www.romanvenable.net:  Clark's Weblog



Friday, December 3, 2004
The Scoop On Kerik

Light at the End of the Tunnel:

"Kerik enters the DHS job with impeccable credentials and important real world experience. He is well known for his excellent stewardship of the NYPD during and after the 9/11 attacks. But it seems that his life experiences have culminated to make him uniquely qualified to hold this position. After serving in the US Army, Kerik got a job supervising security for the construction of a US military installation in Saudi Arabia. In 1984 he had returned to the States, and took a position as Corrections Officer in Passaic, NY where he was quickly promoted to Warden. In 1986 he took a 50% pay cut to fulfill his life’s ambition of becoming a NY Police Officer where he soon began to work undercover on narcotics investigations. By 1991, Kerik’s successes had garnered the attention of Mayor Giuliani who appointed him the NY Commissioner of Corrections. In August of 2000 after vastly improving conditions at Riker’s Island Correctional Facility, Kerik was named Chief of the NYPD where he served with the distinction. Following the invasion of Iraq, President Bush tapped him to go to Baghdad to design and implement the training program for the Iraqi Police. "

Categories: News
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He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. --Friedrich Nietzsche


Wednesday, December 1, 2004
Despair.com "Greatest Hurts" Collections

Despair.com, creators of 'demotivators,' has its holiday stuff available. How about a mug that says:

Ambition: The Journey of a Thousand Miles Sometimes Ends Very Very Badly

or

Meetings: None of Us Is As Dumb As All of Us

or

Procrastination: Hard Work Pays Off After Time, But Laziness Always Pays Off Now

for your co-workers?

Categories: Huh?, Sites
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At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid. --Friedrich Nietzsche


Sunday, November 28, 2004
RSS Event Schedules

Seth Dillingham pointed to an artist I hadn't heard before, Scott Andrew. It turns out he has a blog, which I guess shouldn't surprise me given that he's:

"the author of the XML-RPC JavaScript Message Builder <http://www.scottandrew.com/xml-rpc/>, one of only a few browser-based XML-RPC javascript libraries"

to quote Seth.

Scott points to a nifty idea at http://www.upcoming.org/. My favorite place to hear music here in central PA is the Whitaker Center but, despite multiple e-mail's from me, they don't yet have an rss feed for new shows (or even e-mail announcements, for that matter). Upcoming.org gives me a way to enter upcoming concerts. Very cool use of rss.

Categories: Music
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How To Read RSS Headlines On Your PalmOS Device

I just upgraded to a Treo 600 from my Tungsten C. The always-on internet is handy, and I wanted to be able to read certain of my RSS feeds on the handheld during down time at work so I'd have that much less to read when I'm NOT at work because, like checking e-mail, scanning rss headlines is something that MUST be done before the day's end.

I'm an OS X user and I use the excellent NewNewWire as my RSS reader. After looking at several option, I chose Hand/RSS for PalmOS for $14.95. I chose it because I'm familiar with the company (which used to make Newton software). After installing it I must say I'm impressed with the app all around.

Hand/RSS comes with some channels installed, but I wanted to move my subscriptions from NetNewsWire over. Hand/RSS can import rss subscriptions that are in an OPML file. Although NetNewsWire 2 offers syncing via dotMac, it doesn't use an opml file to do it (it uses a 'SyncSubscriptions.plist.gz' file), so I had to export my NetNewsWire subscriptions as an opml file. The easiest way to import the opml file into Hand/RSS is to make it a memo. That method failed for me, probably because I'm not using the default PalmOS memo application (I'm using MarkSpace Memo Pad). Instead, I uploaded the opml file to my web server, from where Hand/RSS could fetch it via http.

It's a kind of labor intensive way to import the subscriptions, but my rss subscriptions list is mature and doesn't change too much anymore so it's not something that I have to do often.

Categories: MacOS X, RSS, Technology, Toys
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Peace is not a relationship of nations. It is a condition of mind brought about by a serenity of soul. Peace is not merely the absence of war. It is also a state of mind. Lasting peace can come only to peaceful people. --Jawaharlal Nehru