Something else interesting in what Lisa wrote: "It's also the case that blog editing is really just an example application for the OPML Editor..." In other words, blogs.opml.org is just a demo. Think about what else can be done with quick, lightweight, hands-on management of semi-structured information within a desktop environment well-equipped with a rich, network-enabled scripting framework. There's another source of enthusiasm for me. ";->"

The OPML Editor means Getting Things Blogged

• Lisa Williams points to OPML blogging bewilderment from authors of a desktop blogging client, Qumana. I compared the OPML Editor to a cavitating torpedo. It's just fast and uncomplicated - it's light on formatting features, but that itself is a feature. I type, and save, and I'm published. I could post 60 entries in a minute, maybe more. (I type pretty fast, think faster.) When I open the day's outline, I'm not Faced with the Task of Composing a Document, I'm faced with a structure based on luring atomic thoughts out of my head. Ready, fire, aim. That's the blogging style here.

• I come back here later; I can post another entry; move it around; expand on an idea; restructure atomic ideas into a molecule of a larger entry. The day's context and history remain splayed out for my perusal. The day is a fine unit of continuity for a run of thought. Further on through the course of thought, I can move into a richer tool if I feel I've got enough from which to Compose a Document - but until then, at least I haven't wedged the mechanisms. I've gotten it out of my head. Getting Things Done, blogger style.

• Since I started playing with this tool for blogging, I'll bet that I've gotten more out of my head and onto the web in just over two weeks than I have in the past six months. This has been a theme in my blogging for quite some time now. So, you can probably imagine why finding what looks like a solution to the problem has induced such enthusiasm in me.

Hmm. I have a suspicion that my NewsRiver has stopped doing hourly scans, despite my prefs setting. I wonder if it's something my code broke, somehow? Trying to track down the spot where the hourly check happens so I can start tracing.

You know how people go through all sorts of gymnastics to obfuscate their email addresses so as to escape the baleen of spammers' spiderbots? It's too late for me - my email address, l.m.orchard@pobox.com, has been around too long and disclosed too often to be a secret. So, bah. It's like DRM - it only has to fail and get cracked once for everyone to get a copy.

Shelley has a great ramble about learning programming languages that circles around and back again to the ascendance of PHP as the language for today's un-cool programmers.

Planet OPML

• Another idea dumped into my Maybe Do list:

  • "Planet OPML"

    • Built as a public RSS aggregator

    • Subscriptions from an OPML reading list

    • OPML reading list sources drawn from a weekly history window of top updaters found via changes.opml.org

      • Idea courtesy of Donovan

Oh yeah, in case anyone wonders: People (including you) can call me Les. My search term for google-juice l.m.orchard, and my personal brand-name is 0xDECAFBAD. Occasionally, my user name is deusx, deusx23, lmorchard, or lorchard. It's all kind of weird and confusing sometimes, but all these monikers make for easier disambiguated ego-searching in the tuple space, usually. Some of these are artifacts of my past attempts at being a cool kid. ";->"

I'm surprised I haven't heard of ImageWell before now. This looks like a perfect little app for wrangling images into a blog. Thanks, Donovan!

Book writing is a brain sucker

• There's nothing like writing a book to wring free every last drop of interest one has in a topic. After finishing Hacking RSS and Atom, I didn't want to think about or touch anything syndication feed related ever again. Of course, my reservoirs of interest have since self-replenished, and I expect the same will happen with respect to my thoughts on del.icio.us.

• I've still got a fair bit to go before the finish line, though, and I hope the end product yields something with which my editors and I might be satisfied - and something for which you'll part with well-earned cash to purchase!

• At this point, I feel like just about every fractal neural branching of my brain on this subject has been roughly extracted and aspirated clean from my cranial cavity. If you can believe it, all this public brainstorming I've been doing with the OPML Editor has really been akin to water injection in oil fields, so that my brain doesn't collapse in upon itself from the vacuum left behind. (The main difference being that the OPML injection itself is worth recovering once I've gotten all the del.icio.us out of there in a few weeks.)

This free icon viral sharing system at iconbuffet is rather a bit of genius, I must say.

And, when it rains, it pours - I also appear to have received a delivery of this coffee icon set from George Hotelling, though alas it ended up in my weekly-checked junkmail folder.

I like being able to make public shoutouts and get friendly replies in this lil OPML blogosphere sub-space. ";->"

Oh yeah, and I've got these deliveries available to share on iconbuffet, for what it's worth: