Magpie RSS - PHP RSS Parser. Been up to a few things this past weekend. Worked about 6 hours Saturday, setting up some assays. But for downtime that night, I looked into syndicating news sites for my "Interests / Links" page. Let me tell you, it was not fun trying to find a PHP script to parse RSS files. First of all, there are three main versions people are using now, I believe--version 0.91, 1.0, and the new 2.0. The script had to be able to read all three formats. Finally, I stumbled upon MagpieRSS on Sourceforge (the link above), after going through a few pages in a google search. It's just what I wanted, and the functions are very easy to use and intuitive. Installation was a snap. I'm glad someone out there wrote this, saves me lots of time trying to reproduce it. Check out my results in my Links page. Hopefully in the future, I can use the functions to develop a more informative blog.
I also ended up upgrading version 2.51 of MovableType to 2.63. Followed the directions on their website and upgrading was a breeze.
MovableType has an automatic script that writes xml files for RSS in versions 0.91 and 1.0. It's nice to have that function--with the link to my xml file, I went to Feedster and submitted my site to their search engine of blogs and syndicated news channels. Hopefully providing some more traffic to my site. I wish my friends blogs had RSS files for me syndicate their sites--much better way of directing traffic to their sites, rather than a plain-ol' link.
Thought about completing my taxes and sending it out this weekend, got tied up with other things--huge birthday party for friends' children. Oh well, I'm a procrastinator, I'll have my taxes out the last day. Also thought about finishing up the last touches of my paper, waiting on one last experiment (I hope) to finish it.
Just got an email from Computer Geeks, they have Dell Axim PDA's for sale at very reasonable prices. The 300MHz version is running for around $150 and the 400MHz version is around $200. These prices are much better compared to the Audiovox Maestro. The processor is much faster. I still don't see why people are getting the iPaq's when these run at such discounted prices in comparison. Someone please tell me? Is it the integrated wifi? Bigger screen?
Posted by johnvu at April 7, 2003 11:14 AM