I'm never quite sure whether Advent should run 24 or 25 days, so if you're of the "24" persuasion, consider today's #FreeSoftwareAdvent a bonus 🙂

Today it's rss2email¹, which is I read my RSS feeds². I prefer to read my RSS via email for a number of reasons:

• I don't need to learn Yet Another Set of Keyboard Bindings because I already know my MUA's key-bindings

• I can use any standards-compliant MUA to read my RSS feeds, whether I have them delivered to my mbox file and read with mail(1), or delivered to my normal mail account and read them via mutt/neomutt/Claws/Thunderbird/whatever

• I have offline access via OfflineIMAP/mbsync and any changes (deleting entries, read-status, flagging, stars, tags, filing, etc) gets synced back up to my server, even across multiple machines

• I have all the filtering power of my MUA

• plenty of utilities also speak IMAP, so I can write scripts to (post-)process my RSS feed too

• sharing an interesting article with friends is as simple as forwarding an email

• my backup process for email also automatically backs up my RSS feeds too

• because it runs from cron(8) on a schedule I establish, I have more control of my distractions (I usually run it around 4am gathering feeds for me to read with breakfast). I found if it ran hourly or even multiple times per day, I'd get sucked into constantly checking to see if anything new/interesting had arrived

• control remains with me on my machine rather than handing my reading habits over to some 3rd party RSS reader-service

And I love RSS because it is a pull rather than a push. If I subscribe to your email newsletter, I have to trust that you'll respect my email address and not share it or lose control of it, and cutting off email subscriptions is sketchy. But with RSS? I just stop polling that feed if I'm done with it and it's gone.

⸻
¹ github.com/wking/rss2email

² blog.thechases.com/posts/readi…

GitHub - wking/rss2email: open-source tool for Windows, Mac OS and UNIX for getting news from RSS feeds in email

open-source tool for Windows, Mac OS and UNIX for getting news from RSS feeds in email - wking/rss2email

^GitHub

Today's #FreeSoftwareAdvent appreciation is for some of the Free Software languages that bring me both joy and income: Python & Golang

I've used Python at $DAYJOB since version 2.3 (it got woefully stuck at 2.4 for WAAAAY too long, and finally switched to 3.x some time in the last 2–3 years) and it simplified so many automation tasks there. I've used dozens of programming languages in my life for various tasks, and the hard part is rarely *writing* the code, but rather *reading* the code. And I find it a LOT easier to come back and read old Python code than just about any other language.

Meanwhile, Golang saved my bacon on a short-term contracting project where TB of (simple) CSV files needed to be processed, cross-referenced. Being able to spin up a pool of multithreading Go processes, have built in locking and hash-map structures, and operate on raw input buffers of bytes shaved a 3-day manual process down to about an hour involving running a single command. I find it pretty readable too, feeling a bit like C while ditching some of the most cumbersome aspects.

#FreeSoftwareAdvent day 13: Thunderbird

I've used various open source email clients over the years, but right now, my email client of choice is Thunderbird, on desktop and mobile. When I installed the mobile app, I was pleased to find that I could create a QR code on the desktop that my phone could scan to set up my accounts there. Much simpler and quicker than manually entering all the account details.

One of Thunderbird's killer features for me is the Send Later add-on. I have it configured so that when I click "Send" on an email, it delays sending by five minutes. That gives me a chance to realise that I'd missed something, and edit the email before sending.

But it can also set a much longer delay. Sometimes I work in the evening, but any emails that I write then are scheduled to be sent the next morning at a more sensible time.

thunderbird.net/

@thunderbird

Send Later

True "Send Later" functionality to schedule the time for sending an email.

^{addons.thunderbird.net}

#FreeSoftwareAdvent for today: Hammerspoon. Another macOS tool that makes the platform usable.

Script the OS, add hotkeys, all from Lua, a not wholly unpleasant programming language. One thing that it desperately needs is good documentation, and if I had a few weeks of uninterrupted time and no responsibility, I'd write said documentation. Otherwise, you need to do a lot of googling to find blog posts and code samples because the API docs are a bit mystical.

hammerspoon.org/

#LibreOffice (@libreoffice) has been my go-to document creation software for over a year now, and I've been thrilled by just how good Writer is. (I'm less of a fan of Impress, the presentation software, but that's for another day.)

Whether it's "good enough" to replace Microsoft Word is a matter of personal choice but, for me, it has done exactly that.

libreoffice.org/

#FreeSoftwareAdvent