Feed should be set now

For those of you subscribed to the new feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/markcleafeeds, I think it should be a go now, and moving forward everything should be smooth. There might be some confusiness (that's not a word) today, but just make like you never saw it. As I post things to separate sites, we'll see how the feed holds up. If it doesn't work like I want it to, I'll try to fix it, but if I can't, I'll probably just trash the idea.

Also, if you want to see the page where the feed originates from, you can go here (not sure why it's set up as https, but hey, whatever, it works in both http and https): https://www.google.com/reader/shared/user/06128103336565407440/label/markclea%20feeds.

Please note that the rss feed address on this page is different than the feedburner page, so if you subscribe from that page, you'll get a different address. Feedburner gives me some interesting analytics, and the raw rss does not. I'm sure it will in the future though. Choose whichever one you want.

feedback?

this is a test post for feedback loop in rss feed, might need to change some settings, but then again maybe everything is ok.

Combining Feeds

Alright, as some of you may, or may not know, I've been trying to find an easy and effective way to combine multiple RSS feeds into one feed. I've always wanted to be able to just post something to one site, and have it automatically be posted somewhere else. For instance, if I wanted to post a gallery of pictures to a photo gallery site, I'd really rather not have to do the work to post a link to that specific gallery to my weblog. It seems pretty redundant.

I tried several different things like posting images directly in weblog posts instead of in galleries, using tumblr to try to blend feeds, and ultimately, the answer was always right in my reach. Google Reader.

I use Google Reader everyday keeping up with my 100s of rss feeds. Basically, I try to read a lot. What I didn't know was that I could create a tag (also called a folder), add feeds to it, and then share that feed as a web page, publicly. This web page, in turn, has an rss feed. Instant feed combining and blending.

So, currently, of my many, many readers (pffffpfftppt), you're probably subscribed to my main blogger rss feed, which is http://feeds.feedburner.com/markclea. This feed won't go away, so if you want to still be subscribed to just that feed, that's cool. But, if you'd like to try something new and different, and keep up with all my goings on, you can subscribe to this new feedburner feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/markcleafeeds. This feed contains, or will contain the latest and greatest from image galleries, video sites, and blogging platforms that I use. I'll be curious to know how this will all turn out. Currently, the feed might be a bit confusing, because it looks like it organizes feeds in the order that I added them to Google Reader, which isn't necessarily in chronological order. I'd suggest just ignoring the past items available in the feed for now, and wait for the next thing.

Feeding the feed

It's been a while since I've posted anything here, and this is going to serve as a test to feed the "feed". If this works as I expect, I'll probably be changing some feedburner RSS feed settings in the near future. I'll post to let you know if feeds change, so you can decide to either unsubscribe, and subscribe again, or just keep things as it is. All I can say is, thank goodness this isn't a high traffic site. I'd have some explaining to do.

Seven bucks the hard way

Today is the last day of paternity leave for me. I think it should be law that all employers must give 10-12 weeks off every year. I mean, it's not like we don't have people looking for work, right? It could just be a rotation of employees... I think it'd work rather well. I'm sure no one else is with me.

To put a good note on where my focus is lately, I went to half price books to peddle some cassettes, VHS tapes, and some books yesterday. The guy that rung me up responded to my Riddle of Steel shirt by saying, "I have that same shirt in brown. It's the only brown shirt I own." In the past, I'm sure I would have struck up a conversation about Riddle of Steel, saying how completely awesome they are, or when the last time I saw them was, or if they had the latest record. Instead, I responded by saying, "my five month old likes this shirt too. He is constantly grabbing here, and here." To which he responded... "heh, heh, kitty cats."

Funny how things work like that. Our total gain from half price books was seven bucks. I went and got gas right after that, and it was $52.