Information Overload

Hi, my name's Tom and I suffer from Information Overload.

Every day I open up my web browser. The browser currently contains tabs linked to slightly over 100 blogs, newspapers, magazines, and news sites.

On a typical day each of these sites will have a couple of articles worth reading, but call it one article for simplicities sake.

On average each of these articles is around 500 words long.

That's roughly 50 000 words every day.

At the moment I'm also reading Lady of Mazes by Karl Schroeder, and Java for Dummies by Barry Burd.

I have a box of books in my bedroom and another virtual boxload in my Amazon wish list.

I also have a 9:00 - 17:00 job.

Something needs to be done.

But what?

....

RSS feeds have never impressed me. Taking blogs, mulching them up and squeezing them into an email format doesn't appeal.

The challenge then is to find a service or piece of software that combines several blogs together without pissing me off.

I would first have to define exactly what I wanted. This is actually pretty hard.

If anyone has any ideas I'd appreciate them. I haven't thoroughly researched RSS feeds and similar services and if I'm missing something I'd appreciate being told about it.

Mania

Like most people I have a few neurotic manias.

One of them is the one where I compulsively switch off wall sockets that don't actually have an appliance plugged into them.

I'm trying to wean myself off this as there is no discernible benefit.

However there is also my inability to tolerate TV screens left on standby. This is fairly reasonable as that TV is consuming valuable 'leccy but not actually being used. The puritan in me also suspects that getting up and turning the box on reduces sloth.

So standby button are bad for the soul.

The hotel across the street recently had a new wall-mounted flat-screen TV installed.

The room is unoccupied now but I can see that little red dot floating in the darkness...

...taunting me...

It would be the work of moments to email the hotel requesting they replace the offending item with a TV not equipped with a standby button.

..................