Password-protected LiveJournal syndication
Hey Big Chris, you remember how I don't like friends-only entries because they aren't accessible from a feedreader? I just discovered a way that they are. The rss link I've been using is the one that comes up when you enter "http://theazureshadow.livejournal.com/rss" into the address bar. It redirects to this url: http://theazureshadow.livejournal.com/data/rss.
Right now, I'm using Linux, because I finally got wireless working (by switching to a different device, and upgrading to Ubuntu 6.06). So I'm using a different feedreader, which means that I have to update the feeds. So, I searched online for a opml file generator for LiveJournal friends, and found one here. The only problem I have with it is that it names the feeds based on the thing people call their journal, not based on their screen name. But that was easy enough to go through and change everything.
Anyway, back to what I was talking about. This generates feeds based not on the link that I knew about, but this one instead: http://theazureshadow.livejournal.com/data/rss?auth=digest. Now this file is a password-protected one, and only your friends can see it when they enter their username and password. And, in Liferea (the Linux feedreader I'm using), it allows access to the friends-only feeds. I suspect that most major syndication programs support this sort of protection.
I hope that's useful for someone.
On a related note, Ubuntu 6.06 is very nice. I've got sound, networking (stealing files from other computers), internet, etc. My Wacom tablet worked right when I plugged it in. I still have a few things to configure, but it's proving easier than I worried it might be. I wish I didn't have to install Windows still, because that will likely screw up a lot of the hard work I've been doing. I'd actually be just about satisfied with just Linux, if it weren't for the unfortunate problem of lack of Photoshop and Painter.