---
title: "Sometimes I think Radio UserLand has too much bootstrap"
date: 2002-04-11T04:51:44-04:00
url: https://blog.lmorchard.com/2002/04/11/ooooho/
author: Les Orchard
---

# Sometimes I think Radio UserLand has too much bootstrap

<p>Some grumbling before I hit the sack for the night.  Since January, when I bought <a href="http://www.decafbad.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/RadioUserLand">RadioUserLand</a>, I've been getting sucked into the platform.  I resisted at first.. I mean why learning another language, especially one bound to a single, commecial platform?  Well, the more I played with it, the more the platform looked elegant, and the $40 I spent on it was chump change for what it can do.  I can see the foot-in-the-door when I start thinking if there's a way we can use Frontier at work.</p>
<p>So, I'm tinkering and playing... And I'm putting up with flakey things happening, which confuses me.  Inexplicable delays, screen flashes, stuttery speed-up and slowdown of text entry.  The <a href="http://www.decafbad.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/PipeFilters">PipeFilters</a> app I'm working on is killing Radio on my iBook.  Sometimes <a href="http://www.decafbad.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/RadioUserLand">RadioUserLand</a> crashes.  I just can't see what's to exotic about what I'm doing in <a href="http://www.decafbad.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/PipeFilters">PipeFilters</a> what would prepare me to think it would hobble Radio regularly.</p>
<p>Sometimes, when testing <a href="http://www.decafbad.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/PipeFilters">PipeFilters</a>, <a href="http://www.decafbad.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/RadioUserLand">RadioUserLand</a> somehow manages to bring my iBook to such a grinding, HD thrashing halt, that the CPU Monitor no longer scrolls and I can't even get response from the Dock to kill Radio.  My only hope in this situation is to have a Terminal ready with a kill command typed out, launch the script in Radio that only sometimes offends, and then hit enter if things wig out, hoping that within the next 30-90 seconds the Terminal will be able to get a slice of time to eke out the kill command.</p>
<p>Part of it might be the iBook itself.  This thing, though pretty and nice, is just not meant to run OS X.  It runs it, but I beat the crap out of it.  It feels like a 486 laptop.  I just switched to a dual 800 G4 Mac at work, and OS X is a dream there.  Though...  Radio still crashes from time to time.</p>
<p>The more these things happen, the more it starts to make me think maybe I should cut loose soon and take what I've liked about Radio and do some wheel reinvention and cloning in the Python-based things I was thinking about.</p>
<p>But I so want Radio to work well.  It's got so many nice ideas in it.  I'm just worried that there's too much bootstrap in there.</p>
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shortname=ooooho

<div id="comments" class="comments archived-comments">
            <h3>Archived Comments</h3>
            
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        <li class="comment" id="comment-221089344">
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                    <a class="avatar image" rel="nofollow" 
                       href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0104369/2002/04/13.html"><img src="http://www.gravatar.com/avatar.php?gravatar_id=9f3f78b261b6f185ec2e996fbd8a2326&amp;size=32&amp;default=http://mediacdn.disqus.com/1320279820/images/noavatar32.png"/></a>
                    <a class="avatar name" rel="nofollow" 
                       href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0104369/2002/04/13.html">Jon Schull</a>
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                <a href="#comment-221089344" class="permalink"><time datetime="2002-04-14T00:11:17">2002-04-14T00:11:17</time></a>
            </div>
            <div class="content">I’ve got the same misgiving about Radio, and I’ve been thinking about the wiki weblog connection too (so, happy to make your acquaintance ;-).  

However, the pace of development in the Radio space is telling us something too.  In particular, Simon Fell’s Word-to-Radio-via Soap hack strikes me as an instantly invaluable tool.

Which brings me to Wiki/Weblog/Radio convergences.  I’m thinking…

*	the most impressively wonderful thing about Radio is the author’s ability to work locally site and have the results mirrored on the hosted site.   Its not clear a heavily-collaborated wiki site could or should survive that.

* Why then isn’t the solution to build an RSS aggregrator into the wiki so that the contents of subscribed-to weblogs are displayed by the wiki.  (Or are you trying to replace Twiki altogether via Radio?  If so, why?)  Now authors get to continue authoring weblogs in a tool optimized for weblogging and syndicating.  But readers get to read (and even modify!) the syndicated content on a tool optimized for *that*  purpose.</div>
            
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