Chris Curtis Web Site

After becoming uncomfortable with the direction being taken by FeedDemon since it became part of the Newsgator company, I have been trying out some alternative feedreaders.

In case you do not know, lots of regularly updated websites provide “feeds” which are special pages coded in RSS or Atom versions of XML instead of the web’s usual html. Instead of displaying these pages in a web browser, you load them with a feed reader (or aggregator) which displays the content for you. Your reader will retreive new material from as many sites as you wish (literally hundreds if you want) and display the content in one place, so you can browse and search across lots of sites without having to “visit” them in the usual way. I have been reading a number of sites in this way for a long time now, and it is a fantastic way to have the web content that you read regularly organised so it becomes more useful.

I have enjoyed using FeedDemon and am happy with what I paid for it. It does the job well, is “comfortable” and reliable, though it can be a little slow. I was pleased to see its creator, Nick Bradbury, begin to make serious money when he was taken over by Newsgator, but then very worried when they introduced subscriptions to Newsgator as a “compulsory” part of any new version of the software. Although the deal was honourable (free subscriptions for two years if you had already paid for FeedDemon) I detest subscriptions – they always seem to be a way of buying something you do not need. It can be a reasonable compromise (e.g. a magazine subscription can be worth it if there are enough decent articles in each issue to be worth the money, even if you dislike some articles) but something seems fundamentally wrong with the newsgator model – you are not paying for the content, just how it is organised and delivered to you. You can access the content directly with a feed reader, so why subscribe? If I used multiple computers, I could see some value in a service that synchronised for me, but I carry my computing with me as a laptop, so the subscription buys me nothing I need. Thankfully, they have now dropped the subscription requirement – at least in the sense that the software works once the subscription expires, but you will still have to become a newsgator customer to use the new version of FeedDemon – thanks but no thanks.

I have been trying two readers – recommended by one of the comment spammers who has been criticising FeedDemon changes. RSSBandit is open source and a good reader. I liked its interface and behaviour. Sadly, it is extremely fussy about having very accurate code in the feeds and rejects all sorts of things I want to read. I have never been a fan of “purity” of this kind so it is not for me. I want to read the content, not worry about whether the code fully validates. I might come back to it when it has gone through a few more versions. Incidentally, it allows a free version of the “synchronising” that Newsgator charges for, using your own or a friend’s server.

I have settled, for now at least, on Greatnews (click icon below). It is free (in its current beta at least), it is very fast and it does what I want it to. There are still some very minor bugs (e.g. not always consistent in how it marks articles as read). it uses css to style its display, so you can alter it to suit you very easily if you know css, and it is comfortable and pleasant to use. Documentation is lacking, but I find it faster than FeedDemon to download feeds and I enjoy using it.

I thought I would say a little more about the route choice between controls 11 and 12 at the Buxted Park-O. The results are out and analysing the splits (with winsplits) shows that this leg was where I lost a lot of time and a few places.

Looking at the leg (ignoring the scruffy copying of the course – my red pen was on the blink!) there are two obvious route choices – marked in violet – either towards the railway fence to pick up the path through the open area, or through the open woodland along the stream . The former looked like the better choice being shorter and with a fence and then clear path to follow. It also had a good attack point close to the control. The run through the woodland by the stream was attractive on such a hot day.

What I actually did is shown below:

I did not quite go far enough to find the path and came onto the rough open instead of open area looking for it. The rough open was a nightmare of thistles and brambles, so I painfully crossed it and came down the stream, which was an easy and open run. Having had one encounter with the rough open, I stayed on the path round to the control, rather than cutting the corner past the marsh from the end of the path.

Looking at the map at home, in the comfort of the armchair, the tunnel under the railway from which the path emerges is so glaringly obvious that I should have headed for the railway fence, stuck with it like glue and then come down the path. Other runners found it and said it was a good path, though not quite so obvious on the ground as on the map. I ended up with the worst of both worlds, losing time through changing my mind and through the painful slow crossing of the rough open, though the run down the stream was pleasantly cool and enjoyable.

Today was the only one of the early summer series of “Park-O” events I have managed to make this year. With it being weeks since I have run, and at least a fortnight since doing any real exercise, I was not expecting great things, but saw it as a training opportunity.

Buxted park was a stately home, now a hotel, surrounded by landscaped parkland. This is a little more understated than some of these parks, but very pleasant, with a river curving through the main park, feeding two main lakes, several streams tucked into woodlands along the edge of the park, several large ponds and a great deal of variety, from Churchyard to manicured garden to open woodland. The open grassland in the centre of the park has a remarkable number of ancient anthills. These are impressive from an ecological point of view, but very hard on the ankles if you try to run across it.

It was a stunning morning. There were just a few streaks of cirrus in the sky, with clean sunshine and warmth building quickly, slightly tempered by a light breeze. The turn out was a little more manageable than some events and after a little friendly chat and copying the course onto my map I was off and running. To my surprise, I felt very good. I found the first control easily and just seemed to know where the next control would be. Even the impenetrable fields of bracken did not phase me, I just went round. (The bracken was higher than me and genuinely impossible to get through – marked on the map as “rough open”) Things went on like this until control 7, almost half-way, when the heat worked its way through and boiled my brain. Quite suddenly, I was dry, hot, not thinking well and energy had gone. Speed dropped away but I kept going.

I made one route choice error. I set off along a good fence to find a pathway through open, but convinced myself that I had made a bad choice when the “open” was choked with thistles, bracken and brambles. I headed across the “open” (which took ages) and had a good route down a stream in open forest, but this second choice route brought me out some way away from the control. Others told me if I had stayed with my planned route a little longer I would have hit the very good path and been at the control quickly – more than one runner caught me up on that leg. Others had gone straight down the stream in the first place, and avoided the slow traverse of the undergrowth.

Allowing for slowing down even more towards the end (well, it was over 25C and there was very little shade) I was quite pleased with my run. Under 15 mins per km and only twice the time of the leader. If I had thought to take water with me (which some runners did) I could have been significantly faster. I thoroughly enjoyed myself in what might be the last run of the “season”.

Sorry there have been few posts recently. I am very busy at work and I have been away, including four days on a geography field trip to Yorkshire. There are some Yorkshire photos in the gallery.