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I finally filled in all the post summaries for the archive. But I was too lazy to go back and actually decide on a summary for that year and a half of posts so I just wrote a little script to grab all posts without post summaries (from my page) out of the database, strip out any tags, take the first seven words, and insert them (followed by '...') back in as the post summary. Maybe I'll run that on some of the group pages as well.

Anyway, a funny thing happend. I was testing it before I actually let it loose on the real database, and it's a good thing because of course I had the script wrong at first. I wasn't unsetting a variable at the bottom of a loop, so the first seven words were accmulating from post to post. This is the resulting post summary for the final post of that particular misguided round. But words are funny. This is like the Brian Gysin cut up stuff. It can be really interesting. So now I have lots of ideas for cut up style tools you can apply to your page. Weblogs might be really great fuel for that sort of strategy.
- jim 11-25-2001 12:11 am [link] [add a comment]

It was pointed out to me that the new archive I wrote about the other day was not working for some browsers (notably 4.x Navigator.) I believe this problem has been corrected.
- jim 11-24-2001 4:19 pm [link] [add a comment]

Fun with spammers.
- jim 11-23-2001 4:06 pm [link] [add a comment]

Hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving. We did. Thanks to everyone on Long Island.
- jim 11-23-2001 3:43 pm [link] [6 comments]

"This utility strips proprietary Microsoft tags and artefacts from Word HTML documents..."

That could be useful someday.

"...Fancypants tags and client-side scripts are stripped."

- jim 11-21-2001 11:29 pm [link] [add a comment]

Bill posted this great link to thirteen beautiful screenprints by Buckminster Fuller. "Each of the thirteen prints consists of two 30" x 40" screenprinted sheets, one of which illustrates drawings for a patent invention by Fuller, and the second sheet illustrates the realization of the concept."
- jim 11-21-2001 9:27 pm [link] [add a comment]

I made a new archive view for the pages on this site. It's on option for page owners (in [editpage].) The old style is the default.

Every time I make something with either frames or javascript it turns out to not be a good idea. This uses frames so I have to figure I won't like it eventually. But it uses frames in an anti-frame way. Almost anything you do will pop you out of the frames and back to a full page view. So there shouldn't be any way to get stuck in there (framed?)

Like everything else this has no instructions. Probably a few words in the two initially blank frames would be enough, but even without you can probably figure it out. Click a month to get that months summaries, and then click on the summary text to bring up that post. Clicking on the post number (in the top window) or 'posted by' (in the bottom window) brings you to a full screen view of the post on the normal page.

[Note that I didn't start including the summaries for each post until fairly recently. This reduces the value of the archive. Some day I'll go back and add them in for the early days.]
- jim 11-21-2001 8:21 pm [link] [add a comment]

Mozilla 0.96 is out. So far so good.
- jim 11-21-2001 5:21 pm [link] [add a comment]

HTP pointed me to this interview with Dave Winer (Userland CEO and blogging bigshot) titled the case for personal publishing. Nothing ground breaking here, but Dave does manage to get in this really great explanation:

There are three different structures you can hang information off. One of them is time, another one is searching, and the third is categorization (or "taxonomy" or "hierarchies"). You see the search engine space is doing great and you've got various attempts to try and do the taxonomy stuff.

But the idea of hanging content off of time works extremely well in an environment where the goal is to keep people coming back. You want to refresh your homepage every day? That's what blogging is. It is a site structure that uses time to create a framework of organization that both creates immediacy and is easy to understand.
I think he should keep using this explanation. Very clear.
- jim 11-20-2001 3:19 pm [link] [1 comment]

Oh yeah, here's a page (from /. maybe?) with 300 thumbnails of all manner of absurd gadgetry on display at this years Comdex. My favorites are this linux powered Sharp PDA with cool slide out blackberry style keyboard, and Samsung's virtual keyboards in wired and unwired flavors. I think I could type OK without looking (and without there even being a keyboard not to look at) but I wonder how many people could.
- jim 11-19-2001 4:11 pm [link] [add a comment]

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