In response to quite literally two requests, I have painstakingly set up two exciting new features. Oh yes.
Firstly, this blog now has an RSS feed, whatever that is. Its URL is www.squandertwo.net/blog/atom.xml. If this actually means anything to you, I wish you all the best with it. A friend of mine has tested it and claims that it works, so it should be more reliable than Windows 2000.
Secondly, you can now opt to receive Squander Two Blog by email. I think this is considerably more impressive than the RSS thing, because I know what email is. It's been tested, too, and it definitely might not all go wrong. My hosts use Majordomo mailing-list-management software, whose user guides appear to be written by Unix geeks for other Unix geeks. Jesus wept. Anyway, I reckon I worked it out in the end, but I'd appreciate people signing up and reporting any faults they can find or cause. The instructions are just over here.
I originally promised myself that I would not blog about blogging. Another broken promise, another lost dream. But hey.
13 comments:
I'm assuming that you're not being sarcastic about RSS, so here's a quick (and probably full of errors) summary. RSS is Really Simple Syndication, and by publishing an RSS feeed it means people can view your blog in newsreading software rather than a web browser. If you read *lots* of blogs it's an absolute godsend.
The best RSS programs can handle the various different feed formats (XML, RDF, etc) and you can add a feed to your program by drag and drop. The result is a bit like using email: you can see at a glance what's been updated, group weblogs into folders, etc etc etc.
Probably the best RSS program I've seen is NetNewsWire on the Mac, but IIRC you're on Windows so that's no use to you. There are various ones for PCs, for example Feedreader:
http://www.feedreader.com/
But I prefer FeedDemon:
http://www.bradsoft.com/feeddemon/index.asp
Hope this helps...
Here's an example of NetNewsWire in action:
http://www.kasino.co.uk/screenshot1.jpg
I knew what RSS did, I just had no idea how it worked. For some reason (ignorance), I'd assumed it was tricky, geeky stuff. Which makes it all the more puzzling that I hadn't tried it out. Anyway, NetNewsWire does look rather nice. I might try it. (I'm only on Windows at work. Windows 95, at that, would you believe?)
Hmm. Looks like my posting a comment to the blog causes the post to be re-emailed. Doesn't seem to happen when you comment, though. My comments must be more powerful.
I could disable that easily enough by commenting anonymously, I suppose.
Didn't happen that time. Mustn't have been as powerful a comment as my first one.
I thought that was blogging about technical things, slightly different to blogging about blogging. So you can let yourself off.
Never blog about blogging. Keep to that rule - it's one of mine and therefore right.
It's like journalists writing about journalism. And we all know how boring that is.
To other journalists, reading journalists writing about journalism can be quite interesting - after all, half the media writes about the media ;-)
So is there a big list of things people shouldn't blog about?
If only it were only hal the media that wrote about the media. More like 90%, I'd guess, based on no research whatsoever. You know what pisses me off? Hearing some DJ talk about a TV program they saw last night about the unsuccessful media careers of ex-Big-Brother-contestants. How self-referential can you get?
It's nowhere near as bad, but I hate blog posts about how the Blogger interface has been playing up and some friends have recommended Movable Type but WordPress looks really good and.... Shut up!
I think I can justify this post on public-service-announcement grounds. But it was cutting it a bit fine.
I have no idea whether there's a list of Things About Which Thou Shalt Not Blog. If I ever find one, I shall flaunt it.
Hi, Jonny. Your blog's ace, by the way.
"hearing some DJ talk about a TV program they saw last night about the unsuccessful media careers of ex-Big-Brother-contestants."
The fact you've blogged about it makes it even better - I read on a blog about hearing a DJ talk about a tv programme etc etc etc... brilliant!
No, it's even better: I discussed it with a journalist in the comments thread of a blog post.
Hullo there, Squander One. Welcome.
I was using the skewpie account to test the new email sign-up thingy mentioned above: I just subscribed and unsubscribed again a few times with different settings; you shouldn't get any more mails. (And can I just say you were being a bit quick off the mark. I was deleting those messages from the server as soon as they arrived, so as not to bother you. That didn't work, then.)
The Atom feed is Blogger's standard one. I've not done a thing with it, and I'm not even sure I could if I wanted to. Sorry.
(No, of course I'm not blogging about blogging. Nothing to see here. Move along.)
FWIW, the atom feed's fine in the beta of NetNewsWire Pro.
Thank you very much, Mr or Mrs Mysterious Stranger. I shall eventually add that link to the sidebar.
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