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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