Month: May 2003

Meet me down at the pubDate

Post author By Dotan Dimet
Post date May 05, 2003

Futzing about with my RSS 2 feed, I discovered the mind-numbing fact that Movable Type can’t output a valid pubDate (explanation ). phil ringnalda solved this using a plug-in, which seems like swatting flies with an elephant gun. I could probably just hardcode the damn timezone…

One reason I was futzing with the templates is to move the full body of the message from a <content:encoded> element to a proper xhtml <body> element (as seen on the sites of Sam Ruby and Don Box). Good for shaking out XML errors, and already supported in SharpReader.

Roleplaying

The Dungeons and Dragons Cartoon Show

Post author By Dotan Dimet
Post date May 05, 2003

Mark Evanier has some funny anecdotes about his involvement with the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon show, and links to Michael Reaves’ unproduced “final” episode of the series.

Comics

Peter David

Post author By Dotan Dimet
Post date May 05, 2003

Apparently, I didn’t mention so far that Comics (and Star Trek novelization) writer Peter David has a nice site, with a blog. Lots of Buffy/Angel reviews.

I met Peter David at the San Diego Comic Con in 1990, and asked him the inevitable “why did you kill Jean DeWolfe“?. He said he’d killed her off in his story precisly because of the reaction it would provoke, because this was a character fans cared about. Clever guy.

Resources

Sacred Texts, 22 Goblins

Post author By Dotan Dimet
Post date May 03, 2003

Sacred Texts is an awesome resource, collecting public domain translations of religious and mythological texts. On that site, I started reading a collection of Hindu fantasy stories, Twenty-two Goblins, by Arthur W. Ryder (1917), which is really good so far.

Software and Programming

Eric Sink, CornSharp, Mosaic

Post author By Dotan Dimet
Post date May 02, 2003

Lots of interesting reading on Eric Sink’s weblog (well, interesting if you’re a programming geek). Just two examples – he’s put up a nice little client-side weblog-management tool he wrote in C# for managing his site (CornSharp), and he’s got a nice piece on his Memoirs From the Browser Wars.