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Jason Haslup
jason at haslup dot com

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Thu, 20 Oct 2005

Funny Search
blog

Last night I was looking through my web server logs... it's interesting seeing the search terms that people use that lead them to your site. On this blog they're what you'd expect... zaurus, linux, emacs, im-a-dork, etc...

Not so on our kids site. This search cracked me up (a plus sign is really a space):

do+boys+like+to+have+poopy+butts+more+than+girls

Yes... someone actually typed that into Yahoo and apparently our kids blog showed up as one of the results. I haven't actually done that search myself, so I'm not sure what our rank is. I'm hoping we're not at the top because honestly, I have no idea if boys like poopy butts more than girls. I would hope that both boys and girls don't necessarily like poopy butts, but you never know.

Mon, 10 Oct 2005

Ruby on Rails
blog

A few weeks ago I finally decided to buy the Ruby on Rails that was made availabe in both paper and PDF format. With some trepidation, I actually bought the PDF version, crossing my fingers in the hopes that they didn't use some fancy PDF magic that would block it from being viewable in xpdf. Thankfully they didn't, so I can happily read it on my Zaurus.

I'm only a little bit into the book so far, but I like what I've read. But that's not my point... I didn't realize this, but they're actively fixing the book and every now and then they'll release a new version of the PDF file. I can then go back to their web site and regenerate my PDF book and voila! I've got the latest and greates. Very cool... I'll definitely go back to these guys for PDF versions of their books.

podcasts at yahoo
blog

Yahoo has a new podcasts site. It looks pretty nice at first glance, borrowing some ideas from Odeo, it seems. I'm not sure if I'll switch to it to manage my subscriptions or not... it doesn't seem to offer an API for syncing subscriptions like Odeo does. I use a simple bash script that contacts Odeo and downloads new podcasts to my Zaurus... I was expecting Yahoo to have some sort of API, but maybe that's coming soon.

One thing that's kind of a bummer, but I knew was inevitable: they wrote a podcast plug-in for Yahoo Music. Back when I subscribed to Yahoo Music I downloaded their development kit and started writing my own plug-in for managing podcasts. I had grand plans of releasing it but I never continued with it. I did get my plug-in working and into Yahoo Music, which was kind of fun. It was written in .NET, though, so I'm not really sure how many people would have used it.

Anyhow, it's nice to see it out there... I might actually try it with Yahoo Music at home with my Zen micro, but I'm getting pretty used to using the Zaurus.

Sidenote: I used to be a user of the Real Rhapsody music service... until Yahoo came out with their $5/month deal, I was a big fan. I cancelled it in May, though... or so I thought. Mystique realized this weekend that I had been charged twice for it since cancelling, so I geared up for a fight this morning and gave them a call. To their credit, they realized their mistake and refunded my money without any hesitation or attempt to get me back to their service. I know it seems like that's the way it should be, but often it's not. So kudos to Real for handling it so well... if you come down to $5/month, I'll switch back!

New topic: real estate RSS feeds. Where are they? Why can't I subscribe to realtor.com/feed?zip=59718 and get an RSS feed of properties for our zip code? Google, Yahoo... where are you? I'm half-tempted to hack my own version... I looked at the source of realtor.com's listings and it's nicely formatted. Great for parsing. Hmm... maybe my first Ruby on Rails project?

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