Eclectic Ramblings and Bite-Sized Whimsy

Want a chance to win one of three copies of NY Times Bestseller Scott Sigler’s novel Infected (kindle version)?

Check out the Scifi Media post linked above for details.  Contest ends on June 21st.  If you’re a Horror / SciFi fan and you haven’t read Infected yet, you’re missing out!

twistingmearound:

rossruns reblogged your post: Damn my lack of scripting skills right now, I…block

may be wrong, but this sounds like…wouldn’t really fit into Tumblr’s dash very well,…

I hope you get as far in life as that attitude will take you.  Really, if the point was a 7 o’clock bus, you showed up at 7:15, buddy.

The whole idea is TO MAKE OTHER BLOG POSTS FIT INTO TUMBLR’S DASH, seamlessly.  I’m guessing you’ve never installed any extensions before and speak from exactly that level of experience.  But, you know, nice to know someone cared enough to read my idea, I guess.  Thanks for that?

Au contraire - I’ve installed many an extension and have even written a few of my own (ok, so they’re primarily Greasemonkey scripts, but the extension portion would primarily be repackaging them in another format.)

The point I was making, which you so blithely blew by, was that Tumblr’s dashboard is primarily a pretty UI for their backend, which does all the heavy lifting.  For you to have an extension that 1) constantly polled a list of sites, 2) pulled new content into a database that reformatted them, and 3) inserted them in-situ into the Tumblr post stream (and I’m assuming left them there in perpetuity as you scrolled backwards/forwards indefinitely), you’d basically have to have your own backend data-management mechanism.  Something that heavy on processing, storage, and endurance is probably not the right fit for an extension.  Of course, you could be thinking of doing this all real-time and not storing anything anywhere, but now you’re looking at the overhead and processing time of constantly pulling in, formatting, and inserting posts based on where you are in your Dash history, which is going to play merry hell with the user experience as they begin to scroll down the page, only to have posts get inserted after they’ve passed by that portion of the stream.

It sounds like what you are looking for is to build an RSS reader into an extension, but have the UI for the reader be integrated with Tumblr’s dashboard.  While this is, of course, possible, given enough time and effort, I can’t see the urgent NEED for such a thing.  RSS feed readers exist.  They’re even built into browsers nowadays.  Extensions like missing e provide functionality on Tumblr that cannot be found anywhere else in any shape or form.  Your extension just relocates an existing solution into the Tumblr dash.  Would people LIKE to see posts from other sites on their dash so they don’t have to leave Tumblr? I’m guessing if you asked people that way, they’d say “sure.”  But would those people pay for it when there are free feed readers they can use instead with only mild “inconvenience”? (Or not even any inconvenience, given that there’s no reason you can’t have a feed reader open in a second tab of your browser, and have the “Share on Tumblr” link embedded in each feed post in the reader with a 5-liner script.)

My original reblog of your post also tried to suggest some workarounds, since you clearly indicated you didn’t know how to code your extension.  I was trying to be helpful, and foster some discussion.  I did not appreciate your patronizing and insulting response.  If this is the way you treat people who are trying to help you, I can’t imagine that any extension developers would want to get involved in helping you implement your idea.  

I wish you luck, though, and here I’m NOT being sarcastic or patronizing.  If you actually do get something like this together, I’d be willing to give it a test to see how it changes my current Tumblr/Blog Reading habits.

twistingmearound:

Damn my lack of scripting skills right now, I would totally write that extension myself. I even know how it would work… I just don’t know how to code it.

Basically the extension would need a “management” panel or page, where you, the user, could add to or remove from a list of (non-tumblr)…

I may be wrong, but this sounds like it wouldn’t really fit into Tumblr’s dash very well, since Tumblr controls the dash and what you’re asking to do is basically set up an independent database that monitors Wordpress (or other) blogs and inserts posts in the appropriate location.

You could mimic the functionality you want by creating a bare tumblr, and then adding the Wordpress blog’s RSS feed into it in the configuration tab to auto-pull-and-post that blog’s posts into the bare tumblr.  Then follow that tumblr with your account and you’ll see all the blog posts as they’re scraped/reposted on tumblr.  Of course, you’re effectively stealing the blog’s content and republishing it on tumblr, so only do this if you have no qualms about stealing someone else’s intellectual property and repurposing it for your own entertainment.

Someone at Groupon has an AWESOME sense of humor.

Carolina Trail Learning Center’s instructors lead golfers of all skill levels through a series of private one-on-one lessons designed to develop and enhance individual games. Though each 30- to 45-minute session can be tailored to fit specific goals, beginners spend their first lesson honing the basics of club handling, such as grip, aim, and setup, which are then packaged together to enable putting and long-distance club throwing. The second and third lessons cover chipping and pitching and reinforce the tenets learned in earlier sessions. After review of previous teachings, the fourth lesson boosts abilities to swing irons and woods as the newly minted golfer plays a full hole with the instructor in tow. Finally, in the fifth session, the instructor challenges the student to become the master of golf, strike him down, and steal the essence of his backswing.