Philip

OK, thought I’d post up about how I find stuff to blog about so the other OneTwenty guys can actually… um, blog some more. I’m sure they have stuff to blog about, however as usual it’s about having a routine to stick by to make it effective. I remember when I talked to Nick before starting up I expected to chuck random stuff up that I find interesting, which is pretty much what I do at the moment. As people can tell a lot of my interest is in computing and social commentary, but it seems people need a break from computing all day to see what’s going on in the real world. Most people can tell I’m pretty critical about a lot of stuff.

Pretty much any given day I’ll be quickly reviewing 250+ articles per day from a bunch of RSS feeds. Basically, if you use web sites it slows you down. A lot. I used to look at web sites but I pretty much gave up since it’s like watching commercial TV vs renting a DVD. You get ads. Lots of ads. So many ads it slows you right down. RSS is like the advertisers worst nightmare, since you can get the content without the time waste of watching what they think you need. So, I use Feed which is a nice simple RSS aggregator for Mac OS X which also happens to be free. It bogs down after say, a few thousand RSS articles per RSS feed, so you have to remember to clean it up every so often to keep it in tip-top shape.

So, once you have a good RSS program you can rapidly speed through those hundreds of articles and pick out the ones that interest you. Out of my 250+ articles I’d quickly get through, maybe about 25 I’d actually bother to read beyond the subject heading, then about 10 I’d actually bother to go to the web site. My RSS feeds are by no means comprehensive, so I could probably track down some more feeds to round it out but what I’ve got at the moment seems pretty good. Out of those 10 or so I’d maybe pick say, 3 (this is an arbitary number, I figured any more than 3 would get a bit much) articles to actually share and blog up about which ends up on Planet OneTwenty. This would take less than say, 15 - 30 minutes in the morning while I check my email. Again, it’s my personal routine as I need to keep up to date with what’s going on in computing.

I recently switched to a dual screen setup at work so that makes life even better as I can use Safari or Firefox on the right screen (a secondhand Apple Cinema Display 17″, I only got it as I’m too lazy to buy another screen and an ADC -> DVI adaptor to make it work) and email and Feed on the left with other applications. Works out pretty good as a combo and saves me even more time as I can review the web page on one monitor and write up on the other. Maybe I’ll write about that later on, it’s almost shameful how quickly I’ve adapted to being a dual screen user. I get a bad feeling I might get to being a triple screen user, but I can probably use some kind of program like Leopard Spaces or Desktop Manager to hold off the inevitable.

So, that’s where the 3 or so blog posts a day comes from. Then there’s the “research” I do on the web which usually goes off on interesting tangents. That probably generates another couple of blog posts per week if not more. Let’s just say I research a lot of stuff up and my habit of right-clicking “Open Link in New Tab” gets used a lot. So, generally I’d be searching something up directly, then I go back and handle all the side searches that come up during my primary search. Which might generate more searching, you can see where this goes. Again, most isn’t worth talking or even blogging about, but I do get ideas on the way so I might get around to the real deal sometime soon.

After all that there’s articles I’ll see about writing up at some point which I consider is the real content of a blog (since other stuff is just personal opinions to other stuff out there) which I need to focus on. Hopefully, I’ll get some time to write up some articles like this so people can see what it’s all about.

OK, thought I’d post up about how I find stuff to blog about so the other OneTwenty guys can actually… um, blog some more. I’m sure they have stuff to blog about, however as usual it’s about having a routine to stick by to make it effective. I remember when I talked to Nick before starting up I expected to chuck random stuff up that I find interesting, which is pretty much what I do at the moment. As people can tell a lot of my interest is in computing and social commentary, but it seems people need a break from computing all day to see what’s going on in the real world. Most people can tell I’m pretty critical about a lot of stuff.

Pretty much any given day I’ll be quickly reviewing 250+ articles per day from a bunch of RSS feeds. Basically, if you use web sites it slows you down. A lot. I used to look at web sites but I pretty much gave up since it’s like watching commercial TV vs renting a DVD. You get ads. Lots of ads. So many ads it slows you right down. RSS is like the advertisers worst nightmare, since you can get the content without the time waste of watching what they think you need. So, I use Feed which is a nice simple RSS aggregator for Mac OS X which also happens to be free. It bogs down after say, a few thousand RSS articles per RSS feed, so you have to remember to clean it up every so often to keep it in tip-top shape.

So, once you have a good RSS program you can rapidly speed through those hundreds of articles and pick out the ones that interest you. Out of my 250+ articles I’d quickly get through, maybe about 25 I’d actually bother to read beyond the subject heading, then about 10 I’d actually bother to go to the web site. My RSS feeds are by no means comprehensive, so I could probably track down some more feeds to round it out but what I’ve got at the moment seems pretty good. Out of those 10 or so I’d maybe pick say, 3 (this is an arbitary number, I figured any more than 3 would get a bit much) articles to actually share and blog up about which ends up on Planet OneTwenty. This would take less than say, 15 - 30 minutes in the morning while I check my email. Again, it’s my personal routine as I need to keep up to date with what’s going on in computing.

I recently switched to a dual screen setup at work so that makes life even better as I can use Safari or Firefox on the right screen (a secondhand Apple Cinema Display 17″, I only got it as I’m too lazy to buy another screen and an ADC -> DVI adaptor to make it work) and email and Feed on the left with other applications. Works out pretty good as a combo and saves me even more time as I can review the web page on one monitor and write up on the other. Maybe I’ll write about that later on, it’s almost shameful how quickly I’ve adapted to being a dual screen user. I get a bad feeling I might get to being a triple screen user, but I can probably use some kind of program like Leopard Spaces or Desktop Manager to hold off the inevitable.

So, that’s where the 3 or so blog posts a day comes from. Then there’s the “research” I do on the web which usually goes off on interesting tangents. That probably generates another couple of blog posts per week if not more. Let’s just say I research a lot of stuff up and my habit of right-clicking “Open Link in New Tab” gets used a lot. So, generally I’d be searching something up directly, then I go back and handle all the side searches that come up during my primary search. Which might generate more searching, you can see where this goes. Again, most isn’t worth talking or even blogging about, but I do get ideas on the way so I might get around to the real deal sometime soon.

After all that there’s articles I’ll see about writing up at some point which I consider is the real content of a blog (since other stuff is just personal opinions to other stuff out there) which I need to focus on. Hopefully, I’ll get some time to write up some articles like this so people can see what it’s all about.