to use a PC and/or Android I’d just quit technology completely. Actually I’d go Linux.

The new iPad Mini has ZERO social media installed on it. NONE. It is for specific purpose, and spying on me for FB is not one of them. I understand that Apple will spy on me. That’s not the hill I’m going to die on. I also told Apple Intelligence to FUCK OFF during the setup process. AI is bullshit. Outside a few very controlled uses it is probably the worst thing to happen to tech since social media. Now, if they can use it to cure cancer, that’s cool. I’m talking about people using AI to “create blog content” or to “come up with better ways to write a sentence or convey and idea.” Sorry folks – there are SUPPOSED to be good writers and shitty writers. If you are a shitty writer, you get better by learning to write better, not by farming out the work to AI. That is the hill I’ll die on, or at least lay down uncomfortably for an extended time.

Overall, even with the sinus infection and torture-bed, it has been a good Christmas. We are with our family for the first time in several years and it all went well. Our dog Riley is with us, and he’s been a good boy. Everyone falls in love with him. Lefty (our cat) is at home and I can’t wait to see him again. Best of all, other than me, everyone is healthy. There was a time a few years ago that wasn’t the case.

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The Greatness of the IndieWeb

I just watched this video about the IndieWeb vs Silos, from 2014. Yes. Ten years ago. It is about 14 minutes long. Worth your time.

The silos have gotten worse in 10 years since this talk. Much worse. Most of the other services mentioned, especially those from Google, were shut down.

But THIS SITE – CONCRETELUNCH.INFO – is still here.

If you had a blog back in the early 2000s I’ll bet it is still there too. Or event the late 2000s. Or even the late 90s.

All the current shit – Facebook, X, Bluesky, blah blah blah – all those silos will die, and the blogs will remain. The IndieWeb is where it’s at.

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Test Blog Update

I’ve made some progress using Jekyll to create a static-page test version of this site. Just making some test pages and trying to see how it will work.

I’ve got a few things to figure out still. For example, the RSS feed is doing some weird stuff, but I found some info that I think will fix it.

One of the disadvantages of the static site generator is that it pretty much lives on one computer. It creates the pages and updates everything, saving to a folder on the computer, which you then upload oldschool-style to your server. So this means I can’t just jump into the post editor from whatever computer with an internet connection I happen to be using.

Like a lot of people, I think I’ve gotten used to the convenience of being able to access and edit documents and projects from nearly anywhere. Google Drive, stuff on iCloud, Dropbox, whatever. It’s all super convenient.

So why am I obsessed with this step back 20 years? I think there is a certain amount of nostalgia involved, for sure. There’s also an element of control. Much less worry about people hacking the static site and stuff like that. I like the community of people I’ve found who are into this kind of thing as well (https://indieweb.org/)

Also, I was in a conversation with an internet-friend the other day on micro.blog about how punk rock it feels to have a blog. I agree, and I have a lot to say about that, and sometime in the next month or so I will likely write a long post about it.

 

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A New Version of Concrete Lunch?

I’ve been doing nerd things.

I’ve been playing around with a static site generator called Jekyll.

What is a static site generator, you might ask?

Well, if you created web pages/sites in the old days, you likely wrote every one by hand. That HTML file contained the whole page, with links to images or whatever. There was no database backend, no embedded javascript, etc. If you were really fancy and smart (like me!), you used Server Side Includes to standardize your header and footer, so you’d only need to change it in one place if you wanted it to change across your whole site.

Flash forward to the late 2000s/early 2010s, and platforms like WordPress, Blogger, etc came about. They use more sophisticated means to deliver webpage. There are databases involved, lots of code and other shit. It’s all very cool. This site runs on WordPress.

You also have to update your site’s content management system (in this case WordPress) pretty often, as hackers and scumbags are constantly trying to log into it, hack it, steal your information, blah blah blah. All that complexity-based convenience comes with a price.

Another price – in theory these content management systems are kinda slower serving up pages, since they are doing a lot more on the backend.

BUT — these days there are number of programs like Jekyll that generate static pages for you, which you then upload to your space on a server (just like in days-of-yore). Since the pages are just HTML, some CSS, and whatever media you might embed in them, they are less vulnerable to hacking.

Also in theory, all else being equal, since there are not database calls involve and other technical fuckery, the static site should serve up to readers much faster (again – depending on connections speeds, etc., which is true for CMSs too).

The drawback?

You have to work harder setting it all up. You have to understand some stuff like installing things from the command line/terminal/whatever. It is all a lot nerdier than just going a Blogger or WordPress site.

Clearly I have too much time on my hands (I don’t).

So here is test.concretelunch.info. Since I’m just figuring this out, the homepage is still a level down in the directories, but whatever. You get the idea. There is supposed to be a process for moving a WordPress blog over “easily” (it is never easy). We’ll see ….

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A fairly good year

Other than the reelection of the orange turd, it has been a pretty good year. We’ve done some fun things this year. I suppose in a couple of days, when I’m not so tired, I’ll list all the concerts/shows we went to see. We have a lot lined up for 2025 as well, to which we look forward.

The second half of 2024 my reading habit kinda fell apart. We started a new D&D campaign that I am running, so I’ve been putting a lot of my reading time into that. Still, I will finish the year with 14 or 15 books read. Not too horrible when measured against the average inhabitant of The America.

Last weekend I earned my Nidan (2nd degree black belt) in Aikido. I’ve been practicing now for 18 years. I also turned 60 this year. I feel pretty good. Aikido is really good.

Our sweet dog, Riley, is now two years old, and just ridiculously sweet. Or 15-year old cat and my best boy Lefty is show no signs of slowing down other than that he’s getting to be a skinny old man.

Back in the summer I judges a freestyle skateboarding contest out in Lake Forest, California. The U.S. Opens. It was fun. A really good event, and clearly the judging was perfect.

I got to some good skateboarding in this year. Not as much as in some previous years, but still good. I’ve made real efforts to evaluate the way I use my time. I don’t really want to “practice” for contest level skating anymore. I just want to skate.

This blog is now about 18 years old. It is approaching 1000 posts. As I’ve written I am kinda tired of using WordPress for some reason. I mean, it works, but I’m bored with it. I’ve been doing some experimenting and learning with static site generators. If I can find a way to successfully export this blog’s content to a static site, I may change it. If not, well, I’ll just keep typing here.

A couple of years ago I did discover micro.blog, a very cool platform for really pure blogging. I love it. I have two blogs there (well, two main ones). bloftin2.blog – a skateboarding blog, and bloftin2speaks.micro.blog, which is kinda like this blog.  So I’ve been posting a lot over there. I highly recommend micro.blog as a platform. It has nice, simple themes, is hand-built by an old coworker of mine who constantly improves it, and makes podcasting very, very easy.

As part of this blogging journey I’ve been doing a lot of reading and learning about IndieWeb principles and goals and Fediverse stuff. This has all been very reinvigorating. The web, thanks to social media, influencers, AI, scammers, spammers, scumbags, and douchbags has felt — NOT THAT FUN for a while All this stuff I’ve been digging on has brought back the excitement of the early web. It’s fucking cool.

I guess I’ll write about goals for 2025 soon.

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Dear Readers

Dear readers,

Just a bit of notice. I am becoming increasingly annoyed and frustrated by WordPress. Constant issues with the system, the necessity of paying for extra security on the site (which is insane for a tiny blog with about 24 readers), terrible themes that are difficult to customize — all of this has me searching for a new blog system.

I am considering copying some of my favorite posts to a new blog (the domain name will remain the same) and archiving the rest of the site.

I’ll let you know before I do anything drastic.

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Modifying Blog Theme

I have been changing the theme of this blog a lot this week.

I’m trying to make it look good on phones and tablets, which meant ditching the sidebar.

I’m also trying to adhere to good accessibility practices. The structure of the pages is good. I ran it through a couple of checkers. I was displeased with the color of the links. While I like this theme, I think clickable links should either be a different color from the rest of the text, or be underlined, or both. Themes these days are so damned complicated – they are hard to modify.

But anyway, I made all the links on the blog underlined. I’ll probably change their color too.

There I did it.

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No email notifications for a while…

I was fiddling with this blog the other day and deactivated Jetpack briefly. Jetpack is the plugin that runs the email notifications for new posts, and collects stats. I turned it off because I no longer wish to see stats.

Now Jetpack will not reconnect.

For a non-coder I’m pretty good at this stuff, but damned if I can get it to work.

Honestly, I probably should keep it removed. I don’t like them tracking my website through the plugin. They might…you know…discover all the secrets I’m publishing publicly here.

The ability to do a free email newsletter summery of a blog is BUILT IN to micro.blog . I have considered moving this whole blog to that system. Actually I’ve tried it, but the blog is approaching 1000 posts, and lots of images and files, and micro.blog choked on it. I think the formatting of the WordPress site is just slightly not friendly to MB. I will try it again.

Anyway, if you are reading this and would normally have gotten it via email, this is the reason. There are about 23 of you.

I’m likely going to just keep Jetpack uninstalled. I really only want the email list if I can still get it, but with only 23 people subscribed it might be easier to just to start over.

I really recommend you use an RSS app, like Reeder or NetNewsWire to keep up with this and other blogs.

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No tracking code

Today I removed the tracking code from this and all my other sites.

I removed Google Analytics well over a year ago, and replaced it with Fathom Analytics, a pay service that strives to act ethically.

I removed the Fathom code today. I decided it is dumb to collect stats on a blog like this. If some is interested enough they will comment. Or email me. That’s all I need.