Sidingsound

At the present time, I use a Web-based service for keeping up with RSS feeds. (I won’t name it, but if you really have to know, you can hazard a guess or hunt through my “lifestream” entries for clues, off-the-cuff references, etc.)

For various reasons, I am looking to move away from using this service, to reduce the amount of free demographic information for advertising purposes which they could extract from my usage of their facilities, if they were so minded (and I strongly suspect they may be). I would like to move my feed-reading activity to a “desktop” aggregator application; fortunately, the online service provides a feature to export all my RSS/Atom subscriptions to an OPML file, which any aggregator worth its salt can import and re-use.

The catch? Obviously, a major benefit of a Web-hosted feed-reader service is its “access anywhere” advantage—i.e. if you have an Internet connection and a browser, you can log on wherever you happen to be. If I was running an aggregator application on (say) my Mac and my netbook, the two apps would presumably use separate “databases”, which would normally be difficult to keep in sync.

However, I use Dropbox to provide me with a folder on each machine which is kept in sync via Dropbox’s online storage area. This means that if an application allows you to specify a location for its configuration settings, it’s possible to store these on Dropbox, and therefore share the same settings between machines. (I already do this with a couple of programs—e.g. an encrypted password database—and it works like a treat.)

So, here’s my question:

Does anyone know of a cross-platform RSS aggregator—preferably, which will run under Mac OS X and Linux—which allows you to share the same “database” of feeds, posts read, etc. between multiple machines?

I’ve already thought of one or two possibilities myself:

• BlogBridge satisfies the Mac/Linux test, and it helps that they say the application is free and open-source. However, the synchronisation of settings between machines is achieved by setting up an account with BlogBridge, meaning that this element is not entirely under your control (a major reason for my considering this move in the first place).
• Thunderbird has feed-reading capabilities, and there is guidance out there on storing your Thunderbird profile on Dropbox (though it’s Windows-centric, I think the advice could be adapted). However, the idea of placing my unencrypted (?) e-mail details on an external server doesn’t appeal particularly, though I could put up with storing just my feed-reading data.

So, I’ll continue my hunt for a solution, and I’d be pleased to hear from anyone out there who might have a handy idea or two

I wasn’t planning my first blog post of 2010 to be on this subject (and I really wish there was no reason to be writing it), but I found out—belatedly, via Wikipedia—that folk-rock musician Tim Hart died on December 24th. He was 61, and had been suffering from inoperable lung cancer.

Hart was a founder member in 1969 of English electric folk band Steeleye Span, and stayed with the band until 1982. He retired from music in the late 1980s, and to recover his health he moved to La Gomera in the Canary Islands, where he devoted the final two decades of his life to writing and photography (producing the first English-language guide to La Gomera, published in 2004).

Personally, I owe a particular debt to Tim: it is directly because of his work that I started playing electric dulcimer (the “mountain”/”Appalachian” variety), or more specifically, because I saw this video on YouTube:

Steeleye Span – The Lark In The Morning

“What is that?”, I remember asking myself in wonderment as I saw Tim playing this strange electric instrument like a lap steel guitar. A few months later, I asked Texan luthier Tom Yocky to build me a custom electric dulcimer, which we named “White Hart” in honour of the musician without whom I would never have discovered the instrument. I played it at our church’s Christmas carol service a couple of weeks ago, and am confident that I will be playing electric dulcimer on the recording project I’m planning for 2010 (of which more here soon).

It was very moving to see Tim and Maddy Prior reunited at her BBC Electric Proms performance in October 2008, where Tim was in as fine a voice as ever, and playing as if he had never retired. The memory is even more poignant, now we know that merely weeks later, Tim was diagnosed with the cancer which would take his life the following year.

Perhaps the most moving song Tim ever recorded, for me at least, is “Dancing At Whitsun”, from his 1971 album with Maddy Prior, Summer Solstice. This haunting account of how women kept the traditions of Morris dancing alive whilst the men were fighting in the First World War (and afterwards), is sung solo by Tim with guitar, accompanied by a beautifully-understated string octet arrangement by Robert Kirby—one of my all-time favourite arrangers, best-known for his work for Nick Drake, and who sadly passed away himself in October 2009.

I’m saddened that I will never have the chance to let Tim or Robert know how I appreciate their inspiration to me, but tonight, perhaps I will put on “Dancing At Whitsun”, and be thankful that they both contributed some fine music to the world. Rest in peace, gentlemen.

I keep forgetting that tomorrow marks the last day of the 2000s (although if you’re really pedantic about such things, one could argue that 31st December 2010 takes that title).

It all feels so different from this time ten years ago, when plenty of people got caught up in the euphoria of the “new millennium”. I remember it well: on 31st December 1999 I was living alone in my own flat, which I had bought barely a year previously, and was booked to play guitar in a band at my church’s New Year 1999/2000 party. (I believe I may have most of the concert recorded om a MiniDisc somewhere—one handy illustration of how technology alone has changed in ten years.)

Whilst I could hold forth on how I feel I’ve progressed musically in the past decade (in short: I probably haven’t improved my guitar skills massively, but have arguably matured them somewhat, and have also taken up a couple more instruments, mostly drums and mountain dulcimer), I mainly think of how much my life has changed on a personal level. On 1st January 2000, though I naturally had no idea, I was roughly ten months away from making contact with the woman I would go on to marry in 2002. Furthermore, I had even less concept of what it would be like to become a parent, which would change roughly halfway through the decade with the safe arrival of Naomi.

So, in many ways it has been ten years of gradual but considerable change, both “locally” and “internationally”. Others have written at great length about the latter, so there is little I could add—suffice it to say, the expectation with which I greeted the arrival of the Noughties has been replaced at its departure, by a kind of wearied apathy. It helps me to keep in mind that the Lord is in charge, as looking at the world, George Banks’ line in Mary Poppins (“life’s a looming battle to be faced and fought”) has rarely felt so apt, and I can barely imagine where we will all be on 31st December 2019 (if I could face the images my head produces).

But enough doom and gloom… I have my fair share of ideas for what I’d like to achieve in 2010, and harbour a feeling that one way or another, this will be a year of pretty momentous changes at the “micro” and “macro” levels (and sorry if that comes over needlessly cryptic, but there you go). Thanks for reading my various scribblings here—I’d like to wish you all a very Happy New Year for 2010, and I’ll see you around here (and my various other outlets) very soon.

Before we dive into the Christmas festivities head-on, I’d just like to take the opportunity to wish you a very happy Christmas (or whatever you may happen to celebrate at this time of year (have to say that ).

Apologies for not posting here that often in recent weeks; I’ll try and write more here as long as time allows, but if somehow you’re desperate to read more of my jottings, you can keep an eye on my “lifestream” page (which collects together my Twitter feed and other online activities), as well as Eee 701 Planetoid, my blog dedicated to my Asus Eee 701 ‘netbook’.

Have a great holiday, and I hope I’ll get back here before the New Year