Keeping Up With RSS

07:51 Wednesday, 25 January 2023
Current Wx: Temp: 66.83°F Pressure: 1011hPa Humidity: 84% Wind: 12.66mph
Words: 288

Since I've cut back on my Twitter usage, I've subscribed to a lot of RSS feeds.

I have two feeds devoted to Twitter. One is my "Locals" list (which includes a few non-locals), which is where I spent most of my time on Twitter. The other is my "mentions."

I also subscribe to a number of National Weather Service feeds, and some of those post very frequently with conditions updates.

There are a number of local news sites that offer RSS, and I subscribe to those as well.

Finally, there are a lot of blogs I've discovered and subscribed to.

The "unread" feed can get very large, very fast. On the Mac, it's easy to just down-arrow through the timeline, skipping over weather updates or Tweets are kind of meaningless absent some of the context which doesn't always come over in RSS. But it can feel like a slog.

So yesterday I spent some time dividing things up into folders on NetNewsWire. That makes it easy to dip into the NWS feed and just "mark all as read," if there isn't a weather situation developing.

Similarly, I can quickly scan mentions on Twitter to see if there's something I should reply to.

It's easy and pleasant on the iPhone to swipe through blog updates, starring the ones I might want to return to.

I need to look into RSS for Mastodon, micro.blog and YouTube so I can add those. Then NetNewsWire would be the central place where I would go for new content from things I have a persistent interest in following.

Folders make it easy to kind of prioritize subjects and manage attention.

I don't know, I think this RSS thing might catch on.

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Unsettled

10:51 Wednesday, 25 January 2023

Current Wx: Temp: 73.26°F Pressure: 1011hPa Humidity: 78% Wind: 19.57mph
Words: 27

Very breezy this morning, ahead of a line of thunderstorms expected this afternoon. E-M10 Mk4 with the 14-150mm zoom, dramatic tone filter applied. A mood.

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Get Out of The House

11:10 Thursday, 25 January 2024

Current Wx: Temp: 75.33°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 80% Wind: 5.01mph
Words: 467

Mitzi's in St. Pete visiting a museum exhibit and an old friend (and her financial advisor), so I'm rattling around here by myself.

I had my eyes examined the other day to make sure there weren't any issues with my retinas. There aren't. We discussed "floaters" and I told him that I've always had them. I seem to notice them more when I'm reading and he said that's not unusual. They're most visible when you're looking at a blank surface and so the brain "notices" them more, whereas it's busy constructing the visual scene in other environments, and they just become part of the noise.

I suppose something similar goes on with tinnitus. Last night it was screaming. Normally Mitzi has her CPAP machine going, and I don't notice my ears ringing. Once I notice it, it's hard to let it go. So I played some music through the little HomePod mini on the nightstand and fell back asleep eventually.

Before I went to bed, I kind of made plans to get up early this morning and head down to the kayak launch point and watch the sunrise. I overslept a little because of the tinnitus interruption, but managed to make my way down there in time.

I brought along two cameras. I had the OM-5 on a sling with the 12-45mm/f4 zoom; and I carried the E-M1X with the 100-400mm zoom mounted on the Cotton Carrier on my chest. Spent a little over an hour down there with no discomfort anywhere. I could have stayed longer, but I'd taken a lot of images and wanted to get home to look them over.

Ran into someone leaving as I got there. He said I'd just missed a pod of dolphins. Water was slack and like glass, but the tide started coming in while I was there. The most exciting thing was a dolphin surfacing and exhaling not more than a few yards from where I was standing. Of course, I didn't have a camera raised. I got a shot of the ripple where it descended.

Sunrise was unspectacular, so I went wandering back on the trail north of the launch point and spotted a bunch of snowy egrets, ibises, egrets and a little blue heron. There was even a wood stork, but I didn't get a shot of it, it left as I came upon them. I put a dozen or so up on Flickr, beginning with this one and you can work your way back if you're so inclined.

I took the RAV4 down this morning, rather than the golf cart. The road is a mess and beats the hell out of the golf cart. The RAV4 handles it much better, and is faster too.

I should do this more often.

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ChatGPT on Empathy

06:40 Sunday, 25 January 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 6.19°F Pressure: 1033hPa Humidity: 82% Wind: 7.34mph
Words: 89

Another bout of insomnia, wrestling with why a significant portion of the population is totally okay with agents of the federal government openly executing an American citizen on the streets of an American city.

I've never tried this before, sharing a "chat" session, but I thought the responses were informative, reasonable and not especially delusional. So here's a link to that session, I don't know how it'll appear, or if you have to have an account.

Some things to think about.

As if I needed any more of those.

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