Header graphic.


Messing around with the template.  Permanent link to this item in the archive.

Feeling my way around in here Permanent link to this item in the archive.

It's eerie. Updates are so fast and invisible. I'd read comments by earlier testers that the blog tool seemed lightweight and quick. It does feel that way. But there's more to it than speed, or at least there is an illusion of the sensation being more than speed -- it's something more like proximity. It feels like there's no transfer to a web server happening at all, as though I'm just saving to a drive somewhere close by. It seems more, what? Direct. That sounds mystical almost, doesn't it? Never mind me.


Odd news from my town Permanent link to this item in the archive.

A local woman is suing both a Bears football player and the Lord of the Dance. I interviewed a nanny candidate once who was suing a 49ers player to take responsibility for paternity. DNA tests and everything. She seemed to think it was just fine. I half (well, maybe a sixth) considered her but ultimately went another way. Click here to access the object that's linked to this item.


What about the world outline?  Permanent link to this item in the archive.

That's the part of this thing I'm more interested in than the blog tool (though I am shopping for new blog software since pMachine doesn't support pMachine any more).

I'll have to post to the newbie list and see if I can recruit a buddy to check out the collaboration aspect. Or maybe it would be better to push this on a work colleague or hobby collaborator so it would be real work. Better trial that way.


Notes Permanent link to this item in the archive.

Nice that Control-Z is both undo and redo. I like that.

I should try the editor on a SCORM manifest. Collapsing would be handy there.

Comments don't show up in the browser? I guess that's the way it should be.

Interested in learning more about mashing together RSS feeds in OPML, tying blogs together. Could be a handy thing for volunteer divisions blogs and newsletters at work.

The feed isn't saving right. I get that "Can't call 'item #1' " error. Get it when I hit the save button too, but I can save with a keyboard shortcut.

I wonder if my style tags are messing things up.

It's odd to think of a paragraph as a line in an outline. Or is it the other way around? I gotta go to bed.

There's no OPML file type in Windows. If I wanted to make one, what would the mime type be?

Nope, now the RSS feed looks right.


Sweet little Flash podcast player Permanent link to this item in the archive.

imageHave you seen PupuPlayer?

Click on the Who Said game graphic on the right and you'll see what it does (launches a little window containing a Flash player loaded up with all the items in my podcast feed, and starts right in playing the most recent one).

It's nothing you couldn't make yourself if you know a little more Flash than I do, but I don't so I popped for the 10 bucks for rights to customize it. There's also a free version that advertises other podcasts.

Let me tell you what I think I'm going to do with it, and how I made it work in Loudblog, the PHP/MySQL app that generates my feed and edits my ID3 tags and makes this page.

What I'll do with it. I don't need a Flash player for the podcast site, because Loudblog has a nice one built in to each entry, in the way a lot of podcast directories do it. I was interested in PupuPlayer as a way to allow other sites to play my podcast.

  • I've put it on another of my own sites already.
  • I think it would be a good tool for cross promotion of podcasts -- as something you do for another cast in a formal network, or just an informal periodic cross-pollination thing.
  • And I also think some static sites might really like to let their visitors play audio files as a content feature, if it fits the subject matter of the site.

image

Making it work with Loudblog. If you want your own link and graphic to show up in the player you need to futz with the feed, add a tag like you do for iTunes. I didn't have to worry about the iTunes tags because Gerrit, the Loudblog developer, was kind enough to his users to work all day on a new version that builds the new iTunes tags in. I think he did it the day or the day after iTunes added podcasts.

When you buy PupuPlayer, you get instructions in email on how to edit your feed by hand, but I struck out yesterday trying to figure out how Loudblog generates the feed in PHP. Whatever I was doing was invalidating the feed, so I looked away from it for a day and now it's fine. Isn't it funny how that's all it takes sometimes. Just a different frame of mind.

So, if you use Loudblog and you want to add the Pupu tag, here's what you do (worked for me, anyway):

  • Ignore the instruction to edit the RSS version tag. Pupu's own sample feed doesn't show it edited.
  • To add the tag that shows your image and link in the player, edit Loudblog's buildpodcast.php file found in /loudblog/inc/. Around line 112 or so, under the description tag, paste this in, replacing your own URLs

    echo "<pp:media link=\"http://www.whosaid.org" image="http://www.whosaid.org/images/avatar.jpg"/>n";

That does it. It's also possible to have separate images for each item, which might be cool, but I don't know if I'll get into that, at least not until I know if anybody is looking at this thing!

 

Last modified: Friday, October 31, 2008 at 6:14 PM.

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