What the hell is an RSS?

in

For a good primer on what an RSS feed is or what it means to subscribe to a site, check out this page. I also wanted to offer a bit of a public service for others in my circle of friends. though.

I'm on LiveJournal but have non-LiveJournal friends I want to keep track of when they update

You can create "feeds" for those other friends and get their RSS feeds mixed in with your friends list on LiveJournal. All you have to do is add them here by adding the URL of their RSS feed: http://www.livejournal.com/syn/

Some of the most common formats/examples for the feed URL:

TypePad: http://leofwynne.typepad.com/adventures/index.rdf (it can take some poking around to find the right link for this, holler if you need help) DiaryLand: http://thornbury.diaryland.com/index.rss (DiaryLand feeds have been sporadic at best and just started working again on Friday) Other: http://www.wilwheaton.net/mt/index.xml (Wil Wheaton rocks. He uses Moveable Type and has his own domain etc.)

If you add a URL that no one has added before, LiveJournal may ask you give it a name. You are naming that feed for everyone who uses LiveJournal, so be sure you give it a reasonable name that implies where it's coming from (like thornburydl or leofwynnetp or doocefeed) and not something obscure (like mysweetie). In addition to your friends, you can add a variety of news or public service RSS feeds. For example, I added the Word of the Day feed and the American Diabetes Association News feed to my friends list. You can see the feeds I have in my user profile in the section under the satellite dish looking thing.

As a note, when you first add an RSS feed, it will dump all of them at once to start, so your friends list may look like a bomb hit it at first. This will sort itself out soon enough.

I don't use LiveJournal, but would also love to keep track of various RSS feeds

You can use a Feed Reader like NewsGator, or the like. The free one is a just a web site that you go to, but you can pay a small price for it and get versions that work on your phone or integrate with Outlook.

You can use the formats above as well as add any LiveJournal user. The format for any LiveJournal user is:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/puck_eater/data/rss or http://www.livejournal.com/users/puck_eater/data/atom

depending on if you want RSS or Atom. Your mileage may vary.

I've noticed some of my feeds show the whole entry and some just show snippets with a link.

This is something the RSS author (or their provider) has set up. Each author has their reasons for doing that. Some do it to make sure they still get traffic to their web site (and thus, those ever so satisfying web stats), others just do it to save space on your reader (like a lj-cut in LiveJournal). Again, everyone has a preference one way or the other and they both have their strong points.

I notice your RSS feed link at the bottom of your web site isn't any of those formats. What's up with that?

I use FeedBurner to manage my RSS feed, becuase I'm a stats whore. I also want to be able to change the link behind the scenes for my blog if I needed to, one day, and not have to change where folks go. It's also nice that FeedBurner gives a short tutorial at the top. And I can use FeedBurner to have the same link be my PodCast address (PodCasting is a whole other post in and of itself). My link is:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/messageinabottleblog

If after reading this, you still have questions or comments, let me know. I'm just doing my part to get all the various folks to easily be able to keep track of each other online.

All I want is a proper cup of coffee ...

in

We've been having trouble with the coffee pot at the office lately. It's a very nice Capresso that was original bought with the idea of making hot chocolate, but has evolved into our deluxe coffee pot. This week has been hard on us coffee drinkers for two reasons. One, Matt has been on vacation all week. Matt. The only person who can make coffee worth a damn in the entire office. I've considered changing his job description to include "must make at least two pots (minimum 16 cups) of coffee each day the office is open" to prevent disasters like this from ever happening again.

Matt has tried to teach us coffee novices how to make a pot of coffee. But we all suck at it. And this isn't even the "oh, let's do a crappy job so Matt will have to do the coffee" kind of sucking. This is bona fide craptastic coffee that we make when Matt is not here.

So it's bad enough that Matt is not here this week. But then, to add insult to injury, the coffee pot has been acting up the past few days. I'm not sure if our coffee maker is a jealous vixen of a coffee maker, and she's pining for Matt's return. But the coffee pot has leaked at least four times now, and two of those were this week alone.

And these leaks aren't the "oh, could you grab me a paper towel, the coffee maker is leaking again" kind of leaks. They're the "HOLY SHIT THE COFFEE POT IS LEAKING AGAIN! SOMEONE GET ME A TOWEL! A BUCKET! DAMMIT, MATT, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN US?!" kind of leaks.

John made the coffee on Tuesday. And coffee exploded on the counter, in the silverware drawer, and all over the carpet. So I made a coffee containment contraption (CCC), i.e. a cardboard box, and installed it around the coffee maker. And I left specific instructions that when, not if, the coffee maker leaked again this week (because I knew it would), to come get me and I would investigate the cause. I was getting all CSI on this coffee pot's ass.

And yesterday, John told me the coffee maker had leaked again. He grumbled and groused and said horrible things about our crappy coffee maker. But we can't replace it. It may be the Holy Grail of Coffee Makers. The only thing that is so well aligned with Matt's style of coffee preparation so as to make a perfect cup of coffee every time he touchs it. And we like the thermos pot so the coffee stays warm.

So John shuffled off to get a cup of coffee from Kroger next door and I started cleaning up the carnage. Hooray, Coffee Containment Contraption! All the coffee was in the box. The box was gross, but we wouldn't have to clean the carpet again. As I picked up the coffee pot to empty it, I noticed it seemed very full. Very full indeed. And it was brimming over. While there were still 2 cups of water in the reservoir and about 5 cups of coffee in the box. Hrm. It seems John tried to brew a pot of coffee and put it in a coffee pot that was already half full. And while I'm no Matt, I do know you can't put a pot and a half of coffee in only one coffee pot.

So one can hope that we won't have any more coffee maker mishaps this week as we anxiously await Matt's return. I have replaced the CCC with a fresh box and we all hold our breath until the pot is done brewing. If he doesn't come back soon, I may have to resort to a cup of tea.