Friday Cat Blogging? No, but how about Catty Blogging Friday?


What would Life be without silly (new) traditions?

I just found out about Friday Cat Blogging this morning. I myself don't currently have the pleasure (yeah, cat person) of a "feline cohabitator" (let alone two GIANT fluff-empowered ones, like some mammal fetishists known to peruse this blog!), but there are several individuals who have been known to frequent my garden from time to time. Seems to be a good place to nap, late on sunny autumn afternoons:




Cute, neh?

NOW FOR THE CATTY BIT:

Those of you subscribed to AreaV1 (Whaor the who? Yeah, remember the OPI mailing list? Me, either. ZZZZZ) will recall the problem with the website RSS feeds pointed out to me by Steven Fisher. I didn't go into the gories (that I recall), but here's a brief outline of the history of ospgli.org syndication, entitled

TO RSSia WITH LOVE: RON'S ADVENTURES IN FEED CREATION!

Started out doing RSS 0.91 files by hand. Not too difficult, but not too fun, either. Soon skipped 1.0 and headed straight to 2.0, still doing things manually, based on egs snook, borrowed or steeled (??) from other sites. At some point happened onto a commercial RSS feed creation app with a month demo and gave it a whirl. (Moral quandary: to name it/them or not ... hmmm.) Eventually realized (from inspecting the content of the feed files produced) that said app was crap and was VERY glad had not "bought the farm", as it were. Did some more looking around and found an alternative (FREE, mentioned on the list and site), which I continue to use; it has one problem only that I'm aware of, and since Steven's pointing out to me that the feeds didn't validate, I have a simple workaround and thus am content to continue using it. (I've written the developer, but haven't heard back from him yet.)

Since the original app had a lot fuller feature spread (however BADLY implemented) but hadn't seen a new version since 2002, I decided to write its developers as well and make sure whether it was truly MIA, as I suspected:

(Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 08:15:30 +0900)
Subject: Re: XXXXX Software - Support

Hello. Just a quick question: Are you continuing development on this product? I was considering buying it until I realized what a mess it was making of my feeds. (If you want, I can send you a detailed bug report; one thing you should really look at is the skip times settings code.)

The reason I wanted an RSS editor like [app name] was so I wouldn't have to edit the feed files by hand; having to go in and clean things up every time I use [app name] defeats that rather nicely.

I like the detailed control promised by all the settings. They're pointless though if they don't work.

Charging for this product in its current state is a bit cheeky to boot, don't you think?

Ron Craig
Iwaki, Japan

Maybe I've been a bit too long from the anglophonic regions, but I don't think that was overly rude or obnoxious ... right?

Either way, I didn't hear anything back, so I figured "Yep, DOA", and got on with it.

Until just a while ago when, as I was reading about Friday Cat Blogging, Eudora blatted out a new-mail alert. I clicked on the In Box, which I keep ordered by date, but didn't see anything new at the bottom of the list. "Ah, spam filter must've got whatever it was." But no, the Spam box was empty. Hmm ... what the?

This isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened, but since most people I deal with have their acts together enough to get the time and date on their computers set correctly (Notice that I don't mention the other possible causes besides ineptitude ... er, or did I, indirectly, with this parenthesis? Oh dear...), checking the top of the list isn't top of my checklist when playing "OK, Eudora, Where'd You Stick It?"

It's Item No. 3.

So I checked the top of the In Box and, sure enough, found this:

Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2002 22:29:47 +0000
From: XXXX XXXXX <xxxx@xxxxx.com>
Subject: Re: XXXXX Software - Support
To: Ronald Craig

Thanks for your feedback, a recode of [app name] is on the cards -

XXXX.

On 6 Feb 2005, at 23:15, Ronald Craig wrote:

> ailed control promised by al

Righto.

OK, sometimes it takes me a month or more to get back to people on things ... if even then. But I usually don't respond late and in the past! (Makes me head ache just thinking aboot it!)

Um, far be it for me, an avowed non-programmer-type-person, to cast aspersions on the technical abilities of people for whom programming assumedly forms some more-or-less significant part of their livelihood (which prologue means, according to one of my profs at OSU who has recently started his own blog, that I'm about to do just that!), but I'm not planning on holding my breath, you know?

Hmm. Not quite as catty as I first intended, I guess....




There. Introducing Sophe The Wonder Skitter Cat, taken my last morning in the States during my most recent trip home, at the home of a friend near Cincinnati.

Ciao for niao!

Posted: Fri - March 11, 2005 at 09:38 AM           |

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