Reading feeds on a nearly-daily basis

[jack]

There are a lot of webcomics and blogs I read intermittently that have some sort of ongoing story, so the reading pattern I really want to follow is:

1. Feel a bit bored.
2. Go to the last update on this comic/blog I read.
3. Read from there forward until I get bored of it or get up to the present.
4. Go do something productive.
5. Repeat.

However, what I end up doing is:

1. Go to read something I've not read for a while
2. See spoilers on what's going to happen in today's update
3. Spend five minutes faffing looking for the last update I read
4. Read forward from there.
5. Say "sod it", I should give up entirely xor read it every day.

Now maybe "sod it" is the right answer, but can anyone think of a better approach?

* Ideally there'd be a browser plugin which lets me bookmark a date, but when I click "next" automatically updates the bookmark. (Although that may fail with comics where the latest update redirects to the home page.)

* Or maybe, just have a "stuff I'm reading" browser window, and leave it open all the time. Except (a) it's annoying if it's ever accidentally closed and (b) it would have 50+ tabs and (c) is there an easy way to share that between computers

* Alternatively, I could subscribe to RSS updates, and then read from the "last unread" or "last nondeleted" forward? But not everything has a good RSS feed.

I feel like I'm probably missing an obvious way of reading intermittent updates that everyone does by default. (Other than "not bother", I'd find it easier to go cold turkey if I have the option of reading stuff if I like, rather than having to cut out everything at once.)

Comments

[ptc24]

I find that if something doesn't have an RSS feed, then I don't follow it regularly. The part of my brain that invents workarounds suggests writing a program that polls a website, checks for substantive updates, and makes RSS based on that... however, there's no particular site I can think of that's RSSless that I'm that keen to follow.

My RSS strategy seems to be; have a big feed reader full of STUFF. Skim-read most of it, following the things I follow closely. If something appears to be perking up, go back and catch up. This means I can't be picky about spoilers etc., but by and large it seems to work for me.

[naath]

There *are* tools for synchronising your open-tabs over multiple browsers (I think XMarks can do it). However I think many of them only work for *one* set of tabs being the "open" tabs; otherwise you have to bookmark things, which of course suffers from the "this bookmark doesn't update when I click next" problem.

Maybe a bookmark-manager plugin thingy is needed.

[ptc24]

Reading does indeed feed upon a near-daily basis. If you do something regularly and frequently, it becomes habitual, whereas if there isn't a set schedule, or that schedule is sparse, then you just lose interest.

(Sorry...)

[seryn]

If there's no feed, then life's too short.