I want my new server.

I also want a Java version of Textile (JTextile? Hello, Humble Narrator).

And how about this:
from a single Jabber account, I want to be able to auto-generate a comprehensive FOAF file.

  1. from JID (using vCard) JID2FOAF (php)
  2. from roster (using vCards) Roster2FOAF (php)
  3. from MSN contacts (contact details) msn2foaf (perl)
  4. from exisiting OPML file (using autodiscovery)

in Java.

I also want Joggle to support iCalendar so I can have my appointments wherever I go, and be notified via Jabber (if necessary via SMS using the ICQ interface (if it still works these days)). Is this too much to ask?

Weapons of mass seduction? Pff, next thing you’ll be telling me is that guns are sold to gun-totin’, battle-lovin’ (sad and lonely) rednecks using women posing in bikinis firing AK-47s! Please! We’re far more civilised than that!

Enlightenment, my first favourite window manager for Linux isn’t dead. Apparently. (It’s sure been doing a good job of pretending.) It’d be great to see the E team release a rip-roaring new version, kicking the other WMs into touch with all-aliased, perfectly skinned, amazing ease-of-use everything.

Why won’t it happen? Because it’s probably been the longest product development cycle since Netscape 6. That’s why.

Mark Pilgrim was the platypus.

I knew it had to be a set-up (all those very high profile links, with content like that? I know it had all those xml files, but still….), but didn’t know who it was. Well done Mark. 🙂

The ‘get out’ list of blogs I regularly read (over on the right) is now generated on the fly, using javascript, from an OPML file created using the “export” function of Syndirella. I got tired of having my blogroll out of sync with my RSS reader, now a single file upload and voila! the same.

It’s cross browser, which is great, but as Mark Pilgrim mentioned yesterday in his article about MIME types, it will cause problems if and when I ever want to create valid XHTML 2.0.

It still needs to be sorted alphabetically (because Syndirella doesn’t support sorting its feeds), but I just wanted something quick – sorting can come later.

The script is based on one found at probably the best javascript resource on the web – ppk’s javascript section. Everything I know about Javascript I learnt there.

→I suspect this sorting lark may be more complex than anticipated, and whilst still very doable, I’d rather keep the code simple. Unsorted it is. It’s more fun like that anyway.
→I almost forgot to mention that whilst the file kept its opml extension, it wouldn’t be loaded by either IE6/Win or Mozilla 1.3 – only when I renamed the file to have an xml extension did it start to work.
→Now ordered alphabetically by removing all my subscriptions in Syndirella and then importing back from the xml file. Not an ideal solution, but works in the short term.

Work, work and more work.

None designed by me, hence the table-ness of everything.

My current job, to upgrade this site, means out go the tables, font tags, spacer GIFs, and in come tamed lists, flexible layouts and general niceness.

The problem, of course, is that I’ve only got a week from beginning to end to get it all converted and working.

This is my first posting to my Blogger blog via Jabber.

I can have new paragraphs, and more.

All from a chat window!

Haven’t we all wanted to send lynx text instead of images so we can keep great design and great accessibility?

Ben Hammersely loves linked folders in Eclipse, and many other people just adore Eclipse in general. Neither I nor any of the dev team I work with have ever really got to grips with it in a satisfactory manner (OK, one of the guys uses Emacs on his Win2K machine, but we won’t count him). It just seems to take so long to understand and start being productive with. Is there something we’re missing?

(Incidentally, just about all the other developers, including me, use Editplus)