disobey.com

A new member of the AmphetaDesk discussion list asked why AmphetaDesk doesn't display the RSS feed's channel <image>. My response was a two-parter (which also explained how to enable the display), but only this is worth mentioning:

Two, myself, I'm not a fan of 'em all that much. I'm of the opinion that an RSS feed and the data within are a) what people want to see - why else would they be using an aggregator?, and b) the chief determination for "character" of an RSS feed. An image/logo (ie. a visual representation of the site, much like the HTML design that RSS deigns to remove) doesn't contribute to those ends - it's not how you say it, it's what you say.

Congrats to Sal for finally hitting pay dirt!

I randomly decided that last night would be a good time to start fiddling around with the coding behind DNN. To those ends, the site is now wider, and it no longer supports 640x480 or Netscape 4 users (who only comprised 0.02% of my traffic). I also realized that my initial import years ago didn't work 100% - I've been slowly going back in the archives and adding titles, categories, removing dumb formatting, etc. I figure if I do a month a day (save weekends), I'll be done in a month and a half (arrrrgh!),

I still haven't removed the embedded tables, and I probably won't. I just don't agree with having stylesheet detection for different browsers, and I've no plans to create a site that looks different from browser to browser, version to version. As such, craptacular design tables stay. Sorry (to both of us).

A few months back, I won a giveaway from Logitech for their Cordless Elite Duo, a keyboard and mouse package for a hundred bucks. I just installed it today, and I can't say I'm elated.

The little hub thingy is designed to be placed on the right hand side of your desk - it's the only reason I can think of (besides the illustrated picture showing its placement there) why they situated the cord the way they did. I only have space "away from electronic devices" (wha?!) to the left side of my desk, so, for the hub to sit evenly, I need to position it backwards, looking at its ass with no view of the LED that's supposed to suggest its status. That was annoyance number one.

Chuckle number one came in the form of the "Troubleshooting" section of the manual - if something goes wrong with the keyboard, they refer me to the online help on the CD. Apparently, they didn't think that if the keyboard wasn't working, there'd be no way for me to use the online help. They probably thought I'd enjoy putting my old keyboard back into place, memorizing their troubleshooting, then shutting down the computer to start all over. Uh huh.

Annoyance number two arises after the computer reboots, but it deserves a little explanation on my current setup. My desk is farily typical, with one remote exception - where I place my mouse. My mouse is placed *inside* an open drawer, below and to the right of the level the keyboard rests on. It keeps my hand in a naturally resting position, as opposed to constantly raised. This became a problem with the wonderful world of wireless. Apparently, if I don't use the mouse (or the keyboard, actually, as I type this) for a few seconds, it ... .. "unsyncs" with the hub. This causes a one or two second delay when I want to use the mouse again - enough so that if that doesn't fix itself soon, this keyboard is useless to me. Granted, I *could* reposition the mouse, but that means retraining myself after eight years at the same desk, same positioning. Not gonna happen.

The third annoyance? The included OS X software doesn't work, saying that no Logitech device was detected. Of course, for me to get to their software, I use their device, but that doesn't faze the error message.

Fourth annoyance, in a list that is slowly causing me to rethink this freebie: remapping of the keys. Apparently, the Apple key is no longer the Apple key. When I Apple-C to copy a block of text I've selected, the block of text is replaced with a umlauted letter C. Likewise on other Apple key commands. Apparently, they want me to retrain my fingers to go one key to the left - the cutesy key that shows the Windows Start icon, and then "alt" and "option". Funny. The Apple key, you know, the correct key, shows the word "Alt" too. That capital "A" must mean something different.

I sure as hell hope that, after I download this software update, everything fixes itself. Else, I'm gonna try to get a hundred bucks back in spite money.

Update: Welp, the latest software update seemed to fix most of my problems, except for the "unsyncing" I described above. I'm still seeing that very frequently, and very annoyingly. I'll use it for a few more hours tonight, but if it doesn't straighten out, I think I've no recourse but to go back to Apple's supplied hardware. Sigh. Anyone wanna buy a $100 keyboard and mouse? Barely used!

Update, Again: Another thought just hit me. This flipping thing uses batteries! That means I'm going to run out of juice, which means I'm gonna be a slave to consumerism before I can run around being a proponent of individualism. This is not a good thing. Definitely. Keyboard and mouse for sale. Email me if you're interested.

Dave mentions that NetNewsWire has RSS 2.0 <comments> support in the latest downloadable beta. I sometimes forget how easy it is to add new display data to AmphetaDesk - all current versions of AmphetaDesk could have supported display of <comments> the second Dave rolled the idea off his tongue. Here's how you do it with the default AmphetaDesk templates. First, open AmphetaDesk/templates/default/index.html with a text editor. Then, look for the following line (wrapped here for clarity):

to_browser(qq{ $item->{description} })
   if $item->{description};

Right beneath it, add one line (wrapped here for clarity):

to_browser(qq{ <div align="right">[<a href="$item->{comments}">Read the Comments!</a>]</div> }) if $item->{comments};

You can do this with AmphetaDesk open already - once you save the file, refresh your page, and any RSS 2.0 feed that uses the <comments> tag will give you a chance to go directly to any posted comments on that entry. Try it out on Brent's (of NNW fame) RSS feed.

I love seeing progress. For years, I've been maintaining an .htaccess file for Disobey.com - the chief benefit being to redirect any 404's to their proper location (ie., if I've done a redesign and locations have changed, etc.). It's simply a fight against linkrot I'll never give up. Since I started this .htaccess back in 1997, it has grown very large - about 100 lines, which means a slower Apache as it looks through all my rules for each and every piddly request. Today, as I went through my error log looking for new 404's, I realized I could rebuild my .htaccess to be smaller, faster, stronger. And rebuild I did, going from 100 lines down to about 40. That just tells me that the last six years dealing with Apache and regexps have been doing something for me. I smile. I smile and the world frowns, for asparagus looms within!

I think I'm finally ready to move onto to the next step in Syncasaurus. I finished the last few Mozilla <=> XBEL conversion snafu's tonight (and as such, these finalized modules will be used as templates for future formats, like Safari, IE, etc.). The reason they took longer than I expected was because I believe in lossless conversions - everything you see in Mozilla should show up in the XBEL, and vice versa. I just gotta write down some notes in POD format (which'll be fun, as this'll be my first real attempt at POD), wipe and freshen the CVS, and then I'll be able to do a quickie command line conversion utility. When that's finalized, the Google and RSS APIs. mMMMm.

I've started reading How To Be A Programmer (pdf), a forty page "short, comprehensive, and personal summary". It gets early bonus points for mentioning Code Complete, a book which literally changed my coding habits from night to day (for archivists, compare AmphetaDesk v0.92 to complete rewrite v0.93). Code Complete, I'd recommend to everyone. Jury's still out on the PDF, but my initial impression is "good".

A funny post from Eric Sigler, who was having problems with AmphetaDesk, entitled "How does he do that?" questions my well-known... .. "ability" to appear out of nowhere with comments or support for people who've never contacted me. Showing Ben this prompted him to say:

you're like the Candyman Customer Support
people only need to post, and BAM! you're there

A while back, I mentioned I was maintaining, by hand, my list of video files, primarily because I couldn't get Portfolio to work the way I wanted it. With a little more twiddling, I eventually did move back to Portfolio, and wrote a Perl script to take care of the HTML generation, bemoaning that I still needed to export from Portfolio manually. I spent some time today hammering out an AppleScript to automate the exporting (which was more difficult than I expected because their documentation seemed inaccurate, and I know very little about Applescript). Either way, I'm automating the exportation and generation daily, and saving myself more time. I've been going on a "time minimization" kick lately, and the extra hours are starting to show.

Update: Getting the Applescript working was with no thanks to Extensis technical support. After reading their supplied "AS Reference" PDF provided with the demo download, I attempted to create a script per their documentation. I couldn't get very far at all, receiving AppleScript errors of -2 and -35, even when the Applescript matched their examples. After sending them a tech support request and then trying numerous variations, I eventually closed the PDF, and started exploring other alternatives, swapping Portfolio's "find" AppleScript command for "search" instead.

Whilst I eventually succeeded (see above), I was disheartened by the response from their tech support, which was, in full: Extensis Technical Support does not provide scripting support for Extensis products. Apparently, they weren't too concerned that what they documented wasn't working as they suggested it should. I can accept the whole "we don't teach Applescript" (which they mention in the doc), but not after mentioning that I'm using the information (and examples) provided in their own PDF.

As such, I won't be recommending Portfolio to anyone anymore - it's too expensive a product to be given a flippant, uninvestigated reply. Once Canto's Cumulus releases an OS X version, I'll be reinvestigating their product (which, feature for feature, is VERY comparable to Portfolio).