Marcel Marceau’s Greatest Hits!

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As The Apple Turns points out some of the amusing things that happen on the iTunes Music Store:

Yesterday we mentioned in passing that faithful viewer djsteve had purchased a track that cost him the “best 99 cents [he’d] ever spent.” The joke, of course, was that it was the second track from The Whitey Album by Ciccone Youth, which consists of a minute and three seconds’ worth of silence. To tell you the truth, while we’re amused by the fact that Apple is charging 99 cents for a song full o’ nothing, we’re even more amused by the fact that said track contains the usual digital rights management code to prevent you from playing it on any unauthorized systems. And the most amusing thing of all, of course, is that the song has a thirty-second preview.

Well, as it turns out, the Ciccone Youth track is by no means the only all-silent untune for sale at the iTMS; faithful viewers ben, Scott Levin, and Michael Wyszomierski contributed their own suggestions, too. And you know how Apple recently added a bunch of “iTunes Essentials” playlists to the store, such as “Cover Songs” and “’70s AM Radio Classics”? Well, we’ve compiled all the silent tracks we managed to scrape together into the first AtAT Essentials playlist, “To Be Played At Maximum Volume.”

Turn it up! Turn it up!!!!!

iTunes: “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” by Kickshaw from the album Superstar (1999, 6:45).

RSS Templates for TypePad Pro/MovableType

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I just had someone ask how I was able to create the four RSS feeds for my site. Here’s a quick rundown, along with the templates themselves, should anyone else want to do the same thing. All the templates are RSS 2.0, and have been checked with the RSS Feed Validator.

TypePad users will need a Pro account, and will also need to be using an Advanced Template set, as you’ll need to create a new template for each RSS feed you want to add. I give each template a name that’s fairly indicative of which feed it is for, and I make sure that the output file is also named similarly.

Here are the templates I use:

####Default feed: Full text, no comments####

Template Name: RSS 2.0 Full
Output File: index.rdf

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?> <rss version="2.0"      xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"     xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"     xmlns:admin="http://webns.net/mvcb/"     xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"     xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"> 

<channel> 
<title><$MTBlogName remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></title> 
<link><$MTBlogURL$></link> 
<description><$MTBlogDescription remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></description> 
<dc:language>en-us</dc:language> 
<dc:creator><MTEntries lastn="1"><$MTEntryAuthorEmail$></MTEntries></dc:creator> 
<dc:rights>Copyright <$MTDate format="%Y"></dc:rights> 
<dc:date><MTEntries lastn="1"><$MTEntryDate format="%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S"$><$MTBlogTimezone$></MTEntries></dc:date> 
<admin:generatorAgent rdf:resource="http://www.movabletype.org/?v=<$MTVersion$>" /> 
<admin:errorReportsTo rdf:resource="mailto:<MTEntries lastn="1"><$MTEntryAuthorEmail$></MTEntries>"/> 
<sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod> 
<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency> 
<sy:updateBase>2000-01-01T12:00+00:00</sy:updateBase> 

<MTEntries lastn="15"> 
<item> 
<title><$MTEntryTitle remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></title> 
<link><$MTEntryLink encode_xml="1"$></link> 
<description><$MTEntryExcerpt remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></description> 
<guid isPermaLink="false"><$MTEntryID$>@<$MTBlogURL$></guid> 
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<$MTEntryBody$><MTEntryIfExtended><p><a href="<$MTEntryLink$>" title="Continue Reading: <$MTEntryTitle$>">Continue reading <$MTEntryTitle$>...</a></p></MTEntryIfExtended>]]></content:encoded> 
<dc:subject><MTEntryCategories glue=" | "><$MTCategoryLabel remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></MTEntryCategories></dc:subject> 
<dc:date><$MTEntryDate format="%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S"$><$MTBlogTimezone$></dc:date> 
</item> 
</MTEntries> 

</channel> 
</rss>

####Enhanced Feed: Full posts with comments####

Template Name: RSS 2.0 full plus comments
Output File: fullposts.rdf

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?> <rss version="2.0"      xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"     xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"     xmlns:admin="http://webns.net/mvcb/"     xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"     xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"> 

<channel> 
<title><$MTBlogName remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$>: With Comments</title> 
<link><$MTBlogURL$></link> 
<description><$MTBlogDescription remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></description> 
<dc:language>en-us</dc:language> 
<dc:creator><MTEntries lastn="1"><$MTEntryAuthorEmail$></MTEntries></dc:creator> 
<dc:rights>Copyright <$MTDate format="%Y"></dc:rights> 
<dc:date><MTEntries lastn="1"><$MTEntryDate format="%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S"$><$MTBlogTimezone$></MTEntries></dc:date> 
<admin:generatorAgent rdf:resource="http://www.movabletype.org/?v=<$MTVersion$>" /> 
<admin:errorReportsTo rdf:resource="mailto:<MTEntries lastn="1"><$MTEntryAuthorEmail$></MTEntries>"/> 
<sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod> 
<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency> 
<sy:updateBase>2000-01-01T12:00+00:00</sy:updateBase> 

<MTEntries lastn="15"> 
<item> 
<title><$MTEntryTitle remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></title> 
<link><$MTEntryLink encode_xml="1"$></link> 
<description><$MTEntryExcerpt remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></description> 
<guid isPermaLink="false"><$MTEntryID$>@<$MTBlogURL$></guid> 
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<$MTEntryBody$><MTEntryIfExtended><p><a href="<$MTEntryLink$>" title="Continue Reading: <$MTEntryTitle$>">Continue reading <$MTEntryTitle$>...</a></p></MTEntryIfExtended><MTEntryIfAllowComments><p>Comments on this Entry:</p><MTComments><h4><MTCommentAuthorLink show_email="0"> on 
<MTCommentDate format="%b %e, %Y %l:%M %p">:</h4><MTCommentBody></MTComments></MTEntryIfAllowComments>]]></content:encoded> 
<dc:subject><MTEntryCategories glue=" | "><$MTCategoryLabel remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></MTEntryCategories></dc:subject> 
<dc:date><$MTEntryDate format="%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S"$><$MTBlogTimezone$></dc:date> 
</item> 
</MTEntries> 

</channel> 
</rss>

####Short Feed: Excerpts Only####

Template Name: RSS 2.0 Excerpts
Output File: excerpts.rdf

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?> <rss version="2.0"      xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"     xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"     xmlns:admin="http://webns.net/mvcb/"     xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"     xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"> 

<channel> 
<title><$MTBlogName remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$>: Excerpts</title> 
<link><$MTBlogURL$></link> 
<description><$MTBlogDescription remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></description> 
<dc:language>en-us</dc:language> 
<dc:creator><MTEntries lastn="1"><$MTEntryAuthorEmail$></MTEntries></dc:creator> 
<dc:rights>Copyright <$MTDate format="%Y"></dc:rights> 
<dc:date><MTEntries lastn="1"><$MTEntryDate format="%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S"$><$MTBlogTimezone$></MTEntries></dc:date> 
<admin:generatorAgent rdf:resource="http://www.movabletype.org/?v=<$MTVersion$>" /> 
<admin:errorReportsTo rdf:resource="mailto:<MTEntries lastn="1"><$MTEntryAuthorEmail$></MTEntries>"/> 
<sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod> 
<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency> 
<sy:updateBase>2000-01-01T12:00+00:00</sy:updateBase> 

<MTEntries lastn="15"> 
<item> 
<title><$MTEntryTitle remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></title> 
<link><$MTEntryLink encode_xml="1"$></link> 
<description><$MTEntryExcerpt remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></description> 
<guid isPermaLink="false"><$MTEntryID$>@<$MTBlogURL$></guid> 
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<$MTEntryExcerpt$>]]></content:encoded> 
<dc:subject><MTEntryCategories glue=" | "><$MTCategoryLabel remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></MTEntryCategories></dc:subject> 
<dc:date><$MTEntryDate format="%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S"$><$MTBlogTimezone$></dc:date> 
</item> 
</MTEntries> 

</channel> 
</rss>

####Comments only feed####

Template Name: RSS 2.0 Comments
Output File: comments.rdf

Update: The code here has been slightly altered since the original posting to account for an issue with incorrect dates.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?> <rss version="2.0"      xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"     xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"     xmlns:admin="http://webns.net/mvcb/"     xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"     xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"> 

<channel> 
<title><$MTBlogName remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$>: Comments</title> 
<link><$MTBlogURL$></link> 
<description><$MTBlogDescription remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></description> 
<dc:language>en-us</dc:language> 
<dc:creator><MTEntries lastn="1"><$MTEntryAuthorEmail$></MTEntries></dc:creator> 
<dc:rights>Copyright <$MTDate format="%Y"></dc:rights> 
<dc:date><MTEntries lastn="1"><$MTEntryDate format="%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S"$><$MTBlogTimezone$></MTEntries></dc:date> 
<admin:generatorAgent rdf:resource="http://www.movabletype.org/?v=<$MTVersion$>" /> 
<admin:errorReportsTo rdf:resource="mailto:<MTEntries lastn="1"><$MTEntryAuthorEmail$></MTEntries>"/> 
<sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod> 
<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency> 
<sy:updateBase>2000-01-01T12:00+00:00</sy:updateBase> 

<MTComments lastn="20">
<item> 
<MTCommentEntry> 
<title><$MTEntryTitle remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></title> 
<link><$MTEntryPermalink encode_xml="1"$>#c<$MTCommentID$></link> 
<description><$MTCommentBody remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></description> 
<guid isPermaLink="false"><$MTCommentID$>@<$MTBlogURL$></guid> 
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<MTCommentAuthorLink show_email="0">: <$MTCommentBody$>]]></content:encoded> 
</MTCommentEntry>
<dc:date><$MTCommentDate format="%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S"$><$MTBlogTimezone$></dc:date> 
</item>
</MTComments> 

</channel> 
</rss>

Suit measurements?

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My brother has very kindly offered to get me a suit for his wedding next weekend (and he just asked me to be best man!). This should be pretty cool, as I haven’t had a suit in years…but now I need to get myself measured.

Anyone in Seattle know of a place in the downtown/First Hill/Capitol Hill area that I could go get measured for a suit without having to buy one? Or, failing that, what measurements are generally needed so I could do it myself? I’m quite clueless in these matters.

iTunes: “Ultimo Imperio” by Atahualpa from the album Techno-Trax Vol. 1 (1991, 6:32).

Bush’s Budget

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Bush has announced his budget, and the Chicago Sun-Times takes a look:

The president’s budget reveals his priorities, what he truly cares about. It is not a reassuring picture.

The president’s first priority remains tax cuts, largely for the wealthy. Millionaires are pocketing \$30,000 a year in tax breaks from this president. The president wants, first and foremost, to make his tax cuts permanent — no matter what that means for the deficit, for investments in our future, for already obscene extremes of inequality in what once was a middle-class nation.

Tax cuts for the wealthy come first — before jobs, before schools, before health care, before poverty, before the war on Iraq, before dealing with the deficits. Bush proposed these tax cuts when the economy was soaring and the budget was in surplus. He demanded them when the economy tanked and the budget went into deficit. He insisted on them even as he led the nation into wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And now, with record deficits, a jobless recovery, costly and endless occupations, he wants only to make them permanent.

…With schools inundated with record numbers of students, Bush won’t even keep his own promise to fund his education reforms. With university tuitions soaring and community colleges getting cut, he abandons his campaign pledge to increase Pell grants. His much-advertised community college budget doesn’t even make up for what has been lost.

Bush devotes less than 3 percent of his budget for education. Educating the next generation is less important to the president than providing for the inheritances of the next generation of wealthiest Americans.

Surprised? No. Annoyed? Greatly.

Just scanning the Google News related headlines, it looks like nobody seems to think Bush has a clue what he’s doing. Kos looks at the reaction too, noting that even Republicans aren’t happy with this.

The MS Mac BU

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Last Friday, the Seattle P-I ran a nice story on the Macintosh Business Unit at Microsoft, which included a photo of some of the Mac BU staffers seated in front of racks of Mac computers. I read it and appreciated it, but at the time, I didn’t give it much more thought.

Today, Todd Bishop points out that a few other readers drew some amusingly suspicious conclusions based on the fact that the computers in the photo were older model G3’s, and not new G5’s…

One person who e-mailed raised the issue of the Microsoft contract worker who was fired after posting a photo of new PowerMac G5s arriving on campus. The e-mailer put that situation together with the newspaper photo and theorized that Microsoft was trying to hide the fact that it had bought new G5s. He asked if the company prevented the P-I from taking the photo in front of any G5s.

Amusing as this is…sorry, folks, nothing so dastardly!

I hate to dispel a good conspiracy theory, but in fact, we were given a full tour of the test lab — which includes PowerMac G5s and basically every other Mac ever made, as I described in this post last week. P-I photographer Phil Webber could have taken the photo wherever he wanted, but the G3s provided a more colorful background than the metallic G5s would have.

I was always a little bummed that I never did find a way to wander my way through the Mac BU during my time on the MS campus. Microsoft or no Microsoft, just being around that much Mac history (both computers and software — remember, much as we love to hate them, Microsoft has been a major Mac supporter and software supplier since the Mac’s introduction) and Mac fans could have been a lot of fun, even if it were just for a tour or walkthrough.

It may be a bit late for me to peek in their doors now, though. ;)

Todd also mentioned something else that gave me a laugh — when Slashdot posted a link to the Seattle P-I’s article, a couple commenters decided to exercise their funny…

Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit: An anonymous reader writes “Today’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer has an interesting piece on the folks who work at the Mac Business Unit for Microsoft.”

andih8u: They make software for macs and have a mac business unit. I hope someone can get some shots of macs being unloaded from a truck.

wed128: Nah…that might reveal the location of one of microsoft’s unloading platforms…any employee would be fired for an offense so great…

Teaching? Technical writing?

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Every so often, a topic pops up in the TypePad User Group forums that I feel I can add my own particular little brand of insight into, and I’ll spend some time doing my best to explain (often in excruciating detail) what’s going on. I recently got a very nice comment from Doc in response to one such post.

…another excellent description. Are you sure there’s not a bit of teacher in you someplace?

The funny thing is that over the years, I’ve gotten quite a few comments along those lines from many friends of mine, and I’ve started considering the possibility of pursuing getting a teaching degree ~~if~~ [when]{.underline} I manage to get back into school. It’s always flattering to get comments like Doc’s that indicate that this might not be an entirely unrealistic goal.

Another direction I sometimes toss around in my head is technical writing. I’ve come up with quite a few different ‘how-to’ or explanatory posts (quite a few of which are archived here) over time, and I’ve always enjoyed writing them out. There’s a definite satisfaction to being able to take a somewhat obscure concept (such as printer stylesheets, title attributes, or [dealing with blockquote tags]) and finding a way to present it clearly (if not always concisely) so that it can be more easily understood.

As long as I enjoy writing and have an apparent knack for things like this, I sometimes think that getting into technical writing — how-to’s, manuals, documentation, and the like — could be a very interesting way to make a living. Programmers and technicians can often come up with some wonderful applications and devices, but often can’t explain how or why they work as successfully as could be done. I can’t program to save my life, but if I have an ability to come up with decently-crafted explanations, why not explore that a bit?

Of course, I haven’t got the foggiest idea of how to get started, or even how to go about investigating the possibility. Still, it keeps kicking around in my head, so maybe one of these days I’ll stumble upon a direction to go in.

iTunes: “Eastern Promise (Dub Pistols vs. Bow Wow Wow)” by Bow Wow Wow from the album Groove Radio Presents Alternative Mix (1999, 4:08).

Only Just Beginning

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Only Just Beginning

Jason Webley has a new CD coming out.

There once was a boy who remembered that his heart did not ever really belong to him.

So he tried to give it back to the sky.

The CD will be in stores May 11th, with a CD release party April 30th kicking off this summer’s round of touring.

(via Mike [See you at the release party?])

RSS feeds updated

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I’ve updated, rearranged, and cleaned up the RSS feeds for Eclecticism. Hopefully I haven’t just screwed things up too horribly for those of you who subscribe to one feed or another.

Until tonight, the default RSS feed was the ‘full posts plus comments’ feed. This may have been a bad choice, as the default feed is the most likely to be subscribed to by the casual user, and they may not want to automatically get an update every time someone replies to something I’ve posted. Because of this, I’ve swapped the ‘full posts’ and the ‘full posts plus comments’ feeds around.

I’ve also added a fourth RSS feed that is only recent comments. This can come in handy for following discussions on a particular posts, especially after it ages enough that it’s no longer included in any of the primary RSS feeds.

All of the feeds have received some slight tweaks to improve readability, including line and paragraph breaks for comments in the ‘full posts plus comments’ feed (I’m not sure why I had those turned off in the first place), more legible separation of comments in the ‘full posts plus comments’ feed, and more descriptive titles for each of the feeds (‘eclecticism: Excerpts’ and ‘eclecticism: Comments’, for example, rather than four feeds each simply titled ‘eclecticism’).

The feeds page has been updated to reflect the changes and additions, and has also had subscription information for LiveJournal users added.

iTunes: “Temporary Phase” by Sausage from the album Riddles are Abound Tonight (1994, 5:59).

New category, design tweaks

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Following up on my thought process, I’ve added a 15Minutes archive category that collects all posts related to my experiences with blogging my way out of a job.

I’ve also made some other slight design tweaks. I’m now including a list of categories for each post in the metadata on the front page between the post date and the comment/trackback links, and I’ve linked the post date on individual archives to the monthly archive pages.

Nothing really major, but I’ve found myself wishing I had these at various times in the past, and finally decided to implement them.

iTunes: “Somebody Screams” by Galaxy 2 from the album Techno-Trax Vol. 2 (1991, 5:51).