Ok, I warned you I was going to hack at FEED ON FEEDS a bit, and I did, just a little bit…

My main goal was to make it function a little bit more like Bloglines, and so far we’ve got this. (Click for full size versions.)

(Example of Bloglines list of subscribed feeds)

(Example of hacked FEED ON FEEDS list of subscribed feeds)

So they’re starting to look similar, but I’ve also got some of the functionality replicated as well. For instance, in my hacked FEED ON FEEDS just loading a feed’s items marks that feed as ‘read’ - there is no manual marking needed, no checkboxes to check, or links to click. I like it this way and became accustomed to it in Bloglines, so I had to have it here.

I don’t know how much farther I’ll take things, but I might hack at little bits of it here and there if I get motivated, or you know, actually get involved in the development, though the fear of commitment to yet another project makes me not want to get into things too deep…

I thought I should actually get around to releasing the AutoValidator… From the README:

This is the AutoValidator, a program that can help you make sure your web
pages are valid.

The AutoValidator takes a list of URLs from a text file, and checks them
using the W3C MarkUp Validator. You can use the W3C’s validator located at
<http://validator.w3.org/> or you can install the W3C's validator on your
own server, as the source code is available:
<http://validator.w3.org/source/>

This is what the sample output looks like, but it’s quite customizable. Don’t expect state of the art OOP code here, it’s just more of the same old Perl-hackery, but it works for me…

If you’re a validation nut, and find it useful, let me know…

(Note: AutoValidator 0.2.6 fixes a very minor bug, not worth upgrading, but grab this instead if you’re a first timer.)

Mr. Genehack suggested I look at FEED ON FEEDS as a "Super-Happy-Terrific Aggregator", and while I have used it before, it’s gone through a number of updates since then. Perhaps enough for me to hack at it a bit and see if it’ll do what I want.

Phil suggests using Mark’s Universal Feed Parser, which is what I too would want to see happen, as I’ve mentioned before… Even if it’s an optional thing, where you could choose to use the Universal Feed Parser or FEED ON FEEDS mechanism, it would be cool.

As for the UI of FEED ON FEEDS, the framed version is nice, but I’d like to see it look a little cleaner, perhaps similar to Bloglines. In fact, I’d like to see some of the functionality mirror what Bloglines does, where just viewing a feed marks it as read, without having to explicitly click things. It looks like the tables in MySQL could use a few more columns. Items are marked with a timestamp that appears to denote when it was downloaded, not the actual time of the entry. RSS 2.0 has pubDate, and Atom 0.3 has issued, modified and (possibly) created, on a per-item level, can’t these be used instead?

Since FEED ON FEEDS is open-source, and released under the GPL I could certainly hack some of these changes into it. The only thing stopping me is my lack of time, and my lack of PHP skills… In other words, I’ll start hacking on it very soon…

I hadn’t really planned on it, but it looks like this is the year I’ll learn Java. And by that I mean actually programming in Java.

I’ve toyed with Java in the past. I even use a text edit written in Java, and have written some macros in Beanshell, a Java compatible scripting language, but the time has come to go all the way, and learn the Java.

I’ve installed Tomcat and started to play with JSP, but feel like I’ve got a long way to go. There’s Cocoon, and JSTL, and Struts and all sorts of things I only have passing knowledge of. I’ve used Velocity, read about Lucene, built stuff with Ant, but have never felt comfortable with Java the way I have with Perl.

I’m sort of excited and dreading it, all at the same time. ;)

Rogers wants a gluttonous aggregator, and Les is an Info Freak when it comes to aggregation, so here’s what I’d like to see, do, wish for…

First we need an indexer, some code that is smart about ETags and Last-Modified headers, and redirects, and all that jazz, and we also need something to parse all that incoming data into something useful. Mark’s Universal Feed Parser seems to be capable of all that. So, we set that up as the piece of the puzzle that grabs data, and parses it, and with a little more glue, stores that data.

Where to store that data? MySQL seems like a nice place. So, we use the Universal Feed Parser to fill up MySQL with all this raw data, and where do we go from there? Anywhere we want. Confused? Here’s what I’m thinking… Once we’ve got all this raw data, we can write code that does all sorts of crazy stuff with it, and that code can be Perl, Python, PHP, or even Java - anything that can talk to MySQL really.

Ideally it would be cool if MySQL had a base table with the raw data, and then different people could write different code in different languages that did different things. Think Different and all that.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been thinking about. I think this would allow people to have a common base, that being data stored in a SQL database, and at that point it doesn’t matter if it came from RSS 0.91, RSS 2.0, Atom 0.3 or whatever, as long as we can figure out some sort of base data model we’re set.

I don’t know if this would work, or who else would be interested in such a thing, but figured I should throw it out there instead of just rolling it around in my head.

I’ve got a problem. I want to set something up to allow a group of people (none very technical) to discuss something each month. I’m not even sure discuss is the right word there. The problem is, I could set up a community-type site using Drupal, or a blog-type site using WordPress, where each month there would be a post, and comments would allow for the discussion, or I could set up a mailing list, either on my own server or using something like Yahoo! Groups.

I suppose it’s a good thing I have so many choices, but it does make it a little difficult to figure out what might work the best. Since the users might not be very technical, an email list might work well, as I could subscribe them all, and they could just discuss things via email. I could provide a web-based interface to the archives if needed as well.

I’m leaning more towards the mailing list right now, though it’ll probably be more work to set up, I’ll most likely do the archive as well, and a syndicated feed (ok, two of them, one in RSS and one in Atom…)

Nothing’s ever easy it is? ;)

Joel has a piece on Microsoft and the Windows API. It’s a good read, a long read, and it touches on a lot of things.

Now I’m not a Windows programmer. I’ve written code that runs on Windows, usually in Perl, though I’ve been known to write ASP when forced to. I don’t know much about the Windows API besides what I’ve read, so I’ll not comment much on that.

What I do know about is the web. Most of the software I write is for the web in some way, either web-based applications, or applications that produce output as HTML. If you’ve been reading this site for a long time you’ll know I’m against lock-in. Writing applications that run on the web, and use a browser for the interface, allow for a great deal of lock-in avoidance.

Joel says the following about writing web applications:

You can use any programming environment you want because you only have to get it up and running on your own server.

While you may actually have to get things running on more than just your own server, nowadays that isn’t a big issues if you choose a language like Perl, PHP, Java, Python, etc… and if you use a *nix-type OS like Linux, FreeBSD, or Mac OS X (heck, sometimes Windows even works!) Add in MySQL (or PostgreSQL, or SQLite maybe?) and Apache (or… ok, alternatives are a bit more limiting here, but Apache is open-source and runs on a dozen platforms) and you’ve got a nice bunch of choices. Yup, choices, something you don’t always get from Microsoft. You may have to do a bit more work in some cases, for instance, you write something that works with Linux and MySQL and later want it to work on Mac OS X and use PostgreSQL, will it work? Probably… Will the changes needed to make it work be massive? Probably not. For most web-based applications it shouldn’t be. I regularly develop things on Mac OS X and move them to Linux with zero issues, and I know plenty of other people who do the same thing.

I think Joel nails it when he says that Microsoft has lost a whole generation of developers. A co-worker of mine talks about this sometimes. We see that the colleges have a lot of kids that don’t go the Microsoft way, they’re using Linux and other open-source tools, and in a few years these kids will be in the workforce, and they’ll want to use the tools that they understand, the tools that make sense to them, the tools that they know. This will be one more step in the decline of Microsoft. While I often wish Microsoft would just go away, I’m pretty sure it isn’t going to happen anytime real soon, but to imagine the world five years from now being much less Microsoft and much more open-source gives me great hope.

Of course I can’t just let it slide that Joel says the following:

Remember, people buy computers for the applications that they run, and there’s so much more great desktop software available for Windows than Mac that it’s very hard to be a Mac user.

Yeah, he adds a disclaimer after it, but I’ll still respond. What I want to see is a list of “great desktop software available for Windows” because I can’t remember any Windows application being so compelling it made me want to run out and buy a Windows machine. I do know plenty of people who say they need to have a Windows machine for work, or they need a Windows machine to test browser compatibility. (Here’s a funny one, Microsoft probably sells a whole bunch of copies of Windows just so those web developers who don’t want to get locked in to developing for Windows can test their sites using Windows and IE, you can’t win…)

Anyway, the majority of people buying computers nowadays probably want to browse the web, use email, write documents, edit photos, or video, or audio, or… I dunno, I’m having a hard time figuring out what you would need a Windows machine for, that a Mac could not do, unless it was be a corporate developer, or use some application at home that your employer required that only ran on Windows…

Yes, I’m biased, I don’t like Windows or Microsoft. I do like open-source, the web, and Mac OS X…

Keep up the good work Joel!

I know, “Mid-June Update” sounds like a title with some sort of explanation needed… Maybe not, we’ve been doing this for nearly 7 years now, so cut us some slack! Summer is our slow time around here. Slow as in fewer postings, not slow as in nothing going on. So here’s a dump of all sorts of random thingies…

Things that have broken in the past two weeks:

• Air Conditioning
• Car (Dodge Intrepid, piece of &%$@!)
• Rio 500
• CD Player
• Crock Pot
• Ceramic mug

I’m sure there’s more, but that’s just what I can remember right now…

I was in Door County over the weekend, I highly recommend it. My big summer project involves removing all of the paint from our house, garage, and shed so that they can be repainted. (I do not highly recommend this.) The downside is that it’ll be many hours of work, in the hot sun, uphill, both ways… The upside is I get to use a power washer. Oh, and it should make our house look very cool…

I’ll be in Maryland next week learning Python, which should be interesting.

It’s my birthday this month… One month closer to death! Hooray! (The Greeks would be proud!)

MandrakeMove didn’t move it for me. It failed to work. Mandrake hates me…

In the Good News department, the digital camera is working again, but in the upgrade to Panther the card reader no longer works, so it’s now connected to the iMac running Mac OS 9, so importing photos involves inserting the card, copying the photos across the network, and then dropping into iPhoto. (Damn you Lexar!)

Oh, this site might be moving to a new server this month, and we might even switch to WordPress, but we’ll see - no promises, ok? Cool…

I’ve been thinking about ALLOFMP3, which seems to be able to exist because Russian copyright law is different from US copyright law. Of course you can access ALLOFMP3 from the US and even sign up with the site and download files, and this may or may not be breaking US copyright law. I think it does, but I don’t know because I am not a lawyer. (See Terms of Use.)

Let’s say it is legal in the US. the first question is, should you use it? Well, use it for what? If you just want to get a ton of new music you don’t have for cheap (pennies per song it seems) then that’s one thing, it’s probably not right. Are the artists losing money? Possibly, it all depends on the label I would think. My guess is for big labels you’re hurting them a lot more than the artists. I’d stay away from new independent artists (if there are any) as most of them seem to have some system in place to support them more directly. (Magnatune perhaps?) What if you just want digital copies of stuff you already own? I spent too much time last summer digitizing some old vinyl I’ve got, which involved connecting a turntable to my Mac, playing and recording the album (which hopefully did not skip and didn’t have any bad hisses or pops) and then splitting the album into tracks, and adding meta data, and… It’s a pain as you can see. So while I’ve got 5 or 6 Clash albums it would take me probably 20 or more hours to get MP3’s of them all.

Ok, so we’ve really got a legal and moral thing going on. I mean, if I were to sign up and download all the Clash material I already own on vinyl and cassette, does this violate US copyright law? Does it violate any US laws? Do I violate any laws when I digitize my vinyl collection? I don’t think it does, isn’t that part of the home recording act or something? My friend had his house burn down, and lost all the music he legally paid for. Was it ok that his friends made tapes of much of it for him? What if out old pal Cam goes back to Russia, downloads a few gigs of songs over there and tries to return home with them? Will he get hassled at the border? Does anyone know the answers? So let’s fast-forward, I’ve got all the Clash songs I want, which I’ve paid for once already, does the Clash lose any money from this? Does the label that put out the recordings? I wouldn’t have bought them on CD or as MP3’s because I’m the kind of person who actually would spend that 20 hours digitizing vinyl if I had to.

What do others think of ALLOFMP3? All sort of things apparently. It makes me sad to see people flock to it and think INCREDIBLE DEAL without considering any other implications…

So the final question, for all the money… Do I sign up and get digital copies of all those dang Clash songs I’ve been rambling on about? What say you?

My time with Mandrake was short, and I’m now back to Debian on the old beige G3, and this time X11 worked! We’re now looking at KDE!

It’s all so very exciting. All I need now is the time to actually use the damn thing.

I’ve come to learn that the old saying “Linux is only free if you’re time has no value” is not exactly true, but can be somewhat close. I wasted a lot of time download disk images, and burning them, and not having them always work. Some of that is my own fault, as I didn’t always check the md5sum, but I can see the value in purchasing ready-to-run CD’s that actually work. I can’t imagine doing a Linux install without a working computer sitting nearby with access to the net and all it’s resources. In some cases it took 8 or more hours to download disk images, which is still probably faster that waiting for shipping, but could be longer than going to a store to buy them. (Insert something about BitTorrent here…)

I’m not through with Debian, I still have an old PowerBook with Debian installed, but X11 not working. I’d like to see what can be done there, and I really need to look into running Linux from a CD using a USB thumbdrive as a /home…

Ah, the challenges of Linux never end…

Two interesting things came together this weekend. I heard about a keyboard that is built in the tradition of the Apple keyboards of old, and I read a Consumer Reports magazine that discussed the quality of PC’s.

If you’ve been using Apple hardware for more than 10 years, you might remember that the quality of things produced by Apple was a bit better. Back then it was quite easy for the Mac-crowd to not only feel as if they had a superior operating system, but that they had superior hardware as well. Apple’s stuff was solid, and well manufactured, not flimsy and breakable, like so much of the hardware used to run Windows back then. Apple has always had the problem of costing a little bit (or a lot) more, but I’ve always felt you get quality for the price you pay. (Believe me, I won’t buy another Dodge!)

Today Apple still makes better hardware, and the Consumer Reports I read put Apple ahead of Dell and the others for reliability, least amount of problems, etc. This is of no surprise to people who use Apple hardware - it’s very nice - but years ago it was even better. I think things started to change when the first Macs without auto-inject floppy drives came out, the Mac started to lose some of it’s elegance that day, and it continued on as IDE drives started to replace SCSI hard drives…

Still, Apple had to make changes to become price competitive with the lower-quality products, because to the average consumer it’s still to some degree a matter of megahertz, or disk space, or screen size, or miles-per-gallon, or whatever… I think that more and more people are starting to see the value of the user experience, but to many it’s still just a game of numbers. When it comes to IT departments determining what tools a person needs to do their job, I sometimes think people should be forced to use Mac OS X for a minimum of one month before deciding that Windows is the best operating system for every desktop.

Apple had to lower itself to fit into the category of “good enough” while other companies seem to strive with all their might just to raise themselves up to such a label.