The importance of contingency plans cannot be overestimated. I thought I could drive to Canada, take care of some paper work at the US consulate, drive back to work, do a test run of my TechEd talk before handing in the final version, drop off my car and make it to the airport in time for an evening flight. This plan was derailed half way through the morning when I found out that I had to hang around Vancouver until 3:00PM before I could get my paperwork finished. So I missed my flight...

Click below for my impressions of Vancouver, my thoughts on the mini-blogger meetup at CrossRoads, responses to various blog posts about XML, an RSS Bandit update and Jayson Blair (how low can he go?)

Poll: Have You Ever Missed A Flight?

 

 

So it turns out that I still have stuff to blog about before I leave. The first inspired a KeanuReevesVoice("Whoa") from me. There's now a blog from a Senior VP at Microsoft, Eric Rudder now has his own blog.

The list of B0rg Bloggers is getting long indeed.

 

 

I'm unplugging for a while. Before going I decided to release version 1.1 of RSS Bandit. The release notes are contained in the post below and they outline all the new features since version 1.0d. Also some random comments about RSS, OPML, the Blogger API and other XML geekery to do with weblog interaction.

 

 

It seems quite afew people liked yesterday's RSS Bandit release. The release is now available on GotDotNet with one, two or is that three bugs fixed. I've been having problems accessing the GotDotnet server I'm supposed to be using for testing autoupdate so it is likely I'll have to do a v1.1 release without the feature or else wait until I get back from Nigeria and TechEd before I bang out a final v1.1 release.

More below on feuding pop stars, <blink>XML XML XML</blink>, Google removing weblogs from their index and how I spent my birthday.

 

 

A number of people have asked for various UI features for RSS Bandit. Don asked for a UI widget to help him search Google while Dave wanted notifications when new feeds show up.

ScreenShots

• Integrated Search Bar
  
  
• Notifications on New Messages (old feature, new UI)
  
  
• Themeable Feed Display (Default theme) ( Slashdot theme)
  
  

 

 

Happy 25^th to me.

 

 

I hate when stupid people decide that because I work at Microsoft it gives them the license to twist my words into "EVIL PRONOUNCEMENT BY THE CORPORATE MURDERING SCUM. Since I'd rather nip this in the bud before Dave Winer uses an out of context quote as part of his paranoid vendetta against Microsoft I'd better explain my thoughts below.

 

 

It seems Luke Hutteman is unhappy with me for implementing a threaded message view feature in RSS Bandit. Since his post was liberally smattered with smileys I assume that the language in his post is joking and doesn't imply any seriously hurt feelings.

Random thoughts on Java's new language features, a new B0rg blogger, and RSS Bandit futures.

Poll: Favorite new Java^TM language feature?

 

 

Of all the things the insignificant issues to complain about, the US congressional Democrats think that railing against Bush for flying onto an aircraft carrier in an fighter jet instead of using a helicopter is the best use of their time. This is so embarassingly pathetic and childish. There are lots of things the current US president has done and is currently doing that probably should be criticized but this one should be like 7098^th on the list right between failing to say grace before a meal and not wiping his feet before entering the White House.

 

 

Rss Bandit v1.1 (beta 5)GIF

Only two more features on our TODO list to fix then this release can be boxed up and shipped. From the screenshot it can be seen that Torsten and I got the "related feeds" feature that shows links to and from a particular post as threaded responses (a la email and newsgroup readers) working. I borrowed the idea from SharpReader and have to say it is quite cool having all the discussions about a particular post from all the feeds I susbscribed to in a threaded message format.

 

 

After a few months writing code for RSS Bandit on the .NET Framework I can unequivocably state that the class I hate working with the most is the HttpWebRequest class. Somewhere along the line someone made the brilliant design decision that the 3xx range of HTTP responses should throw exceptions completely ignoring the fact that a redirection is not a fatal error nor can it truly be considered an exceptional condition.

Arrrgh. More rant below.

 

 

In recent times I've read many ill-informed reports about XML support in Office 2003 especially Word 2003. The first article in this wave was How Open is the New Office? written by Joe Wilcox of C|Net which I refuted in a diary shortly afterwards but still managed to start an Internet meme (Microsoft Office XML is not 'open') which eventually was picked up by Slashdot and manifested itself in the same joke over and over and over again.

While browsing online I caught another article by Joe Wilcox about XML support in Office 2003 in Business Week which seemed to contain similar misapprehensions as his article from December of last year. The quote from the article which I am specifically going to tackle in this post is

"Microsoft has yet to disclose the proprietary dialect--or underlying schema--of the XML"

This particular meme has been spreading amongst tech journalists and I've seen it in Internet Week, PC Magazine, and the Register. Meme squashing done below.