Nonsequittal Rumblings

So soon after I ramble about something, another potential solution pops up – The Zend Framework. This looks interesting. Because of its simple design, it seems to have less dependency on libraries and stuff. And it should be fitting in more environment than other frameworks.

But…. eh, it’s a bit too late. Right now, I’m using the combination of the Stupidly Simple MVC Framework and in-hous PHP based template system. I’m still struggling to set things up correctly. I dearly hope that this will be saving me time in the future, because it sure feels like tons and tons of time being wasted now. Bleh the learning curve.

I knew it’s been possible for years and years. But for some reason, I could NEVER figure out how to do this. Last night, I took another plunge at setting up the environment up so I can type Japanese on Linux again. This time, the tools used were Ubuntu running XFCE desktop (Xubuntu), anthy, and uim. I followed some instructions on various ubuntu wiki and forums, and… ta-da! It’s good to go!

I took this linux laptop to Walmart this morning before work. While they were working on the oil change, I typed up my first Japanese blog entry on that laptop. It works like a charm. ;_; My 8+ year goal has been finally reached.

[22:48] <Sylf> installing wordpress was so, so, so easy
[22:48] <Sylf> I’m thinking about moving my blog from LJ to my server
[22:48] <Serjei> yea, LJ sucks
[22:48] <Serjei> be leet
[22:48] <Serjei> and host your own
[22:48] <Serjei> hahaha

It’s not that being leet sounds good. I’ve bee thinking about moving away from livejournal for quite a while. For over a year, actually.

So yeah, I’ll be moving soon. This is actually the 2nd time this blog will be moving. It used to be on my own domain, using something I wrote really quickly. Then moved to LJ. Now I’m moving back to my own domain. I’ll post more about that soon. Probably tomorrow.

I have some strange fondness to transparent terminal windows on computers. (And with a few other objects as well, such as game dice, etc…) back in 1998-1999 or so, I was messing around with wterm on Linux/WindowMaker. (I first found eterm for Enlightenment, but that thing was too heavy for my slow computer.) For DOS prompt, I *could* use programs like eConsole… but I use more telnet/SSH than command prompt. I especially want a transparent SSH window.

What I just found out today, is there’s a patch for my beloved SSH client, PuTTY. That’s just slick. I might even start using this to do fansub works… Yup, I think I will.

Now that Firefox has been freed from its nest, Thunderbird is getting ready to follow the suit.

The change since version 0.9 is quite nice. The interface (especially the icons) are polished up. The bugs in RSS are worked out mostly. Yay, for Thunderbird!

I’m running into a dillemma. I’m starting to handle more and more larger size project, which is still handled mostly by me. And I’m far from having the best programming or project management practice. Recently, I’ve been googling in search of a good tool to put me under good discipline, with no success. What now? Just keep my crappy practice? And let the people who take over these programs suffer? Bleh!

I’ve installed OpenWiki as a means of project documentation, but so far, I’ve had very little motivation to fill it up… Comments in the program source code are very sparse at best. I need something… really, something…

I think I’ve finally come up with the solution I like.

I’ve used nntp//rss for a while. It works well to a point. But it’s not perfect. I can’t perse some RSS files for some very minor errors. http://feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Fweather.gov%2Fdata%2Fcurrent_obs%2FKICT.rss is one example of those. See how minor the error is? A program should be able to ignore that kind of error, and go ahead and perse the document.

I’ve also mentioned about the lack of support for the HTTP authentication protected feeds on nntp//rss. It was going to be supported as of version 0.4. But I’m really not seeing any developement activities. I’ve decided to give up on it.

Also, another gripe is that the way it perse is not always plausible. Reading slashdot feed on it was not very pleasant.

Now I found a new answer. Actually, 2 answers.

1 is a Thunderbird extension called Forumzilla. Usage is very easy. You save the xpi file locally, and install it from Thunderbird. Restart Thunderbird. Go to “Tools” -> “Feed Supscriptions” and set up your stuff! Very nice.

The second solution is Thunderbird 0.8. It’s still in pre-alpha state. But the latest nightly build includes the built-in RSS functionality. Unfortunately, I can’t use this build at work right now, because the proxy support on the windows build seems to be broken, and it crashes every time I try to access the outside documents.

A switch from 0.7 to 0.8 nightly build was rather complex. I had to jump through a few loops to import all the saved messages to the new profile, which now supports all the mail account save the incoming messages in the local folder inbox. Hopefully it will be much easier in the production release of 0.8.

If you’re not too fond of Thunderbird, there also is another choice. As of version 2.0.2, ~Awasu~ has an option to switch the browser engine in its view pane from IE to mozilla. Finally, someone has done it!

But I’m using Thunderbird, and not Awasu for couple reasons. For one, at work, the access to the windows registry is very restricted, and Awasu couldn’t work with that restriction. And for the other, Thunderbird is open source; Awasu is not.

There we go. We now have safe and practical RSS environment.

Additional note : Forumzilla is a bit more cumbersome to use than Thunderbird 0.8 built-in RSS parser. Why? Because forumzilla does not list the link within the normal header or the message body. I have to show “All” the headers, and copy and paste the Content-Base URL. It still works better than anything else I’ve used so far at my work, so I can’t complain too much. (With this, I can be up to date on the latest anime release, get the torrent URL, pull up the Azureus remote-control page, and start the download while I’m still at work. It’s really nifty.)

The woe continues.

I quickly found out that nntp//rss does not support any feeds thta require HTTP authentication. Well, it doesn’t yet, as of version 0.3. The support is planned for 0.4, and I can see the code in the CVS. But it’s been over a year since the release of 0.3, and 3 months since the last visible update on 0.4 branch.

So, I set out for another alternative once again.

BottomFeeder

I couldn’t figure out how to configure proxy setting, which I need when I’m at work.

Awasu

It’s somewhat interesting looking, cool name, and even has an ability to swap the integrated browser for viewing pages within the program, although it’s not officially supported. The problem is, HTTP user authentication, etc are only enabled in professional version and up only. I wan a freeware, preferably an open source product.

Syndirella

This one was just still too poor in feature and UI etc.

NewsMonster

Finally something that’s integrated to Mozilla. The problem is, when I installed it on Firefox, it was ugly. This one is NOT for Firefox. It’s only for Mozilla and Netscape 7! Firefox users, stay away from this product!

I give up. I just can’t find the solution I can get happy with. For now, I’m going to stick with nntp//rss + Thunderbird. I got very acustomed to having RSSReader running all the time, but this needs to change now. Besides, now I have 2 programs in one – both email and rss in T-bird!

I have experimented with several aggregators since yesterday’s post. So, what did I find out? I found out that I don’t like all of my candidates.

Opera

pro: displays HTML news contents, does not require .NET or JAVA

con: clunky UI, in-line image not supported

FeedReader

pro: displays full HTML news contents, does not require .NET or JAVA, fast

con: Relies on MSIE engine

RSSOwl

pro: Runs on Java technology, good UI

con: no support for HTML contents, default HTML viewer is MSIE for windows version

comment: The default browser for unix/linux version is Mozilla. I don’t understand why they couldn’t do the same with windows version

So, I searched for alternatives.

I thought about using XSL to display contents as HTML. But using this method lacks the support for old/new item flag, which I really like on all of the above mentioned programs.

Then I thought about writing my own RSS parser in PHP. It wouldn’t be too hard. It’s not the fastest solution, but handling XML in PHP was pretty easy when I’ve tried it out in the past. (It was just recently that I found the power of building OOP-based library for handling XML in PHP, without use of DOMXML. Maybe I’ll mention that some other day.)

I tried out MyYahoo‘s RSS aggregation service, since I already use MyYahoo. The result wasn’t too pleasing.

Besides, surfing through all those RSS news using those web interface would be a bit clunky. I wouldn’t like it too well anyway.

I tried out nntp//rss. It’s RSS to NNTP (usenet protocol) gateway, written in Java. The idea is close to those of YahooPOPS and HotPOP – the POP3 simulators for Yahoo Mail and HotMail. Except it can be configured to subscribe multiple feeds (they are not targeted for 1 news source, thank goodness!), and uses NNTP to communicate with the client, not POP3. I really like how it works. Now I can use Mozilla Thunderbird to view the RSS news.

And here’s one more thing: while I was searching for all these program,s I also stumbled upon quickSub – a small javascript library that makes subscription to the news feed easier for many RSS programs, including RSS Bandit, SharpReader, and, of course, nntp//rss. Now, it’s time to go add this library to Froth-Bite’s release page.

…or aggregator, you might say.
http://www.winplanet.com/article/2432-.htm
As most of us know, MSIE is loaded with security holes. It’s not all too buggy, but it’s insecure. All the security experts nowadays warn against the use of IE. Well, IE isn’t a bad thing if you keep up with all the security patches, firewalls, anti-virus, anti-spyware, etc. But still, we’re still finding more security holes everyday. That scares me. So, I’ve been sticking with Mozilla based browsers – namely, Phoenix, Firebird, and now Firefox. (Or Firepanda, if you use Fireanything plug-in.)

That’s fine and dandy for the most part. But recently, I was thinking, it’s not too wise of idea to be using applications like RssReader, which is based on .NET framework (not too bad) and MSIE (bad bad bad).

Well, fine. So I’ll make a switch. There are plenty of non-.NET/MSIE based aggregators around. Yes, sure. But most of them are JAVA based. I don’t hate JAVA, especially as a user of Azureus. But, I was hoping to get Mozilla based RSS Reader. And so far, I’ve only found side-bar RSS reader plug-in, which isn’t powerful enough in my opinion.

Anyway, for now, my choices are RSS-Owl and Opera’s built-in RSS system. If anyone out there know of any good reader that you really recommend (especially if it’s something like Thunderbird add-on), then let me know. I’d be eager to try it out.