weathering the beautiful storm

I'm declaring LJ bankruptcy, guys, sorry. I'll try to read entries from today on, but anything in the past two weeks just isn't getting read.

A half-hidden trail in the woods led to a grove full of wishes, where a fairy bestowed a strip of fabric and pen so we could add our own to the gathering.

Maryland Faerie Festival

Reading LJ from afar through RSS is easy enough to do, but friends-locked entries require that the feed reader be able to use authentication (name/password checks), and that's hard to find. Here are some of the options I've tried.

Web-based:

- Bloglines says it allows authentication, but it doesn't seem to work for LJ
- NewsGator works perfectly
- Google Reader does not work
- Google Groups reportedly does not work
- Netvibes works perfectly

Firefox-based:

- NewsFox authenticates, but is slow to load and requires you to enter a user/pass for every feed, every time you refresh or restart
- Sage and SageToo are the same as NewsFox and are abandonware anyhow
- Firefox live bookmarks work, but have the same issue

No desktop-based readers were tested. I've heard that FeedReader 3, FeedDemon, NetNewsWire, RSSOwl (Java), Outlook 2007, vienna (Mac), BlogBridge, Thunderbird, and intraVnews all support authentication. Here's another discussion on authenticated feeds.

Friends-locked RSS feeds work in any reader after being passed through FreeMyFeed. I use Bloglines as my primary reader, but the process below should work in your reader of choice. each friend and community to an RSS feed reader. No, there's no good way to do this in bulk*. LJ doesn't play nice.

1. Log into LJ and go to "Add or Remove Friends" (http://www.livejournal.com/friends/edit.bml)

2. Open up http://freemyfeed.com/ in another tab. If you're adding communities, use code A below. If you're adding personal accounts, use code B below.

3. Paste the appropriate code into the freemyfeed box and fill in the user or community name.

4. Enter your LJ name and password** and hit submit.

5. Choose your RSS reader from the list, or copy the new RSS link into your reader.

6. Hit the back button until you get back to the freemyfeed starting screen and repeat for each friend you want to add. Use LJ's add/remove friends page as a reference. It's easiest to do all the friends at once, then all the communities, since all the text will still be in the boxes and you'll just have to fill in the next friend/community name.

7. Once you "free" an RSS feed, be sure to add it as a private entry in your feed reader so that others can't see it, otherwise you could compromise your friends' locked posts. This tutorial is not responsible for angry or lost friends.

Code A (communities): http://community.livejournal.com/communityname/data/rss
Code B (friends): http://username.livejournal.com/data/rss?auth=digest

*It's possible to use this link (http://www.livejournal.com/tools/opml.bml?user=username) to import all your friends' feeds at once, but it probably won't allow you to read friends-locked entries.

**The freemyfeed website says they don't store that information.

I think I've finally gotten all these to their recipients, so here are some of the things I made for Christmas.



I found a nice little lavender lemonade recipe last year and made up baskets with everything you need to make it (except glasses). These ended up being a huge pain because I kept buying lemons that went bad before I could give them out, but the baskets were cute!



These were fun to make, although the diffuser liquid itself is kind of scary - melted right through some condiment cups I was using for testing. I recommend glass containers only. ;)

Corks - repurposed wine corks from Etsy
Vases - Ikea
Ribbons - stash
Reeds - From Nature with Love
Diffuser liquid - From Nature with Love

I used some pebbles, also from Ikea, to fill the vase partway before putting the liquid in, to make them less likely to tip over. The fragrance oils for the diffuser were also from my stash.



Made the same way as the ones in the white vases, but with glass jars from Ikea instead. I just love the way they look. None of these were given out, I'm just using them around the house.

I disapprove of this outlet.



I disapprove of your entertainment.



I disapprove of your paint choices.



I disapprove of you.



I keel you.