Technology
- First to choose the space for the new note
- Then an optional Folder selection. I skip that one, as they by default go to Unsorted, which I treat as an Inbox.
- Unread counts = anxiety inducing and for no good reason. NONE of what I have in there is life ending if I miss it… even though I enjoy following most all of it.
- With the downfall of Twitter and social media spreading out to places like Mastodon, Bluesky, and Micro.blog there are a lot of apps and feeds to browse. It’s a chore to keep up with them… and all three of those have taken a back seat at one point or another this year. One app, one feed is glorious. The timeline sync keeps me tethered so I don’t re-read things I’ve already seen — it’s all pretty seamless.
- Turns out, Reeder is pretty good for watching video AND (at least through my testing over the last 24 hours) listening to podcasts. There are dedicated views for Video and Audio, which also tracks what I’ve seen so it’s easy to keep up with what I want to watch and read. I’m hoping this can replace my podcast app too, as I’m starting to realize that app is another inbox that feels unwieldily and a chore to maintain.
- Low Maintenance - no marking items as read, deleting un-listened podcast episodes from a queue, or anything else really. I REALLY like the low to no maintenance aspect of the app. If I don’t happen to see something in my feed, I can either rely on serendipity of it showing again some time OR I can browse specific feeds or services to do a deep dive if I really need to…
Exporting GoodLinks Highlights to Craft
I’ve been exploring Craft more, now that I took advantage of their 50% off for life promotion. It’s been fun discovering all the new features since I last used it, as well as how I can integrate apps like Things and GoodLinks, which I have been using more often.
My most recent discovery has been exporting highlights in GoodLinks to a new Craft document. I think I have a pretty good setup, so it’s time to share!
First off, you will need to edit the GoodLinks export template (Settings > Highlight > Edit Export Format). I ended up with this template, but feel free to customize however you like:
{{#tags.0}}
Tags: {{#tags}}{{name}}{{^is_last}}, {{/is_last}}{{/tags}}
{{/tags.0}}
{{#author}}
Author: {{author}}
{{/author}}
---
{{#highlights}}
*{{created_at}}*
{{content_md | blockquote}}
{{#note}}
{{note}}
{{/note}}
{{^is_last}}
---
{{/is_last}}
{{/highlights}}
You will also want to make sure “Include highlights in Markdown” is checked on this setting page as well.
Then you should install my shortcut.
There are two import questions when you install the Shortcut:
The best place to run this workflow is on iOS because the GoodLinks iOS app has a custom action you can create for this shortcut. To set that up, go to Settings > Custom Actions and click the icon in the upper right hand corner to ‘Add Action’.
On that screen, enter a name, choose an icon and a color. For the URL field use:
shortcuts://run-shortcut?name=GoodLink%20Highlights
Then, once you are on an article in GoodLinks and have made some highlights, access the more menu and you should see your custom action up top:
Click that and the end result should be something like this in Craft:
Hope someone finds this useful!
New Reeder!
The new version of Reeder is out and it is glorious.
Reeder is by far the most used app on my phone. It’s been my go to RSS feed reeder since 2011 and I’m pretty sure it was one of the first apps I bought for my iPhone, after switching from Android that year.
Like most app addicts, I’ve tried a LOT of RSS readers and services over the years, but I always came back to Reeder as my app of choice. It’s beautiful, well thought out, and rock solid.
When I saw the developer of Reeder post about a beta version of a new version of Reeder this year, I immediately volunteered for the TestFlight. It turned out it was a completely re-thought out model and approach for the app, which I honestly didn’t understand at first and was hesitant to put it through the paces.
Then a little over a month ago, I decided to give it a go after the developer added an OPML import function, which would allow me to add all of my feeds to the app. Since then, I’ve been using it 100% of the time for reading RSS, Mastodon, Bluesky, and Micro.blog… as well as my YouTube subscriptions and (most recently) my podcasts.
Beyond the app design (still top notch and beautiful) and usability, the new Reeder has some great perks and solves a few issues for me:
With that said, there are some things I’d like to see added like the ability to reply natively within the app, the ability to set up your own custom feeds (like Audio and Video), and more services (maybe Instagram and Threads?)
I get that this app won’t be for everyone, but if any of this speaks to you, I couldn’t recommend Reeder more.
Attempting to port the Hugo theme Congo for micro.blog. Stay tuned!
Was thinking through a web app idea, then realized it was pretty darn close to FriendFeed (which i loved) and upon doing more reminiscing, realized Micro.blog isn’t too far from FF. Just need the ability to subscribe to RSS feeds and other services beyond Mastodon.
My Hain’s Point theme is almost ready! I just need to figure out why the Photos page isn’t working and finish up adding all of the settings to the Plugin setup. You’ll be able to customize the logo, a couple blurbs, newsletter name, and a few other things. Soon!
Apple Music users: get yourself a Last.fm account and a sweet iOS music app like Marvis or Soor to track your listening next year and you too can have reports galore.