Radio UserLand Notes

It looks like a Midwest BloggerCon is happening in May according to legendary Nashville blogger and all around great guy Rex Hammock. I'll be there and I might drive instead of fly--I'm finding other bloggers here in Springfield that want to go.

Thanks for the pointer, Rex.

Dave Winer marked the anniversary of Radio 8 shipping a few days back and then dug up this old logo to remind us how far we've come.

Is it time for something new?

I had no idea how small the new Mac mini was until Gizmodo posted a photo of a Cube *over* a Mac mini. Wow, that's small.

How long will it be before someone like Griffin Technology makes a DVR add on for this thing?

I've been a fan of Griffin Technology stuff for some time--I purchased an iTrip when they first hit the streets--so I was stunned to see the note on Gizmodo back on the 11th about the upcoming SmartDeck.

Basically, it's a cassette adapter for your iPod, but it works in a way I'd only dreamed about. It uses the cassette player's native controls for fast-forward and rewind to control your iPod. This is great news as controlling my iPod while driving was dangerous at best. In addition, my iTrip has developed an odd feedback hum when tapped, likely due to my own abuse.

I'm ordering a SmartDeck to replace the iTrip since we mainly use the iPod in the car on trips or during the week on my short commute to work. Let's see if it lives up to the product description.

Seeing this great photo reminds me that I haven't mentioned the chef's lessons I received as a Christmas gift. My wife arranged three lessons with Italian chef and all around great guy Doug Guccione. Lesson one was last Friday (the 21st) and was a three and a half hour whirlwind of food, fun and learning.

We made three small dishes: a shrimp appetizer, shrimp scampi and eggs benedict. All were chosen for their techniques to prepare giving me the best opportunity to learn. In addition, we made two sauces (béchamel and hollandaise) in the process. Mary (Doug's wife) is not a fan of shrimp, so the béchamel became a cheese sauce. Add that to pasta and you've got, well, macaroni and cheese. Pedestrian yes, but try it with sauce made from scratch and you won't go back.

All in all, it was a wonderful first experience and Doug is a magnificent teacher.

In an interesting set of posts, Dwight Shih takes us along on his journey to learn UserTalk, the core language of Radio UserLand and Manila's scripting environment.

• Learning UserTalk: Accessing weblogData.root
• Learning UserTalk: the Current Post
• Learning UserTalk: Local Macros and Loops
• Learning UserTalk: Categories and Post Links

Dwight, if you haven't already, pick up a copy of Matt Neuburg's excellent book on Frontier, the precursor to Radio and Manila. The first 150 pages or so of the "Buffalo book" are a gold mine of programming instructions and tips.

Updated: 1-26-05 to include Dwight's fourth post.

UserLand released support for the addition of the 'nofollow' label on HTML anchor tags last night around 8:30PM Eastern time. If you run a Manila server, especially one that hosts a Radio community, please take a moment to update your root files.

Radio users have nothing to do here. The comments are hosted by Manila servers as discussion group messages and the comment pop up window is also created by Manila servers, so that made things very easy.

Again, special thanks to Jake Savin whose clever programming idea for the fix made things a snap.