Category Archives: Computers

Xanga RSS

I always had a problem with Xanga RSS not working in NetNewsWire.

So I hacked up a solution in the form of a php file:

<pre><?
$f = escapeshellcmd($_GET["q"]);
$g = shell_exec('curl -s http://www.xanga.com/rss.aspx?user='
. $f . ' | sed -e "s/<rss version="0.91">/'
. '<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/'
. '02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" xmlns="'
. 'http://my.netscape.com/rdf/simple/0.9/">/"'
. ' | sed -e "s/</rss>/</rdf:RDF>/"');
echo $g;
?></pre>

And then I just call the script by subscribing to http://path.to/script/?q=username. It’s ugly, but functional.

A copy is also available for download.

Tiger 10.4

I got my hands on Tiger, the developer preview of Apple next operating system.

My thoughts:

  • Safari
    • It’s noticably faster. Especially in sites that used to bog it down, like the StarTribune.
    • The RSS support is nice. I don’t think that it will replace an app like NetNewsWire or Pulp Fiction (at least not yet). The mouse scroll wheel doesn’t work in Safari’s RSS view, but I’m sure that will be fixed before next year.
    • Having both an RSS search and Google search field in the toolbar for Safari seems clumsy. It takes up too much space. Why couldn’t they come up with some clever way to merge the fields together. (Or god forbid search google and your RSS feeds simultaneously).
    • SSL doesn’t seem to work in Safari at all. So I can’t load any https:// pages which is annoying to say the least.
    • Mail
    • The Smart Folders looks nice, but I haven’t had the opportunity to test it.
    • iChat
    • It seems faster (fast enough that I’d consider using it again).
    • The multiple chat participant thing looks interesting, but I’ve yet to test it. Anybody up for a video conference?
    • QuickTime
    • The interface looks a little different
    • Dashboard
    • Ick, totally useless. I’ll take the Stickies.app over the dashboard one any day. The other widgets are mostly useless: iCal already gives you the date in the tray, the time is already in the corner, the calculator is clumsy, I’d rather just open Address Book instead of using that fandangled search thing that Dashboard provides.
    • I think my main hatred for it stems from the fact that it wants you to use the keyboard and then the mouse and then the keyboard. Slow! Why do I have to hit F12, then click in the search field, and then type. Instead I could have just clicked on the relevant real application and used tab to get to the right field.
    • I’ll admit that it looks nice, but it seems rather useless. Maybe if they allowed it to be started by a mouseclick or something.
  • Closing the widgets is tough because the circle “x” to quit is small and a little ways away from the gadget. It’s hard to get your mouse there. And if you mess up and click somewhere else, you return to the screen you were at before Dashboard launched.

One Bug Down

Argg. I just spent all morning figuring out why some pages on this site wouldn’t load. The issue came down to a call to getimagesize in wp-content/plugins/textile2-new.php.

The change that fixed it (in unified diff format):

--- textile2-new.php.old        Tue Jun  8 23:36:12 2004
+++ textile2-new.php    Sun Jul 11 15:19:04 2004
@@ -2805,7 +2805,7 @@
         }
       }
     }
-    return @getimagesize($file);
+    return;
   } // function image_size

   /**

Read on for a more detailed discussion.

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