Apparently, using lists screws things up to holy hell. There were tons of malformed <p> tags, a bunch of whitespace, as well as complete disregard for switching from numeric order lists to alpha ordered lists, when nesting lists. Manual intervention was needed to clean up the gobs of whitespace strewn about my last post on fatblogging.

So… needless to say, I wouldn’t recommend using OneNote/Office’s automatic blog posting feature for anything more than the simplest of posts.

This is 512 bytes of nonsense, since the Firefox 2 developers, in one of the strangest decisions ever, decided they would obsolete XML styles by overriding them without permission. Furthermore, the developers appear to be disinterested in fixing this. Therefore, we use the unofficial workaround, which includes filling up the first 512 bytes of a document so that the sniffer doesn’t encounter the RSS tag. I really enjoy using Firefox, but this particular behavior really annoys me! Anyway, since I’m almost at 512 characters, I’m going to ramble on for another minute in this comment, and then, without further ado, present you with a valid XML feed.

Also, Hi. It’s been a long time. Things have been good here.

Here’s proof.

I wonder if they’ll leave the link up…

“Although Tor claims to improve safety and security, the article goes into detail on how Tor can be used as a anonymous attack platform.”

It’s all true, every last word.

If it weren’t bad enough that they created a competing format, they only allow the spec to work with their proprietary format, AAC. The Voxmedia Wiki, the most comprehensive source for how to implement AAC multimedia markup, states that Garageband/Podcast Chapter Tool is only compatible with AAC files. Apple’s decision to only support this markup in their player for AAC files fucking sucks. I’m really, really mad about this. I see no reason why the annotations can’t be applied to other file formats, as it should be the player’s job to associate the timestamp in the XML file with the position of audio playback.

Maybe I don’t get this. I hope I don’t, and if I don’t, someone please set me straight. But from where I’m sitting, this new development is a mixed blessing. It’s too bad that the functionality that podcasters have been desiring is caught up in this GarageBand/iTunes/AAC quasi-open format bullshit.

Found by way of Scoble.
Update: It looks like Simon is a bit miffed too.

Most of my favorite bloggers, (Robert Scoble, Joel Spolsky, Mark Cuban, Gabe and Tycho, Tim Bray, Iggy, and Tracy and Trev) besides being authoritative, all share a focus and consistency of content that makes their respective sites worthwhile. Their adherance to a topic is one of the key qualities that makes their respective sites valuable.

I’m sure Scoble is a well rounded individual and is interested in many things besides Microsoft and related technology, but I don’t care. I don’t read Ongoing because I think Tim Bray is a good person and I don’t read his site expecting to hear about his newest hobby. I read their blogs because they give me focused info on topics I’m interested in and I don’t have to wade through crap.

So many bloggers would do well to remember their audience when they are searching for what to make of their webspace. I’ll do my best to keep this from turning into this.

Update: Forget this. I may not read “shotgun” blogs that jump around from topic to topic, but I realize that shouldn’t have anything to do with how and why I blog. I write for my own sanity, to keep a record of interesting bits, and to hopefully help someone else out.

Update 2: Don’t forget this, just forgive me for being to rash in both previous revisions. I just don’t think strict adherance is what’s going to make my blog good. More accurately, I have a need to stray every now and then from regular technological writings to keep my own sanity. To be a useful resource though, I have to stay on target. The best place for myself and brainscat is somewhere in the middle. End of navel-gazing. I promise…. for now.

1. At bloglines, find your own blog.
2. If it’s not there, register and add your blog.
3. After searching by your blog url, click related feeds.
4. Select “include” feeds that you’re subscribed to, if that’s your fancy.
5. Post the top 5 (or more) on your blog.

Results for brainscat.com follow…

1. Joe Beda’s EightyPercent.net — never heard of him, but I’m subscribed now.
2. Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger — everybody reads him, no suprise here.
3. Alain Leroy’s view on our world — another wildcard, but I’ll give him a shot.
4. Nate Furtwangler — coworker’s blog. Brandon’s leetle brother.
5. brandon.furtwangler blog — Brandon’s blog, not a suprise at all, since we both started blogging at the same time.

1. Hook up your iPod.
2. Run the iPod-Linux Installer

3. Create a folder on the iPod called “Recordings”
4. Eject and reboot your iPod into linux (usually by holding the rewind button.)
5. Go to Extras->Recordings and start recording audio either with a microphone plugged in, or just shout into your headphones real loud. I’m not kidding, I did it, see below.
6. Remount iPod and edit your audio files in the “Recordings” directory you just made.

Listen to some very sad proof I recorded that this actually works. Be warned, though, I had to raise the volume in Audacity a bit. This works because basically microphones and speakers work on the same principle, magnets generating electricity by being vibrated, or magnets vibrating because of electricity passing by.

• Card Club Ep. 2 — Lord Admiral Radio
• Card Club Ep. 3 — Lord Admiral Radio

Moving on… Mary said she’d bring up my concerns to others in the office and gave me some links that might help. While these are interesting, they can’t possibly compete with a discussion led by a few people “in the know” who are good at summarizing products and new technologies.

• java.sun.com
• java.net
• research.sun.com
• Calvin Austin — J2SE
• Chris Melissinos — Java Gaming
• James Todd — JXTA
• John Clingan — Solaris

Now, if only someone at Apple were easy to reach… Then again, the fact that their organization isn’t transparent at all means I can’t get ahold of anyone and that they just don’t get it.

1. Give project updates as things progress.
2. Clip interesting posts from other blogs to my work blog.
3. Code review with peers.
4. Share experience and tips as I find them.

So, I talked with my friend Ryan about the best interface for clipping from a blog and having a tool grab the pertinent RSS area. Turns out we want the following process to appear to users who want to linkblog.

1. Right click a permalink for a blog.
2. Click “clip this”.
3. Full contents of the article (taken from rss item block) are credited and syndicated in new blog.

We didn’t care if this behavior was in an aggregator like Bloglines, or a plugin to Firefox that posted the necessary information to WordPress. We didn’t care if the tool created a feed somewhere that a WordPress plugin could read, or if it spoke directly with WordPress. What I wanted is a tool to automatically clip a post and make the clip go live on my site.

Inspired, I downloaded another cvs copy of WordPress and started to hack on this. But in the midst of that, I started thinking about how co-workers were going to use the internal blog, and I realized they should be able to read the blog from anywhere. Okay, so I want a private blog that’s accessable anywhere… riight. The only practical, scalable solution for this is to use a VPN. Okay, no biggie, we need a VPN anyways at work. People connect to VPN, they can read the dev-blog and get RSS now.

But shit, I don’t get RSS, Bloglines gets it for me, and there’s no chance in hell of them getting into my VPN. The whole point of putting it on an intranet is so Bloglines and other people can’t read it. >_<

How do I fix this? Install Bloglines behind the VPN so it can access the site and serve me my feeds over a secure connection. But I can’t install Bloglines, I don’t own it.

So, Mark Fletcher, I know you’ve been concerned with a revenue model for Bloglines. If you’re reading this, please, take heed. Either offer a separate Bloglines installation to my employer for a reasonable price, or open source the Bloglines engine. Bloglines has overcome the performance problems I’ve complained about before and I’ve come to love your service because of the user interface. I hope that you see that your unique value, to me, is in your interface, not your centralized service. For the most part, AmphetaDesk does the same centralized aggregator deal, but its interface is terrible. You’re kicking ass when it comes to centralized aggregator user interface.

Even if your strategy for Bloglines is as a portal, as you imply in your recent writings, there’s no reason licensing of your engine can’t provide supplemental revenue. Google does it, I don’t see why you can’t. Allowing custom installations is valuable to the enterprise market with VPNs, it’s valuable to anyone who can’t use your service because it belongs to you alone. Better yet, make the engine extendable, let me customize it. Create great hooks for a plugin system. Open source Bloglines, and sell dual-licenses like MySQL. Give discounts to educational institutions. Really add to the Bloglines web-service, give us way more options than we have now. I don’t care how I get to customize it, as long as I can for a reasonable cost.

You see, as it stands, your centralized hosting hurts me. I know it allows users to get feed suggestions and search feeds for topics, but I’d really be interested in hearing how many users actually are using that functionality. My guess is few, though I may be wrong.

Bloglines is a great aggregator and there are many things I’d like to modify and tweak but I just can’t. Take the clipping solution I’d like above. This would be so simple if when bloglines clipped a post, it offered to keep the original rss item block instead of a link back to Bloglines. If your clipping feature built a custom rss of my clips, I could easily use it and syndicate the “best of” my blogroll. Alas, you probably won’t implement this feature in a timeframe reasonable to me, but if I could could somehow extend your system… well, then the sky would be the limit.

I hereby present to you, the Inaccessable Tablet PC Hardware catalog. Upon visiting I see…

“This site only supports Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 and above on Windows. Please visit Microsoft.com.”

It might as well say, “Give up now. You’re not wanted here.” But, I know that can’t possibly be the case, and I’m sure Microsoft would love more of Michigan State University’s dollars. Thankfully, I can look at the page at home, on my PC, but should I really have to? Wouldn’t Microsoft really want to make it as easy as possible for the greatest number of people to get excited about their products? I would think they’d cater especially to those who use a competing product. If any page should be accessable on Microsoft’s site, it should be those spaces where their new technologies are showcased.

Update: You can find the DotNetRocks themesong on their website.

Update 2: Oops, I thought it was episode 90, guess it was episode 91.

• The music is hot. Not a suprise, but easily the best thing about the movie.
• Cinematography was beautiful, and I enjoyed the look of the movie very much.
• Do not expect a narrative proper.
• Do not expect a documentary proper.
• Expect to see an hour and a half long music video and 45 minutes of disjointed narrative, both of which are salted with 15 minutes of documentary.
• All times are estimates.
• I enjoyed parts of the movie, but as a whole, I was dissapointed.
• If these facts sit well with you, you’ll probably like the movie.

While waiting for the movie to start, Lorin and I were talking back and forth about his dillema posting between friends.brainscat and his livejournal. In the end, I don’t see the reason for him to split the two, as it only makes it harder for his readers, considering that the topics he posts about are commonly present in both versions of his blog. I really truly believe that there’ s no point to making a spinoff blog, unless you are going to write enough content for muliple sites and you’re going to follow through on segregating the content between them.