Poptech Still Has Spaces Available

Interesting -- there is still space at poptech.  Buzz of ActiveWords has been after me to go to this and recommends it highly.  I'll have to think about it some more. 

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XML-RPC for PHP from Keith!

My, my -- how open source and today's plethora of connectivity has truly changed everything.  Here's version 2.5 of an XML-RPC library for PHP from Keith Devens.  Keith is a college student -- and here he is building great stuff and releasing it to the world.  And, while college students have always been doing development, it's never had the impact that it is having now.  I can't pick up an issue of Linux Journal without seeing an article by some kernel hacker still in school.  Or a Python user who's still studying.  Or whatever.  Given that I started my first software company when I was still in school, I understand this all too well -- and it still surprises me.

Oh and the source code examples in the next link below show how to use PHP to implement the blogger API which is very neat.

• More on this library 
• Article about this library

Thanks Keith!

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Wow!  mnoGoSearch Rocks!

Given my background in search and retrieval (like, oh, 15+ years), it's an absolutely travesty that my websites and my blog aren't searchable.  And, yes, I know it.  A real problem though, when you know a lot in an area, is that you become a perfectionist and are unwilling to not have perfection -- and that doesn't ever exist.  So, alone, unsearchable, my websites and blogs have wandered in the wilderness.  For the proverbial 40 days and 40 nights.  And then a shot rang out !  Well actually John smacked me on the head and basically shamed me into implementing a search engine.  He recommended mnoGoSearch so I ran with it.  After a few errors, wrong turns and some silliness on my part (and more than few difficulties with their "documentation"), I now have a searchable site and a searchable blog.  What's even better is that not only is mnoGoSearch hackable, I've been able to use its url spidering to implement a simple table of contents for my Radio stories on marketing (that url will go away in a few days when I make it better such as eliminating the stories which are still in draft stage).  In the future I'll use it to implement a link checker and other tools that rely on link spidering.  I am still fine tuning the indexing and making changes but the basics of search and retrieval are now quite functional.

Strongly recommended -- if you are willing to roll up your sleeves and grapple with poor documentation and a wee bit of bizarreness.

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ht: check Link Checker

Very cool.  A powerful open source link checking tool with an SQL based database.  Derived from the tried and true ht:dig search engine.  More... 

Note: The known, occasional problems with ht:dig and poor indexing of binary document formats do not affect ht:check since it only checks links and doesn't parse binary documents.

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Cool -- Russell Has a Home Page for His Open Source Projects

Check out Manywhere when you get a chance.  It's the home page for Russell Beatie's Open Source java stuff including the MiniBlog blog tool.  He also recently added a cool "Last 20 Comments" feature to MiniBlog.  Sweet Russell, Sweet !

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What a Great Weekend!

I'm sure that by many people's standards this would have been an awful weekend but by my standards, it's been just great so far.  Just massive productivity coupled with a good infusion of indian food (home made samosas) and Ben and Jerry's.  There are major design improvements to my new overall blog theme - here.  I did a bunch of Qmail work thanks to the wonderful sysadmin aid of Apokalyptik.  I fought with Network Solutions and lost again trying to transfer a domain name.  I got mnoGoSearch partially working (thanks to John beating me up).  I even dipped my toes back into Perl to automatically generate a Windows help file.  I then learned in excruciating detail what pathetic quality Microsoft has built into the Windows Help Workshop (nothing like a development tool that crashes REQUIRING you to reboot your machine).  I also learned about how pathetic the table of contents generation feature is -- nothing like ignoring 90% of the headings for no apparent reason.  And crashing if there is a single <UL> tag wrong.  Sigh.  I did find an interesting web site which offered to create my help file for me for a fee -- for the low, low, low price of $813.50 and 5 days of time, they would make me a help file.  Pass. 

And, finally, I even got a webcam working for the very first time -- I have a checkered past with webcams; this is the 3rd one I've bought and the first one that worked.  Amazing. 

And I've been back at it for hours already and things are going well. 

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