RSS feeds and bugs November 14, 2002 3:23 AM   Subscribe

Two observations and a question. [more outside]
posted by hama7 to MetaFilter-Related at 3:23 AM (14 comments total)

1. Today was a spooky MetaFilter day, with long waits and timeouts and 404 announcements, (at least for me). Once I saw a huge bleached version of the sidebar, which might have been due to:

2. The new RSS feed title feature mentioned here and here, which was mentioned by Matt here. Could someone please explain the significance and advantages of this new feature to those not so in-the-know?

As timeistight mentioned in a previous RSS request thread: "I'm having a hard time getting my head around this RSS/RDF/XML stuff. Can anyone point me at an interesting use of the MetaFilter feed?"
posted by hama7 at 3:24 AM on November 14, 2002


I'm interested too, as a non-techie Mefite.

[BTW, the 'more outside' goes to a hosed geocities site. Whats that about?]
posted by dash_slot- at 4:07 AM on November 14, 2002


Once I saw a huge bleached version of the sidebar, which might have been due to:

Oooh. Me too, me too!

[BTW, the 'more outside' goes to a hosed geocities site. Whats that about?]

It's a brilliant ironic comment by our brother in arms, Hama7. Instead of linking to an actual image of the outside, which you, in your virtually-dependent world, expected, he linked to a broken site as a way of saying "Hey, fuckwit, outside doesn't mean an actual picture of the outside." It was his personal 404 on your life. Yeah, you just got 404'd. It's like being property of the bangbus, only, you know, not.

Or maybe the link got over-used. I dunno ;)
posted by The God Complex at 4:31 AM on November 14, 2002


2. RSS news aggregators like NetNewsWire Lite.
posted by mcwetboy at 4:33 AM on November 14, 2002


BTW, the funniest '404' ever...? Or is this one?
posted by dash_slot- at 5:29 AM on November 14, 2002


It's like being property of the bangbus, only, you know, not.

I prefer the sinister cousin, but your meta-po-mo interpretation does float the relative boat.

Also, where the user name and user number used to appear on the browser bar, these days it does not.
posted by hama7 at 5:36 AM on November 14, 2002


Or sometimes it does, as I see now. Help!
posted by hama7 at 5:40 AM on November 14, 2002


In preview it shows a name, outside of preview it shows the user number.

Matt explained it awhile ago but I can't remember where.
posted by The God Complex at 5:59 AM on November 14, 2002


Crap. I meant to link an update to Stan Chin's [more outside] quip. I am sorry.
posted by hama7 at 6:16 AM on November 14, 2002


[BTW, the 'more outside' goes to a hosed geocities site. Whats that about?]

The Geocities server apparently won't serve an image if you try to fetch it with a referrer from an outside site (in other words, by following a link). If you cut and paste the URL, or just go to the Address field and hit Enter again, you should see the image.
posted by staggernation at 7:05 AM on November 14, 2002


1. The server was tanking left and right yesterday, and had to be restarted a zillion times, but checking the error logs, I couldn't find the source of the problem. It usually happens under heavy traffic loads, so maybe that was it.

2. RSS is a syndication format that is widely deployed and understood by apps. So if I put out an xml representation of the front page in a standard format, you can reproduce the contents of the homepage on your desktop, your personal site, wherever you want (that's what syndication is all about).

Here's the last 24 hours feed of MetaFilter seen through RSSMonkey

Here's MetaFilter at LiveJournal (I know, kinda weird).

Here's a screenshot of it on my desktop, running in NetNewsWire.

The syndication format lets you view a representation of a site any way you see fit.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:25 AM on November 14, 2002


wow. thanks for the links mathowie -- i am so running out to download netnewswire.

well. i guess i can download it from my desk, but i'm sure it'll be nicer outside.

anyhow, it looks really useful.
posted by fishfucker at 9:45 AM on November 14, 2002


Thank you very much. This has helped a lot!
posted by hama7 at 11:09 PM on November 14, 2002


I'm a big fan of this 404 page.
posted by Yelling At Nothing at 2:14 AM on November 15, 2002


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