I've tended to avoid discussions about politics and current affairs on K5 since they typically devolve into pointless shouting matches with people talking past each other and heaping insults on their verbal opponents. However sometimes I read something that disgusts me so much that I have to express myself.

We now live in a world where the government of the largest military power in the world says 1 + 1 = 3 to justify going to WAR and its citizens sit docilely like sheep speaking only when they want rationalize their apathy and inaction. Thousands will die, billions of dollars will be spent yet the economy is still in the shitter, states are slashing education budgets all all over the place and the War on Terror^tm is yet to nab the main terrorists of the past few years; Bin Laden and the Anthrax mailer(s).

If you are easily incensed by people who do not share your opinions and feel like posting a response in this diary, don't bother. I won't be engaging in pointless K5 flame wars. This diary is just for me to get the thoughts out of my head and have a reference I can point people at that is accessible online.

 

 

I worked on RSS Bandit this weekend. I can now officially state that it now has more features than any other client based RSS news aggregator on the market. :)

OK, posturing aside I have added some neat features. Here is a screenshot showing off tracking read/unread messages, the system tray icon and various menu options. I also have importation of OPML files working fine. For the curious the second screenshot shows the results of importing Gordon Weakliem's subscriptions file. More on my progress below and a potential release schedule.

Poll: Favorite Office Space quote?

 

 

I've noticed more and more fellow Borg are blogging (fifteen spotted in the wild so far) and can't help noticing the wide variance in the content. Some people post personal stuff, others post about technology or philosophy, while some just talk about work. More thoughts below.

 

 

Dave Winer asks What About Your Data specifically he has this to say about the importance of access to your content in this age of weblogs and message boards

This is much more important than having access to the source of the program, a program must give you complete control of your content, and for that, you must be able to get a copy

I can't help but agree. What good does access to Scoop or Slashcode do for me if I can't migrate my journals and stories from K5 and Slashdot to my own server or another online community.

A couple of New year resolutions, my five year plan, ruminations on RSS Bandit and more below.

Poll: First Choice for Weblog Software?

 

 

A few days ago I mentioned trying out a few news aggregators. At the time I thought FeedReader was a good choice but I've since then come across some of the problems Will Sargent mentioned. Most annoying have been the random crashes and forgetting to update my feeds. The lack of a way to track stories I've read between runs of the program is also quite annoying. So this morning I decided to write an RSS News aggregator.

Here are twoscreenshots of my baby in action. Of course, I was late for work. More below.

Poll: Favorite News Aggregator?

 

 

I just saw the movie AI on HBO. This had the makings over being one of my favorite movies of all time but just like everyone else I believe the movie went on for twenty or thirty minutes too long. It felt like a nine year old was asked to tack on a "happy ending" to an already finished work that had originally been a moving and somewhat melancholy look at what makes us human.

More below on Mark Pilgrim's response to my thoughts on semantic markup and his usage of the <cite> tag plus a review of 3 news aggregators.

Poll: What Means The World to You?

 

 

Various thoughts on Mark Pilgrim's neat trick with the <cite> tag, Macintosh addicts, foreign language translations of my articles and Buffy the Vampire Slayer on UPN.

But first, Pud's InternalMemos.com sure picked up some grinches this holiday season. The biggest grinch-like memo is this one which includes the gem

I expect a return email from all the staff to tell me if they can step up and make the commitment to DO EVERYTHING IT TAKES, INCLUDING POSTPONING DECEMBER VACATIONS ... I also need to know if you will volunteer to be here the week of December 23-27 and Dec. 30-Jan. 4.

Now more than ever, the [CompanyName] team must have the start-up/do whatever it takes mentality. If any of you are not of that mentality anymore, have personal/family issues that prohibit you from making the full commitment, please tell me that as well and I will do whatever I can to assist you to find a job outside of [CompanyName].

Poll: New Years Eve When You Had The Most Fun In Recent Memory?

 

 

I just noticed via Slashdot that it is now possible to become an official card carrying member of the dirty GNU Hippie Society. If this is your scene I'm sure joining would skyrocket your cred amongst the Linux geek pack in the same way a three or four digit Slashdot ID used to awe me when I was in college. Nothing attracts the chicks like a business card that's also a fully bootable Linux distro. :)

Anyway, GNU isn't for me but the EFF on the other hand is worth every dollar donated. If you haven't joined and work in the software industry, you should.

Various random thoughts about stuff below.

 

 

I've been using my Toshiba Portege Tablet PC for a few days now and have a couple of thoughts about it which I'm sharing since Derath asked.

Noticed ChrisD on Slashdot posted a hoax about Sony settling a lawsuit with Nintendo $2.3 billion as a front page story. This seems a much bigger fuckup than the biweekly duplicate story posts. Also noticed they posted about the C|Net article about Office 11 XM which I talked about a few days ago. As usual people kept on posting the same joke over and over and over again.

Poll: Worst Slashdot Editor?

 

 

A couple of people have mentioned being interested in my notes from Don's XML 2002 keynote which has already been the cause of some speculation. Below is my summary of his presentation with my personal comments and opinions in italics.

Poll: Biggest Technology Hype Jobs of 2002?