Blog Aggregation and RSS…

I decided to write a basic blog aggregator using PHP and mySQL at the weekend, which is now on my website:

https://oracle-base.com/aggregator/index.php

I created a couple of tables in a mySQL database, wrote a few lines of PHP and “Bob’s your uncle”, as they say. I’m not sure if it will stay, but I thought is was worth a few minutes of my time to play around with it, just for the experience.

By far the most time consuming part of the job was writing the XML parser so that it was able to deal with all the formats of blogs I currently read (RSS, ATOM and RDF). Even within these formats, there are variations on tag names and date formats. It’s a real pain in the ass.

Just like everything else in IT, you take a simple idea (RSS), then let it diverge into a monster…

Cheers

Tim…

Everyone needs an IT friend…

It strikes me that IT companies are getting away with murder as far as usability and support are concerned.

As soon as my friends or family get a new bit of hardware or software, I get a phone call. I actively encourage people to use firewalls and antivirus software to reduce the amount of time I spend ridding their machines of nasties. Sometimes I feel like sending an invoice to Dell/Microsoft/Norton for the time I’ve wasted because their products are not fit for use by “normal” home users.

It would be interesting to see the state of home computing if all the “IT friends” turned round and refused to help their friends! I’m guessing it would be a serious mess…

Cheers

Tim…

AEON FLUX…

I went to see AEON FLUX at the cinema last night. It was quite a stylish film, in a kitch kinda way, but it was pretty rubbish.

Charize Theron was totally not right for the part. Aeon is supposed to be a highly trained assasin, but Theron looks weak and moves like she’s never done a days exercise in her life. She’s gangly, like a foal. On occasion, when stationary, she looks kinda iconic, but when she moves she looks like a slob whose had liposuction.

In my opinion, they should have used someone like Jennifer Garner, a babe who looks like she can kick your ass.

In my opinion, you would be better saving your cinema money and putting in towards the price of the animated series!

Cheers

Tim…

Exit mobile version