498th Friday Blog Roundup
So Feedly was down for two days this week, which means that I spent the time curled up like a potato bug being poked with a stick. Okay, perhaps I just read other things instead, but it was a bit unnerving to not know what was going on with all of you. If you wrote a comment, I could click over from that url. And I could click down sections of the blogroll. But I couldn’t get to my feeds. I was locked out of my subscriptions and apparently incapable of reconstructing a list of several hundred blogs.
My lack of trust in anything cloud-based has been a running theme on this blog for years, and now I’m turning my paranoid eye towards my rss reader. If had made a backup of my rss reader, I wouldn’t have been in that predicament. I could have clicked down the list in a XML document. Or imported the backup file into a different platform. There would have been options if I had made a backup. But I didn’t. Until Feedly came back up.
After I declared Feedly bankruptcy on most posts (it was going to be too hard to recover from 48 hours worth of unread posts), I made a backup. Every rss reader will be different, but with Feedly, go to the bottom of the screen where you see the three dots in the bottom left corner. Click on those dots. It will open a menu where one of the options is “organize.” Click that. Scroll to the bottom of that screen and click “save as OPML.” Then download your feed by clicking the big green button. Move the file into a folder on your hard drive labeled “rss reader backup.”
But wait, there’s more.
Download it a second time, and this time, instead of saving it, use the “open file” choice on the download. Select a program such as Excel to open the file. It should have your feed listed, one blog per line of the spreadsheet. Save this as a file too. If you ever lose access to Feedly (or the rss reader of your choice), you can use the first backup to upload your feeds elsewhere. You can use your second backup to see a list of your feeds if you want to just click on one or two. And you should update both lists every time you make a change to your reader. Or every Friday, as part of your weekly backup. Yes, I’ve already added it to that page.
I’m sure others experienced the same thing this week and had to declare blog post bankruptcy to make a clean slate, so take pity on all of us and please give us a quick summary of what has been up in your world this week. Just leave a comment below summing up the last five days. Pretty please?
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Time for your weekly nag:
This is just your friendly nudge to do your weekly backup. I know, I know, who has the time to create backups on a weekly basis? No one. But you still need to do it and forgo ten minutes of something else, once a week. Right now, before you do anything else, use this post to roll through a quick backup of your email, documents, images, blog, social media accounts, and mobile devices. Reading the Roundup on the go and don’t have the ability to do your backup right now? Email yourself a copy of the Roundup so that the email will serve as a visual reminder to get this task done. Ten minutes of your time once a week may save you a major loss of time and data down the road. Don’t have regrets. So, on your marks, get set, back up!
As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.
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And now the blogs…
But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week. In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:
- None. As in, no one found a post last week that moved them or made them think or cracked them up or… (yes, this is a guilt trip)
Okay, now my choices this week.
Haisla’s Adventures in Endoland has a post about being down that fit my mood. The words felt like a rainy, grey day unfolding on a page. I especially loved this: “I’ve always been a bit of an emotion burier and only years in therapy taught me how to dig around in my emotional quagmire to find the root causes for feeling blah at any one time. So I think as a result of writing this post I’ve found it, the root cause for this bout of blah and it is the last failed IUI cycle, indeed. Thanks for dropping by sadness, it’s nice to see you made it to the party after all.”
Just Another Infertility Blog also has a sort of down post that I loved. She admits that she has pulled back from reading: “There is just so much joy and so much pain in your lives that I every time I venture back to my reader I’m struck with either happy news that ignites my own longings or heartbreak that devastates me on your behalf. I’m not sure if I’m being overly sensitive or if we all affect each other this way, but I can only take it in little bits at a time.” If you are overly sensitive, then I am overly sensitive too, so it’s nice to know that we’re not alone with this. It’s a post about taking a deep breath and creating order in things.
Lastly, I’ll end on a happy note. Wednesday was Bio Girl’s sister’s birthday, a hard day for the family since her sister died. They were having dinner together when they looked outside and saw the start of a rainbow. She documented it with pictures, and by the end of the rain, there was a double rainbow surrounding her parents’ house. A small moment of heartbreaking beauty, drawing all of them close together.
The roundup to the Roundup: Uh, what happened to you this week while Feedly was down? Please catch me up. Your weekly backup nudge. And lots of great posts to read. So what did you find this week? Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between June 6th and June 13th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week? Read the original open thread post here.
18 comments
I don’t know if you have tried digg reader yet but I’ve been really happy with it. I like it better than feedly.
Dang technology. :p I exported my Google Reader files when that shut down (last year?). I still have the file saved on my hard drive, but I’ve added blogs to my new reader (Bloglovin) since then. Will have to check & see how that one backs up. Thanks for the reminder!
I don’t think you missed anything from me blogwise, my posts have been scarce lately & so has my reading & commenting activity. :p Work has been overwhelming lately and I’m exhausted at night. We said goodbye to our family dr of almost 29 years on Monday (subject of my last blog post) & are interviewing/being interviewed by a prospective new dr tonight after supper. Fingers crossed that we “click.”
Two words: Mercury Retrograde. Thus, it does not surprise me Feedly went down. My week has been work and meetings and trying to be productive as we countdown to leaving for vacation.
Oh my goodness, yes, that was freaky!
My update: we returned from a trip and started talking about how to ease culture shock in kids using travel games. Suggestions are welcome and the second in the series is going up over the next 24hrs. It sounds like something you’d be good at, Mel… of course anyone else is welcome to join in.
Not to sound too self-promotional – I genuinely am looking for new ideas having played I Spy pretty much to death over the last week.
My update: IUI #2 (1st with clomid) produced a dreaming 31mm follicle. My RE has hope. I do not.
Interesting article by Trevor O’Sullivan, who suffers from cystic fibrosis:
http://www.thejournal.ie/readme/infertility-cystic-fibrosis-1509485-Jun2014/
I was stressed at work all week. We’re moving and there seems to be no plan for dealing with all tbe logistics. Oh well. Iam currently, though, drying off after a thorough soaking on a water ride at the amusement park. My nieces and daughter find it hilarious!
I wrote my 200th post…but you know that. Thank you for the comment 🙂
I saw Loribeth’s comment above, I use bloglovin’ too. If she figures out how to back up on there, do you think she could let us other Bloglovin’ users know?
The only excitement in my week was doing 100 pushups and 100 kicks at TKD and not being able to lift my arms above my head ever since! Happy Friday!
@Tiara: Ummm, I don’t know how to back up on Bloglovin… I backed up/exported my Google Reader files & then transferred them to Bloglovin last year, but I haven’t backed up those since I joined (& I have added blogs to the list since then). So I’m going to have to find out…! (If you find out ahead of me, let me know!)
I really identified with this post about recurrent pregnancy loss and feeling like your body is a graveyard. http://spiritbabycomehome.wordpress.com/2014/06/11/my-womb-is-a-graveyard-healing-body-mind/
Fifi, thanks so much for the link to the man with cystic fibrosis (even if it wasn’t happy reading). I have a niece who has CF, and I’ve often wondered about her future.
Thanks to Mel too for the info about how to backup from Feedly. I’ve just done it. And I didn’t realise Feedly was down this week, and was cursing my iPad. I’m sorry iPad – this time it wasn’t your problem.
No real excitement this week. Drove for the first time since my surgery, so now I can escape the house at last. Emotions of recovery from surgery are very much up and down. Didn’t really expect this, as I was so looking forward to getting rid of my problem uterus.
Thanks for the reminder to backup the RSS feeders… I am still so sad I lost my collection on google reader.
Also, I was really touched by this post about a mom seeing a change in a child. Its not really IF related per se, but I think it relates to this ongoing theme of us all coming to terms with various held opinions and stances and how they evolve through time. I have been thinking a lot about how much we penalize people in the public eye (and privately as well) for changing their mind. For evolving. When listening to a recent interview with Hillary Clinton on her stance regarding gay marriage, I was struck by how we have this cultural gotcha moment if anyone dares reveal that their thinking has changed on an issue.
We all need to space to evolve and just because I didn’t always agree with X, that shouldn’t lessen that I do now. But particularly for politicians and on a personal level, the people who have hurt us directly, it can be hard.
Here is the post:
http://adiaryofamom.wordpress.com/2014/06/13/change-2/
Tickled to see my post on the roundup, thanks for reading! I’m also relieved to know that I’m not the only one super emotionally affected by the stories of others. I don’t know how you keep up with all of us Mel, but I’m glad you do. I’m going to second Lauren’s recommendation of SpiritBabyComeHome’s graveyard post. Its one those of us with repeated losses can all relate to.
Mali, the good news with CF us that treatment a and life expectancy is getting better all the time. I hadn’t realised until I read the article that CF had such a big impact on male fertility. No idea if it is similar for women with CF. Something for your niece to discuss with her doctor (and maybe a supportive auntie) if and when the issue arises. Wishing you and your niece the best.
I was NOT happy when Feedly went down….but then again it is a free service so I couldn’t complain too much. I just read more of my book those two days!! 🙂
A bit late to the party, but just wanted to thank you Mel for a) reading my blog post and b) mentioning it here. As JustAnotherInfertiltyBlog said, I’m not sure how you keep up with all of us, but I sure do appreciate it..x
I am really behind on reading my blogs (clearly!) but thank you for including my post 🙂 xo