Pets

I’ve been on a work sabbatical the past year or so. It’s probably been too long because I can feel the job black hole starting to warp time as I’m dragged towards the unemployment event horizon. The non-event horizon, perhaps.  

As with any good sabbatical, some of the time has been spent holidaying, much of it on family stuff, and some of it has been spent doing literally nothing which some people call “decompressing” but it’s actually just good old fashioned boredom. Which, by the way, is highly underrated.  

Another thing I’ve been doing is writing code, building noddy apps to get me back into the coding groove and to try out all the latest Rails goodness. It’s been fun and productive, notably due to LLMs doing lots of the hard work for me. These apps are all live now even if few people are actively using them. It’s mainly just me, a few friends and some sympathetic acquaintances. And the spambots, of course (never build free blogging software!). 

Some people call apps like these “side projects”, but I call them pets. You have to feed them now and again and in return they give you a bit of entertainment. They can make you feel good, filling you with warm pride. They cost a bit of money to keep alive, but not that much. Occasionally they’re really annoying and shit all over your carpet, interrupting your Netflix binge and leaving you with an unholy mess to clean up, having you pray it doesn’t do it again. Which of course it will because it’s a pet and it will do what it likes when it likes. 

This is the price of having a pet, and it’s totally worth it!

Of my three new pets my favourite (unlike children, I think you’re allowed favourite pets) is my new one, Feedgrab. It’s nothing special, but I get to use it every day which I love. I’m dog-fooding my pet! Good boy. It’s rather basic right now (tbf it only took 2-3 weeks) but it works fine and it’s definitely “good enough”. There’s lots I could do with it which is nice to plot and daydream about, but it’s even better to think there’s no obligation to do anything. 

Despite RSS being a gift from the internet gods, I’m learning that most people don’t want to use it anymore. I think I can change some minds though, in time. You should be able to keep up with the latest news and blogs (and discover new sources) without having to do it all yourself, or resort to Twitter/X, right? All you need is a chronological feed of stuff you’re interested in following which you can star, filter, mute phrases, and so on. That’s it!

There are plenty of other apps out there that try and do this, but crucially they’re not mine. I can’t pet them, or improve them, and I can’t benefit from building them. Regardless of how often building stuff challenges my sanity, it’s so rewarding and worth it in the end. 

If you’re keen to play with my new favourite pet you can sign up and try it out now. Unless you’re a nerd that knows how to use RSS, it will probably be a bit underwhelming because the onboarding experience is almost non-existent. I plan to improve that soon but, for now, if you need a hand just email me and I’ll help you out.

Be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed for this blog!

(Pets, but not my pets)