I'm Published.

It's two birds with one stone time again. I've been using RSS Bandit on all 3 machines I use regularly and have decided that having a config file that stores my subscription information and tracks read/unread items is insufficient. Even though I just have to copy a file over from my Tablet to my home or work machine this has begun to get tedious. Part of me thinks I should write a quick and dirty Perl script to automate this while my XML buzzword compliant inner self is whispering something about retrieving and storing my feed file on a single server which is accessed via an XML Web Service.

Given that it is highly likely that I'll be talking at TechEd about XML Web Services in it seems like I should be dogfooding the B0rg XML Web Services technologies. More below on learning about WSDL, Jon Udell's recent entry on querying XML in databases and a run down on car shopping this weekend.

GOOGLE BOMB: french military victories

This time next week I'll be right here with old friends. I wonder if it'll compare to the last crunk Freaknik before the the Atlanta city government killed it.

Kirk Allen Evans asks What is an XmlNode and what does node() return?, a question I can't help answering. More on what constitutes exactly is an XML node below.

I have been having my share of Dilbert Moments in the past few months. Unfortunately my blog is not anonymous so I won't be sharing them but it is amusing to suddenly think to yourself "So this is how Dilbert feels."

Some thoughts below on "Release Early, Release Often" vs. "Better Together", yet another update RSS Bandit and what is old is new again.

Poll: How often do you have Dilbert Moments?

Exhibit A

I've spent more time than I planned this weekend working on RSS Bandit and even then I didn't the feature I most wanted in there done; autoupdating the GUI. However I did add resizable panels and feed categories which were the two features people asked for the most. I especially like the fact that WinForms enables me to support stuff like dragging and dropping a feed from one category to the other quite easily.

I have to finish reviewing Michael's XQuery book (buy it when it comes out, it's hot) so I'm probably done messing with RSS Bandit for the next few days. More on RSS Bandit and an explanation for why I'm no longer providing an updated version of Tantek's feed.

Whoa, it seems a lot more people liked RSS Bandit than I expected. A glance at Technorati shows dozens of links to the article from various blogs, I've gotten quite a few emails about it and already have half a dozen people signed up as co-developers on GotDotNet. Not a bad reception for sample code. Special shoutouts go out to Don, Joshua and Andy for showing the B0rg love and linking to it.

More on Scalable APIs (again), Joel Spolsky's recent subscriber only article and RSS Bandit futures.

What D&D Character Are You?

Poll: What is your alignment?

Posts like Robert Scoble's recent Open Letter to Bill Gates remind me that there is a difference between people who know how to run a successful business and technology people who like to be armchair business men but lack financial forsight.

I've been killing three birds with one stone in the past 12 hours. I've been pretty irritated by the general lack of functions in XSLT. No support for dates & times, no regex support and even simple aggregation functions like min()/max() are missing. So after work yesterday, I decided to implement the EXSLT functions for the .NET Framework. So far I've done all the date functions plus some extra from XQuery.

So now I get three things; XSLT functions I've been craving for months, fodder for a future Extreme XML column, and better tools for creating the expected results for my day job testing the XQuery F & O

More below on Penn & Teller's new show, political humor, blogs as journalism and thoughts on Joe Gregorio's recentposts on Regex-able XML.