1---
 2title: "Consuming News"
 3subtitle: "My setup for quickly getting news I want and discarding news I don't"
 4author: Amolith
 5description: "My setup for quickly getting news I want and discarding news I don't"
 6date: 2020-03-31T14:08:14-04:00
 7draft: false
 8cover: /assets/pngs/news.png
 9categories:
10  - Technology
11tags:
12  - Productivity
13  - Reading
14  - RSS
15  - wallabag
16  - TT-RSS
17  - Firefox
18  - eReader
19  - Workflow
20toc: true
21---
22
23I recently posted about getting through 487 feed items in less than half an hour
24and I thought I would write about my setup here. There are three primary
25applications that require some configuration:
26
27* [Feed reader](https://tt-rss.org/)
28* [Browser](https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/new/)
29* [Read-it-later service](https://wallabag.org)
30
31## Tiny Tiny RSS
32My feed reader of choice is TT-RSS. It's one of the most advanced
33readers I've ever used and can be tailored for any workflow. My basic
34preferences are below:
35
36* :white_check_mark: Enable categories
37* :white_check_mark: Combined mode
38* :white_check_mark: Always expand articles[^1]
39* :white_check_mark: Show content preview in headlines
40
41Making use of the categories is *very* important; if you have a lot of
42feeds, getting through them is much easier when you can go topic by
43topic and leave some for when you have more time.
44
45In addition to categories, the *big* feature I make use of is keyboard
46shortcuts. You can view those from the hamburger menu[^2] in the top
47right at `Keyboard shortcuts help`. `n` and `o` is what I make use of
48more than any other; `n` goes to the next article (or scrolls in
49particularly long ones) and `o` opens the source in a new tab. This
50would be great except that most browsers automatically switch to that
51new tab. If you're just wanting to get it up there to deal with later as
52I do, this diversion is *incredibly* annoying. Thankfully, it can be
53disabled in Firefox :smirk:
54
55## Firefox
56This setting is pretty damn easy; open `about:config`, search for
57`loadDivertedInBackground`, and set it to true.
58
59When you right-click something and open it in a new tab, you're
60automatically diverted to it. In some cases, this is convenient but I've
61always found it annoying and worked around it by middle clicking links.
62Changing this setting in `about:config` will make it so *all* tabs open
63in the background leaving your current tab focused.
64
65## wallabag
66My read-it-later application is [wallabag,](https://wallabag.org) a
67libre alternative to Mozilla's Pocket (which they still haven't made
68open source :eyes:) I use the [Firefox
69Add-on](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/wallabagger/) so
70simply clicking the icon will send the URL to my server for download. I
71also have an application on [my
72eReader](https://us.kobobooks.com/products/kobo-aura-one-limited-edition)
73called [Wallabako.](https://gitlab.com/anarcat/wallabako/) It downloads
74articles from wallabag as ePubs so I can read online articles while I'm
75offline as if they were books. A dream come true :wink:
76
77## Entire workflow
78With all that out of the way, here's my entire workflow.
79
801. Select topic of interest (category)
812. Start at the top and use `n` to quickly view the `n`ext headline and
82   maybe a short preview of the content
833. If you want to read more, `o`pen it in the background
844. Continue pressing `n` and/or `o` until you get to the bottom
855. If you have time, move to the next category
866. Use `CTRL+Tab` to cycle through all the links you opened and send
87   them to wallabag for consuming later
88
89[^1]: Depending on what feeds you add, you might want to disable this.
90    Slashdot makes up the bulk of my feed items and they generally fit
91    on one page.
92[^2]: A hamburger menu is three parallel horizontal lines typically
93    styled as a button that expands to show a menu of some kind.