Cruftbox: My Box of Cruft

Last night I went to a City Council Meeting to speak publically as I am wont to do.
The basic issue was whether the city should replace a stable that borders the Arroyo Seco Park with the 13th soccer field in the city. I think not.
At 6:30PM the meeting convened,

In the comments of my last post, Jason mentioned that my RSS feed did not have full posts. That’s true, but not entirely. The confusion is over what feeds I have and how they are declared.
Jason and I emailed a bit over this and I’ll steal from his replies liberally to explain things. I briefly met Jason at SXSW and he’s quite the web/blog/syndication saavy guy. Consider him getting full props for the meat of this post.
What Jason mentioned was that my RSS feed did not have full posts. The RSS 1.0 feed I was using didn’t.
I had three different feeds:
RSS 1.0 -> https://www.cruftbox.com/index.rdf -> not full feeds
RSS 2.0 -> https://www.cruftbox.com/index.xml -> full feeds
Atom -> https://www.cruftbox.com/atom.xml -> full feeds
So there were two things I was doing wrong. I didn’t think that RSS 1.0 could have full posts. I was wrong, you actually can. Jason shared with me a RSS 1.0 Full Post template for MovableType that I put in place.
The second thing I was doing wrong was that I was ‘advertising’ that I only had a RSS 1.0 feed. The syndication aggregator I use parses the page looking for possible feeds, so I never saw this problem.
In the main index of the page, there are link tags that explicitly call out where feeds are located so that an aggregator knows exactly where to find your feeds. The only link I had called out was the one for RSS 1.0.
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="https://cruftbox.com/index.rdf" />
I wasn’t specifically calling out my Atom & RSS 2.0 feeds. To do that, I added these lines to my main index file.
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="https://cruftbox.com/index.xml" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Atom" href="https://cruftbox.com/atom.xml" />
I decided that while I wouldn’t get rid of the RSS 1.0 feed, I wouldn’t advertise it any more. For all intents and purposes, I am telling the world that I only have Atom & RSS 2.0 feeds.
Make sense? Thanks again to Jason for his keen eye.

Many of you people that read here, I read your sites. Some of the time I use a news aggregator to read your sites.
The trouble is many of you don’t provide full posts in your RSS feeds. I can only read the first few lines. So, if it would’t be too much trouble, would you please replace your old RSS 2.0 template with this one:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<rss version="2.0"
    xmlns:dc="https://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
    xmlns:sy="https://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
    xmlns:admin="https://webns.net/mvcb/"
    xmlns:rdf="https://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
    xmlns:content="https://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/">
<channel>
    <title><$MTBlogName remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></title>
    <link><$MTBlogURL$></link>
    <description><$MTBlogDescription remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></description>
    <dc:language>en-us</dc:language>
    <dc:creator><MTEntries lastn="1"><$MTEntryAuthorEmail$></MTEntries></dc:creator>
    <dc:rights>Copyright <$MTDate format="%Y"></dc:rights>
    <dc:date><MTEntries lastn="1"><$MTEntryDate format="%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S"$><$MTBlogTimezone$></MTEntries></dc:date>
    <admin:generatorAgent rdf:resource="https://www.movabletype.org/?v=<$MTVersion$>" />
    <admin:errorReportsTo rdf:resource="mailto:<MTEntries lastn="1"><$MTEntryAuthorEmail$></MTEntries>"/>
    <sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod>
    <sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>
    <sy:updateBase>2000-01-01T12:00+00:00</sy:updateBase>
<MTEntries lastn="15">
    <item>
      <title><$MTEntryTitle remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></title>
      <link><$MTEntryLink encode_xml="1"$></link>
      <description><$MTEntryExcerpt remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></description>
      <guid isPermaLink="false"><$MTEntryID$>@<$MTBlogURL$></guid>
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[<$MTEntryBody$>]]></content:encoded>
      <dc:subject><$MTEntryCategory remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></dc:subject>
      <dc:date><$MTEntryDate format="%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S"$><$MTBlogTimezone$></dc:date>
    </item>
</MTEntries>
 </channel>
</rss>
That’s a Movable Type template, so if you’re not using Movable Type it’s not for you.

Nigritude Ultramarine

A few months ago, my buddy Paul mentioned the fascination with multi-bladed razors.
I recently ran out of my regular razors and stopped by the supermarket to pick up some new ones. I was surprised to see a FOUR BLADED RAZOR.

Yep, you read that right, four effing blades! Of course, I had to buy it.
When I got home, I examined the package a little closer. I was happy to read all the vital info.

I’m just the kind of man that needs “maximum shaving power” from “The Most Souped Up Disposable Razor — Ever!“. Four blades AND four lube zones! Who can ask for more?
You simply must love the terminology that has found it’s way into razor advertising. Note that this is an ‘All Terrain Shaver’ and has ‘High Endurance’. What these two things have to do with shaving I don’t know, but they do make you feel more manly if you buy it.
Some light shavers or women may not know what a lube zone is, so I will explain. To make razors more complicated, manufacturers have added these little strips of gel to the tops of razors. When the razor gets wet, the gel dissolves slightly and leaves some sort of coating on the skin. It never made sense to me because anyone that is shaving with a razor has shaving creme slathered on their face already. But hey, it ‘soups up’ the razor, so whatever.
Take a look at the razor head and indeed, there are four blades.

That stuff in pale green are the ‘lube zones’.
I’ve shaved with the razor twice, and to put it succinctly, it sucks.
The blades really don’t shave that well and I had to go over areas a couple times to get things smooth. This is bad since it leads to razor burn. When using a good razor, you can feel it cutting and know that it’s working. This razor feels like a plastic bar moving over the skin and you aren’t sure if it’s actually shaving.
The lube zones turned my face into a slimy mess. All the green crap covered my face and I literally had to scrub it off with a washcloth. Way too much slime.
Now that I’ve tried one kind of four blade razor, I guess I have to review the others…

Some of you don’t believe there really is berry-flavored coffee.

Tonight I went with my cousin Richard to see the original Godzilla movie. The Godzilla movie that most Americans are familiar with is not the one that was originally released in Japan. In the American version, Raymond Burr is wandering around as a narrator, added in 20 minutes to the film. TO fit him in, 30 minutes of the original were removed.
Richard is a true Godzilla fan. He gets invited to Japan for screening of new Godzilla films by Toho. He knows everything there is to know about Godzilla and monster films in general.
As he explained, the film was made in Japan after the Lucky Dragon incident, where a Japanese fishing boat was hit by radioactive fallout from an American nuclear bomb test. The Japanese public was outraged by incident and the Americans tried to cover things up.
Considering the timing of the release of Godzilla is important to remember when watching the original movie.
The movie tells the story of Godzilla being awakend from his slumber by H bombs and the subsequent devastation of Tokyo and other Japanese cities during his rampage. Most Godzilla movies show the battle between the Godzilla and humans in a campy way, but in the original, it’s quite serious.
Godzilla represents and unstoppable force of nature that was awaken by Man’s playing with powerful weapons. The analogy of this to the effects of the Bikini fallout on Japan’s food chain are obvious. During the H bomb tests, the fallout traveled on ocean currents and into the fish. Thousands of tons of fish were destroyed since they were contaminated.
The mysterious Dr. Serizawa has invented a powerful device known as the Oxygen Destroyer. He agonizes over using it even though it is the only things that can stop Godzilla. He fears that the device can be used as a terrible weapon.

Coffee purists, you are warned to click away, lest you be offended.
This morning I stopped at 7-11 with Michele for morning beverages. For Michele it’s a Super Big Gulp, for me, it’s a cup of coffee.
7-11 has redoubled their efforts in the coffee arena and now sport a Coffee Station with probably eight or more different brews ready to go at any time. They have the usual cinnamon, hazelnut and vanilla coffees most days. Around Thanksgiving they had Pumpkin Flavor and at Christmas, they had Peppermint flavor. Most of the time you get just a hint of flavor.
Today I tried Berrylicious Coffee. Let me tell you, it was a blast of berry goodness that I wasn’t expecting. You need to get your sorry butt into a 7-11 ASAP and try it. I’m not kidding, it’s tasty!
It’s the middle of the afternoon and I want another cup and we only have a crappy Starbucks in the building. Starbucks needs to give up on the nasty, burnt roast crap they have and get hip with the berry coffees.
7-11 is the cutting edge of coffee technology. You heard it here first.

I finished my latest book, Ilium, a week or so ago. I didn’t get around to write about it until today. Seems fitting though, I received the book at Christmas as part of a Great Stack of Wishlist Titles and kept being put off to reading it by the shear size of the book. In hardcover, it’s 592 pages and several inches thick.
Once I got reading though, I couldn’t put it down. I should known. I read Simmon’s Hyperion Series at a similar furious pace.
Ilium – Dan Simmons
The story takes place in the far future, with plenty of high technology in every corner of the solar system. We follow three basic story lines, the humans on what appears to be idyllic paradise on earth, sentient robots exploring the outer solar system, and what appears to be an exact reenactment of the Trojan War, including the Greek Gods.
Literature plays a large role in the book and it would be good to have a passing knowledge of Homer’s Illiad, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, and Marcel Proust. I’ve read the Illiad and much Shakespeare, but not much Proust.
The story begins with life moving along normally for the characters with no sign of the drama about to begin. As Simmons has done in other novels, he draws the seperate story lines tighter and tighter together, leaving mini-cliffhangers along the way. He puts a lot of details in early in the story and you will find yourself checking back to the earlier chapters during the book to confirm that it all really does fit together so tightly. Simmons has obviously planned the novel out in great detail before getting to the actually writing of the prose. Science Fiction readers adore consistency and continuity and it’s here in the is novel in droves.
The main theme I read was the idea that all is not as it seems and that those that appear to be in charge, are not really in charge. The book is a series of unveilings to the characters that they are not as powerful or weak as they have thought previously. Interesting thoughts in these days of global hegemony…
The technology in the book is secondary to the main story line of rebellion and appearance versus reality of power, but it is interesting enough to to keep a geek’s mind spinning at the possibilities mentioned. While not firmly in the realm of hard sc-fi, the book does have a goodly amount of fun ideas.
The ending is a cliffhanger leading to the second novel in the series, Olympos, due in the fall. I anxiously await the release.
Dan Simmons has a good web site, full of information and even a message board that the author reads and replies to regularly.

On our way to pick up the kids today, we stopped at the Japanese supermarket to pick up a few things. I was mainly after a set of bento boxes that I could put the children’s lunches into for school. One of my daily duties is making the children their lunch for school. I use far too many plastic baggies to do this, so the bento boxes will be good.
Of course, I took a look at the coffee section. The Japanese may not have invented coffee and iced coffee, but hey have done a damn good job of perfecting it. Here are a few cans I had not seen before.

Who can resist these cans? Not I. I especially like the ‘On Business’ can. Also, the ‘naked beans’ are in intriguing.
For a few months now, we’ve been drinking tea more in the morning, much more thatn coffee. In fact, Michele has placed the coffee maker in the cupboard and we only have an electric water kettle on the counter now. To get my coffee now, I have resorted to instant coffee. It’s not bad.
I picked up a bottle of Japanese instant coffee on a whim. I saw a bottle of UCC Taste No. 114. I’m a sucker for any food product with a graph on the package.

There is a coffee called Taste No. 117 and the graph somehow compares them on a two dimensional graph. I cannot read Japanese, so I wasn’t sure whether to buy 114 or 117. I decided that the red dot for No. 114 denoted danger and so, that meant it was the coffee for me.
I’ll find out tomorrow how it tastes.
Eventually when I visit Japan, I fear I will not sleep because all I want to do is drink Japanese coffee endlessly.