Spring is Sneaking In!
(Sorry about the relative lack of posts lately. There was the whole issue with the new computer desk and then I bought three new games this week (Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, Champions of Norrath, and Culdcept) - so it's been a busy week. More on many of those topics soon.)
This week has been positively springlike for the Bay Area. I've had the sunroof open on my car several times this week, I switched back to short sleeved shirts, and there's sunlight on BOTH ends of my commute these days. In a related note the pedestrian footbridge to downtown Palo Alto reopened this week. It had been closed since September - but it's again possible to take a post-lunch stroll downtown and hit the Starbucks. Very nice.
Anyway, this morning I was taking out the trash and caught those few moments when the clouds are all orangy-pinkish. I had my Treo with me, so I snapped a couple of quick pics.
(Sorry about the relative lack of posts lately. There was the whole issue with the new computer desk and then I bought three new games this week (Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, Champions of Norrath, and Culdcept) - so it's been a busy week. More on many of those topics soon.)
This week has been positively springlike for the Bay Area. I've had the sunroof open on my car several times this week, I switched back to short sleeved shirts, and there's sunlight on BOTH ends of my commute these days. In a related note the pedestrian footbridge to downtown Palo Alto reopened this week. It had been closed since September - but it's again possible to take a post-lunch stroll downtown and hit the Starbucks. Very nice.
Anyway, this morning I was taking out the trash and caught those few moments when the clouds are all orangy-pinkish. I had my Treo with me, so I snapped a couple of quick pics.
This week has been positively springlike for the Bay Area. I've had the sunroof open on my car several times this week, I switched back to short sleeved shirts, and there's sunlight on BOTH ends of my commute these days. In a related note the pedestrian footbridge to downtown Palo Alto reopened this week. It had been closed since September - but it's again possible to take a post-lunch stroll downtown and hit the Starbucks. Very nice.
Anyway, this morning I was taking out the trash and caught those few moments when the clouds are all orangy-pinkish. I had my Treo with me, so I snapped a couple of quick pics.
RSS Fun
comments.xml is now an RSS feed with just comments. The nice thing about this feed is each new comment is a new entry in it.
comments.xml is clean, according to the RSS Validator. The other feeds aren't and fulltext.xml in particular has some issues with it. But honestly, I'm tired and I don't have any more time today to futz with it. Besides, it's working in BottomFeeder, and as far as I know in any aggregator. (It wasn't clean before I started in on it - and I hadn't heard any complaints.)
Anyway, I've learned a lot about XML, RSS, and Movable Type in the last couple of hours, and I'll try to publish some of it later this week. :-) For now, please enjoy the shiny new comments feed.
If you're not sure you have the right feed for you, please select from the pleasing menu on the right or bottom of the entry.
Sunday - Feb 8 - Outage
I've got to put together and install my new computer desk on Sunday. While I'm at it, I'll likely do some other rearrangements of the computers. So the web server will be down for a few hours while I rearrange. Shouldn't be too long of an outage . . . .
I've got to put together and install my new computer desk on Sunday. While I'm at it, I'll likely do some other rearrangements of the computers. So the web server will be down for a few hours while I rearrange. Shouldn't be too long of an outage . . . .
More on the iPod Mini
Arc Technica weighs in with a solid argument that iPod Mini does make sense. Super-short condensed argument: the Mini is not the new low-end iPod, and doesn't make price sense against other hard drive players. But the Mini is positioned against flash RAM based players, where your same $250 buys you 512 Meg of storage. In that sense, the 4 Gig iPod Mini is a steal.
It seems like a good argument to me. That then shifts the argument to discussions about whether the flash player market is after size, battery life, or solid state electronics. If your average flash player consumer wants shockproof droppability, or a longer battery life then the Mini doesn't hunt. But if the average consumer buys based mainly on size then the Mini is a hell of a deal.
Since I'm not a flash consumer (my iPod has 3200+ songs on it and I'm still rolling on CD ripping :-)) this argument hadn't occurred to me. But it seems sound.
Anybody want Kool-Aid in any of five fruitalicious colors?
Arc Technica weighs in with a solid argument that iPod Mini does make sense. Super-short condensed argument: the Mini is not the new low-end iPod, and doesn't make price sense against other hard drive players. But the Mini is positioned against flash RAM based players, where your same $250 buys you 512 Meg of storage. In that sense, the 4 Gig iPod Mini is a steal.
It seems like a good argument to me. That then shifts the argument to discussions about whether the flash player market is after size, battery life, or solid state electronics. If your average flash player consumer wants shockproof droppability, or a longer battery life then the Mini doesn't hunt. But if the average consumer buys based mainly on size then the Mini is a hell of a deal.
Since I'm not a flash consumer (my iPod has 3200+ songs on it and I'm still rolling on CD ripping :-)) this argument hadn't occurred to me. But it seems sound.
Anybody want Kool-Aid in any of five fruitalicious colors?
It seems like a good argument to me. That then shifts the argument to discussions about whether the flash player market is after size, battery life, or solid state electronics. If your average flash player consumer wants shockproof droppability, or a longer battery life then the Mini doesn't hunt. But if the average consumer buys based mainly on size then the Mini is a hell of a deal.
Since I'm not a flash consumer (my iPod has 3200+ songs on it and I'm still rolling on CD ripping :-)) this argument hadn't occurred to me. But it seems sound.
Anybody want Kool-Aid in any of five fruitalicious colors?
HTML in comments?
So Brian mentions here that not being able to post HTML in Movable Type comments has tripped him up on occasion. I did a spot of research, and it literally is a checkbox in a configuration screen to turn it on or off. I think the default is off to ensure that evildoers can't create popups, run Java code and the like. (Hell for all I know IE has added an ActiveX control to allow you to reformat readers hard disks. So that you can install new widgest from Powerpoint or some such.)
(Note that it does allow hyperlinking currently, but no HTML formatting. )
Anyway, does this really bother people? There is a school of thought that says I should turn it on until somebody abuses it. Then there is a school of thought that says comments are currently under attack anyway, this isn't the time to relax the iron fist of control. Post your opinions (in plain text, please :-) in comments!
So Brian mentions here that not being able to post HTML in Movable Type comments has tripped him up on occasion. I did a spot of research, and it literally is a checkbox in a configuration screen to turn it on or off. I think the default is off to ensure that evildoers can't create popups, run Java code and the like. (Hell for all I know IE has added an ActiveX control to allow you to reformat readers hard disks. So that you can install new widgest from Powerpoint or some such.)
(Note that it does allow hyperlinking currently, but no HTML formatting. )
Anyway, does this really bother people? There is a school of thought that says I should turn it on until somebody abuses it. Then there is a school of thought that says comments are currently under attack anyway, this isn't the time to relax the iron fist of control. Post your opinions (in plain text, please :-) in comments!
(Note that it does allow hyperlinking currently, but no HTML formatting. )
Anyway, does this really bother people? There is a school of thought that says I should turn it on until somebody abuses it. Then there is a school of thought that says comments are currently under attack anyway, this isn't the time to relax the iron fist of control. Post your opinions (in plain text, please :-) in comments!