From bc8e7d4900dae9b607c4b111ab8407a238fbc99d Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Joe Carstairs <me@joeac.net>
Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2025 18:14:39 +0000
Subject: update

---
 website/src/components/BlogFeed.astro              |   2 +-
 website/src/components/Me.astro                    |   1 +
 .../blog/2025/01/19/my_feed_and_reading_list.md    | 193 +++++++++++++++++++++
 .../src/content/blog/2025/01/19/newsboat-post.webp | Bin 0 -> 84468 bytes
 website/src/content/blog/2025/01/19/newsboat.webp  | Bin 0 -> 64292 bytes
 website/src/content/blog/2025/01/19/ranger.webp    | Bin 0 -> 77444 bytes
 website/src/content/blog/2025/01/19/w3m.webp       | Bin 0 -> 93640 bytes
 7 files changed, 195 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
 create mode 100644 website/src/content/blog/2025/01/19/my_feed_and_reading_list.md
 create mode 100644 website/src/content/blog/2025/01/19/newsboat-post.webp
 create mode 100644 website/src/content/blog/2025/01/19/newsboat.webp
 create mode 100644 website/src/content/blog/2025/01/19/ranger.webp
 create mode 100644 website/src/content/blog/2025/01/19/w3m.webp

(limited to 'website/src')

diff --git a/website/src/components/BlogFeed.astro b/website/src/components/BlogFeed.astro
index f1559b9..5d5f727 100644
--- a/website/src/components/BlogFeed.astro
+++ b/website/src/components/BlogFeed.astro
@@ -64,7 +64,7 @@ const canonicalBlogUrl = new URL('blog', Astro.site)
 		<ul>
 			{ posts.filter(matchesYear(year)).sort(sortByPubDateDescending).map(post => (
 				<li class="h-entry">
-					<a class="u-url p-name" href={`/blog/${post.slug}`}>{post.data.title}</a>.
+					<a class="u-url p-name" href={`/blog/${post.id}`}>{post.data.title}</a>.
 					<Fragment set:html={post.data.description} />
 					Added: <FormattedDate date={post.data.pubDate} />
 				</li>
diff --git a/website/src/components/Me.astro b/website/src/components/Me.astro
index fc21bbf..4d26ace 100644
--- a/website/src/components/Me.astro
+++ b/website/src/components/Me.astro
@@ -45,6 +45,7 @@
                 <a href="https://www.facebook.com/joe.carstairs.5" rel="me">Facebook</a>,
                 <a href="https://mastodon.social/@joe_carstairs" rel="me">Mastodon</a>,
                 <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-carstairs-0aa936277" rel="me">LinkedIn</a>,
+                <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/joeacarstairs.bsky.social" rel="me">BlueSky</a>,
                 or <a href="https://github.com/joeacarstairs" rel="me">GitHub</a>.
             </small>
         </p>
diff --git a/website/src/content/blog/2025/01/19/my_feed_and_reading_list.md b/website/src/content/blog/2025/01/19/my_feed_and_reading_list.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c11dd85
--- /dev/null
+++ b/website/src/content/blog/2025/01/19/my_feed_and_reading_list.md
@@ -0,0 +1,193 @@
+---
+title: How I read things on the Internet now (no, of course I don't leave the terminal!)
+description: >-
+  I've been sprucing up how I follow what's happening on the Internet. I can
+  now read all the things I want to read pretty efficiently, and enjoy doing
+  it, which is exciting.
+pubDate: 2025-01-19
+---
+
+## The problem
+
+I like to read things on the Internet sometimes. Or listen to things. Or watch
+things.
+
+Some interesting people write blog posts. Some beautiful people make music. Some
+silly people make comedy sketches. Sometimes my friends are sharing stuff with
+their friends, which means me (WIP on that front: I'll get back to that).
+
+I want to know about it. I want to read interesting things that will educate
+me. I want to hear beautiful music. I want to hear about what my friends are up
+to.
+
+I can't read everything as it comes in, it's too much: I'll need to sift a lot
+of it out quickly. I'll need to sift through it regularly to stay on top of it:
+like, several times a week, if not daily. And sometimes, while I'm doing my
+daily sifting, I'll find something I really want to read, but I haven't got
+time right now: I'll save this for the weekend.
+
+For a while, I've been hosting [CommaFeed][commafeed] on [PikaPods][pikapods].
+This has been OK ([OMG, RSS is cool][rss]), but the interface is just clunky
+enough to make it a chore to use. That means I don't sift through stuff
+regularly, and that means my feed piles hundreds of unread posts high.
+
+It also hasn't been any good for distinguishing between stuff I don't want to
+read *ever*, and stuff I don't want to read *right now* but will get round to
+later. I could in theory use the bookmarking feature built-in to my browser,
+but removing things after I've read them is too clunky, so I don't do it.
+
+## The solution
+
+Every morning, I open my terminal and run [newsboat][newsboat].
+
+![newsboat showing how many unread posts I have at a glance in the opening view](./newsboat.webp)
+
+I know the unread count is pretty fresh, because I've set up a systemd service
+to run newsboat at startup to fetch the feeds.
+
+I press `l` twice to open a post. Then I press `n` to navigate to the next
+unread post until I run out of unread posts.
+
+![newsboat displaying a post](./newsboat-post.webp)
+
+If I encounter something I want to read later, but don't have time right now, I
+press `b`, which runs a home-made bookmarking script. Here it is:
+
+```bash
+### readlater.sh ###
+
+# newsboat passes a few arguments:
+# the first one is the post URL
+url="$1"
+
+# I turn the URL into a suitable filename
+filename=$( \
+  echo $url | \
+  sed "s/.*:\/\///" | \
+  sed "s/\//./g" | \
+  sed "s/\.html\$//g" \
+)
+filename="$filename".html
+
+# If I've already got this in my reading list,
+# I don't add it again
+if [[ -a "$HOME/readlist/unread/$filename" ]]
+then
+  exit 0
+fi
+
+# Otherwise, I download the post with curl
+# and pipe it to a file in my reading list
+# folder, ~/readlist/unread
+curl "$url" > "$HOME/readlist/unread/$filename"
+```
+
+I can also run this script manually and pass it a URL of my choice at any time,
+say, if I find an interesting article while browsing the Web.
+
+When I want to read from my reading list, I run `readnow.sh`, which simply
+opens my reading list folder, `~/readlist/unread`, in my terminal file browser
+of choice: namely, [ranger][ranger].
+
+![ranger showing the contents of my reading list with a preview](./ranger.webp)
+
+Although ranger has a preview, I'll typically open the file up in my terminal
+web browser of choice, which is [w3m][w3m] (plus a couple of custom
+key-bindings). I've configured this to be my preferred web browser in ranger by
+shifting it to the top of the list of HTML browsers in
+`~/.config/ranger/rifle.conf`.
+
+```conf
+### ~/.config/ranger/rifle.conf ###
+
+...
+
+ext x?html?, has w3m,               terminal = w3m "$@"
+ext x?html?, ...
+
+...
+```
+
+Having configured my default web browser in my ranger config, all
+I need to do is press `l`.
+
+![A post displaying in w3m](./w3m.webp)
+
+No ads, no cookie popups, no giant banner images taking 2 seconds to load and
+shifting the content all over the place: just the text I want to read. Isn't it
+beautiful?
+
+Once I'm finished reading the post, I'll press `q` to quit w3m and return to
+ranger. Assuming I don't need to read it again, I'll press `dm` to move the
+post to `~/readlist/read` - my way of marking a post as 'read'.
+
+I've done this by writing a super simple script, `markread.sh`:
+
+```bash
+### markread.sh ###
+
+filename="$(basename $1)"
+
+if [[ -a "$HOME/readlist/unread/$filename" ]]
+then
+  mv "$HOME/readlist/unread/$filename" "$HOME/readlist/read/$filename"
+  echo "Marked $filename as read."
+else
+  echo "I couldn't find a file in ~/readlist/unread with the name: $filename"
+fi
+```
+
+...and hooking it onto the custom keybinding, `dm`, in ranger:
+
+```conf
+### ~/.config/ranger/rc.conf ###
+
+...
+
+# map `dm` to run markread.sh in the shell, providing the active filename
+# as the first and only argument
+map dm shell markread.sh %f
+
+...
+```
+
+## The result
+
+I can now keep up to date, and I enjoy doing it.
+
+I get not everyone likes to live in the terminal. I think the key takeaways
+are:
+
+- Make it really easy to sift through new posts
+- When you sift, sift through every post, and for each one, either read it
+  straight away, or add it to your reading list
+- Sift daily
+- Make it really easy to add things to your reading list
+- Make it really easy to browse, read things, and mark things read in your
+  reading list
+- Set aside time to catch up on your reading list
+- Make the whole thing joyful (both because joy is good, and because you won't
+  do it otherwise)
+
+## Next steps
+
+I still haven't really figured out social media. I'd like to stay up to date
+with what my friends are doing, especially the ones I don't see very often. If
+my friends are posting stuff on the Internet, I'd love to see it.
+
+I still need to know:
+
+- Are my friends posting stuff on the Internet?
+- If so, where?
+- What's the best way of subscribing to their posts - even if they live on
+  different websites and in different formats?
+- What's the best way of sending and receiving comments/replies/reactions?
+
+TBC. Answers on a postcard please.
+
+[commafeed]: https://www.commafeed.com
+[pikapods]: https://www.pikapods.com
+[newsboat]: https://newsboat.org
+[ranger]: https://ranger.github.io
+[rss]: /blog/2024/05/02/no_more_youtube
+[w3m]: https://w3m.sourceforge.net
diff --git a/website/src/content/blog/2025/01/19/newsboat-post.webp b/website/src/content/blog/2025/01/19/newsboat-post.webp
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