Tim Bray just posted an
entry about including a comment count in his atom feed. He said that
he soon disabled it as people complained that it meant they saw the
entry again as an updated entry. As I’ve recently done the same for my
atom feed, I’m confused as to why this is happening. In my case I don’t
update either <published> or <updated>, just the
<content> element. As the guid never changes, readers shouldn’t
consider it updated. Do readers really take a hash of the contents and
consider it updated if it changes? Why do readers ignore the date
fields. Is this affecting anyone? Certainly, it doesn’t seem to affect
Planet or the few readers I’ve tried it on.
Monthly Archives: February 2007
After my last post on music players capable of Ogg Vorbis playback, I
was recommended:
- Anything by Cowan (iAudio)
- iRiver t10
- iRiver iHP 120
- Samsung’s YP-U2
- Kingston K-PEX
I can discount the iHP120 straight away as it’s a HD based player and
will be too large for what I want.
Update: I’m intentional avoiding any Apple
products.
iRiver t10
90GBP will get me a 2GB device. Several people have claimed it works
as USB mass storage, although I’ve seen someone say American versions
wouldn’t work. iRiver have a firmware updater to convert it to UMS, so I
might need to find a Windows installation. It has good battery life of
around 45-50 hours from a single AA battery, which is good. It’s got good reviews for
its sound quality and its rugged construction might make it good in the
gym.
Kingston K-PEX100
A 2GB model will set me back around 65GBP. It’s a touch larger, but
thinner than the T10. Looks like a UMS device. It can be expanded with
miniSD cards, which seems a nice feature. It only has a 17 hour battery time using the internal
rechargable, which seems a bit low, considering my CD player will do 120
hours off two AA. Reviews have mentioned that the build quality is a
little budget and a couple of firmware bugs, but hopefully these have
been fixed now.
Samsung’s YP-U2
Can only find a 1GB unit for 60GBP, although there is a 2GB unit
available. Battery life is only 14 hours from the internal rechargable
battery. It’s smaller than the iRiver T10 and is a UMS device. I’ve seen
reviews complain about the audio quality of this device. I think the
lack of battery life and audio problems will rule this one out.
Cowon iAudio U3 and T2
I wasn’t recommended any particular models, but the two I’m considering
is the T2 and U3.
The T2 is a necklace style player, which is rather unusual, but I can
pick up a 2GB model for around 100GBP. Battery is around 12 hours using
the internal rechargable battery. Looking at the reviews, the supplied
headphones make up the actual necklace part and you have to remove that
to use your own headphones, which is what I’ll be doing, having just
bought some Shure E2Cs. They also say the controls are a little
confusing.
This is the most expensive of the products I’ve looked at at 115GBP
for the 2GB model. Battery life is around 20 hours. Reviews have been
very positive. Not sure if it’s worth the extra price though.
Update: Apparently the 2GB model can only be charged
via USB, where as the 1GB model comes with a charger too, Also, I read
in a review that it has doesn’t do gapless playback, which is very annoying. Why don’t
players do gapless playback?
Summary
I think my top choice is the iRiver T10, although each of the others
have their plus points. The K-PEX is expandable, the T2 is small and the
U3 gets good reviews. I think I’ve discounted the Samsung. I will try
and find each of the players in a local shop to have a play before I go
out and buy one. If you have any comments on any of these players, or
you have another product to recommend I’d be
very interested.
Oh, and continuing my trend of discovering bands that have split up,
I’ve been getting into At The Drive-In. :S
Firefox 2 is an improvement on previous versions, but one thing
annoys me is the new tab style. I don’t like having a close button on
each tab and I don’t like it hiding tabs after you have a certain number
open. Fortunately you can fix this. Go to about:config in the URL and
then set browser.tabs.closeButtons to 3 and browser.tabs.tabMinWidth to
0 and now you should have a close button on the right and all tabs
displayed.
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="----=25532899_4522_4927_1140_664401643181"
This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
------=25532899_4522_4927_1140_664401643181
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
This message is in MIME format. Since your mail reader does not
understand =
this format, some or all of this message may not be legible.
------=25532899_4522_4927_1140_664401643181
Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
No, my mail reader understands it perfectly. It’s your crappy mail
client that sends out multipart/alternative mails which don’t contain
alternatives. Fuckers.
If you use Last.fm, you may have got
around to using their events feature where you can search for events
near you and mark yourself attending those events. I was manually
entering the information into my google calendar, which was a pain.
Fortunately, being one of those hip, friendly web2.0 websites, Last.fm
allows you to get your data out in all sorts of useful ways, including
you event calendar as an iCal file. Google being useful, allow you to
display external iCal files in your calendar. Can you see where I’m
going with this? To get this up, log into you Google calendar, go to
“Manage Calendars”, then “Add Calendar”, then “Public Calendar Address”.
Finally type in the url of your last.fm iCal file, which will be http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/1.0/user/dpash/events.ics,
although obviously you need to change dpash to your particular last.fm
username. Now, you only need to mark yourself attending a gig to have it
show up in your Google calendar.
You can use something like this
to get it into your Evolution calendar.