Wednesday, December 28, 2005

I'll be in Cambridge, January 2-7; staying near MIT, visiting friends, doing business. Maybe we should do a geek dinner or a classroom-style discussion? 

I started a new section of the OPML Docs directory linking to Tools that add functionality to the OPML Editor. The first link in this section is wordPress.root, a tool that allows you to create and edit posts on WordPress weblogs using the OPML Editor. 

A few years ago I wrote a tutorial on dancing that really works. If you don't dance but would like to, give it a try. Now I'd like to add something. To get started, try a song that has a big funky beat, because, in the unlikely event that you lose the beat, you can very easily get it back. A good example -- Superstition by Stevie Wonder. Or Them Changes by Buddy Miles. These songs are like freight trains running at 60 mph down straight tracks. Once you're driving in their direction, you jus can't lose em.  

Ted Roche: "Why lug around a 1300-page reference when you can just look it up on Google." 

Mary Jo: "RSS is gospel in Redmond these days." 

BTW, people make too much of my distaste for Microsoft's mucking with the iconography of RSS. It's already kind of a mess thanks to other techies who thought they understood the art better than everyone who came before. The content companies, like Yahoo, are generally pretty good about this. There's so much value in being consistent. "One way to do something, no matter how flawed that way is, is better than two, no matter how much better the second way is." But techies have this inappropriate arrogance that nothing happened before they discovered something. At least Microsoft hasn't said anything personally insulting in pursuit of their epiphany. When other BigCos came in, some of them slung mud to prove their point. Microsoft people have been ladies and gentlemen. And net-net, they're doing it 98 percent right. Scripting News tends to have too loud a voice sometimes. When I post something here, once or twice, among hundreds of other posts, that should give you an idea of how important I think it is. I have no control over how many times an item gets repeated elsewhere. (Or if they repeat it correctly.) 

Ernie explains why New Orleans disaster tours are weird but okay. At lunch yesterday I tried to explain to a bunch of Berkleyites what New Orleans is like, but didn't get through. People think they know what it would be like, but until you actually put yourself in there, you don't. I had a thought, is anyone writing about it? I don't know that anyone is making it their job to chronicle what's going on there. If the city rises then it's the story of how it happened. But if the city never regains its momentum, and just drifts, tragically, that's a story too. The death of a major American city. Is anyone there working on that? 

People have speculated that I will go there, and I've thought about it for sure, but I'm not sure if I could. I need to be close to good health care. For me it's not a casual thing. I think perhaps that's why New Orleans presents such a great opportunity for people in their 20s. You get a chance to form a city around your aspirations, and you can survive with very little support at that age.