Archive: January 3, 2004

<<< January 2, 2004

Home

January 4, 2004 >>>


OPML

Saturday,  01/03/04  05:51 PM

For the web nerds among you (and maybe others as well), I've published my current RSS subscriptions as an OPML file.  If you don't know what this means, don't worry; please ignore this post and continue.  If you are interested feel free to click the little  button in the nav bar at right to get my current subscriptions.

As you may know, RSS is a way for blogs and other websites to publish a directory of their contents.  Programs called RSS readers (or "aggregators") retrieve and display sites' feeds as a shortcut way to access their contents.  (I use and recommend SharpReader for Windows, and Shrook for Macs.)  OPML is an XML-based format for storing "outlines".  One popular use for OPML is for people to publish the RSS feeds they presently read.  By accessing my OPML file, you can see what blogs and news sites I read regularly.

If this kind of thing interests you, check out Dave Winer's Yahoo discussion group.  There's also an experimental website for people interesting in exchanging OPML files and discussing them.

 

One Year Ago...

Saturday,  01/03/04  10:19 PM

Doing a little blog tinkering...  Implemented "One Year Ago" (new link in nav bar at right).  This is one of the cool things about having blogged for over a year, I can see what I was thinking a year ago.  (Please, no snickers from those of you who have been blogging for seven years :)  I also beefed up the Archive a bit...

 

Saturday,  01/03/04  11:47 PM

(click for larger pic)

Yippee!  The Spirit has landed!!  The little golf cart essentially pounded into the Martian surface, cushioned by a giant air bag.  "The $400 million rover Spirit, designed to conduct unprecedented geologic and photographic surveys on the Martian surface, transmitted a simple hello to Earth minutes after landing."  This is so excellent.  Here's NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Mission page...

The NYTimes explains From Vinyl to Digital, Hold the Crackle.  Or how to "rip" phonograph records.  Personally I recommend PolderBits highly for recording any analog source (I've used it with cassette tapes).

While I'm at it, let me put in a plug for VirtualDub, an awesome tool for editing and converting video.  I just used it to transcode The Italian Job from MPEG to DivX.  Piece of cake.

I saw LOTR Return of the King again, today.  I like it just as much as the first timeAwesome!

Glenn Reynolds links another excellent Michael Critchton speech, on media speculation.

Robert X. Cringely makes his predictions for 2004 (and reviews how well he did in 2003).  The most interesting: "The SCO debacle has created a crisis within the Linux community.  They pretend that it hasn't, but it has.  This will come to a head in 2004 with either the development of a new organizational structure for Linux or the start of its demise.  Linux has to grow or die, and the direction it takes will be determined in 2004."  Hmmm....

Have you ever wanted to build your own Scanning Tunneling Electron Microscope?  Aha, I thought so.  Well, here's a do-it-yourself kit.  Warning: it doesn't look trivial.  Where's Heathkit when you need them :)

Yeah, where are they?  At the Heathkit Virtual Museum...

Scoble is excited about his site optimization efforts.  As he should be.  Of course, he'd be really excited if he implements GZIP compression...

 
 

Return to the archive.