FeedFrenzy Status Report Sunday, Nov 27 2005

(These type of posts will appear here every Sunday for a few weeks. These are a way of helping me define goals for this project, as well as overall GTD. If you are good at PHP and want to submit a few ideas and/or tips, please please please do so).

Goals for November 27, 2005

• Figure out why gzuncompress gives a data error
• Try to avoid crap before and after the HTTP content (WTF is this anyway?)
• Figure out why Molly.com’s feed is so fucked up (bad charset?)
• Work on getting static .xml feeds to display 304 codes
• Polish off redirect support

UPDATE: If you help me solve any of these problems, you’ll get a WordPress.com invite. Yeah, I know that WordPress.com is currently opened up to everone, but…you know…in case it closes again.

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To Everyone Who Uses Atom Monday, Nov 21 2005

Fuck you. By using Atom and not offering an RSS 2.0 feed, you’re only making things more complicated. The inclusion of an additional format to web feeds is ridiculous and childish. RSS 2.0 is the standard, and will be for a while.

Anyone who’s ever written a Feed Reader knows what I’m talking about.

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One Holiday at a Fucking Time! Sunday, Nov 20 2005

I saw a fully decorated Christmas Tree in someone’s house on Wednesday. What the Fuck? These people couldn’t wait until after Thanksgiving?

If that’s not enough, it’s been around 75-80 degrees this whole week here in San Francisco! Outside my room, where I’m writing this from right now, it’s 110 degrees in the sun. The rest of the porch is about 95. I am not exaggerating.

Maybe it’s just that my front porch (which is unfortunately adjacent to my room) collects heat well, or this is global warming at work.

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Best of the Blogosphere Friday, Nov 18 2005

Ok, here’s a beta podcast of something new I’m doing. Every Friday, I’ll publish a short 2:30 – 3:00 minute podcast about this week’s best blog posts that have come under my radar.

Please please plesae give me feedback. I know the quality sucks. How’s my voice? (I know I talk too quickly; this is a combination of time constraints and my natural tendency to talk quickly and then slow down, probably inherited from my mother’s Irish accent). Next time I’ll try to fully write out what I’m going to say. I just typed some notes into a text file and read off that.

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On Mint Tuesday, Nov 15 2005

It’s rare of me to do this, but I have to congratulate Shaun Inman on Mint. The site itself is gorgeous, and I find myself poking around the site and just taking in the absolute beautiful colours and typography. While the design is somewhat Safari-centric, it’s still beautiful on my XP box (probably because I have the Lucida Grande font installed). The actual application I can only imagine, but I’d love to be able to view the CSS he uses for it. I have a weblication of my own I’m working on, and it will be only half as good as Mint. I mean, he even has a bloody API for his!

Long story short, if I had a site to track, I’d totally buy Mint. I’m oficially ending my weird personal vendetta against Shaun Inman. No hard feelings man.

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Hello Carnival of the Godless Folks! Sunday, Nov 13 2005

This is just a quick hello to everyone coming here from Pharyngula for the Carnival of the Godless. I just barely missed the cutoff point for submissions last time, so my entry is in this edition (#27).

So, thanks for coming and I hope you enjoyed my submission. I plan to write something for the next carnival as well.

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Greased Lightning Saturday, Nov 12 2005

You know, I never realised how dirty the lyrics of Greased Lightning were until today.

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‘Talkin Odeo Friends Only Blues’ Friday, Nov 11 2005

The unofficial chords to Merlin Mann’s ‘Talkin Odeo Friends Only Blues’, that I got by listening to it:

'Talkin Odeo Friends Only Blues'
Merlin Mann

Intro: F#dim

G
Odeo, Odeo
C
Friends around our show-deo
G            D       (Dsus2)
Odeo, Odeo-o-o

(Repeat)

Bridge:
Em        D
Odeo, Odeo
Em             D D/C D/B (descending baseline)
Odeo, Ode-ahhh-o

(Repeat first verse)

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Where hast thou been? Wednesday, Nov 9 2005

Where have I been? I’ll tell you. I’d have posted if I could. See, my internet has suffered a bit over these last few days. I don’t know what the hell is wrong, but my connection strength has been low and it’s been off and on continuously. I did learn a new trick from my dad (who used to work for Compaq). It’s probably painfully obvious to most of you, but I’ll document it here for myself.

1. Open up Command Prompt and type in ipconfig/release
2. Wait a few seconds
3. Type in ipconfig/renew

And you have reset your connection.

Oh, and remember I was talking about how I was building my own feed reader? Here’s a screenshot. It’s not even in alpha yet, but I’m getting there. (Why can’t more people send Last-Modified and Etag headers? Molly and Dean, I’m looking at you guys.)

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The Mystery of “Eclipse” Tuesday, Nov 1 2005

You may heard of the rumour that you can hear a string arrangement of “Ticket to Ride” by “The Beatles” at the end of Eclipse by Pink Floyd. I was skeptical at first, but I think it really is there. Here’s how to listen to it, assuming you have the song and iTunes.

1. First, turn off the bass on your speaker, put all the balance to the right side, and turn the volume to the max
2. Then, open up the equalizer in iTunes (bottom right corner) and turn the first 5 rows completely down and the second 5 completely up.
3. Set the position to -27 seconds (right after the speaking)
4. Listen very carefully

“Ticket to Ride” is in the key of A, but the clear part of string arrangment is in Eb (nowhere close to the original key). I figured this out by a little trail and error with my keyboard. The key is different but the melody is identical for the opening lines (“I think I’m gonna be sad / I think it’s today”). This is the clearest part of the arrangement.

Tags: Music Pink Floyd

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