Singpolyma

Archive for May, 2006

Archive for May, 2006

Blogger Supporting RSS?

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For the longest time Blogger has been ATOM-only. This now seems to be a thing of the past. While I can find no official announcement anywhere, RSS 2.0 feeds seem to now be available on all Blogger blogs (unless the blog has not had the index published since whenever the change was). As you would expect, while the old was, say:

http://singpolyma-tech.blogspot.com/atom.xml

They have added to this:

http://singpolyma-tech.blogspot.com/rss.xml

It’s not the nicest implementation of RSS 2.0 I’ve seen, and I’m going to keep using my hAtom2RSS-through-feedburner feed for the comment options, but this is definately a step forward for Blogger.

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What is a Reading List?

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A reading list is the organised list of all feeds that a person reads using their feed reader. There are two primary file formats for reading lists, XOXO and OPML (see What is XOXO?). Reading lists are popularly used as an import/export format for moving subscriptions between feed readers. If they are made available online they can also be used as dynamic reading lists.

Dynamic reading lists are reading lists that are aggregated by a feed reader. One folder or module is always updated to contain the most current subscriptions from the reading list. This allows users to subscribe to other users’ reading lists to see what other’s are reading, for example. Directory sites like Share Your OPML (which, as the name indicates, is anti-XOXO) also allow users to share their subscriptions en masse.

Feed readers currently supporting the dynamic reading list concept are:

Dynamic reading lists can be previewed or included as a widget in a webpage using Grazr. Grazr currently only supports OPML, but XOXO is on the todo list.

If you know of any other programs that support dynamic reading lists or other interesting uses for reading lists, please leave a comment below.

If you have any suggestions on how this introduction to reading lists could be clarified, please leave a comment below.

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Trackback Inside Blogger

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It is reccomended that you use the new del.icio.us, pinging, AND trackback script. This one may still work, but I no longer actively support it.

Blogger has no native trackback capabilities. While trackback is a wonderful tool, it can sometimes just be too much of a pain for Blogger users. After all, you just went to the work of writing a wonderful post, who wants to bother making a hop over to Haloscan afterwards to send trackbacks to others? With the advent of the semi-automatic Backlinks we seem to be ever less inclined to make the extra hop.

Now, the extra hop can be a thing of the past. Install the Blogger Trackback Userscript and get trackback functionality directly from your Blogger dashboard! Every time you publish a post, the script harvests the title, permalink, and post excerpt (as well as blog title) and then displays a form on the ‘post complete’ page for trackbacks. Enter the trackback URLs one at a time and hit enter. The trackbacks will be completed AJAXially.

Much thanks to Johan’s Blogger del.icio.us helper script which facilitated much of the code for this script.

Possible Future Features

  1. Support for autodiscovery trackback RDF so that one can enter simply the post URL for a trackback and not have to use the full trackback URL
  2. Optionally try auto-trackbacking to all posts linked to from the post
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Back South

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Voià, for those of you who knew it not I spent the last week in our nation’s brilliant capital of N’djamena. Went up to help Dad with some work and watch him and whatnot. Usually NDJ is dreadful, but this time it wasn’t too bad. We managed to get their computer issues worked out and Dad did a lot of other stuff for them up there. I was sick one day, which was rather nasty, but I’m better now and almost glad that I got sick because of the good that came from it 🙂 They have 5-channel satellite TV up there now, which was kinda neat. After the first night of channel surfing though I had one thing on my mind — PVR! This whole bit where you turn on the TV and a show is partly over and you can’t rewind to find out what happened before just annoys me. They had this idiotic tabloid show running about who married who and got divorced in the same day and all that retarded stuff. Lots of sitcoms, which was awesome 😀 And BBC aired a live press conference where President Bush said he would start yet another war in the Middle East, this time against the Palestinians… well actually he said he would try not to but it was a rather thinly veiled threat 😉 So I’m back now and catching up on my emails took most of the morning what with this code busted and this person wanting my code for that and this new code to look at etcetc, hehe. I wish I had more time sometimes! 😉

And now for a funny story that comes straight from last night’s sermon:

A little girl came to her grandmother one day and asked, “Grandma, how old are you?”
“Well,” said Grandma, “you see dear, when you’re as old as I am you don’t tell people your age.”
“Don’t wory, Grandma,” said the little girl assuringly, “You can trust me.”
“I’m sorry, dear, but I’m not going to tell you my age.”
The little girl realised she wasn’t getting anywhere and walked off. After twenty minutes she hadn’t showed up again and Grandma was getting curious. She checked around and found her granddaughter upstairs digging through her purse.
“What are you doing?” Grandma asked.
“Grandma,” replied the little girl, “You’re 76!”
“Why, that’s right!” said Grandma, “How did you know?”
“Well,” the little girl smiled, “I found your driver’s license and it says the year you were born. So I subtracted that from this year and figured you’re 76!”
Her grandmother was surprised, but the little girl wasn’t finished yet.
“Guess what else I found Grandma?”
“What, dear?”
“Your driver’s license also says that you got an F in sex!”

LOL! 😀

Retreat, Date, Trip

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Those extremely interested in more information on the ‘retreat and date’, which I will be sumarrizing here, may look at my brother’s beautiful writeup. The retreat being referred to would be the Palmview School Annual Retreat. Bible study, snack, food, snack, games, snack, singing, food, fun, snack, snack… maybe I’m exaggerating about the snacks 😉 Aunt Mary and her wonderful acolyte Asheley did the Bible studies (on excellence), my brother did the beautiful musicalness, and my mother did the games, snacks, etc 😉 We did a bonfire, a HUGE bonfire, so that was fun. They all slept outside in tents — not for me, no thanks! A certain someone would have to twist my arm pretty bad to get me to do that (or my parents order me :P) so I slept in my bed like a civilized person. Games included a sort of mini-golf which I totally bombed but had fun at anyway. Food included hamburgers and (wonder of wonders!) hotdogs. Plus we made tie-dyed tees! 😀 *is so happy* Mine came out with an awesome totally multi-colourishious sworl. I shall muchly be wearing cet un 😀

Date, date… ah, yes, date! That was Aunt Mary and Asheley taking Daniel and I out to dinner. We were the chaperones 😉 Think guys chaperoning girls seems backwards? Tough! teehee 😉 it was a lot of fun, and Aunt Mary gave us both a copy of The Prayer of Jabez — I’m mostly done mine already 😀 Really good book.

Trip. Fall. Spat! Wait, uh, no, not that kind of trip. I went on a day-trip with (vous avez eu!) Aunt Mary and Asheley yesterday. They had a meeting to decide the fate of a youth camp they’ve been planning. It was a good Chadian experiance for me, especially right before I leave for good. Beigné (French for doughnuts, but these aren’t quite doughnuts, we just call em that), sugared milk, peanuts, boule, and two glasses of utterly revolting tea. Not the nice red-so-much-sugar-your-teeth-rot-before-you-finish shai, but some sort of herbal coffee bitter less-sugar thing 😛 Ah, well, on survive.

I’m going to NDJ with Dad on Monday for one week, and may or may not be out of contact during that time — I have no idea. Going to have a peek at their computer system et chose comme sa, haha. Have I totally annoyed you with all the French thrown into this post? rofl, sorry, still in semi-french mode from yesterday 😉 I’m sure you’ll all live — if any of you even read this. With Chels grounded and Trev busy I probably just have the occasional visit (which I know I have, but it’s not regular), but anyway, yup, uh huh, yayayayayayaya — lol, you’d have to see the movie 😉

Until I see you or see you not or post or email or chat/IM + write again I shall not have, uh, done any of that… ya, teehee 😀