Category Archives: Keep in Touch

Nick

May 3, 2020

Episode 16 of KeepInTouch.fm has everything from Tractors to Raspberry Pi-powered ventilators, alongside the usual privacy & security chatter and tech for kids:

  • Todd has a technical epiphany in the pre-show
  • The usual chat about Security and Privacy is focused around COVID-19 contact tracing
  • Raspberry Pi powered ventilators
  • Todd goes on a shopping spree
  • Quick thoughts on the iPhone SE (2020)
  • Kids and messaging apps

https://KeepInTouch.fm/16

Nick

April 11, 2020

Episode 15 of the KeepInTouch.fm podcast is now available. We talk about:

  • Our experience with homeschooling the kids
  • Working from home
  • Zoom’s privacy issues
  • To buy or not to buy an iPad for the kids
  • Nick’s new job
  • … and much more

https://KeepInTouch.fm/15

Nick

December 15, 2019

Episode 11 of the KeepInTouch.fm podcast is now available. We talk about:

  • Coke vs Pepsi, and why the choice is easy for Nick
  • Follow up on our 10th episode anniversary
  • RIP Google Cloud Print
  • Todd’s next phone will be made by Microsoft
  • Lots of thoughts on Thanksgiving and Christmas
  • … and much more

https://KeepInTouch.fm/11

Nick

November 19, 2019

Making Episode 10 of the KeepInTouch.fm podcast has been the most fun yet. We cover:

  • Open floor plans vs Private Office. Bonus: Keyboard clickiness
  • Rainbows and unicorns
  • Honey, macaroons, bread, yogurt, and strawberry jam
  • Kids: birthday parties, sickness avoidance
  • … and much more

https://KeepInTouch.fm/10

Nick

September 16, 2019

Episode 8 is out:

  • An immigrant’s understanding of New Zealand history
  • Thoughts on the Android 10 and on the Apple’s announcements
  • Todd DeLand’s thoughts on how to introduce kids to News and Current Affairs
  • … and much more

https://KeepInTouch.fm/8

How to turn a Podcast RSS feed into a website

As I wrote previously, getting started with a Podcast can be very straight forward. Todd and I wanted to add some personality to our show’s online presence, so we decided we needed a website. A lot of the information that would normally go on the website is already available in the Podcast’s RSS feed, so I started thinking about a way of not duplicating this effort. The Keep In Touch show is a hobby, and given how busy (and lazy) I am at the moment, I needed a pragmatic solution.

TL;DR

KeepInTouch.fm runs on Jekyll and is updated every time we publish an episode using our fork of the Jekyll RSS importer. We upload the episode and its metadata to our Podcast host and then we point the importer at the Podcast RSS feed. If needed, we customise the blog post and then push it to GitHub. GitHub pages then automatically updates the website.

List of requirements

We wanted the website to provide some fairly basic functionality:
– general information about the show, and a the ability to subscribe to the Podcast
– a blog/website where each episode can have its own page
– each episode page would need to privide visitors with the ability to listen to the show, and to find shownotes, links, and other relevant information

As the administrators of the website, we would need:
– a modern website: responsive, fast, and secure
– an easy to maintain set up (i.e. no hardware / software maintenance)
– a simple updating mechanism
– a simple way of transforming the information we had already provided in the Podcast’s RSS feed

The solution

GitHub Pages was the first option we considered, and luckily it ticked all our boxes. We quickly set up an organisation and picked a simple, but quite configurable jekyll theme for the site.

The only friction I still had to deal with was the “transformation” of the Podcast RSS feed into blog posts on the site. Jekyll does come with an RSS importer, so I gave that a go. Most of the metadata was extracted nicely, but there was no way to play the show without changing the post manually to link to the mp3 file that was actually available in the RSS feed.

Open Source FTW

Luckily, the Jekyll project is open source, which meant I was able to fork the RSS importer, and turn the RSS audio enclosure into an HTML audio tag. All it took was 13 lines of code.

The result

Today, my workflow couldn’t be (?) simpler:
– Record and edit the show
– Upload the episode and it’s metadata (i.e. shownotes) to the podcast host
– Run a simple script to fetch the new episode (and turn it from a feed Item into a blog Post)
– Push the new post to GitHub


If you found this post useful, please consider subscribing to KeepInTouch on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or wherever else you listen to podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. Lastly, please send us your feebdack via email or twitter @KeepInTouchFM.