Friday, January 11, 2002

Oops, Forget to toggle the proxy server setting. 1:26:23 PM

This piece of news removed at the request of the rest of the rest of my family. From now on I doubt that I'll be posting anything personal about family members other than myself. So it looks like this weblog will degenerate into one that's pretty impersonal. Whilst I am sure that there are some readers who visit here primarily for the technology links, there may be one or two that tune in to see how I tick and there may even be frends and family that like to pick up on family news. I'll still express my opinions but these will from now on restricted to computing related matters. It's a bit of a shame since I visit some weblogs as much for their personal news as their links and this helps to engender a sense of community and friendship that sets apart such weblogs from the rest of the web. 11:00:33 AM

Looks like Radio doesn't respond when iBook comes out of sleep mode. Had to tickle it with a Radio -> Web Server -> Stop Server followed by Radio -> Web Server -> Start Server. So, now I'm on the train but it's being held up by a failure to a train in front. Never mind, I used the time to finish of marking student assignments. Yay! Now I can play with a clear(er) conscience! Opera 5 for the Mac and Radio seem to be a nice combo. Opera _is_ fast. None of the frustrating 'deafness' that plagues the MacIE 5 series of browsers. Since Netscape and Opera don't suffer from this bug I am at a loss to understand why Microsoft can't fix it in their browser. Perhaps it's deliberate FUD - "Mac IE ain't done until Radio won't run (fast)" ;-)? Since MacIE 5.x is the most 'popular' browser on the Mac this is sure to cause some grief for Userland once Radio starts shipping to newbies. [Userland have highlighted this problem at http://radio.userland.com/tips/macintoshPerformance]. C'mon Microsoft!, get the finger out. Us old-hands know about (and can work round) the problem. Parhaps we need a logo - "Radio works best with Opera*" ;-) [* substitute your favourite non-IE browser here!] I'm in a really good frame of mind this morning. Even the delay to the train can't faze me. It's (slightly) partly the fact that that I've completed my low-level programming assignment marking, but much more so is the really great news my daughter Heather received this morning. But details of that deserve another post... 10:51:47 AM

Anything John Robb can do... The train to work is 15 minutes late so I thought I'd see how simple it would be to use Radio offline and unconnected to the 'net. I'm currently sitting in the ststion's waiting room. As you can see, I can prepare posts for later publication in the 'cloud'. There were a few pitfalls along the way. To get Radio to 'listen' I had to change from from Mac's dial-up (home) location to my LAN (work) setting. The attempts I made prior to that when my iBook had come out of sleep in the waiting room (still on my 'home' settings) were unsuccessful. I'll investigate further another time since the train's due in the next few minutes. S'ya later... 9:03:18 AM

One of the coolest things about Radio is the ease with which you can select and then tune in to the massive flow of information that is radiated by the web. It is truly an innovative product - and one which exposes its interfaces in an open an transparent way, via the likes of XML-RPC and SOAP. I'm really looking forward to tapping into its huge potential and integrating Radio into my personal website - Duncan's Jotter - as well as my work website - http://www.cs.strath.ac.uk/~dunc/ My work website, in particular, is in need of an injection of content but until now the process of keeping it up to date has overwhwlemed me. I believe Radio will be the answer. In which case, the 200 or so students that I act as mentor for won't know what hit them. The students, of course, could be Radio-controlled too ;-) In fact, I believe that they would benefit greatly from using Radio to help organise their own weblife! Stay tuned... ;-) 12:28:45 AM

Radio 8 - a sure fire hit. Dave drops a mindbombshell ... I was involved in the last few days of the beta testing and I can confidently predict that Userland are going to ship Radio like shit off a shovel. Radio has huge potential as a 'knowledge router'. I'll be forking out my $39.95 at the end of the 30 day trial period. That's praise indeed from a canny Scot who's careful with his money ;-). I'm really looking forward to hooking up Radio with Conversant.[Duncan's Jotter] 12:04:45 AM

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