Category Archives: General

TweetDeck Bites It

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So, Twitter just announced that TweetDeck is soon to be effectively crippled. They’re turning off and removing their mobile versions of the app and discontinuing integration with Facebook, which was one of the major selling points of the service for me. From reading the announcement, basically what I get from it is that not enough people are using TweetDeck anymore so they’re just going to take their ball and go home. I guess this was to be expected when Twitter bought TweetDeck and they immediately stripped out a lot of what made TweetDeck great, but it still bites to have my favorite social media client put on mothballs.

So, I’m in the market for a new one, and I’m open to suggestions. Ideally, I’d like to have something as similar to TweetDeck as possible — multiple Twitter columns so I can monitor simultaneous streams, a mobile version for iPhone, and Facebook integration. Also, preferably something that’s free or at least extremely low cost.

Any suggestions?

Feedly vs The Old Reader: The Final Result

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Ever since Google announced that it’s closing the doors on Reader, I’ve been running Feedly and The Old Reader side-by-side, trying to decide which one I like better. Today, I’ve decided to go with The Old Reader, and I figured it might be helpful to put my list of pros and cons of the two readers out there for others, in case they’re having the same debate.

Feedly

What I like about it:

  1. It updates frequently, so new items hit my feed very close to the times they hit their websites.
  2. It has an iPhone app, which does make it convenient for reading while on the go.

And that’s about it.

What I don’t like about it:

  1. Feedly has a clunky interface. Very little of what it does makes it easy to manage my feeds.
  2. It doesn’t hide read items. Sure, you can click the button that tells it to display on new items, but once you’ve gone through the list and read everything, rather than displaying a blank page with a note that says there are no new items, it shows all old items from a window that is, as near as I can figure it, about 30 days old. What’s worse is that, while it greys out those items, the ‘read items’ grey is so similar to the ‘unread items’ grey that it’s difficult to tell the difference.
  3. It doesn’t have an easy way to add new feeds. It’s supposed to, and it says it does, but the method it actually uses is anything but simple.
  4. It mashes graphics to fit the reading panel. Basically, whenever an item contains an image that exceeds the boundaries of the reading panel, it resizes the image to fit. For most things, this isn’t much of an issue, but I read a lot of webcomics, and it’s exceptionally annoying when it resizes those comics down so much that it makes reading the text difficult. I’d prefer to keep the images the same size as the originals and have to scroll a little to see everything.
  5. On a similar note, Feedly insists on floating all images to the right, which A) is counterintuitive, and B) is just annoying and frustrating. I’d much rather have no float at all and have item text appear above and below the image. I know this is Feedly’s way of trying to make a more user-friendly reading experience, but it just doesn’t work.
  6. The reading panel wastes a lot of space. When viewing a list of unread items, Feedly uses the entire reading panel, edge-to-edge, left to right. For some reason, though, when you view individuals items, it plunks a large buffer of empty space on the left, which further exacerbates the image problem two items above. I don’t know why they have this buffer — it doesn’t make sense from a design perspective — but there it is.

I’m sure there are other minor issues and annoyances that I’ve forgotten, but these are the big ones for me. It’s not an ideal experience, by any means, hence my decision to stop using Feedly altogether in favor of The Old Reader.

The Old Reader

What I like about it:

  1. It’s much more similar to the way Google Reader used to be (before Google ‘upgraded’ its image and broke nearly everything that was good about it). But then, that’s one of The Old Reader’s mission statements. Visually, TOR could be the original Google Reader. It’s simple, lightweight, and easy to navigate (mostly).
  2. It actually hides read items, making it really easy to see when new things have come in and when you’ve gotten through your list.
  3. It’s easy to add feeds. Like Google Reader, TOR has a button in the left sidebar that lets you easily and quickly add a new feed. It couldn’t be simpler.
  4. It doesn’t shrink images into a smaller space. Have I mentioned how happy this makes me?

What I don’t like about it:

  1. It’s noticeably lacking in certain keyboard shortcuts, like ‘R’ to reload/refresh new items. I use keyboard shortcuts extensively when browsing my news feeds, and using ‘R’ to refresh is one I’ve come to rely on. Not having it in TOR is annoying, since I still find myself trying to use it, several weeks into this experiment. The TOR design team has said that this is a feature that will be added later, so I’m looking forward to seeing it.
  2. It doesn’t refresh as often as I’d like, nor does it refresh all feeds with the same regularity. The TOR folks have said that they use a different system for fetching news feeds, and it apparently operates on a different schedule than most other readers. Compound that with the fact that they became unexpectedly popular when Google made their announcement and have spent the better part of the last few weeks updating servers to handle the load and you end up with some latent news updates that can happen anywhere from several hours to several days after new items appear on their respective websites. It’s a little annoying at times, but it’s something I can live with. There’s little I read that’s time-sensitive, after all.
  3. It doesn’t have a mobile app — yet. This is not a deal-breaker, but I’m hoping they’ll be able to design and deploy and mobile app that will allow me to continue taking my news feeds with me wherever I go.
  4. The search function does not appear to search through old feeds. This is something I just discovered today, since it’s a feature I rarely ever need. But I’m also realizing that it’s one that’s frustrating when I do need it. I’m hoping they’ll extend the search range to include read items as well as unread (and really, why would you search unread items when you don’t even necessarily know what’s in them yet?).

The Old Reader definitely offers a better experience for me than Feedly, hence my choice to use them as my new feed reader. The things I don’t like about TOR are things I can live with. The design team for TOR consists of just three people (edit: now just two), all with full-time jobs and responsibilities. TOR has been a side project that, up until their recent spotlight, was under development mostly for just friends and family. I expect things will slowly get better over time as they make tweaks and deploy new features.

Hopefully this is a helpful summary of these two services. There are certainly other options out there for feed readers, including desktop apps and self-installed server-side readers. There are limitations to all of them, of course, so your mileage may vary.

Next-Gen Xbox Reveal Coming Soon

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Microsoft revealed the news the other day that the announcement for the next generation Xbox console has been scheduled for May 21. This is good news for gaming enthusiasts, particularly in light of the recent scuttlebutt over rumors that the next Xbox will have an “always on” requirement (a DRM enforcement measure), meaning that an Internet connection will be required in order to play games. Such a move on Microsoft’s part could have a devastating impact not only on gamers, many of whom do not have reliable Internet access, but also on its own business interests, as an “always on” requirement will both diminish the size of its potential user base and likely cause previously loyal gamers to jump ship in favor of other consoles that do not have similar requirements.

Then comes a rumor supporting the rumors that the “always on” requirement is, indeed, accurate but that it is not as draconian as gamers would believe, a counterintuitive statement to be sure. Whatever the truth actually is, all eyes will be on the reveal broadcast in May.

Looking for a New Reader

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With the news that Google is shutting down its popular Reader service, I’ve been on the lookout for a suitable replacement. I’ve always preferred Google Reader for managing my news feeds, having tried several alternatives, including a couple of desktop clients (like Thunderbird) for aggregating my feeds. Reader was always the simplest and easiest to use, with good keyboard navigation and enough features to keep it robust and useful while not drowning the program with more things than I need. Best of all it was free.

Which, as it turns out, is apparently part of the problem. I suspect Scalzi’s analysis of the closure is probably pretty spot-on, which makes me a little nervous. Google has begun demonstrating a willingness to start up — and shut down again — projects somewhat willy-nilly, which is kind of a shame. In general they make good things, things that people want to use, and things that people come to rely on. Reader’s been around for a while now, so I was shocked by the news that they are planning to shut it down this summer.

With the announcement from Google, there have been a flurry of posts from various sites about other aggregation products. The problem is that few are 100% free, and I simply refuse to pay money just so I can read more than 12 feeds at a time. Fortunately, there are some free options out there, and the two I’m currently testing are Feedly and The Old Reader.

Feedly was the first completely free service I found, and it’s a decent replacement for Reader, despite a handful of interface elements that are clunky to use. I’m not a huge fan of the Today screen, so I’ve adjusted my setting to default to the list view — article title and preview of the first few words of the article — which is closer to how I’m accustomed to reading through my feeds. I also like my categories sorted in alphabetical order, which is something that Feedly doesn’t allow you to do easily. It seems to have imported my Reader account in somewhat random order, and while they do allow you to drag-and-drop feeds and categories into your preferred order, it’s awkward and difficult, and I’d much prefer an option to automatically sort them by category name. The final element that annoys me a bit is that, when you’ve finished reading through new articles and refresh the list, there’s no option to hide articles you’ve already read. If I’ve gone through the list already, I prefer to see an empty page so I know there’s nothing new. Currently, I either have to refresh the page manually or wait for it to do it automatically, which isn’t as frequently as Reader has done in the past.

I’m always trying to give The Old Reader a whirl. The Old Reader is supposed to something of a Google Reader clone, with the look and feel of Reader before Google gave the service a facelift and broke a bunch of things that didn’t need fixing. I like the clean look of The Old Reader better than Feedly, but the service is still in beta, and their import process is ridiculously lengthy. My imports have been in their queue for about a week now, and it has every indication of taking at least another week before they process through enough of the queue to get to my account. For some reason, though, a handful of my feeds did get make it into my account the other day, and what I’ve seen of those as they update I like better than Feedly. About the only thing I don’t like that I hope they implement is a keyboard hotkey (r) for refreshing feeds. Currently, the only way to refresh is by clicking on All Items in the left sidebar.

I’ll be curious to see what other services spring up in the next few months before Reader shuts down. Frankly, I kind of hope Google recants its decision, but I don’t really expect them to, especially if monetizing the service really is their major motivating factor for discontinuing it. In the meantime, I plan to try out as many different free services as I can and figure out which one best suits my needs and preferences. Let me know if you have any recommendations. I’d certainly like to hear them.

March and Depression

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Man, I feel blue today.

March is the hardest month with my depression. The combination of short daylight hours and long weeks of cold weather mount up to make these last few days before the spring equinox some of the hardest I face all year. It’s a little counter-intuitive at first blush, perhaps, since the days in March are actually longer than those in December.

But I liken it to a 12-month tidal cycle. It takes a while for all that water to change directions and to shift back toward my own shore. In December the tide is still out. We’re just coming out of the fall season — long days getting progressively shorter, warm weather getting progressively cooler, and I’m still feeling pretty good. Plus, it’s the holiday season, between Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year’s, so there are plenty of distracting family activities. January is still pretty good. Yes, I’m starting to feel the weight of all that water starting to slide back my direction, but it’s not too bad at this point. Winter is really just starting to gear up, and the weather, too, is only just beginning to feel the effect of the sun’s southerly slide toward the Tropic of Capricorn. January is tougher than December, but bearable. By February, though, it’s become apparent just how much of that tidal weight has shifted back this direction. It’s been more than two months of shortened days and cold, snowy, icy weather, and my moods are reflective of that. I spend more time feeling tired and depressed, and my mental focus struggles more than just about any other time of the year. There’s some solace to be found in the fact that Spring is right around the corner, but only some. Then March swings in, and the full weight of the tide has settled in. Yes, the days are getting longer. We’re starting to see pre-dawn light around 6:30 AM and the temperatures are more consistently up in the mid-30s to lower-40s (typically), but the effects of three-plus months of shorter days has piled up, and it takes time for the momentum of all that water to slow and start to shift away again. I have extended periods — a week, 10 days, sometimes more — of depressed mood, exhaustion, and mental haze, and even my daily anti-depressant isn’t enough to keep it entirely at bay. I can’t imagine how bad it would be without my meds. At this point it’s little comfort that the official first day of Spring is just a couple of weeks away. It’s a struggle just to get through a day, and it takes effort to find — and focus on — creative projects to keep myself distracted. Things will get better in a couple of months, as the tide starts to shift away again. Longer days, warmer weather make a huge amount of different — but right now, it’s a fight just to get out of bed in the morning and face the mountain of things that have to be done every day.

The cycle repeats on a roughly annual basis. Summers are better and easier. The extra sunlight boosts Vitamin D production, which has a noticeable effect. That’s not to say that I don’t have blue periods the rest of the year; I do. But they’re typically shorter and less intense. There is definitely a seasonal component to my depression, and this year it has helped tremendously that I now work from home with the ‘wall’ behind my desk being a huge picture window that faces east. I get more sun than I used to working in a windowless basement, but those dreary days in February still make it feel like I’m in a cage, sometimes.

I think this may be the first time I’ve talked about my depression in any real capacity here, and it’s not because I’m ashamed or embarrassed by it. It’s a medical condition, and I recognize that. I manage it with medications and by making some specific lifestyle choices. It’s something I’ve wanted to write about for a while but haven’t found the time or energy to do so before now. And I know there are many out there who similarly struggle with mood disorders. It’s more common than you might think, and I’ve been pleased to see the stigma of mood disorders begin to ease off in recent years.

So consider this me adding my own voice to the conversation. It doesn’t bother me in the least to talk about my challenges with depression. I’m happy to discuss my story and lend support to others as I’m able, and this seems like as good a place as any to present a formal invitation to have that discussion to anyone who’s interested.

Scary Moments in Parenting

Or, that moment in which I nearly kill myself (and the baby) and end up saving both
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There are those moments in parenting that bring you right to the edge of heart failure. I had one of those the other night.

First, a little setup. Liz and I have been working, with the help of one of our neighbors, to restore an old John Deere manure spreader for use on our farm. This machine is a bit of a beast and is currently parked in our garage where it’ll be out of the winter weather. The spreader has a relatively long tongue which, due to an unfortunate positioning of lighting in our garage, sits mostly in shadow after the sun goes down. All of us in this household have forgotten about it at least once and barked our shins on the confounded thing. The spreader also sits in the garage between where we park the car and the door to the walkway to the house.

The daughter and I had just returned from running some errands. I had a bag of goods in one hand and was pulling the little girl out of her car seat with the other. This, of course, would be one of those time where I forgot about the spreader. I stood up and turned to go into the house — and banged my shin, hard, on that piece of steel. Front-loaded as I was with a 25-lb toddler, I completely lost my balance. Any other time I would have just done the face-plant into the concrete and accepted the damages — y’know, because that’s how I roll. Instead, I performed a gorgeous careening stumble where you end up doing one of those awkward runs, trying to move your feet forward faster than your body in order to stop the inevitable and embarrassing collapse on the ground. If my arms had been free, they would have been windmilling like some large, flightless bird in an attempt to change my center of gravity. As it was, all I could think was Don’t fall on the baby. Don’t fall on the baby. I think I might still have ended up on my face but for the wall ten steps ahead of me, the one with the door to our kitchen. That, mercifully, brought me up short, but then I looked down to realize that foot, shod with a new steel toe boot, was now firmly planted in the outer kitchen door. Oops. Fortunately, that was this story’s only casualty. Meanwhile, I’m trying to get my heart rate under control while nursing a bruised shin (with a sizable goose egg). I look at my daughter to make sure she’s alright — and she starts giggling and bouncing, her way of saying, “Daddy, let’s do it again!”

Yup, that’s my little adrenaline junkie.

Cabin In the Woods

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*sigh*

Much as I love Joss Whedon, _Cabin in the Woods_ reminds me of exactly why I don’t much care for gory horror flicks. Part of the problem is that I have too much empathy for the characters, and their suffering messes with my head (and heart). Some people get off on this; I’m not one of them. That said, there were, in typical Whedon form, some seriously laugh-out-loud moments in the film, especially in the first half hour. And also in typical form, he’s not afraid to torture the characters he makes you love, all while putting his own particular spin on the horror genre and throwing in twists that take the story places you don’t necessarily expect. But this is probably the only Whedon creation that I’ll watch only once.

I had to use James Cameron’s Avatar as a palette cleanser aftwerward.

Skype Quit

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Thank you, Skype. I’m fully aware that if I quit you, I won’t be able to send or receive messages or calls. I’m well aware that that’s what ‘quit’ means. I wouldn’t have clicked on ‘Quit’ had I not been aware of that fact. I don’t really need you to remind me of something I already know.

Quit trying to micromanage already, wouldja?

Otterbox Defender

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I just had one of these arrive in my mail:

My initial reaction to the Otterbox Defender so far has been that, overall, I like it. It’s a solid construction with a reasonably attractive design. It appears to provide decent protection for my iPhone 4, especially the camera — good, considering that I just had my phone replaced due, in part, to the fact that the camera on my previous phone was so scratched as to be completely unusable. The case does add a little extra bulk and heft, but that’s a small price to pay if it means the phone itself lasts longer. And as a part-time farmer, I’m generally pretty hard on my phones. The case is also a little difficult to get into, but again, that’s just a minor inconvenience.

I only have a couple of complaints about the Defender. For instance, I’ve already punched out the screen protector. It’s a nice idea, but it’s a filmy piece of plastic that effectively nullifies the usefulness and beauty of the retina display. After having had no screen protector on my phone for months, I’m not willing to trade clarity for the reduced risk of scratching the screen. I’ll probably replace it with a ZAGG screen protector at some point down the road, but for now, no screen protector.

My chief complaint is with the belt clip. I do like the fact that the phone is easy to pop in and out of the clip while still sitting securely in it, but I already hate how much overhead this thing has. There is a good inch to inch-and-a-half of plastic above the top of my belt, and the clip digs into my side in a way that’s very distracting. I think I’d almost prefer a metal ‘U’ clip with no moving parts that lets the case settle further down onto my belt rather than this plastic hinged one that feels like someone is permanently goosing me.

Oh, and using the belt clip as a phone stand by locking it open? That’s a joke. Apparently whoever designed that idea has never had a lesson in basic physics. The clip by itself stands just fine. The moment you put the phone into it, the whole thing topples right over onto its face. Nice idea, bad design.

Overall, I do think I’ll be happy with the Defender. I just may end up looking for other belt clip solutions.