A stream of thoughtsciousness

My name is Donovan Watts. I am the Founder of Getting Sites Built, a web design agency.. we plan, design and build websites. Donovan's thoughtStream is my weblog. For kicks, I hoop.

www.flickr.com

Start here

thoughtStream noteStream (OPML format)

looking for some music on the creative commons site. you know what that means. another thoughtStream coming soon.

i'm happy to announce that artformula is now thoughtStreaming.

amyloo's newsriver template

changes.opml.org

Amyloo's OPML blog

Dan MacTough's OPML blog

Ross Notes (I apologize if this works)

Donovan's thoughtStream

Kellie Miller's OPML blog

kossopml : future data orgy

Matt Terenzio's OPML blog

Tom Morris

weblogging with opml editor. the challenge is to integrate it into your daily work flow or creative flow and easily toss bits of data like words and pix and audio to your site.

i'm trying to do that with my thoughts. a musician might do that with her creative energy, incorporating her thoughts and actions, the very things that make her art, into a workflow that *adds* a simple little outliner window to the mix. now her audience, those on the web who are interested in her work, can keep up with much more content, should the artist wish to 'upstream' it. and to get the artist to upstream it, it needs to be easy, open source, and solid, with good documentation.

imagine a room full of computers. each computer has opml editor on it. each opml editor is configured as a client as well as a community server. is this possible? i wonder what that kind of environment would be like? some seriously fun exchange of info could happen i imagine.

found out how to upload large files in wordpress and keep them all in one folder. add some code to your .htaccess file or php.ini file (look earlier in this thoughtStream for the code) to allow for a larger upload size than your ISP currently has setup. in my case it was 4.5MB. then, go to miscellaneous options in wordpress and uncheck the following: Organize my uploads into month- and year-based folders

thinking about opml editor support system and the instant outliner

there is opml support discussion board. opml-newbies email list. opml-support email list. what if there was an opml instant outliner club? why are we all using old school discussion boards and email lists when we have a powerful, community driven, outliner based, instant messaging type of support system right under our noses?

Dave Winer: "It turns out to be a big deal if you're working with a group of people on a complex project."

sounds like what we're doing with the opml editor to me. so, i'm going to bootstrap this and anyone that wants to jump on board and learn the opml editor with me, please add my instant outline to your Buddy list. And then let me know your instant outline address so I can add you to my Buddy list. Then, together we can experiment and learn about the OPML Editor, while using the OPML Editor. It's a cyclic thing.

Dave Winer: "Just join the community and start participating. There are no formal roles. Become an expert in something and help people out. That's how it works.

oK, so what shall I become an expert at? hopefully all this thoughtStreaming will lead me to the answer.

would be neat if we had a theme repository for OPML Editor users to share templates.

Take my OPML Editor theme, please

The theme for this OPML Editor site is available under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 2.0 license. Please take it and use it.

Template.opml - OPML Editor users, open this up in your outliner. Edit the various parts in the header and sidebars.

CSS file - Download and then drop this file somewhere on your server and point to it from the Template.

oh yeah! site theme fixed. and not only that, i decided to use the power of my outliner to clean up the theme like i should have done in the first place. once i finally got it all structured right, the extra div tag that was causing me grief became readily apparent.

working on site templates in an outliner is great.

working on site theme. some stuff broken.

meet the thoughtBlip

it's 2:40. if i were dyslexic i might think it was 4:20. =)

how to add static pages to opml editor blog? i created an about folder in the www:blogs folder and then created a new index.opml file and dropped it in there. but i can't see where it is on the web. is it over at hosting.opml.org? hmmm. nope, access forbidden. but if i enter this address, i can see it in the raw form. i want to have an about/index.html page on my opml blog.

even though this is a thoughtStream and it's meant to just flow, i guess i should take a little more time out to add more links. that is the spirit of blogging after all.

how many email addresses do you have? i've got so many i just can't seem to ever end up with just one.

when i get my omni three keyboard i'm going to program one of the buttons as the 'New Entry' button from my OPML Editor. in the meantime, how can i create a system wide hotkey to pull opml editor to the front and start a new entry?

update: steve kirks has the answer.

dropsend is great for sending large files. can't upload >20 MB to basecamp so i use dropsend instead.

myprivacy.ca

i forgot that i have a private email address through myprivacy.ca. it is designed to reduce whois email address harvesting.

* Create a free @myprivacy.ca address

* Enter your real email address as the forwarding destination.

* Go back to your registrar and enter your myprivacy.ca address in your domain whois records.

http goes to firefox. https goes to safari. i want them both to go to firefox. how?

don't forget about import/export. suppose opml editor gets all the hooks it needs to control every aspect of a wordpress site. the metaweblog api enhancements get taken care of and everyone is happy. now, will it be easy for me to pull all the posts from my current wordpress weblog into the opml editor so i can have everything in one place? or do i just pick up from here and don't look back?

i think it's important to not only offer up standards for importing/exporting our data so we don't get locked in the trunk. however, as i'm discovering from my attempt to move my radio blog into wordpress that the promise of data shuffling sounds better than it actually is. lots of wrangling must be done to hop on another platform. unless you are lucky enough to have a specific import mechanism but those only seem to exist for the major systems like blogger, and some others. the rest of us poor saps gotta use rss import and really fix up our data first so that everything, including item-level links get imported in the process.

dave doesn't use super entry posts much. hmmm. maybe i can be more free flowing. outlines encourage me to move things around which is good but it also makes my creativity take a back seat to my organizational side. i don't want that here. just a thoughtStream here. not terribly organized. on purpose. you want organization? visit donovan's run.

yes, super entries are going to be reserved from now on. hardly used. free flow is that name of the game in this outliner. just a reaffirmation here.

Basecamp is two years old today. wow how time flies. i remember how i couldn't wait for basecamp to arrive and now i use it every single day to manage my client projects. it's da bomb.

dave winer: "I am a publisher, I love RSS, and I'm proud of it"

post office sucks

where's my friggin mail? argh. temp change of address causes such grief.

opml editor on port 5335 now?

i thought opml editor was on port 5337 or something. i think this is conflicting with Radio UserLand. what up?

how to change the max filesize upload parameter

It is possible for you to change these variables via a .htaccess file. The

lines that you will need to put in there will look like this:

php_value upload_max_filesize 15m

php_value post_max_size 20m

excellent. that worked.

listening to dave's morning coffee notes

blogging became story writing. not what dave wanted to do but the o-reilly folks wanted title-link-description (tld) in manila. became the defacto "formal" process.

dave explains why google didn't stay out of china. they are a business and business's have to compete. bottom line.

where we need to go now. dave sees it now that he's been using wordpress. in spirit of open source... dave says... he wants on home page of blog same as what he has with scripting news. if he gets that, he'll switch to wordpress as his backend. wow. he wants to edit all parts of the site using minor metaweblog API enhancements to do it.

oak tree = dave. young tree = matt

reached an interesting place in last 24 hours. dan mactough very productive member of opml community. had dan figure out with kosso what the ompl community server problem is. dave still doesn't know what it is. as far as he knew, no problem because followed instructions to a 'T' and got a good install.

out of this came about... this podcast, which is better than a post which can be misread. dave wants to support function for community. a page on a site... dave points to it from docs... questions about getting server install right? refer to this checklist. maintained by both kosso and dan. 2 weeks from now a howto. plus a mail list or post to opml-newbies and kosso or dan will help you. by having people at the intersections of communities, things progress.

dave leaves trails... ideally we'd leave people as well who act as contributors to a particular area while dave moves forward.

summary:

1. how wordpress and outlining can make big difference in blogging model. editing env. for home page of blog. look at kottke's remainder links page for examples but dave thinks it's too much work. just move something in an outline is dave's answer.

2. bootstrap opml community server community

nnw: Celsius1414: Anentry is a "simple AppleScript to send an email via Mail based on the currently selected headline in NetNewsWire."

opml community

dave: Today's podcast is about WordPress, Google and the OPML community. It's especially important for the leaders of the OPML community to listen to this podcast, because I want to explore ways for the support system to grow. I think we just had a very good experience and I want to build on it.

opml community server howto

feedblitz says OPML reading list import added

i guess that would be good for if i, as a publisher, wanted to import many feeds at once?

let's get this started.

argh. i'll need a screen shot to explain this. why does my opml feed end up with the words null when produced as a feedburner feed?

subscribe to this thoughtStream via email. maybe i'll add this to my template.

hey! looks like the Event Log remembered (sort of) where it was last time when i quit. i don't think it did this before? i say sort of because i think it was in the same location but the window was wider than i last had it.

weird. as soon as i did that the Event Log went away and a new one opened up in the standard middle of the screen. oh well.

drat. is blogs.opml.org down again? maybe i should think about installing my own opml server on my laptop and posting my own stuff to my own server. seems pretty cool to just keep it all contained right on my laptop. and if anyone really wants a peak, they can just sub to my rss feed. hmmm.

podcatcher of my thoughtStreams

while i wait for the latest thoughtStream to upload to the server, i note the Podcatcher has kicked in and an outline of my talkr.com generated audio posts is waiting for me.

since podcatcher produces an outline, i can paste it in here easily.

2/1/06; 1:01:46 AM

Donovan's thoughtStream via Talkr.com

robots speak your blog posts at talkr. what is talkr.com ? speaks your posts pretty darn good. much better than that crap merlin mann uses. just signed up for talkr. totally cool. ok, this is getting crazy. you can listen to this post as read by a robot. maybe the tweacs audio posts i've been recording aren't necessary after all. i can just have some friggin' robot do my job for me. there's some code you can put in your post so that every post has a link to the robot reading your post. click on the link below and you will be subscribed to my talkr podcast, containing a new podcast for each and every post! holy crap. that'd be nuts. wish me luck... i'm going in. how could i not subscribe to that? ok, just subscribed in opml editor to my own robot generated talkr podcast. hit scan now. let's see what comes in. oops. forgot to turn on enclosure downloading. ok, i'm officially tripping out. talkr just warped my mind. it seems that talkr might not understand the permalink url that opml editor generates. in particular, the # sign i believe. because when i enter the following url as a test according to their instructions i should get an audio post of this show. but i get an error because it doesn't see the #robotsSpeakYourBlogPostsAtTalkr part of the permalink. drat. Apologies, but we cannot find a post with the permalink: http://blogs.opml.org/dwatts/2006/01/31

2/1/06; 1:01:43 AM

Donovan's thoughtStream

first morning coffee notes of 2006

2/1/06; 1:00:25 AM

Donovan's thoughtStream

kosso's opml community server howto

2/1/06; 1:00:24 AM

Donovan's thoughtStream

optimus mini three keyboard. what is this?