I'm wondering if we are going to see an standardized XML format for describing aggregations of RSS feeds. To illustrate the point: I've done all this work on bloglines to set it up with the blogs I care about, but now I'm kinda locked in there. It would be nice if I could export a description of my aggregation into a standard format that looked roughly like this...

<feed-list>
  <feed>
    <url>http://pcal.net/blog/index.rdf</url>
    <format>rss-1.0</format>
    <name>pcal's blog</name>
    <category>stuff</category>
  </feed>
...
</feed-list>

...and be able to import it into a different RSS reader.

Such a format would also allow people to easily publish and consume each other's reading lists. This in turn could create a new class of application, which would allow you to surf a much larger version of the p2p-ish network that bloglines already provides (i.e., you can browse around to see what other people near you are reading about).

Of course, this all is exactly why the RSS reader vendors would probably be reluctant to embrace such a standard, so it may never happen.

Maybe such a thing is already in the works? I tried google but came up empty.

UPDATE: I found this:

Looks like the userland guys tried it a long time ago, didn't get very far.

I saw Blood Brothers and Against Me at the Great American last night. My friend Tim was on on tour with Blood Brothers, playing his 'fabulous crap-selling instrument,' so I came out to see them. He put me on the guest list, which is a good thing because the show was sold out when I got there (this on a Sunday night). Nonetheless, my expectations were not high: a while back I'd given one listen to a Blood Brothers disc, mentally filed it under 'obnoxious-for-the-sake-of-being-obnoxious,' and moved on.

So I was pleasantly surprised to see a really good, tight, high-energy stage show and songs that seemed a lot more interesting live. They have very linear arrangments, lots of time changes, but so much that you'd call them mathy. The dual, dueling vocalists screeched at each other and the audience with manic intensity. Their drummer was great. A number of songs have a layer of ragtime or spooky carnival-organ keyboards. It all added up to something new, worthy of the 'post-hardcore' label that seems to have been affixed to them. I'll have to give these guys another listen.

It was a very different story with Against Me, about whom I knew nothing, and about whom I really don't want to any more. They were completely hardcore-by-the-numbers, basically nothing that hasn't already been done and done better. It actually seemed more frat than punk to me, with linebacker-sized guys conspicuously consuming alcohol while leading the crowd in one cheer-along chorus after another. Still, the kids ate it up, and I suppose I would too if I were still 19. But instead, I was the grumpy guy standing in the back wondering why those kids didn't just go buy some Bad Brains and Fugazi records.

I just pulled some hair out trying to access shared XP volumes from OS X, but eventually got it working. Here is what I learned about it, as much for my own future reference as anything:

If you use smbclient and get

  NT_STATUS_LOGON_FAILED

then you have a bad username or some connection problem. However, if you get

  NT_STATUS_LOGON_TYPE_NOT_GRANTED 

it means that you are connecting and logging in with the right username/password, but that something on the xp side needs to be tweaked. You need to open "Local Security Settings" which is buried in the Administrative Tools control panel. The fastest way to open it is to just

  Run... secpol.msc 

There seemed to be two changes I had to make. First,

  Security Options - Network Access: Sharing and Security for local accounts

was set to 'Guest Only - local users authenticate as guest'. It needed to be changed to 'Classic - local users authenticate as themselves.' Secondly,

  User Rights Assignment - Access this computer from the network

Needs to include the user you're trying to login as. This was blank in my settings.

Also, I had some problems with the share names. Windows likes to append a '$' to the default share names, but the OS X Connect to... GUI doesn't want to deal with them. (the command line smbclient seems ok with them). I think you're best of removing all of the shares you might have, turning off sharing for each XP volume, then going back and creating new shares named without the '$'.

Saw The Motorcycle Diaries at the Clay last night and liked it quite a bit. The story is tight and well-told. It is pleasantly understated visually, if a little overstated thematically. It definitely paints a romaticized and glossy, perhaps even dishonest, portrait of its subject. Taken on its own merits, though, it's an enjoyable ride.

However, I would recommend waiting for this one on DVD. Although it is worth the $10 ticket, it is defintely not worth what you might experience in the theater.

Picture that kid on Telegraph in Berkeley in the Che Guevara T-shirt. The white kid with dreadlocks who hangs out on the corner rambling about third-world oppression and free hemp. The one who bemoans the evils of the capitalist machine as he gets on the BART back to Walknut Creek. You know that kid.

Now picture two hundred of him. They're sitting all around you in a dark room. They're watching a film that they loved before they set foot in the theater. They laugh at jokes that aren't funny. They gasp audibly at scenes that frankly aren't all that breathtaking. They love this film so much that they have to share their love with each other by commenting on it. Continuously. In the seats right behind you.

And if you ask them to be quiet, well, I guess you just don't get it, man.

Am I just getting old and bitter?

A month or so back I bought my ladyfriend an IBM T42p laptop to use for grad school. I tried without success to sell her on the Powerbook; she's studying architecture, and the absence of MacOS versions of AutoCad and FormZ makes it a non-starter.

No matter, I suppose - I'm not the one who has to use it. But the experience has made me realize how spoiled I've already become in my few months as a returning Apple customer. The IBM lowlights so far include:

• Painful Ordering Process. For some reason, they charged my card in installments. The third installment tripped my bank's fraud alarms, which stopped payment. It took three phone calls to get it all sorted out. The ordering website is ugly. Even their invoices are ugly - looks like it came out of a Selectric typewriter. Miles apart from the smooth and stylish buying experience I had at apple.com.
• NO SOFTARE MEDIA IS INCLUDED! IBM laptops apparently don't come with any kind of software CDs; rather, the hard drive has a very secret partition which can somehow be used to reinstall windows and the bundled software in an emergency. I guess they just didn't consider the possibility that the drive might sieze up, or that I might actually want to use those 9.2 gigs for something else. An irritated phone call later and a set of restore DVDs were promptly shipped out to me, but they should have just been in the box. And I'm still trying to figure out how to reclaim those 9.2 gigs mystery space on the drive - Partition Magic isn't having any of it.
• Bizarre Battery. The battery is shaped such that part of it projects almost an inch beyond the back of the laptop. This makes it impossible to fit it in most standard laptop bags without taking the battery out. Why?
• Software Extras. IBM includes its own WIFI softare that does not play nice with XPs built-in networking. They're both pretty bad. I can't figure out which is worse, but it's irritating that I have to figure out which one I'm supposed to use.
• Fit, Finish, Design. This machine is just ugly. There is no other word for it. The keyboard just feels cheap and crappy. I want to smash the big superfluous 'Access IBM' button that opens a web page.

The screen is very nice and the battery lasts a long time. That's about the only nice thing I have to say.

OMG, this is so 1993 - I sound like a total Mac snob again.

Last weekend, I went up to Portland for a sort of reunion with one of my old bands, The Feelings. A few weeks prior, we'd been asked to play at a party to celebrate the centennial of the Lucky House, which is something of a rock institution in Southeast Portland. Initially, we were all a bit reluctant to do it. What if we sucked? We hadn't played together in six years, and I'd hardly sat behind a drumkit at all in that time.

An even more worrisome question was: what if it was weird? Back in the day, we enjoyed a modest kind of success of which I'm still really proud. Rock stardom wasn't really the point; rather, we simply were able to put together a couple of albums' worth of songs that made us really happy and seemed to do the same for a lot of our friends. I guess I was just worried that we might somehow diminsh that in a clumsy attempt to recapture it.

But eventually, we persuaded ourselves to do it. I don't think we would have done a show at a club, but the fact that this was a party at friend's house with the New Bad Things somehow made it all just fine. It seemed like it would just be uncomplicated fun no matter what we did. And in fact, it was.

I flew up about 24 hours before we were to play. We only had about six hours total to practice, but the songs came back with surprising ease. We even wrote a new song, never to be heard again, and learned a new cover. We sounded pretty good in practice, all things considered, though I think we had some pretty bad mistakes during the actual performance. I don't think anyone cared too much, though.

There were quite a few people there. It was great to be able to talk, however briefly, to some people I hadn't seen in years. The whole affair was basically a block party with the bands set up in the driveway and everyone in the street. There was a really difficult drinking game involving ping pong - no one got drunk that way. There was an improvised 20-foot long multiperson teeter-totter that was wisely dismantled before anyone was seriously injured. Someone had an infinite supply of roman candles and wasn't afraid to use them. There were a number of video cameras running, and the performances were projected live onto the warehouse across the street.

In short, it was all fun, no weird. Fun to play, fun to see the New Bads, and fun just to hang out with everyone in PDX again. It was also extra fun because Grace played hookie for the weekend and flew all the way out from Boston just for the occasion. I still think that this was a bit insane, but I doubt she'd have another chance to see this. What're ya gonna do?

Those pictures I have up there are not great. Everyone has scary eyes. If anyone who was there got some more and could send them to me that would be super.