Jamie Thingelstad

The 2024 holiday season can now officially start with another great New Standards Holiday Show tonight. Dessa was the big guest appearance this year.

I created a Twin Cities IndieWeb list on BlogFlock. Let me know if you have sites that should be added! I feel a desire to get an IndieWeb meetup going in the Twin Cities.

I ran across BlogFlock, a new service by Raphael Kabo that takes a social approach to RSS feeds, and decided to give it a look. BlogFlock is entirely built on open RSS feeds and allows users to create lists of RSS feeds that others can then follow. Think of it as a way to build a custom timeline using RSS in the open. It isn’t a Feed Reader because it isn’t just your feed or list and there is no read or unread status. It is more in the spirit of a “river of news” feed that anyone can use.

I was having fun with it and decided to create a list I’ve always wanted for Manuel Moreale’s excellent People & Blogs project. I created a BlogFlock list for People & Blogs and yes, I actually added all 66 blogs to the list (some exceptions noted below). That wasn’t super fun but it is done and adding each new one is simple enough.

I had previously thought of doing something like this in Feedbin but it isn’t public so it kind of missed the point. I wanted something more like a “river of news” for it. So BlogFlock was a perfect approach.

It seems to be working really well and I like the way it works. Check out the People & Blogs List and give it a look.

Some notes for BlogFlock.

1. You should be able to subscribe to the RSS feed for the list itself. In this way BlogFlock could be an aggregator and then I could add that lists aggregated RSS feed to my feed reader.
2. You for sure should be able to create a list by importing an OPML file.
3. Lists should be exportable via OPML as well.
4. The description for a blog in a list is hopefully scoped just to that list. So if I add the same feed to two different lists I would want a different description for each one.
5. You should be able to manually reorder the blogs in a list.
6. It could handle posts without titles a bit better.

On this list itself it contains all 66 blogs that have been highlighted in People & Blogs thus far, with these exceptions:

• P&B 9: Ray Thomas has no RSS feed.
• P&B 43: Devastatia has adult content so I left it out.
• P&B 60: Steyn Viljoen has no RSS feed.

PS: It turns out Manu has a similar People & Blogs List on Feedland.

The SPS Observation Station is ready for Cyber Monday 2024!

I saw this graph on Tyler Cowen’s blog and it blew my mind how much is “alone”. In the comments someone did a stack area version which is much more readable.

We need to spend less time alone. If that isn’t possible, this is one area I think AI could be “helpful”. Spend time talking to AI?

We went to the Vikings v Cardinals game today. Tammy decided that we should take in a football game and got us all set up. We had seats on club level right at the 50 yard line.

The first three quarters of the game were frankly a yawn. A collection of 6 field goals left the Cardinals ahead 12 to 6. Seriously watching teams just go back and forth and score field goals was not thrilling.

Then the Cardinals scored a touchdown and made it 19 to 6. That seemed to wake the Vikings from their slumber. They scored a touchdown getting to 19 to 13. Then some more field goals put the game at 22 to 16 with the Vikings finally taking the lead for the very first time in the final minutes of the game with a touchdown taking them to 23 to 22. The Cardinals had a possession and time, great defense held them and then they threw an interception in the final minute shutting the game down.

The first three boring quarters were all forgotten with that excitement!

Now THAT is a giant flag! 🤩🇺🇸

We saw The Best Christmas Pageant Ever tonightt. Well done and great start to the holidays.