Feb 2008
I'm *this* close...
29/02/08 17:00 in: Web 2.0
... to saying a firm F-U to Twitter.
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Now pay attention, 007
27/02/08 21:00 in: Books
If you're looking for something to read, and I invariably am, then here's a recommendation: pick up the 007 novels. Now, before you scoff, let me make it very clear: I'm a fan of the 007 films, but the novels are something so very different. As a brat, I sat there wondering why on earth John F Kennedy chose 'From Russia with Love' as an all-time favourite -- the film, whilst good, didn't seem to deserve the presidential nomination. As a child, I read 'The Man with the Golden Gun' and thoroughly enjoyed it -- particularly after the truly-dismal film version, yet never got round to reading the other 007 novels until Christmas.
On the odd occasion, there's presents from family (in this case, my parents) that take you completely and utterly by surprise -- they're arguably some of the best you can receive. This year I was given a fantastic box set of all fourteen of Ian Fleming's 007 novels (and collections of short stories). Since then, I've read nothing else. Why? Very simply, there's a humanity in the books that you could never fit into a film. There's also the small matter of the plots. Take a favourite movie of mine, The Spy Who Loved Me. The movie merely uses the title. But the book itself is written (uniquely for the series) in the first person view of the heroine.
If you've not read the 007 novels, then I'd highly recommend you do. They're a fascinating read, incredibly well written (for the most part) and not so long that you'll never finish them. Oh, and I promise there's far less yawns than any Pierce Brosnan 007 film.
On the odd occasion, there's presents from family (in this case, my parents) that take you completely and utterly by surprise -- they're arguably some of the best you can receive. This year I was given a fantastic box set of all fourteen of Ian Fleming's 007 novels (and collections of short stories). Since then, I've read nothing else. Why? Very simply, there's a humanity in the books that you could never fit into a film. There's also the small matter of the plots. Take a favourite movie of mine, The Spy Who Loved Me. The movie merely uses the title. But the book itself is written (uniquely for the series) in the first person view of the heroine.
If you've not read the 007 novels, then I'd highly recommend you do. They're a fascinating read, incredibly well written (for the most part) and not so long that you'll never finish them. Oh, and I promise there's far less yawns than any Pierce Brosnan 007 film.
In praise of SimplePie
24/02/08 13:05 in: Website
I've had a couple of emails recently about my collation page, what it is, how it does the XML parsing. If you don't know what the page actually does, the collation page basically brings together all my published content online, through the wonders of RSS. For example, my TUAW articles are all accessible through RSS (in fact, any tag, bloggers page, or category on Weblogs Inc. sites have RSS available for them -- simply append /rss.xml after the URL to get it).
With the RSS sorted, how then do you go about sorting XML into viewable (and valid XHTML Strict) content? The answer is SimplePie. SimplePie is a PHP-based class library that handles all the legwork of bringing the RSS you choose into PHP variables that you can then use in the page. It even handles multiple RSS feeds with ease, making it ideal for my use. It's also pretty simple to implement. The collation page is in total just fifty lines of code, and thirty of those over-spaced lines are my own to add some custom classes to the titles [something that I've offset until after I've moved to a PHP5-running host]. SimplePie also has a plethora of excellent documentation - which was invaluable in understanding how it worked from my new-to-PHP perspective. Best of all, SimplePie is free to use. I'm not quite sure how the folks pack so much into it for that price but they do, and I'm likely to sing the praises of SimplePie for some time.
More additions
19/02/08 21:45 in: Website
Since the site launched in late January, I've been fortunate enough to have had the site mentioned on a number of well-respected galleries. Thank you all for the mentions -- it's very humbling. Of course, the one thing that stuck out like a sore thumb was my Tumblog which is my link-blog, clippings, whatever-I-find-yet-don't-put-into RapidWeaver blog. Tumblr is a fantastic service with a supersmart bookmarklet that allows you blog content in literally 2 or so clicks, making it ideal to post things easily.
Finally, after a little test-run for the last week or so, I'm thrilled to announce that the Tumblog has finally received the much-warranted make-over, and now fully integrates with the new site design.
Enjoy!
Finally, after a little test-run for the last week or so, I'm thrilled to announce that the Tumblog has finally received the much-warranted make-over, and now fully integrates with the new site design.
Enjoy!