LittleJoe

New Tampa blogger: my better half

There's a new blogger in town! Last night we set up a site for my wife, Shirley. At times during our 25+ years together, I've called her "Squirrelly", and she is quite musical (plays classical piano, sings, writes and arranges music), so I think she came up with the perfect blog name and logo idea. Swing on by the new Squirrelly Notes site and drop her a line.

I think it's cool that Shirley's got her own site going now, although I do feel a little trepidation at the thought of what she might post - she makes Teresa Heinz-Kerry seem reserved :)

XML link added top left

Bonj posted a comment that he'd had a tough time locating the proper link for this site's RSS feed. Click on the "RSS" in the preceding sentence if you need an explanation of RSS. Anyway....I've added a link for one of this site's XML feeds. OK, a quick bit of explanation - but real quick ...There are various standards out there for how content from a web site can be made available in XML. This site is using a service called TypePad, and by default this site has several formats of XML feed available. The link I've added under the photo at the top left is for one of those XML-format data feeds.

The idea is that you can read the data feeds from sites in which you are interested using, appropriately enough, a feed reader program. These programs are also called "news readers" and also "news aggregators". There are many available, and many of them are free. In a Windows environment, I prefer SharpReader. I've also used FeedReader (another free program) and NewzCrawler (about US$25). Your feed reader program of choice can then automatically go to the sites you've designated, and pull in any updates from the sites, so you have a much quicker way to read the updated content versus pointing your web browser to each site explicitly.

Personally, I've now got the feeds in my reader program categorized into Tampa bloggers, Tech sites, Domino sites (the kind of programming I do), political sites, and news sites. The program is set to automatically check the sites every couple of hours, and new entries are highlighted for me in the reader program. So...If you've been looking for where the heck my XML feed is, it should now be easier to find. If you've never tried a reader program, you may want to give it a try!

Tampa Bay Blogger Fest Oct2004

OK, I'm a little tight on time, but I have posted some pics from the second Tampa Bay Blogger Fest! Many thanks to Mr. Bill of SOHOTampa for being such a fantastic tour guide. We hit 7 different establishments in the SOuth HOward area of Tampa...and there were plenty of places we didn't go! Hey, who knew there were so many great spots? The places we visited were:

1. MacDinton's (405 S Howard Ave)
2. HoHo's Chinese (533 S Howard Ave)
3. 717 (717 S Howard Ave)
4. 42nd Street Bistro (516 S Howard)
5. Po'Boys (2216 W Platt St)
6. Mangrove's (208 S Howard Ave)
7. The Dubliner (2307 W Azeele St)

Taking TypePad for a drive

One of the early (maybe the first?) Domino bloggers, Jake Howlett, posted about TypePad.  Well, although my Domino-related blog is built in Domino, I do like the general appearance of Moveable Type.  I've just been too busy with work and studying things that pertain directly to work to learn about Moveable Type.  Now, however, it appears that with the TypePad service there is a very easy way to create a blog based on Moveable Type.  So here we are then.

There's quite a variety of topics about which I've been compelled to write.  There are also photos I'd like to share.  But if something isn't related to IBM/Lotus technologies or web development or other geek topics, I usually refrain from posting about it in my Domino blog.  The items and pictures I post here may be of little interest to anyone but me, but if this site can serve as a catch basin for the miscellanea that pass from free synapse through keyboard/mouse to cyberspace, then that's good enough.

Thus ends the obligatory first post.