Very tired tonight. We had a garage sale today—or more accurately, my wife had a garage sale, I had to work. Only I spent the night before doing heavy lifting to get things ready for it, and spent a good portion of tonight doing heavy lifting again to bring the big stuff back indoors. (And it goes outside again tomorrow.)
The big things? A queen bed set, with headboard. A dishwasher. A lawnmower.
Very tired.
Warning: technical entry. Feel free to skip if you’re so inclined. Today I’m talking about RSS.
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and it’s essentially a format for delivering data and content in an XML (read: structured) format. What kind of content? Well, any kind, really. Right now, the types of content you’ll most likely see RSS being used for are weblog entries and news stories (although some might argue that those are essentially the same thing). The important thing is that if you follow the appropriate standards and set up your RSS file accordingly, then any program designed to read/parse/process RSS can deal with it.
The most striking thing I discovered when setting up the RSS feed for my site was how easy RSS is. I was literally able to build the RSS template file and write the code to parse content from my database into it in less than one day. And you know what? It worked the first time. Yes, it’s that simple. It really is. Dave Winer keeps hammering this point. He’s right on.
In the last few months I’ve been getting more and more into the world of weblogs and the technologies behind them and the more I read, the more potential uses I see for RSS.
For example:
Want more examples? Check out Tim Bray’s excellent suggestions.
So, RSS is an XML file, and it’s really easy and intuitive to set up and use; what’s to prevent me (or anyone else) from setting up my own XML file with my own format and set of “standard” fields and metadata? Well, nothing, really—that’s the beautiful thing about XML. However, were I to set up my own XML data delivery format, who would use it? And how would they use it, much less find out about it? I’d have to generate a critical mass of interest to get people to view it, to write programs to parse it, to support it. Personally, I don’t have that kind of time (or mindshare) to devote to it, though it could be done. (It is being done, in fact. Check out this site to find out more about an alternative format to RSS a bunch of developers are, er, developing.)
Speaking for myself, though, why bother? RSS is already here; it’s dead-simple; it’s widely deployed; it’s extendable; it’s being used. I can write software to produce RSS feeds from all manner of content and know that it can be parsed and utilized by other software that can (and will) do very cool things with my content that I might never think up.
Goddamn, that’s cool.
My day at work was certainly a tech support nightmare. Get this: as soon as I walk in, I’m told the server is down. Thinking (hoping) they meant the connection to the internet is down, I clarified the issue.
Nope. The server. Damn.
This is the main file/print server that everyone in the office uses to store their work on. Excel, Word, Publisher, QuickBooks, you name it, it’s there. Plus, it houses the intranet I developed (and the MySQL database that backs it), Microsoft Mail server (which thankfully no one much uses anymore), and the Intuit Master Builder server software the company relies on.
(I know, I know, words of caution about putting all your eggs in one basket, I know.)
There had been a power outage the night before, and now the server was completely dead, no power at all; but the server had been plugged into a UPS, which was still on and working. Odd. Tried plugging it into several other outlets, nothing. Tried a different power cord, nothing. At this point I deduce it’s the power supply, and that’s hopeful because if that’s all it is, nothing’s lost except some productivity time.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a spare, so I have to wait til the local computer store (who originally built the server, so we have an account with them) opens at 9am to get one. Luckily, I get through to someone in the store at about 8:40 when I’m calling to leave a message, and they’re sending the tech right over with a new power supply.
And guess what? I was right—the power supply died, and everything else was intact and fine. We got the server up and running again by 9:10 tops.
Talk about sweating bullets. Even though we had a full backup of everything important made the night before, there’s still nothing quite like that head-pounding, sweat-behind-the-eyeballs, bowel-clenching feeling that you get when something like this happens.
I suppose most everyone has heard by now, but Arnold Schwarzenegger has announced that he’ll run for governor of California. What a great day for American politics.
Hey, I’m serious; I drank a beer in honor of Jesse Ventura’s election to governor of Minnesota. Colorful personalities like this certainly revive interest in politics, whatever people may think.
A quick note to correct a misconception I propagated in my entry on blogs the other day. I said that a blogroll was a “Fancy name for a list of links to other blog sites” and I was only partially right. While a blogroll is a list of links to other blog sites, it is a list that is managed remotely (by BlogRolling, and there may be others) that you can dynamically insert into your site by including a snippet JavaScript or PHP code.
The neat thing is, they’ve put together a neat little JavaScript trick that allows you to sort of drag-and-drop a blog site to your blogroll list. They also do a few other neat things, including reporting on who’s linking to your own site on their blogrolls. So, a blogroll is definitely more than just a list of links.
It pays to know the right people, I’m realizing.
Today we (my wife and I) got invited to The Beach Boys concert at the Les Schwab Amphitheater on August 17. But not just to the general admission—that would be too easy. No, we got invited to join some friends in one of the private VIP tents.
Let me just emphasize the words private and VIP here.
Plus, it’s catered by Outback Steakhouse.
Plus, it’s already paid for.
Pardon me while I gloat a bit. I don’t get to do this very often.
Where did July go? For that matter, where did the first half of the year go? I’m not sure I like this concept of time passing more quickly the older you get, which is what my grandmother always said and that I take to be a general truism. When you’re a child, time seems to pass so slowly, like when you’re in school or you’re waiting for Christmas… but then the older you get, the more quickly Christmas seems to come each year. And before you know it, you turn around and you’re 30 and you have 2 kids.
And before you can react to that, 31 is just around the corner…
Having grown up and spent a significant part of my life here in Bend, I still tend to thing of it as a small town, even though it’s growing by leaps and bounds. A such, I’m always amused at people’s reactions (my own included) when big-name music comes to town—it’s hard to imagine why bands would go out of their way to play our little logging town. Then I realize, not so little anymore.
Here’s a list of some of the groups that have played here recently or will be soon:
You get the idea. They may not be the biggest names in the industry, but they’re sure a hell of a lot bigger than John Grant and the Rednecks.
(Yes, that’s a real band. Or it used to be. I grew up next door to that guy.)
