Lumpy's Corner

I asked that same question in the lockergnome channel and good ol' flatrabbit told me it stood for Really Simple Syndication. Not to sound ungrateful to any of the lockergnomies but it hardly helps. Now I know what it stands for. Well that was almost a year ago and I did not really pursue this matter much further. I simply tucked the information away in an empty place in my brain (trust me there is gobs of room up there) and waited for my new found trivia to be put to use swooning young women at the clubs. (I am not claiming it ever works but the geek in me keeps trying things like that.) I did however decide to explore it now.

RSS is basically a dialect of XML and means that it extends XHTML. (If you are not sure what any of that means read my blog on XHTML.) By being a special type of XML it has specific keywords that have specific meanings. This allows programs, commonly called readers or news aggregators, to organize this data for its users. It allows one to custom choose what type of news and stuff one gets via the web. It also checks for updates. It is really THE method for finding your news items you desire. It is also THE method to keep up with your favorite blogs.

Now I have explained a little bit about what RSS is. Harvard has some good information on that subject (again this link was given to me by flatrabbit) as does this article if you wish to learn more. My goal is to get all my HTML e-zines into a RSS reader.

I just wanted to quickly post that I finally found an RSS reader that does everything I want it to. RSS owl rawks!

First of all, it lets you read the feeds while offline. That is the one feature that most readers don't have. Lumpy must read feeds offline for he does not always have internet. Some other features include:

• Available for Mac, Windows, Linux and Solaris
• Import/export OPML file
• It can import your blogrolls
• It can save the feed in PDF, RTF or HTML format

This is good software and has many more features. I like it so much that you can expect to see in the sidebar very soon. Give it a try; I am sure you will like it.

Hey all you fellow cyberjunkies!
Sorry I have not blogged of late but I have been very, very busy with Radio Static. I have not stopped writting though and will be pulling an all nighter soon.

Also check out this new news site.

Stick the National Geographic Environmental News Feed into your favorite feed reader. You will not have to wait long to see "how not to" incorporate ads into your feeds. First off, it does not give you the whole feed. You get an ad, a headline, an ad, a headline, etcetera... If you click on any of the headlines (those are the single lines in between the ad feeds), you will also see how to make me hit the unsubscribe button.

The first thing that happens is you are greeted by this screen-sized advertisement. It will take forever to load, be nothing related to the subject of the feed and, almost certainly, annoying. Thank God for bloglines unsubscribe button.

I have often, likely too often, gone off about how great a resource all of the Gnomoies are at Wyldryde.org in the various channels they host. One of them being the person behind this stunt. Before I saw that video this AM, I had already begun this draft. I decided to add this little intro because Chris Pirillo has been mentioned here before and, after viewing it, I just had to... too funny.---

Nonetheless, before Chris' production served as a drafting intermission, it had dawned on me that I have yet to mention one geek of lore here at Lumpy's Corner. Possibly, the worse "how could I ..." in Cyber-history. Actually, I have mentioned this individual here before but only in passing.

I have mentioned many a blogger, author, podcaster and tech gurus here. I mention a podcast almost every show over at Radiostatic.am.

So, a podcaster, an author, a blogger, a tech guru... hmm. He is all of that. Am I leaving anything out?

Some of these links are not from this week but the week before. I still thought them of merit. It is very likely that you will not see a post here for a week or so. I must deal with some tweaks on the server side. Too much to write and too little time.

Certain things can happen to anyone, other things only happen to me. Is my Google Reader angry because I am trying FeedDeamon 2.6?

Two days ago, I was rading my feeds with Google Reader. Check out the summary for this head line. This hiccup was gone by the time I came returned from work. It effected not all the feed but only a few. The headlines and summaries are scrambled up. I had no luck figuring out where the summarries actually belonged. The headlines go to the relevant post. Is anyone else having this problem? Does anyone have any explanations?

I thought it might have been a little glitch or such. I tried refresh and restarting the browser but nada. The issue remained for the same feeds. I have been using Google Reader for a good while now and have never noticed this before. Other than both summaries having a spelling error or typo, I see nothing in common between them. Has it been doing this to a few feeds right along and I have never noticed?

Just curious, does any one know what happened to SuprGlu? I have been checking my page since Friday evening. (I hope it being a Friday the 13th had nothing to do with it.)