crankygeek

Failed experiment - Finding things to do via RSS

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 23:48:18 -0700

I recently decided I was going to try and grab lots of feeds from local sources like libraries, city-hosted event calendars and the like and see if I could come up with a good radar on family friendly things to do. I’d much rather be out and about on the weekend with my family than watching TV or surfing the net (No, really, I mean it.).

After a few weeks of watching feeds from:

Seattle.gov
Seattle Weekly
The Olympian Online
Timberland Regional Library
King County Library
Tacoma Public Library
and third party aggregator, AmericanTowns.com

all I can say is that I’m disappointed. Tons of duplicate posts, posts in the future (Pro tip: event date is not the same as post date), poor feed customization, lots of irrelevant items (at least for my needs) and for several sites, no feeds at all (Another pro tip: if you have a database, you should have RSS feeds.).

Of the hundreds of items that have come through my reader since I started, there was only one that was relevant: a “Shred Event” hosted by my local BBB (Two bags of documents gone and Connor thought the garbage truck was cool.).

The one useful site I managed to find was ParentMap (focused on Puget Sound). Though their feeds could use some customization (hope to send some feedback to them soon), I’m square in their target audience and their content is definitely worth my attention.

I’d hoped to provide a way cool-link list/OPML to share, but linking to Parent Map is the best I can offer. If anyone has other suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

Send To bit.ly or TinyURL from FeedDemon

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:38:31 -0700

You: “Really? Another FeedDemon tip? Is that all you do?”

Me: “Um, yeah.”

This isn’t a power tip per se, just a click saving trick to make it easier to send a post’s URL to bit.ly or TinyURL for tweeting or the like.

Fire up Notepad, or your favorite text editor, and paste in the following:

Save the file as bitly.xml in C:\Program Files\FeedDemon\Data\SendTo

For TinyURL

Save the file as tinyurl.xml in C:\Program Files\FeedDemon\Data\SendTo

SendTo configurations are only loaded when FeedDemon starts, so restart if necessary and then shorten away.

Feeling awfully glad that I mothballed my WP blog. Update - that said, don’t know how useful...

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 21:12:00 -0700

Feeling awfully glad that I mothballed my WP blog.

Update - that said, don’t know how useful the Tumblr Mac Widget is… It makes posting to Tumblr like tweeting, but with more words fewer followers. May just have to pull the trigger on that MarsEdit upgrade.

Great article on HandBrake configuration

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 21:27:52 -0700

Great article on the mystical settings of HandBrake. Some of that stuff actually makes sense now!

Beyond HandBrake’s defaults - Christopher Breen - Macworld.com

Hello, again

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 22:59:00 -0700

Remember me? I’m the guy that used to post things at blog.crankygeek.com. I can’t believe I haven’t posted anything for a year.

I’ve been playing around with the idea of outsourcing my blog. Well, the engine at least. I’m moving things over to Tumblr. I’ll eventually set up a custom domain name for it back at casa de crankygeek, but for now, you can see me at crankygeek.tumblr.com.

I’ve updated my feed at FeedBurner, so you really shouldn’t even have to do anything.

I’m toying with the idea of including my link feed (now Google Reader driven) and Twitter posts here, but I’m worried about the duplication for my RSS-aware friends. Got an opinion on that? Let me know.