A Back Story

A long time ago, in the legacy chain days when my wife and I first joined, there was this little-known account that created an amazing tool. The name escapes me at the moment—maybe someone can help me out—but I’ll keep the story rolling.

This little tool, Gina bot, made participating in our home here ten times better. All of a sudden, we could keep track of what was going on. Back then, notifications on front ends weren’t even a thing. Can you imagine that?

At any rate, Ginabot lived on MSP, also known as Palnet, and every single person I knew was using it. My dear wife even wrote the most comprehensive blog post on the subject. But apparently, drama, and possibly even COVID—killed Ginabot or something.

I’m told the dev has been MIA for years, and the folks who took over ended up killing Gina. I don’t know the details, but it’s a tragic event nonetheless. That said, F.R.I.D.A.Y. is around, and while it’s not exactly like Gina, it does a pretty good job in my opinion.

I’ve been sweet-talking my wife into getting back into writing. I’m biased, of course, but I think she wrote some killer posts back in the day. She tells me, though, that without an easy way to keep track of her favorite authors, she doesn’t see herself jumping back in.

This got me thinking. You know what? I could use a tool like that myself. I’m onboarding people and trying to make sure I don’t miss their posts so they get supported for their efforts. I follow my onboards, obviously, but with hundreds of people on my list, I’m bound to miss one or two, and that just won’t cut it.

A week ago, I sat down at my computer to code a little tool. Honestly, it’s nothing too impressive, and I’m not claiming to reinvent the wheel here. But you know what? It works, and it works pretty darn well.

MyBuzzPicks

It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: I’m not asking for a dime for this. You’re welcome to leave an upvote if you feel like it, but I’m not hitting up the development fund or anything like that. This is just a little gift to Hive, nothing more, nothing less.

MyBuzzPicks Github

The repository, as you can probably guess, is public. Anyone can download it, check out the code, improve it, or turn it into a taco (I hear that’s a thing these days—don’t ask me the context). Point is, the tool is minimal but effective for what I need.

You simply add or delete the users you want to closely follow. It shows a list of their posts from the last three days and ignores their reblogs, which, for my purposes, aren’t important (this might be different for you). After three days, the posts just disappear from the feed.

And… that’s it.

So What Now?

I’ll get back to onboarding and helping the boys from 3Speak with their guide-to-Hiveology efforts. It’s a gargantuan task, and I picked myself an ugly one—not because creating accounts sucks, but because of how much work I’ve piled on myself.

For now, I’ll say good night, make another cup of joe (I’ve only had ten, so I’m still good), and keep typing away, until tiredness beats me again.

Thanks for stopping by,

MenO