Eff You, Feedly

I love blogs. I just think they're such a neat form of expression. I read something recently that their influence, such as it is, is waning, and kids today want their tumblrs and podcasts and vlogs and frim franglers and zoob zooblers, but I'm pretty happy with the basic deal, words, and the occasional picture with the snarky caption.

I read quickly, and I read at work and I read a ton of blogs (I've got 254 in my feed), which is why I tend to prefer a format that's as simple as possible.

That's why Google Reader was so good for me. I think my buddy Tim was the first person I saw using it, I immediately saw the appeal. I could have just about everything I read online pulled to me to read at my leisure, instead of going up and down and to and fro on the internets, to see if my favorite sites had pushed out an update.

Reader was...just about invisible, which is the highest compliment I can pay to the application in its role. It pulled content to me, that's all it did, and I didn't even notice it doing it. It just worked. I never even thought about it.

Then Google announced in March 2013 that it was shuttering Reader in the Summer. I, like just about every other user, got a little sad, then googled some variation on "Alternatives to Google Reader"

There weren't many right at the time of the announcement, because Reader was absolutely the dominant player. In the run-up to the closure, I exported my data and settled on Feedly.

Feedly was an also ran. Remember Netscape Navigator? For one, brief shining moment, it was the big fish in the browser pond. Then Microsoft started bundling Internet Explorer and it lost market share to the point where it would have required a meteor strike on Redmond to get it back.

That's pretty much the position Feedly was in. When the first place product is the best and the most visible, it's hard to make a living in second place. They continued development throughout Reader's period of dominance, and then, when I can only assume what was the products of their contract with Satan came to fruition, they were there to receive the hordes of Reader refugees.

Feedly is, not to put too fine a point on it, kind of a piece of shit. It doesn't do anything better than Reader did, and it does a number of things worse. It lacked basic functionality when it launched, and only later did they add it in...for those willing to pay.

I hate how they put the search right there, and only sandbag users when they go to use it.

That, in itself, wouldn't be a dealbreaker. I'm willing to pay for a product...if it's good and I can always favorite a piece and return to it later. Except that Feedly, on my phone, crashes ALL THE TIME. I click to read something and, hey, I'm back at my homescreen. When I try to find the article, it's already been read, so it's a pain to manually sift through everything to find it again. (Also, it signs me out at irregular intervals)

So...the other day, I went looking for "Alternatives to Feedly". And I found InoReader. It's small enough that they don't even have a wikipedia entry.

I like it more than Feedly, but I like syphilis more than Feedly. I think I may like them more than Google Reader. Even bit as functional, every bit as reliable, and with the added ability to pull in content from blogs that require a click-through.

The Mary Sue doesn't usually require a clickthrough. It just happened to be the site I had open.

Inoreader really is very good. My main concern is that they give away so much at the free level that there's not a lot of incentive to upgrade to the paid tiers. It's a great product that deserves a lot more attention.

Search and Comments fixed!

Just what it says on the tin. I've found some workarounds for both the search and the widget that shows the most recent comments, so all is right with the world.

How Disney saved Christmas

I used to get into a lot of fights on the Internet, but I matured out of that. (Mostly) If someone is spouting bullshit talking points, I'll sometimes include a link from Snopes or something, but only under specific circumstances. I know I'll never persuade the kind of person who posts those things, but if a low-information reader comes across the post and concludes "Yes, duck Dynasty guy DOES have a Constitutional right to a TV show!", I'll do my best to explain why it's not a first amendment issue at all.

I got in a disagreement over this very issue. Briefly, it's not a First Amendment Issue because the government is not a actor in the dispute; it's between two private parties. He's free to act like an asshole, and everyone else is free to point out that he's acting like an asshole, and base their decisions on this knowledge.

It's hard to separate cluelessness from malice in his case, but he really did seem to pine for the halcyon days when the coloreds knew their place and singing songs from Song of the South, and men were men who did not lie with other men. Ridiculously obtuse and lacking in empathy is probably the most charitable reading.

I said what I had to say, and even managed to stay halfway civil, and then didn't think about it too much until Christmas Day.

We were watching the Disney Parks parade. Lily was on the couch with the kitten.

I was kind of halfway paying attention, horrified by the number of disney Channel stars which I recognized and of whom I actually had an opinion. The program was interrupted for a number of Disney infomercials for their properties and parks, and for some lines from people in the park on why they like attending.

Now listen, Disney is a big corporation. I didn't like them as a teenager and a young adult, because I thought they were old and stodgy and didn't make anything interesting. This was the 90's and they just weren't EXTREME enough for 90's Josh. Whatever. I think there are legitimate criticisms to be made of of Disney as a company, but in general, they're not better or worse than any conglomerate of their size, and they do produce their brand of entertainment better than anyone else in the world.

They tend not to take controversial stances on social issues, which only makes sense. Why alienate a potential customer? Support the the things everybody can agree on, make sure the public sees you doing it, and get to work making more money.

That's why I was surprised by how gay-friendly this special was. It featured an openly gay host in the form of Neil Patrick Harris, who showed pictures of his kids and his partner, and some of the testimonials were from gay couples.

And if a company as staid as Disney is as supportive of equal rights in such a public venue and unambiguous way, I think our side is winning, no matter what the swamp folk say.

Are you ready for some football?!

As I get older, I become increasingly phlegmatic about how other people spend their time. I used to be pretty bad about shitting all over things my friends liked, but this was pointed out to me, and I've worked to rein it in and I think I've been much better about it since I've started making the effort.

In general, I really don't give a shit, and I'll keep quiet about it, unless you're coming around to drop what you imagine to be a tremendously clever bon mot in a three-year old thread, Firefly fans.

I try to see things from their point of view, and I'm usually successful in understanding how they reached the conclusions they did or what they get out of the experience.

Doctor Who: 50 years of time travel

Former Doctors returning! 

Tom Baker!

It was everything a fiftieth anniversary special should be!

But enough about The Light at the End. The Day of the Doctor was okay, too.

I guess I'll touch on that briefly, since I brought it up. It was for fans of the new series. I hate Rose, hate Matt Smith, barely tolerate David Tennant, deplore Moffat's treatment of women, and haven't been able to take the Daleks seriously as adversaries for decades.  I thought Clara riding her moped into the TARDIS while Matt Smith mugged for the camera was the most unbearably twee thing I've ever seen.

This is why I'm embarrassed to tell people I'm a fan of science fiction.

Despite that, I thought it was pretty good for what it was. Moffat tends to write Doctor Who as a time travel show, moreso than his predecessors, for whom the TARDIS was merely a vehicle for getting the Doctor and company to the next adventure. This is not without its perils, as once you open the door to those kind of stories, the viewer is left wondering why the Doctor doesn't repeat that solution the next time he encounters the same situation. (See: Fan reaction to the Angels take Manhattan and compare that to the Seventh Doctor, who was so hardcore that he tricked the Cyberman into triggering a doomsday weapon against themselves a mere two stories after doing the exact same thing to the Cybermen, and nobody commented on it except Ace, because that's just how she rolls.)

I thought the Zygon b-plot was pretty boring and occasionally nonsensical (how can an amnesiac human argue for the viewpoints of a Zygon without knowing what they want?, which is another of my problems with Moffat, clever ideas that fall apart with even a slight amount of scrutiny), but the story elements were well-integrated into the main plot. The Doctor's plan was, in essence, to make Gallifrey duck and have the Daleks on opposite sides of the planet shoot each other. Apparently, this worked, which makes me wonder why ANYONE takes them seriously. Still, John Hurt was fun, and I knew it wouldn't be for me when I went in. 

I liked the fivish Doctors a lot, but my favorite bit of 50th anniversary programming was Big Finish's Light at the End special. 

Former Doctors returning! 

Tom Baker!

It was everything a fiftieth anniversary special should be!

Okay, listening to the Light at the End. I don't think I'll ever get tired of remixes of the Doctor Who theme. I'd say someone should release an album of nothing but, except I know that Orbital already did. I have it on my phone. 

I've been listening to a lot of Big Finish's audio plays, as mention occasionally. I like it. I think Classic Who had its own problems, and the budget was one of the biggest. By making it audio-only they largely eliminate that as a factor. You occasionally get exposition disguised as exclamations ("Oh, no, Doctor, he's pulled a gun!"), but that's a small price to pay.

Big Finish has ton of stories, and the older ones are ridiculously cheap. (3 dollars for an entire story?! Sign me up!) I've mostly been listening to stories with the Seventh Doctor and Ace. I've also been listening to Colin Baker, who is much more entertaining on the Audio plays. Unfortunately, he's often paired with Peri. Oh, fucking Peri! Nicola Bryant has had nearly 30 years to figure out how Americans pronounce the letter R. You'd think she'd have it down by now. 

Each of the Doctors had one of his companions from his run. The Fourth had Leela. Leela was never one of my favorites, (I didn't dislike her, I just never had any particular affection for her, either), but I find myself enjoying her parts in this play. 

It's been a long time since I've seen the Leela episodes, and I think my ambivalence is partially attributable to the fact that the fourth Doctor had so many good companions, and I never paid her much particular attention. She reminds me of Jamie, in that they each came from a pre-industrial society. Companions are there in part to serve as audience identification characters/someone to whom the Doctor can explain something, and I liked the Companions like Adric or Leela or Romana, characters who were something other than an ingenue from modern day London. 

The Fifth Doctor had Nyssa. I do like these Fifth Doctor and Nyssa stories, and something that strikes me about them is how this Doctor constantly screwing up. Nyssa surpasses him not infrequently, and that's something you seldom saw with the other Doctors, particularly in the new series. 

The Sixth Doctor has Peri. As my friend Jen said, "Yeah, Peri.  I like the 6th Doctor in the audios, but Peri never gets better.  Stupid Peri!" I'll see you in hell,  Perpugilliam!

The Seventh Doctor has Ace. And there was much rejoicing. Or as Sylvester McCoy would say Rrrrrrrejoicing.

I recently started listening to some of McGann's stories and I'm I'm happy that I happened to listen to McGann and Charley shortly before I started this, because I really like their rapport and I think knowing about it, at least for me, really enriches the experience.

For me, the story takes off about eighteen minutes in, where Charley had just met the 4th Doctor and Leela.  The interplay with McGann and Tom Baker is fun. Baker is grand.He returns to the role like he never left it. He'll always be my Doctor, a wanderer who fights evil where he finds it, and not the Most Important Person in the Universe (travelling with the Second Most Important), who can only be overcome and chained up by a rainbow coalition of space monsters.

Regretfully, the Zarbi could not reprise their role

I thought it was kind of amusing back in Remembrance of the Daleks when Ace turned off the TV in 1963, just as Doctor Who would have premiered. I think centering the whole story around that date is just a touch much for me, however, particularly since someone mentions it every three minutes. 

It's a more intimate story than Day of the Doctor. I like these smaller stories. The problem with every escalating stakes is that it's numbing and meaningless after a while. We know that the Daleks aren't going to destroy the earth/universe/every parallel universe, but if the Doctor is running down the corridor with five guys, there's a real tension, because odds are good that not every one of them is going to make it. Heck, everybody, up to and including the Doctor could die, and you'd still have a series! 

Zagreus, the 40th anniversary story, felt as epic as anything that's ever been featured in Doctor Who, but I don't think I'd want a retread of that. The plot itself is kind of sparse. It's pretty much what Moffet said he didn't want the TV version to be, a celebration of fifty years, with old characters coming back for no good reason.   The Master is being a jerk, and the Doctor has stop him, but that's mostly an excuse to get the characters together so they can interact with all of their glorious quirks bouncing off of each other.