---
title: "Asides from an alternate universe"
date: 2006-02-15T23:34:57-05:00
url: https://blog.lmorchard.com/2006/02/15/asides-from-an-alternate-universe/
author: Les Orchard
tags: [asides]
---

# Asides from an alternate universe

 <p>In case you're not following my OPML alt-blog, here are a few highlights from today:</p>
     <ul>
     <li>
     <span><a href="http://blogs.opml.org/dwatts/2006/02/15#When:5:00:28PM">Donovan points me toward</a> an <a href="http://blogs.opml.org/spaziopml/2005/08/12#presentingaPresentationTool">OPML Editor tool</a> that helps build <a href="http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/">S5</a> presentations from OPML documents, rendered via an XSLT transformation to XOXO that includes all the <a href="http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/">S5</a> machinery.  Presentations straight from outlines, with web standards goodness.  Who says you can't have cake and eat it too? </span>
     </li>
     <li>
     <span>Later:  Hot damn, it's my <a href="http://hosting.opml.org/decafbad/l.m.orchard.xml">Instant Outline as an S5 presentation</a>.  No, it doesn't make a ton of sense, but it was quick and easy to make this nonsense.</span>
     </li>
     <li>
     <span><a href="http://blogs.opml.org/dwatts/2006/02/15#When:4:55:09PM">Donovan's also getting an odd error</a> from my newsRiver add-on, and the original NewsRiver.  I hope my crud didn't break things, though.  Not sure if this tip helps, but:  You can try running <kbd>viewNewsItems</kbd> in decafbadNewsRiverSuite directly within the OPML editor to "replay" the last web request and get an in-editor error dialog with a more helpful Go To button to chase the error.</span>
     </li>
     <li>
     <span>I'm starting to think that the OPML Editor and NewsRiver is a good platform to try throwing together a next iteration of my <a href="http://decafbad.com/trac/browser/trunk/hacking_rss_and_atom/ch15_popular_links.py">popular links script</a> and some notions I had in mind for <a href="http://decafbad.com/trac/wiki/FeedSpool">FeedSpool</a>.  I still really like some of the ideas I was exploring with <a href="http://decafbad.com/trac/wiki/FeedSpool">FeedSpool</a> - but apropos <a href="http://decafbad.com/blog/2006/02/13/reading-lists-opml-xoxo-semantic-web-and-tools">my recent semi-rant about tools</a>, I should target efforts where more people can take advantage of them more easily.  I love Python, and definitely have a yen for things running on the OS itself - rather than the OS-within-an-OS that is the OPML Editor.  But, I haven't yet had time to bundle my stuff up as a single-icon install like the OPML Editor, and there's a lot of infrastructure already there for the hacking.  So, if you can't beat 'em...</span>
     </li>
     <li>
     <span>I'd also like to get back around to adding more things to <a href="http://decafbad.com/trac/wiki/FeedMagick">FeedMagick</a>, such as maybe some Reading List style features to blend multiple feeds from an OPML list into one output feed.  Need to build some cross-format conversion tools.  I could also see a popular links type script joining <a href="http://decafbad.com/2005/12/FeedMagick/">the suite</a>.  These sorts of things seem like they could be a server-side complement to the OPML Editor, especially in cases where I can't run Frontier or the OPML Editor on a server yet PHP is available.</span>
     </li>
     </ul>

<div id="comments" class="comments archived-comments">
            <h3>Archived Comments</h3>
            
        <ul class="comments">
            
        <li class="comment" id="comment-221084351">
            <div class="meta">
                <div class="author">
                    <a class="avatar image" rel="nofollow" 
                       href="http://vielmetti.typepad.com"><img src="http://www.gravatar.com/avatar.php?gravatar_id=e377f3e2140297d32460ae9a4b38ff98&amp;size=32&amp;default=http://mediacdn.disqus.com/1320279820/images/noavatar32.png"/></a>
                    <a class="avatar name" rel="nofollow" 
                       href="http://vielmetti.typepad.com">Edward Vielmetti</a>
                </div>
                <a href="#comment-221084351" class="permalink"><time datetime="2006-02-16T05:35:54">2006-02-16T05:35:54</time></a>
            </div>
            <div class="content"><p>ah, there's nothing like the smell of an alternative universe in the morning.</p></div>
            
        </li>
    
        </ul>
    
        </div>