Library & Literary Miscellany

I finally got around to messing about with Yahoo Pipes (as opposed to messing about in boats; plug classic literature here: “`Nice? It’s the ONLY thing,’ said the Water Rat solemnly, as he leant forward for his stroke. `Believe me, my young friend, there is NOTHING–absolute nothing–half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing,’ he went on dreamily: `messing–about–in–boats; messing—-’” The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame).

So here’s the result (Note: the pipe output may take a moment to appear; I’ll also be posting a larger version on its own page under the Books Buzz tab for those miss out on this post; I decided not to post it on the main page as it increased page load time significantly):

My pipe is fairly rudimentary; I figure now that its created I can continue to revise. So feel free to comment if you have ideas regarding pipe alteration, for example, suggestions about feeds to add, filter additions/subtractions, or otherwise.

And now with the pipe created, I am heading to the great outdoors to take a walk. Using my own powers of ambulation is no boat ride, but still, it is outside activity and it is a beautiful day :).

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RSS…yes, the rich site summary, the really simple syndication, the highly effective tool for keeping up with content. Any, yes, I do find it really simple to subscribe to RSS feeds, but, no, I did not find it so simple to create my own. However, it’s supposed to be simple if one can only follow directions such as are found in Stephen Downes’ “How to Create an RSS Feed with Notepad, a Web Server, and a Beer.” It’s a great article, an article that has helped me to (almost) get my first RSS feed from scratch up and running. Now if I can only figure out how to get the picture to go with the feed…

But anyway, if you haven’t begun using RSS yet, then I’d recommend you start simple and check out some of the popular web aggregators such as Bloglines (my personal favorite), News Gator, or Google Reader. You’ll be up and running in no time. And if you are already using RSS, then you don’t need to be reading this post. Go read a feed.

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