mashby | The personal blog of Michael Ashby

August 21, 2003

Newsfeeds In The Palm Of Your Hand

Man Reading A Newspaper I’ve become a big fan of news feeds. In fact, I’d say that it’s one of the primary ways that I stay current with my interests on the Internet. News, weblogs, technology web sites, the Tour de France, you name it. So when Mike asked me the other day if I had found a news aggregator for Palm OS, I was on the hunt.

I’m able to do just about anything with my Palm. It’s my proxy for when I can’t be at my workstation. I can edit this weblog, ftp images, check e-mail, browse the web, take photographs, as well as keep my schedule, phone numbers, tasks, etc. However, it hadn’t dawned on me that I didn’t have a news feed reader. Doh! After a few Google searches here’s what I found.

Friday is a Java application for reading news feeds from your Syndic8.com account. I don’t have one, so this application didn’t do any good for me, but it does install nicely if you have the free MIDP for Palm OS from Sun Microsystems. If this application had a feature that allowed you to add your own feeds it’d be perfect.

Quick Palm is really more of a script that allows you to read your converted feeds in Plucker. There’s also JPluck that does the same thing.

Plucker is often referred to as an AvantGo clone, but it’s actually much more than that. You can customized just about anything that you’d like to grab off the web. So at this point, the only solution that appears to be out there is to use Plucker with a conversion tool, such as JPluck.

I’m not a Plucker user, so I’ll have to download it and give it a shot. However, I wish there was a stand alone solution that didn’t require the conversion process. Although I haven’t tried it yet, it just sounds clunky. If there’s any Palm OS developers reading this, hint hint! 😀

August 20, 2003

BT – Emotional Technology

BT - Emotional Technology I’ve been a huge fan of Brian Transeau since his first album back in 1996. I don’t remember how, or where I heard it, but the first time I heard Blue Skies I was hooked. Since then, I’ve eagerly awaited each new release from BT.

It’s been over 3 years since BT released an original work (read all about it here), but it was definitely worth the wait. There isn’t a weak track to be found anywhere and in my book, this is his best work yet. From the first track to the last, BT takes you on a journey through an incredible landscape of sound. Along the way he drops some kickin’ hooks that you just can’t get out of your head.

August 19, 2003

Gettin’ Gizzy With It

I love technology and one of my daily fixes is the weblog Gizmodo.com. If you haven’t visted this web site, then you owe it to yourself to check it out. It’s updated almost everytime I go there, which is several times a day. Peter Rojas, the editorial director, is an independant journalist who writes for Salon, Wired among others and he posts approximately 10 posts a day on just about anything technological. Focusing mostly on gadgets, it’s a technophiles crack house, giving you all sorts of tasty bits to help you get your fix.

The site was started by Nick Denton who was the CEO of Moreover.com, among other things. He was written up in the May 2003 Wired Magazine as a nanopublisher, having launched several weblogs based on the same business model. Although Denton may be the brains behind the inital launch, the site would be nothing without Rojas. He’s the person that brings the site to life.

One last little tidbit, Manhattan User’s Guide.com recently did an article on Gizmodo, by going to their offices (aka apartment) and seeing what kind of gadgets Rojas has. It’s nice to peek behind the curtain every now and again. 🙂

August 18, 2003

The Perfect Cup

Bodum French Press Coffee Maker A couple of weeks ago I dropped my thermal carafe from my much beloved coffee maker. As a result, it began a small leak. Faced with having to buy a new carafe, or even I whole new coffee maker, I remembered that I was given a french press coffee maker as a gift from my Mom. I opted to break it out and make coffee with it and boy and I glad that I did!

Some folks may think that the Capresso MT500 is the best coffee maker, but I have to say I don’t know if I can go back to drip coffee after experiencing the french press. It’s so smooth and rich that it has to be tasted to be believed. I’ve been drinking this method exclusively for the past week or so and I’m in coffee heaven. In fact, I met a colleague for lunch last week at a coffee shop and I ordered a french press. I’m hooked! 🙂 For more information on the french press method, select this link.

August 17, 2003

Climbing Mt. Validation

sample tag The other day I was working on a few tweaks on mashby.com and I remembered that it had been quite awhile since I validated my code. For some people as long as it looks good in a browser, that’s good enough and in large part they are 100% correct. However, being the perfectionist that I am, I tend to subscribe to the notion that the code that you write should comply with the specification it was written for. Imagine my surprise when I clicked on the button in the Colophon and saw errors galore! :O So I set out on a challenging adventure to try and tweak my code and that of Movable Type the software that I use to manage my weblog.

The first hurdle I had to overcome was to decide just which spec I was going to validate (HTML. XHTML, etc.) Looking at all the errors I currently had to fix, it seemed only natural to go for XHTML. Besides, that’s the new sexy standard. If I could get my site into XHTML I’d be one of the cool kids on the block.

August 16, 2003

Mother Puss Bucket!

An angry look I’m sorry, I just have to get this off my chest. Can someone explain to me why a validator trys to validate links in your code as well? It just makes no sense! I don’t have any control over other peoples URLs, if they use a weird character such as an ‘&’ all hell breaks loose and the page isn’t valid. As long as the tag is formatted correctly, I don’t see why the validators have to check the content of the tag as well. How am I supposed to fix it!?!?

The only solution that I’ve been able to find is to edit the URL and use ‘&’ instead of ‘&’. If the URL is just too brutal, the the only other option is to use php to hide the freakin’ URLs. If the page is viewed by the validator, then hide this content, if it’s viewed by anyone else then show it. How stupid is that? But what other choice do I have? It just really gets under my skin and makes absolutley no sense to me. I know I’m not the only one that is frustrated by this, so I just had to share it. After having to go almost entry by entry and hide certain URLs is a major PITA (Pain In The Ass) and I just couldn’t contain it any longer. 😐

August 15, 2003

My Sides Hurt

ROTFLMAO The other day, I was talking with my buddy Dan about starting his own weblog. Yes, if I like something then I have a tendancy to push it on other people. I admit it. Anyway, we were trying to come up with a domain name and I suggested ChiselMonkey.org. The .com and .net domains were already taken, but when we entered the .net domain into our browsers we both died laughing. I think it’s one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a long time.

If you don’t mind a little profanity, go to http://www.chiselmonkey.net. Dan and I both want a copy of this as a poster that we can each hang in our offices. It’s just too freakin’ funny.

August 14, 2003

Speak! Good Weblog, Good Weblog

Speak Weblog! Thanks to a handy little guide on Dane Carlson’s Weblog, I’ve added speech capability to my weblog. Simply click on the button at the end of each post and the first 45 words of the post will be spoken. Given my gift for gab in both verbal and text mediums, I don’t think you’ll ever have a chance to hear an entire post. Also, I’d recommend that only broadband users choose this option because the resulting file size can reach in excess of 500k.

How does this work? Well, AT&T has a product called “Natural Voices” that allows developers to add voice capability to their applications. The provide an online demo and so via a web form I’m can submit a post to the demo and have the results streamed back to you. Pretty cool huh? There’s a variety of voices and languages that can be used and Chris Pirillio has taken it to the limit by randomizing both the language and the voice, so you never know what you’re going to hear when you click his “Speak” button. 😀

August 13, 2003

6 Month Anniversary

Champagne I still find the fact that I have a weblog a bit odd. I guess I just never saw myself as a writer, much less someone who would post personal tidbits on the web. However, today marks 6 months that I’ve been doing it, so I guess I didn’t know myself very well did I? 😉

When I started this weblog, I really had no idea what it was going to look like, or what I would write about. Would I mostly comment on technology like Mike Rohde does on his weblog? Would I post interesting news like the guys at Gearbits? Or, would I focus on my personal life, like the wonderfully heartfelt and funny Jumping Monkeys? Well, I’d like to think that it’s been a nice tasty mix of all three examples.

I read all three of those weblogs almost daily and I think they are all excellent examples of how diverse and high quality weblogs can be. In these past six months, I’ve expanded from a simple weblog into a multi-weblog. I added movies, books, photos, a photolog, a workout journal and even a travelogue. Crazy! :O

Now that I’ve run the gambit with this medium, I decided to condense the content just a bit. I’ve moved the movie and book sections into the main weblog, so you can now find that information in the Books and Movies category archives.

So what’s in store for the next 6 months? Who knows! I’m enjoying this wild ride as much as you are. And that’s the most surprising part. I’m amazed at the fact that people do want to read what I write. It’s not that I have a huge audience or anything, but this humble little weblog averages about 1200 unique visitors and approximately 5000 page views a month. That’s pretty surprising to say the least.

August 12, 2003

Photo Web Logging

Handspring Treo 600 There’s a new trend that’s appeared in the last six months that seems to be catching on big time and that’s having a camera in portable devices. More and more cell phones are coming equipped with built-in cameras and even pda/handhelds are now including them. As a result, more and more people are taking snapshots throughout there day. Given the popularity of weblogs, it was only a matter of time before photo weblogs began popping up.

TextAmerica has started offering free Moblogs, so creating a mobile weblog is easier than ever. The images are hosted on their server, as well as the templates and pages, but there are decent template editing tools so that you can integrate it with any web site you wish to add it too. The best part is that you don’t have to have a camera phone to use it. Simply e-mail any photo that you’d like posted to a special address and in a few minutes your photo will be added to your gallery for everyone to see. You can include text with it as well. Another nice feature is that it has it’s own RSS feed, so visitors can keep up-to-date as easy as your regular weblog.

I started one a few days ago (mashby.textamerica.com), just so I could play with this new type of weblog. The other reason it interested me is that sometimes I have a photo that doesn’t fit in the usual galleries that I use in my photo gallery and this way I can post it here. Besides, posting it is a piece of cake. The only limitation at this point is that the image must be 700k or smaller.