Ha!  Amazon listened.  Well maybe not to me but they listened.  A month or so back I bitched about Amazon's limited magazine selection and their lack of Linux magazines.  Well they now claim "Over 50,000" magazines to subscribe to.  Now when I checked, not only do they have Linux Magazine and Linux Journal but they also have the most excellent Linux Format from the UK.  Cool. [ Go ]
10:21:39 AM      Google It!   comment []    IM Me About This   

From Ealasaid I found a link to the Blogger's Glossary.  Too cool.  [ Go ]  I really liked:

Blogathy

noun. When you just don't give a damn about posting in your blog that day.

(coined by Michele Catalano)

It's too bad that this wasn't available when Essential Blogging was released.  It would have been a good addition to the appendices.

10:15:02 AM      Google It!   comment []    IM Me About This   

A really good article from Kryogenix on using nested <UL> and <LI> tags to make explorer style lists using "unobtrusive dhtml".  Thank you very much for this.  Recommended.  [ Go ]
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Joe Friend is back after "Radio UserLand Hell" where he lost his host, lost his templates, lost his mind (teasing).  Welcome back Joe!  I know the feeling.  I know the feeling.  [ Go ]

Note: If you are a Radio UserLand user then I strongly recommend that you periodically backup your program files radio userland directory.  I'd just zip the whole damn thing and burn it onto a rom.  Even better I would recommend using Second  Copy to regularly make a zip file of it.  This works well and captures every little bit of your blog.  If you just do your www directory then you only get your templates and your rendered blog but not your .root files.  It's just plain easier to grab everything and say "To frack with the disc space".

Note 2: And in case you're reading Joe, there are a couple of image links on your blog coming from 127.0.0.1 not your host.

10:09:02 AM      Google It!   comment []    IM Me About This   

A very cool approach to working with PHP and databases "PHP and Databases (for the Lazy Sod) from PHP Builder leading me to "Database Journal".  No this isn't using PearDB or ADODB.  I've never seen an approach like this before.  I really need to think about this.  [ Go ]

10:03:20 AM      Google It!   comment []    IM Me About This   

Interesting article on writing a mailbot in PHP. It's surprising to me that the author avoided using PHP's IMAP classes and just focused on parsing mail as sendmail files.  [ Go ]

9:57:43 AM      Google It!   comment []    IM Me About This   

From Keith (who got it from Matt) comes news of MySource, a new Open Source CMS written in php.  I've looked at this long enough to know a) the link works and b) that the word PHP appears on the home page.  But I really respect Keith's judgement in these things hence the link. [ Go ]
9:55:20 AM      Google It!   comment []    IM Me About This   

From Simon comes Jeremy's guidelines to Why You Want Short URLs.  Jeremy is like 1000% right on this one. 

• Short URLs mail better. They don't wrap and break.
• Short URLs are easy to read over the phone.
• Short URLs can be memorized when used often enough.
• Guessable URLs keep the hackers and geeks happy without affecting the 99.9% of normal users at all. [ Go ]

A real issue with my mailing people my Radio stuff is that a Radio url is huge.  I understand why but I have to wonder about it.  Given that the starting token of a radio url is so damn long already (radio . weblogs . com / user num / ). 

And I'd have to agree with the memorized comment.  Although I couldn't always rattle off a url exactly from memory, in the right context, when I'm about to use it, they tend to come to me quite easily.  Now I am admittedly not a big fan of bookmarks so perhaps I memorize more than others but there's more of this going on than people admit.

9:35:21 AM      Google It!   comment []    IM Me About This   

Interesting.  Kryogenix has a good guess at how Googlism works.  Based on a quick grep of my site and my blog, I'd have to say he's close to 100% right.  Thanks! [ Go ]

9:29:45 AM      Google It!   comment []    IM Me About This   

Too damn funny -- tech business cards. [ Go ]   Thanks to Kryogenix from Steve Parkes.

9:25:26 AM      Google It!   comment []    IM Me About This   

IM versus Email

Someone IM'd me the other day, via AOL's AIM, directions to a meeting.  Now don't get me wrong, I like IM and I like email but there does seem to be confusion about the right way to use each of these.  Here's how I look at it:

• If the person will never, ever need to reference the information again then use IM
• If the information might be useful again then use email

IM is fundamentally a transient medium.  And, if you use AOL's AIM then it's a really, really transient medium since AIM is so transient that if you even press ESC in an IM window you lose the IM session.  (Note to AIM Developers: DUMB, STUPID, IDIOTIC.  Yahoo has the same issue but at least Yahoo supports session logging; AIM doesn't).  So for things like contact info, phone #s, directions email is better.  Need to send me a file for a quick look see then IM is fine.  It's also a lot easier to add contact info to your address book from within email than within IM so keep that in mind. 

NOTE: Please don't tell me that Trillian has logging, etc.  I loathed it with the passion of 100,000 dead toads a when I tried it and don't care to bother trying it again.  It works great for other people and more power to them.  Just not for me.

9:23:24 AM      Google It!   comment []    IM Me About This