RobiNZ CAD Blog

Blog Till You Drop?

A recent article the New York Times suggests blogging is a hazardous game. They cite cases of full-time Bloggers who have died and point the finger at the strain they’ve been under to maintain their new media presence. It is interesting that technology blogging, with it’s pressure to be first, seems to be the focus of the article.

In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop - New York Times
SAN FRANCISCO — They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece — not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home…

While any death is tragic, I can’t imagine blogging being more stressful than many other occupations and think it’s just sensationalism to it single out.

Consuming blogs, information overload?

An amateur like me doesn’t have the pressure to post for income there is one blog related hazard I’ve struggled to avoid. I read lots of blogs and there is a tendency to consume ever increasing amounts of information. A post leads to a new blog, grab the feed, then another, grab that feed, and one day you find yourself looking at a reader tracking nearly a thousand RSS feeds!

I’ve found three ways to deal with that problem;

1. Reading them all is one, but a hardly sustainable, approach.
2. Set a quota at the number of feeds you can handle and cull feeds. If you want to add one you must delete one but that limited the scope too much. The downside is you miss a lot of brilliant information.
3. If nothing is happening or you need to catch up just “mark all as read”!

I tend to combine all these using RSS Bandit’s “Review Flag” and my  own “Favourites”;

• I collect “favourite feeds” which are my prime sources in a category (1) such as Home, IT, News, CAD etc
• If I have time I’ll scan all the feed headlines (2) to find content I want to read. If the item is short I’ll read it in the “Newspaper view” (3), or maybe open a browser tab (4). For longer items I click “Flag” (5) to mark them “For Review”. It means all those feeds can be reviewed in less than half an hour. How much time I spend actually reading depends on what I find!
• If I’m short of time, or just want to catch up, I resort to my “Favourites”. By reading them the I can review about 50 feeds which cover topics as as diverse as CAD, Auto, Sport, Politics, Science etc. If one of those highlights something of interest I might still delve into the 10, 20, 30 , 100+ feeds relating to that topic. Otherwise I may just mark all the items “as read”.

I regard the feeds as a way to gather info rather than something which must be religiously read in full. You don’t feel obliged to read all the newspapers or watch all the TV News channels! However, they do provide rapid access to sources – either professional or personal – I regard as important to follow. 

Creating a blog – A choice, not a chore!

I’m often asked how much time I spend writing this blog and, to be honest, I’m not really sure. While it’s probably along the lines of 5–10 hours a week I don’t regard it as a chore and certainly don’t schedule time for it. My natural night owl tendencies mean posts are usually written late in the evening which is probably apparent from the writing & proof reading! It’s time I’d probably waste on TV so doesn’t impact on my “real life” whatever that is! Besides, it’s something I enjoy doing and if it ever becomes “work” it’s time to stop!

While items appear reasonably frequently that’s a bit of an illusion. I tend to write in bursts so a few hours writing may generate several weeks of posts. I then use TypePad’s forward posting feature to schedule these to appear at a reasonable rate. If “blog worthy” breaking news crops up I just bump those forward posts even further into the future. The funny side of this is I have been asked about a post, which just appeared on the blog, but was actually written so long ago I’ve almost forgotten about it!

There is more to life than blogging and I’m going off-line for a few, hopefully completely computer free, weeks holiday soon. Still, there will plenty to blog about when I return…

It's all about feeds, so here are 400 CAD related feeds

Take a deep breath, then read Shaan’s recent record length single sentence explanation of why you should use RSS feeds;

I still feel the same passion for the [his] blog and read about 300 feeds a day in my RSS feed reader which is something you could not do just browsing updated pages as the feed reader allows me to read the feeds a few times a day and scan for articles that interest me much like a newspaper as nobody really reads each article of the newspaper heck not many read newspapers today come to think of it.

It’s long but does explain the benefit of RSS versus normal web browsing. There’s a myriad of feed readers, both web based and local applications. Many web browsers and email clients will handle feeds but I prefer a separate local app. I use RSS Bandit (open source donor ware), as like it’s features, while Shaan has just switched from Google Reader (free on-line) to FeedDemon (also recently made free).

I’ve posted about how I use RSS Bandit before (see index). It’s currently allowing me to follow 1119 feeds, yes really that’s not a typo! Like Shaan I don’t read them all everyday but they allow me to monitor a massive volume of information which wouldn’t be possible any other way. While it may sound like information overload many only update infrequently.

The secret of RSS: You only get what’s new, meaning unread by you, and what you decide to follow.

As you collect feeds there’s is a tendency to try & read everything but it’s not necessary. For example I have about 20 Formula One feeds yet apart from race weekends only follow a couple closely. The others are there for review which only takes a few seconds except those weekends when the Formula One world bursts into life. I tend to have that approach with each topic and have a few “favourites” I read most days while still  monitoring many others. If I’m away I tend to catch up with the favourites then mark the rest ”as read”.

Whatever reader you choose, use feeds!

To help with that I have have exported the approx 400 CAD related feeds I follow into the attached zip file*. It’s in OPML format which can be imported into most feed readers with one note of caution. The feeds are structured including categories used in my own reader. I’m not sure how other readers handle the import so stress if you have an existing list back it up before importing this file.

File Attachment: RobiNZ CAD Feeds.zip (17 KB)

If you are unsure about this another approach is to open the .OPML file in a text editor and  just copy the feeds that interest you. If you look at each line:

<outline title="RobiNZ CAD Blog" xmlUrl="http://feeds.feedburner.com/RobinzBlog" type="rss" text="RobiNZ CAD Blog" htmlUrl="http://rcd.typepad.com/rcd/" description="" />

Outline title is a Blog, or other feed source, the xmlURL is the feed URL, the htmlURL is the website's URL and “text” the description. Just add the feed or site URL’s of interest to your reader. Happy Feed Reading!

* If your CAD/BIM Bog isn’t listed let me know as it means I haven’t discovered it’s feed yet!

Web Tech Connections...

It’s kind of weird using Dare’s software* to read about his home and dad.

* RSS Bandit is now open source software maintained by a dedicated group of developers –  http://www.rssbandit.org/ – but started out as a technology demonstration by Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life.

RSS Bandit Feedlist download bug

I know about 5% of my subscribers use RSS Bandit so thought should share an annoying Feedlist bug in the current release. I found this in the beta but thought it had been fixed but it appears it hasn’t.

One of  the main reasons I like RSS Bandit is it’s not a web based application, dependent on one provider, but does allow the feedlist and read-state to be synchronised on different machines.

Today I updated the Autodesk Discussion Group Feedlist Categories & Titles, to match the new 2008 naming, then uploaded the feedlist to my USB drive.

For example I renamed the Category ABS to AutoCAD MEP, the feed ABS to AMEP, plus added the AMEP Wishes feed.

Once home I downloaded the feedlist but found that the new naming & structure was not honoured. It does not cause any loss of data, the feeds and read states were there, but the name changes had not transferred .

I found the only way to get the new structure (it’s in the upload file) is a bit drastic:

• Right Click on “My Feeds”
• Then “Delete all feeds”,
• Then Download the new list.

That’s fine, but you may find some show old previously read posts showing un-read. I just ignore them until the next “Mark as read” clears them up.

A new Bandit! - A new version of RSS Bandit Feed Reader

How do you keep an eye on 889 websites a day without going crazy?

There’s only one way and it’s thanks to RSS Feeds and a good Feed Reader. Hit update all and a few minutes later you see a summary of everything that has changed since last time you checked in. I use RSS feeds at work to monitor CAD Blogs, Newsgroups, Web Forums and even work related web searches (company name etc). I use them at home to monitor feeds on many subjects from Arts to Weather and everything in between. I use a common feed-list which I transfer on usb drive to make sure I never read the same post twice.

My favourite, OK my only, RSS feed reader has just been updated. I like RSS Bandit as it’s a local application, not web based, but supports sync'ing the feed list and read state between home & work. There are many new features in the “Jubilee 1.5.0.10” release but my favourites are the addition of favicons to the feed-list & comment watching. Some other nice improvements are detailed in Dare’s post along with download details.

A huge thanks to Dare (seen below), Torsten and the rest of the RSS Bandit community for making the best feedreader I’ve found.

Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life - RSS Bandit v1.5.0.10 Released
Although this has taken much longer than I expected, the Jubilee release of RSS Bandit is now done and available for all. Besides the new features there are a number of performance improvements especially with regards to the responsiveness of the application…

RSS Bandit Beta looking good

UPDATE 20–12–2006: As “Jimmy JTB” mentions (see trackback below) I’ve also had an occasional “feed mix-up” with the beta. In a comment on Jimmy’s post Dare says this will be improved again, hopefully completely sorted, in the next beta. A couple of other things I’ve found;

• If you loose right click menus after a feedlist download restarting RSS Bandit will restore it.
• Clearing the Cache “C:\Documents and Settings\YOURLOGON\Local Settings\Application Data\RssBandit\Cache” will un-mix feeds.

Dare has posted a beta for the next release of RSS Bandit. There are some performance fixes and nice new features. It appears the occasional feed mix-up (posts showing in the wrong location) and scrambled graphics (when you did a large “mark as read”) are sorted.

Some of my favourite new features:

• Comment Watching (Yay!)
• Date-based grouping in the list view

• Favicons in the feedlist. Small refinement but makes it easier to pick a feed in the tree. Below the Autodesk blogs show a mix of favicons; Custom, TypePad and Wordpress included.

Remember, like any beta, this is work in progress, enter at your own risk but so far I’ve not seen any major problems

Updated: RSS Bandit 1.5.x (Jubilee) Beta Installer Available

http://www.rssbandit.org/forum/

RSS Bandit, Bill Gates & The President of Nigeria?

Dare Obasanjo, aka Carnage4Life, aka RSS Bandit creator, works at Microsoft and met Bill Gates. Perhaps that is not remarkable except for the reason they met. Bill wanted to learn more about The President of Nigeria & Dare could help. The result is a fascinating post.

Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life - Meeting Bill Gates

Tags: Bill+Gates, Dare+Obasanjo, The+President+of+Nigeria

Auckland AutoCAD User Group Meeting - 13th September 2006

Demonstration & discussion of MindManager, Blogs, RSS Subscription and ActiveWords UI automation to assist with CAD related work, support, documentation and training.

18:30, 13th September 2006, Northcote, Auckland - If you are interested in attending email me for details.

Meet a nice Bandit - RSS Bandit Upgrade

I came home from AU to find a bandit waiting. Not a problem as it was only a new version of the RSS Feed Reader – RSS Bandit. It has a cool new logo and updated smiley face Bandit icon.

There are some nice new features: I think the best is that items can be marked as read/unread and flagged/un-flagged directly from the newspaper view. This makes reading much easier as you previously had to find the article in the article list.

Working with Autodesk Discussion Groups RSS feeds

As a part of a update last month the Autodesk Discussion (news)Groups now have RSS feeds. I’ve been using them for a while to monitor a few key groups which I used to visit in Outlook Express. I use RSS Bandit as my feed reader so what follows applies to it, other readers may handle or display the feed differently.

You subscribe to the feed by right clicking on the tiny (really tiny) RSS icon on the web page view of each Discussion Group. If you have an RSS Reader you should see an option to “Subscribe in default Aggregator” or similar.

Once subscribed the feed delivers headers for each message with a short extract. Clicking on the header opens the web-page view of that message thread. RSS Bandit does this using tabbed views so its a nice way to compare several threads even if from different discussion groups.

Each time you update the feeds you see new content highlighted and history of read messages. The length of the message history is controlled by a “retain messages” setting in RSS Bandit. I keep 3 weeks but at any time you can alter that to go back further and feed history can be set (in days) globally or per feed. I tend to use the search function on the web-page for material older than this.

RSS Bandit has a “Newspaper View” which I use to scan messages across multiple groups in one view. Clicking on the Autodesk Newsgroups category folder in my feedlist shows all new messages in all the feeds it contains.  This makes it really quick to scan multiple groups, open those that interest you or mark them as read.

I upload/download my RSS Bandit state (RSS Feedlist and read/non-read status) to a USB Drive. You can also do this via web upload/download if preferred but our corporate firewall doesn’t allow it. It means I can read threads at home and carry the feed list and “read state” to synchronise my work desktop. That is a major productivity boost as I don’t see the same post twice!

After a few weeks working with the RSS Feeds & RSS Bandit I’ve not missed my old Outlook Express News-reader.

Autodesk Discussion Group Index ~ http://discussion.autodesk.com

RSS Bandit Home page ~ http://www.rssbandit.org/

A Bandit to the rescue?

Blogs are great, but there are so many of them how can you read them all? With a bit of help you can.
I had heard about "Aggregators" but never bothered finding out about them, or trying one, until today...

Whats an Aggregator?
News aggregators are desktop or Web applications that are used to retrieve and display RSS feeds from various news sources.

Whats an RSS feed?
RSS stands for 'Rich Site Summary', 'RDF Site Summary' or 'Really Simple Syndication' depending on who you ask. An RSS feed is an XML formatted document with a summary of the site and its content used for syndicating content from online sources. You see the RSS feed on news sites and blogs usually in the form of a small orange "XML icon" or a text link like the "Syndicate this site (XML)" link seen on Typepad Blogs. The actual RSS feed XML for this blog looks like this:

How can an Aggregator help?
The Aggregator looks at the RSS feeds you specify and returns any new or changed content from those sites. In a few seconds it's scanned many sites and returned only what is new.
You can then scan and read only the posts you choose either in the aggregator or at the relevant site. This allows many sites to be reviewed very quickly.

There are two main types of aggregators, local or web based. I decided I wanted a locally installed one and after a little searching found RSS Bandit: a .NET RSS desktop feed aggregator. RSS Bandit first implementation was started by Dare Obasanjo and documented in the MSDN article: Building a Desktop News Aggregator. It is now an Open Source project and is hosted at Sourceforge.net.

From my experience so far its a great piece of software that allows simple setup, reading and browser viewing of RSS feeds in a familiar and easy to learn interface. It comes with some feeds preset and you can add others by right clicking on a sites RSS icon/link and choosing "Subscribe in Default Aggregator".
As an example of how it works this is the RSS feed from this Blog seen in RSS Bandit.

You can also see "CAD FORUM" blog has 9 new messages and selecting it would display these. Selecting Search Folder>Unread Items would display all unread items from all blogs. At the time I did this I had 72 active feeds. RSS Bandit scans these in a few seconds and displays all new unread posts filtered in the "Unread" folder. Two feeds show errors where I had put in an incorrect address. RSS Bandit found these and it also can validate an RSS feed for errors in formatting & structure.

You can download RSS Bandit from the RSS Bandit Homepage