Oh good, Tom's learning XSL-FO 

Hey Tom, whenever we get back to the OPML Editor 1.0 support site, maybe you'd like to practice the OPML-to-PDF conversion on the docs? I do mean to get back to the site when my OPML ennui wears off, and it will. I'd like to see how it works, anyway, for work. Strikes me it might be a good way to prepare simple print publications, with a great browsable archive. You could completely skip over Quark for stuff like newsletters, not for magazines. Gotta leave the print designers something to do.

BTW, thanks, Dave, for keeping the backup for us freeloaders. The uptime and speed have been really good in recent months, ever since the server split.

So that's what we are -- incrementalists 

Adam describes the temperamental gulf between semweb types and the OPML geeks. Rings true to me.

Later: Anybody got an Oxford handy? I hate to use the wrong word, so I went back and looked up temperamental. Didn't temper used to have a meaning broader than the one in current use? In Austen's day, when I don't think they used the word "personality," didn't it mean something more like emotional and intellectual constitution? I wish all entries in all online dictionaries would continue to list archaic meanings. It's nice to know where your language is coming from.

Dueling desires: starting sponsored fiction soon 

PayPerPost finally approved my blog, and I'll start my experiment with paid posts as product placements within serialized fiction, probably this weekend. I'm not sure if I want to carry on with the story started here just to illustrate what I meant to do. What do you think? Would you follow it -- or how about something a little more fantastic?

Whining WOWers and whining Amyloo 

Wired writer Lore Sjöberg throws some taxonomy on whining posters to World of Warcraft forums. It interested me as a student of message board culture, and as the overhearer of my younger son's obsession with WOW.

Reading the story also provided me with another limb in the body of evidence I've been compiling lately that convicts me -- and lots of other people who spew things onto the web -- of chronic complaining. I don't like the overall tone of the things I post. Too many times when I'm moved to blog about something, it's to say something is stupid or take somebody to task. It poisons the soul. I think I'm going to have to do something about it.