The Trixie Update

Trixie decorated a birthday cake for me this year. I stuck up a handful of pics on flickr that show what a good job she did. I’m biased, of course. Any cake decoration that includes dinosaurs is going to be good, so she had me at stegosaurus.

I’m still playing around with flickr. It’s just too darn easy to use for me to go back to my old way of doing TPODs. However, I think what I really need to do is finish moving the TPOD archives to a new install of wordpress and build a Picture-of-the-day theme.

(test from flickr)

No registration required. And if you would like to read all the latest comments as they are posted, you can add this syndication feed to your feed reader: http://www.trixieupdate.com/comments/feed

I didn’t even look at the new blog software today, so it’s not really going to at 100% on Monday morning. The blog will probably be a weekend project. Here’s the game plan though in case anyone is keeping score at home:

1) Move all the functionality of the old Trixie Update to the new WordPress blog software. Right now the TPODs are still running in Movable Type. I need to move that next.

2) I’m using the Cutline theme right now. I like it a lot, but since I’m a designer I probably oughta skin my own I was anxious to get moved first, so I’m not really sure if I’m going to replicate the old TTU design (doubtful) or make up something new (likely). Haven’t thought about it too much. I’m just so glad to have a clean, standards-compliant document structure. Getting rid of the old code is like stripping off a festering cocoon. It’s a goood feeling.

P.S. Awesome. I just checked my google reader and I’m getting full feeds! Way to go WordPress and .htaccess! (if you don’t know, you don’t want to ask.)

Thanks for your patience as I migrate to new blogging software. My guess is that things should be working by Monday morning. I would check back then!

I am switching the Trixie Update from my ancient MovableType install to a breath of fresh WordPress this weekend. This is a good thing, but there’s a chance I may mess up the code that moves the site feed (RSS). If you don’t see any more posts in the next few days, please come visit the new Trixie Update and grab the new feed. thanks!

I had an interesting conversation with my Mom earlier today about the flickr account I recently set up. She was very excited about all the new pictures. And to my surprise she wanted to learn more about the other web stuff I had mentioned recently. In particular, the feed reader. She didn’t quite understand what it was, but I’m super excited that my mom wants a feed reader, so this post is to help her (and anyone else) out.

What does a feed reader do and why do I want one?
There is too much information in world. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it means that we need new coping strategies for managing the data deluge.

This is where feeds come in. Every website has the ability to wrap up a portion of its content, label it and tell the world, “hey, here’s my latest content. Check it out.” This is a called a syndication feed and it’s a very powerful thing for a couple of reasons:

1) You don’t have to spend energy searching for new content. It comes to you. You don’t have to visit 50 blogs on a daily basis. You visit one place — your feed reader — to see which blogs have been updated.

2) Syndication feeds can be sliced and diced like you wouldn’t believe. For example, do you check the Trixie Update because you like to read all the new comments? I could (should) set up a feed that syndicates user comments. That way you don’t have to come to the Trixie Update and visually scan the site to see what story has a new comment. You could simply add a “Trixie Update Recent Comments” feed to your reader. Pretty cool idea, right?

How do I get a feed reader?
Again, I’m going to strongly recommend Google reader. Go to google.com/reader. If you don’t have a google account, you’ll need to create one.

Once you are on your Google Reader page, it will be empty — but not for long. Click “Add subscription” on the top left. Paste ‘trixieupdate.com’ to the field and click ‘add’. You’ll then see the latest 10 articles from the Trixie Update marked as ‘New’ in your reader. As you click through each one you’ll notice that number of ‘New’ articles decreases until you’ve seen them all. Congrats! You’re all done. You’ve read all your feeds.

Add a few more blogs in there and you’ll soon start checking your feed reader before you spend time visiting actual site around the web. Mom, I hope this helps. Good luck!

PS. If someone says RSS, they are talking about feeds.

Welcome Baltimore and Memphis! We’re changing up the format a little bit, and no longer exclusively talking about babies. However, you can check out our New Visitor page for a list of the best baby-related stories from the archives.

And if you’d like to learn more about your own baby’s patterns, why not give Trixie Tracker software a try?