ohryan.ca

A Web Developer in Winnipeg

  • My New RSS Diet: No News

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    Until last week, I had not touched an RSS reader. My Google Reader list had become completely unsustainable, I always seemed to have hundreds of unread items.

    I’ve come to the realized that RSS is a crappy way to read news. I want my RSS reader to be a personalized daily magazine. Something I can pick up at the end of the day and browse through medium to long form articles of interest to me.

    Last week I put myself on a new news-free RSS diet. I started a fresh list of RSS sources with one criteria, they need to post no more than 3 times per day or so. This rule excludes all traditional news sources, most “pro-bloggers” and link-bloggers, etc.

    So far it’s been working out really well, I’ve got a manageable amount of content to digest every day and I’m finally able to keep up with web comics again, since they’re not being lost in a deluge of reposted stories.

    As for real news, I keep up with that on Twitter and Reddit. Easy peasy livin’ greezy.

    I still haven’t found a really great RSS reader though, but that’s another post.

  • Blog First, Tweet Later

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    WordCamp Winnipeg was absolutely amazing! I’ve literally been waiting my career to see this calibre of event in Winnipeg.

    David Pensato gave a really great talk about the future of social blogging. He made the keen observation that, with Facebook, Twitter and the like we are all blogging all the time.

    As an experiment, I am going to challenge myself to write a blog post instead of a Facebook status update, or tweet. I’m already seeing some potential issues with this idea, more on that later.

    Oh yeah, Peter Chester‘s talk on measuring WordPress performance was one of the best tech talks I’ve seen, ever!  Slides are here.

  • The best comment evar!

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    In reply to my August 2008 post “5 Reasons Tim Hortons Sucks” danno604 just wrote:

    Food is Appaulling, bordering on Euthenasia for the Elderly.
    Tim Hortons has horribly poor quality food – loaded with hydrogenated oils, white flour and sugar. The sandwiches and soup are so laden with sodium my tongue is sore.

    I’m mystified why this place is a magnet for old people. Is this some kind of end-of life instinct, like dolphins beaching themselves, to go to Tims?