Okay, I played with RSS, and finally saw some benefit in it. It’s not intuitive by ANY stretch, but once you’ve figured out how to drop RSS feeds into your Bookmarks Toolbar folder in Firefox, you can tap those little icons on the toolbar and see what’s new on your favorite sites.

As has been mentioned before, this is best for blogs, or other sites whose updates are not scheduled like clockwork. I’m using it now for Cox and Forkum (a political cartoon that updates irregularly) and Websnark, a blog popular with the webtoonist set, which also updates irregularly. I tried putting my gmail account up there and it errors out. I think I have too much mail.

I’ve not played with aggregation at all yet.

Anyway, thanks for the help, folks. Specifically, thanks to strredwolf and matt_arnold, who actually posted a concise set of instructions I could follow. Honorable mention to p3rlm0nk and datapacrat for the FAQ link and the ForecastFox link, respectively.

I still need to look into Bloglines. That may prove useful when I’m on the road.

At any rate, the tentative verdict is “I will employ RSS for notification, not aggregation.” It’ll be a few weeks at least, as we’re still hammering on more important stuff on the site (transcripts in the archives for Google searchability, and Open Letter archives for a blog I can run ads in).

Thank you, and good night.

–Howard

Every couple of weeks somebody tells me I ought to create an RSS feed. I respond with “what would you use it for?” The reply is “well, it’d be cool to get Schlock in an aggregator.”

Fine. Show me an aggregator. I’m throwing down the gauntlet on you LJers because some of you talk about how cool RSS is. So far NOBODY has been able to provide me with a demonstration of the value of RSS. Until I can use it myself, I’m not going to go to the trouble of putting it in place. To date, RSS has been demonstrably worthless, because nobody has been able to demonstrate its worth.

Here’s your challenge: Post useful, clear instructions, such that I can follow them and observe the (to date wholly THEORETICAL) benefits of RSS for myself.

Go on, I dare you.

–Howard

I read the most recent installment over at Cox and Forkum, and found that the commentary under the strip was missing an excellent piece that jmaynard pointed me at a few days ago. So I emailed the guys with a link, and POW! Not only did they link to Norman Podhoretz’ dissertation, they linked to ME!

If you’re coming here from C&F, know that I don’t typically talk politics, though it does happen sometimes. Adding my blog to your list of “informed sources” would be like rolling the Washington Post up and packaging it as toilet paper — it might be a satisfactory political statement, but you’ll end up with a sore butt.

(Okay, THAT metaphor has to go on my “don’t do that again” list.)

Adding my comic to your list of “things you read every day” will be much more satisfying and yes, easier on those tender places.

I had a great workday yesterday, and followed it up with a really lousy morning today. Finally, I decided I just needed to get “out of the box,” so I went down to Dragon’s Keep with my drawing stuff, and worked on artwork for cast pages.

It was fun. I knew a few of the people there (including the store owner and the regular staff, obviously), and they liked having me around. The rest of the patrons tolerated me with aplomb.

Mostly I drew and threw non-sequiturs into the conversations to which I was listening. I’m good at that. For instance: I kept quiet during the discussion of Michael’s ex-roommate’s friend and her bouts with the STD of the week, but when the conversation 30 minutes later turned to rock-climbing and the benefits of pants with a “gusseted crotch” I couldn’t help but throw a call-back to the previous conversation. Hilarity ensued.

I mention this (hanging out at Dragon’s Keep, not gusseted crotch and the associated home remedies) because I’ll probably do it again. It may end up being my default workplace on Friday afternoons, with an extension into RPGing in the evenings. We’ll see. I know I have work to do, and piles thereof, but having a planned night out may help get that work done more efficiently, what with the out-of-the-box thinking and the clearing-of-cobwebs.

–Howard