Monday, September 30, 2002

Aparently, the Ethernet oddity I observed last week was the result of a default BIOS setting.  I wonder what other interesting settings I'll find in there, next time I reboot? 11:40:51 PM

Will website design matter anymore? The thought just occured to me: What happens when everyone reads their favorite news sites only through an RSS feed within an aggregator?  When that day comes, will site design cease to matter?  Much time is spent on designing the rite visual interface for websites these days.  What happens when the only design one sees is their own? This is an extreme possibility, I know.  But it could happen. 11:17:13 PM

"Join The RSS News Aggregator Cult!. "The RSS conversion ""John Gruber is going through the RSS conversion. First, you start using a news aggregator that you like, then you feel dumb for not providing an RSS feed for your Web site, and then you kind of stop reading all those sites that don't have RSS feeds. There are some sites that don't support RSS that I still follow, but the truth is that I read them sporadically at best, regardless of how good they are. That's still a better situation than when I didn't use a news aggregator at all and I simply stopped reading all personal sites for weeks at a time because I didn't make time to stroll through my bookmark list to see who was writing what." [rc3.org] "If you haven't tried an aggregator, pass go and collect $200 now. It's amazing to watch others go through the same light bulb moments I did! "Side note to libraries: note the shift in how these on the bleeding edge folks are reading web sites. It's time to start thinking about how to get YOUR news into THEIR aggregators. "Side note to John: Perceive Designs is syndicating Zeldman for us." [The Shifted Librarian] So, that's the name of it.  RSS Conversion.  I like it.  I'm only in the early stages at the moment, but I have foreseen the inevitible conclusion, and it is much the scenario described above. 11:09:52 PM

Forget Mel Gibson.  Women want "RageBoy" [Daypop Top 40] 9:15:11 PM

"Demoted by Google.. From: Google To: Phil Message: You Suck.. It looks like our year of living abnormally high in Google's search results is coming to an end with this update.  Ouch!  I'm no longer on the first page either.  Oh, well, I guess I need to find other ways to amuse myself then." [Sam Ruby] One shouldn't wrap too much of their self-image up in the opinions of others. 9:12:00 PM

What is the definition of "wireless"? 6:28:53 PM

Wireless Zone in Athens, GA Students at University of GA are working on new applications targeted at wi-fi networks.  This is too cool.  I might have to take a drive up to Athens in the next few weeks. The project is being run by the Wireless Athens Group, which includes not only students and teachers, but local businesses as well. 6:26:27 PM

Radio: Not just another blogging tool On New Year's Day of this year, I decided to sit down and write myself a blogging tool.  It didn't need to be fancy, as it was for my own personal use.  I built it up and launched it on my site, here: http://ohnomytoe.com/greg/ It was fun.  It was amusing.  It was bare-bones simple.  Over time, as I thought about adding new functionality it just seemed difficult to find the time.  I have two small children, and time at home is far to precious to be spent sitting in front of a computer screen at this time in my life. I've been following Scripting News for a while, and it was clear that Radio was a nice blogging tool, but I had only looked at the web site.  I never downloaded a copy.  A couple of weeks ago, when I bought my new laptop, I decided that I wanted to be able to update my blog while off-line.  The system I built for myself is entirely web-based, and when I considered what it would take to add offline posting I decided it would be much easier to use someone else's tool.  Since I was most familiar with Radio, that was the tool I chose to try.  Yesterday, I bought it. Had I understood the real power of Radio, I would have snatched it up long ago.  Radio is a blogging tool and light-weight CMS, yes, but I have discovered it's true power: News aggregation.  The ability to subscribe to RSS feeds, have them update on a regular basis, and then seemlessly generate blog posts based on them is something I never expected.  Plus, I can read news and post to my blog while offline.  Radio auto-magically upstreams everything when I'm connected again.  Having this feature has drastically altered my usage of the web.  I don't surf directly to many of my usual sites now, but instead read the updates in Radio's news aggregator, only going to the site for those articles I find interesting. I wasn't sure how I was going to like the browser interface, but it is very usable.  It's nice to have detailed, descriptive instructions and help text imbedded right in the primary interface. There are a couple of things I would like to see, though (Userland people?  Dave?  Are you listening?): Spell check!: Having a spell checker in the WYSIWYG editor is something that just needs to be there. Better story management: It would be nice to be able to have the same post/publish functions in the Stories section as in the regular blog posting section.  I want to be able to keep intirim copies of my stories without having them upstream till I'm finished. 'Save' function in the WYSIWYG editor: Over the years, I've had too much data lost by a computer feakin out to leave any work unsaved for more than a couple of minues.  When working in in Word or a text editor, I'm constantly whacking the <CTRL>-S sequence while I'm typing, to ensure I don't lose data.  In Radio, I can save my work in the post interface (since I have the three-button option configured), but it's a pain in the arse, as I have to click the "Post" button, then go click the "Edit" link to re-open the post.  It would be better if I could just hit a key sequence, or even a button on the editor control, to save the post without dropping out of it. On that note, how about having the ability to publish a previously posted article without opening the article in edit mode first. Despite these short-comings, I'm really enjoying the whole Radio experience.  It is a wonderful tool, and I understand there's a lot of stuff one can do to customize it and add functionality.  I'm really excited about getting under the hood and seeing what sorts of things I can do with it. Now, if I can just figure out a non-painful way of getting the posts from my old blog uploaded in to Radio's database. 5:46:04 PM

"Dogpatch confidential. Al Capp, the creator of "Li'l Abner," one of America's greatest comic strips, brilliantly combined comedy and commentary, until he lost it over the '60s counterculture and championed Nixon." [Salon.com] I never thought of Lil' Abner as social commentary before.  But of course!  It was also always George Lucas' intention to create modern myth when he first penned Star Wars.  Riiiiiiiight. Wasn't the Shmoo also in an old Saturday morning cartoons version of the Flintstones, or something?  Indeed!  Sort of. 5:00:38 PM

It appears that these guys have successfully managed to implement the frog-and-lilly-pad network model, at least under Max OS X 10.2. 4:54:04 PM