02 Jan 2004
Still Having RSS Problems
Now it's the turn of AmphetaDesk to catch some grief from me... I've been unable to read my Slashdot RSS feed for several hours now. Amphetadesk just poops out on it: returns an error (usually) about a malformed token, usually on a non-existent line.

A little investigation via Google brought up the fact that this behavior is quite intentional: XML is not a forgiving spec, and if a network error or some other bit gets boogered, Amphetadesk, quite compliantly, barfs.

This is unacceptable.

I don't care who made the error - Slashdot, Amphetadesk or XML. I just want to read my damn news feed!

I have a feeling that the real problem here is with the rigidity of the XML spec itself: Radio seemed to be duplicating the Wired feed rather habitually, and other aggregators that I've looked at have had other, equally esoteric problems.

According to one mailing list missive I found floating about, Amphetadesk only started really trying hard to comply with the XML standard in the most recent version. I may download some older models and see if they work any better: if not I'll have to find another solution or roll my own aggregator. Which seems like a real shame.

Kevin and Rene are coming over for dinner this evening - we're having goulash and playing euchre/drinking mead until who knows when? Should be a fun time.

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A Busy New Year's Day
It's been a busy couple of days, actually. We have a boarder now - Mick has moved into the spare room until he gets some of his problems resolved and decides if he wants to remain in Indiana or return home. So we spent the better part of yesterday and today moving his stuff from Logansport to Dick's garage. Took both trucks, both days, and the beater ran just fine. Still gets a little cranky starting up sometimes, but runs like a top once you get it on the road.

I'll also be posting this locally, and syncing remotely. Manually right now, but if all goes well I should be able to just launch a cron job at boot time and have basic Radio functionality using open source software. Pretty slick, if I do say so myself. Gory details to follow.

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