I’m sick of Twitter. I have been for a long time but I’m finally doing a nuclear sign off. I’ll be deleting my accounts and moving all my posting to this website and mastodon (find me). I want to focus more on this blog, and since I’m leaving the platform I have the most reach and access to followers on, I figured I’d write about how to follow this blog and follow me without being beholden to Twitter.

What is a feed #

Feeds (often called RSS feeds) are just a standardized, machine readable way for websites to tell other software what content is available. If you use some kind of news reader app (Google Reader (RIP)), you’re already using them. If not, reader/read-it-later apps are awesome.

Omnivore, my app of choice, has changed the way I consume writing on the Internet, and helped me read more. I’m not the best person to tell you why you should use a read it later/feed reader app, there are plenty of people with stronger opinions about that on the Internet if you want that.

How to get started #

Use an app like Omnivore (free, open source, my choice), Feedly (freemium), Inoreader (freemium).

Find the feeds for the blogs/websites you want to follow (there’s a link in the footer of this website). Copy it, and add it as a feed to your reader app. Sometimes they can be hard to find, most WordPress blogs have a link to a general feed and a comments feed on the sidebar (you want general), and others have it somewhere else. Usually a command+f for feed or rss on the homepage is enough to find it, if not, ask the author!

I just learned you can follow Mastodon accounts from your feed reader too!

Once or hour or so, your app will check my websites feed to see if there’s anything new, if there is, it’ll put it into your reading list. I don’t do emails when I post or have any kind of sign up, because I think that’s annoying, I don’t want to handle or have your data, and it doesn’t let you choose how you consume my posts.

Everything that isn’t a book I now read through Omnivore. Check out what I’m reading and enjoying at my books and stuff pages!

If that’s too much for you, I’ll still be on Mastodon for the time being. Find me @[email protected], or follow an RSS feed of that account here!

If you’re interested in having a blog (you should be!), I’ll be writing about that soon. More people should have blogs!

I miss the corners of the internet where you’d Google some niche thing and one person with a blog had already written about it. You’d go look at it and they’d have shown their homework and given it to you without watching two minutes of video first or showing you a bunch of ads. These corners still exist and it’s still possible and I’d like to be a part of it — sharing knowledge under the premise of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.”
—Emily Horsman’s Bike Stuff about page

Discovery #

If you rely on Twitter or any platform social media to discover new things, and think you can’t leave because of that, I encourage you to try Marginalia, a search engine focused on blogs and the non corporate internet. There are so many people writing interesting things out there.