To RSS or not to RSS?
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OK, with me its a foregone conclusion that once I get latched onto an idea, eventually the techno-geek wannabe will win. Chasing down this RSS feed thing has taken most of the evening, even considering that I did a lot of the research last night. After several hours of digging and googling and assorted random bits of what one of my more polite co-workers refers to as "salty" language, I've got an RSS feed generator working and in the process, have found a new RSS feed aggregator that combines the best features of my previous favorites.

First, the "salty" language. Much to my ultimate annoyance, it appears that the "browser accelerator" provided by my ISP interferes with form submission pages. Since it compresses data, I guess that makes sense, but I spent a considerable amount of time unsuccessfully trying to get information submitted to web sites (more on that in a minute) to get this task finished, before it occurred to me to turn the thing off. Now, I'm not exactly sure that it was causing the problem, since it doesn't interfere with my on-line banking, but with it off, I got the pages submitted, so that's my story and I'm sticking with it.

Second, the RSS feed aggregator. I'm now using Bloglines. This is a free (the number one criteria!) on-line service. It requires a "membership" which is basically giving them your e-mail address. Once you are a member, you can start adding RSS feed subscriptions on the "my blogs" page. This process is basically typing in the URL of the web site that you want the RSS feed from and Bloglines goes out to the web site and finds the RSS feed page for you. You can put your subscriptions in folders of your choosing. And if you aren't sure where to find web sites with RSS feeds you can do a topic search which will return web site results you can preview and subscribe to. Like Aggreg8 it operates in your browser (because it is a service on a web site). Like Amphetadesk, it gets all the feeds at once instead of you having to click on each one. According to the site information, it checks for updates once an hour (but since I'm still using dial-up, I'm usually not on-line that long, so it isn't that big a deal for me). So, basically I seem to have solved the RSS feed aggregator problem. Oh, and once you are set up, there is a "bookmarklet" that you can put on your toolbar or in your favorites file, which when you are at a website you want to subscribe to, allows you to click on the "bookmarklet" and subscribe without copying the site's URL to the Bloglines website.

Finally, the RSS feed generator. There are several programs out there, but I am severely limited by my ISP in what I can run. I don't have the ability to use self-generated cgi scripts and server side programs are right out. After quite a bit of searching, I found another free on-line service which generates the RSS feed for you. It also requires a "membership" which is basically your name, e-mail address and web site name. It is called RSS Publisher, and can be found at Blogstreet. I have to admit it is a little confusing to get set up, and I managed to get my feed set up with the wrong title and the first time I used it to generate a feed I got mixed up and thought I was supposed to be describing the web site, but now that I've done a couple of post descriptions and figured out how to use the "bookmarklet" gizmo they provide to make the description posting easier, I really like it. I don't know why, but the RSS feed thus generated can be read by Bloglines, but not by Aggreg8 or Amphetadesk. The weird part is that the RSS feed is at the Blogstreet server and is not a web page on my site.

So, now I'm generating an RSS feed and if you've got an aggregator that will read it, the link is in my sidebar. (Or, I'm hoping it is/will be because I've got to tweak my template now to include the links and buttons, etc.)

by Cziltang 
Posted: Wednesday, March 24 2004 10:05:34 PM

A jolly good outing
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After seeing an article about it, I decided to take the afternoon off and go out to the local university to watch part of the International Students Association Cricket tournament. I've got to hand it to these guys. They are just a bunch of college kids from various cricket-playing countries, going to school out here in Kansas. In what seemed to me to be rather dismal conditions, they were having a blast.

First off, if you've ever seen Aussie rules Football, it is played on cricket ground which are basically big round grassy areas. An American football field is way too small and way, way too narrow for good cricket. Because of the field size and because of the surface of the field, instead of using a regular cricket ball, which is roughly the size of an baseball and just as hard, they were using a tennis ball heavily wrapped in medical tape. The wind was blowing about 25 or 30 miles per hour and they couldn't keep the bails on top of the wickets. And it was about 50 degrees and damp. But, like I said, they were having a blast and there were probably 100 or more people in the stands. I took Rat Jr. with me, and we were too cold to stay more than an hour and a half, but we got to see the India team score 126 runs, all out, with the Sri Lanka team getting ready to bat when we left.

On other subjects, when I was talking about extensions for the Firefox browser the other day, I forgot to mention Aggreg8, an RSS feed aggregator. If you aren't familiar with RSS feeds and aggregators, you should check them out. They provide a way for you to get news headlines and see whether your favorite websites have been updated (at least the ones that provide RSS feeds) without having to go to the web site and load each one. I've had Amphetadesk for some time and like it, but it is a separate program. That is problematic for me for two reasons. First, when I'm in a hurry, I often forget to load it. Second, although I have plans to upgrade soon, I'm still working on a 500 mhz pentium computer and by the time I get the browser, the e-mail, Blog and Amphetadesk open, things tend to get bogged down. The thing I like about Ampetadesk is that it will check the entire list of feeds you have specified at specified intervals while it is running.

Aggreg8, on the other hand is a very small program that opens in a tab in the Firefox browser, so I don't forget to run it and it doesn't bog down my system. The only thing I don't like about it is that you have to click each feed you want checked.

Now I'm checking out ways to provide an RSS feed for Ratlands. The actual XML code isn't terribly complex, and I could probably code it by hand, but I would have to update it by hand, and since I have a hard enough time trying to get time to write anything remotely resembling serious material, the chances of me doing that are pretty slim. So, I'm looking for (free) programs that I can use to do it automatically.

Also, I've gotten a bit tired of the look of Ratlands, so I'm playing with some enhancements. Today's experiment was fonts. I'm not sure I like this one or not, but I'll give it a try for a while to see if it grows on me.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Wednesday, March 24 2004 07:10:32 PM

Well, duh...
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While catching up on things at the Peeve Farm, I found a link to this article. Apparently, researchers at Rutgers University, with an axe to grind, a research grant and nothing better to do, decided to analyze "The Simpsons" for health messages (which strikes me as being the intellectual equivalent of listening to records backwards to search for satanic messages.) Now, we all know that Homer Simpson is not a good nutritional role model.

Unfortunately, the message appears to have gone over the heads of the health police. They want him to change, cut down on the fatty snacks and eat some pasta. It's not going to go down well with the Atkins people, but they appear to be serious.

A team of researchers from New Jersey's Rutgers University ploughed through 63 episodes of the hit cartoon show to analyse what sort of a health message it was sending out. Failing to see the joke, they were unimpressed.

"Fats, sweets and alcohol, particularly beer, doughnuts and salty/fatty/snacks accounted for 52 per cent of all foods eaten in this programme," their report said. "Homer was also portrayed eating food more often (he alone accounted for 21 per cent of all actions showing food being eaten) and ate greater quantities than other characters."

OK, Captain Obvious, what did you expect to find? And, of course, the answer is that they found exactly what they were looking for: a popular cartoon character (who obviously influences the eating habits of unthinking Americans) who doesn't eat nutritionally balanced meals in healthy quantities. There must be some kind of conspiracy by "Big Food," because Homer Simpson is clearly the "Big Food" equivalent of "Big Tobacco's" Joe Camel. Clearly something must be done about this. It is a foregone conclusion to any right-thinking individual that these kinds of role models are not good. We should probably ban all cartoons where main characters don't exhibit healthy lifestyles. Obviously the world would be a much better place if the only images we were allowed to see on TV were of physically fit, emotionally mature individuals engaged in healthy practices and positive interactions with others.

Well, you know it's coming. It's only a matter of time until the folks who are out there minding my business (because I'm obviously not a right-thinking individual) come up with "advisory guidelines" for nutritional content presentation in cartoons. And when that happens, some advocacy group will start lobbying to make those guidelines into law.

On a tangential note: Notice the use of the term "health police". I always wanted to be involved in a meme. Apparently, when I wrote my "butter police" post I jumped smack dab in the middle of one.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Tuesday, March 23 2004 02:28:34 PM

The Not-so-Simple Truth
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There is a good article on over-simplification of truth vs. nuanced truth over on The Smedley Log. I was going to copy the "money quote" here, but decided that I will just recommend reading the entire article.

While I was reading it, I was reminded of an interview I saw years ago with George Will on the old Dennis Miller Live show. The topic was about the reduction of American politics and campaigning to 7 second sound bites (or maybe it was 9 seconds, I don't remember now, probably because it took more than 7 seconds to say). Miller was lamenting the fact that there is no engaging debate in American politics because everything has to be reduced to 7 seconds. Mr. Will offered the opinion that generally speaking, conservatives are OK with that, since the conservative message is generally "NO," "STOP," "DON'T," and you can usually communicate that just fine in 7 seconds. It must have been a really strange feeling for the Republican spin doctors to find themselves on the other side of the line when the left came up with "no blood for oil," and "Bush lied, people died." They must be breathing a huge sigh of relief now that a lot of the campaign rhetoric puts them back on the simple slogan side.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Sunday, March 21 2004 02:27:20 PM