Strange Loops
Mark Pilgrim: On a somewhat related note, I’ve cobbled together a firehose which tracks comments (like these) that I make on other selected sites. Many thanks to Sam for teaching me about Venus filters, which make it all possible.
Ah, yes. The Tools Will Save Us, circa 2004. I remember it well.
There’s more to the story. Filters are not unique to Venus. Mark’s first prototype was based on another popular tool. When he first showed the results to me, I immediately pointed out that relative URIs were not handled correctly. Better tools, based on better libraries make problems like these go away. Tools that could convert his firehose template to xslt, and thereby consistently be served as well formed XML.
On a somewhat related note, I see Planet HTML5 is powered by Venus and includes a selection of my entries. Presumably ones that mention HTML5. Like this one. Even though it isn’t about HTML5.
May we know the name of that popular tool Mark based his first prototype on?
Posted by Giulio Piancastelli at
May we know the name of that popular tool Mark based his first prototype on?
It was Yahoo Pipes. Fun toy, easy to get started, a bit frustrating to use, but ultimately crippled by Yahoo’s insistence that all feeds are bastardized forms of RSS.
Posted by Mark atI am perpetually reading Godel Escher Bach. Brilliant post title, especially given its relevance to the topic.
Posted by Martin at
I am perpetually reading Godel Escher Bach.
This is a great mental image. I imagine the pages of the book floating around your head in a large circle, CoverFlow-style. Flick your finger one way or the other and they scroll past your field of vision. Reach out and grab one and it stops and presents itself. Put it back and it settles into place. Or just keep reading and watch the pages lazily scroll counter-clockwise until they loop around again from the end to the beginning.
Posted by Mark at
Is it just me, or is the HTML in the summary of this entry in the Atom feed entity-escaped once too often?
Posted by ak at