After several months of hard work, I was finally able to shakedown my wife enough to agree to allow me to spend the money to get a 15GB iPod. I’ve read about, as well as seen images of Apple’s extraordinarily close attention to detail when it comes to a person’s experience of opening up one of their products. No wonder I’ve always been an avid Mac fanatic. I opened up the box, and meticulously examined every piece that came in the box.

New releases of Blocker and Feed Parser are now available. Blocker 1.3 sports the blocking of 120 more bots than v1.2 did, as well as some new referrers that I’ve just been made aware of over the last week. I’ll be releasing point-point-releases to this as I’m able to analyze more Blocker data from users. Feed Parser 0.6 sports support for RSS 0.9x, RSS 2.0, RSS 1.0 (RDF), and Atom 0.3. Support for RSS 1.0 Modules and OPML is in the works.

I’ve just released an update for Feed Parser bringing us up to version 0.5.1. This release sports full support for RSS 1.0, as well as the RSS 0.9x and 2.0 support that’s been there for a while. Credits for the people who’ve helped me get through tough spots are listed in the release notes and in the code (wherever they contributed). If you’re a Gecko/Mozilla Application Developer itching to develop your own Syndicated News Reader, this engine will do the bulk of the dirty work for you.

Things have been rather hecktic lately. I recently moved into a new apartment, I had my car accident, and I started a brand-new job all in a span of a week and a half. I’m still getting used to my new job. I have to take the train to get to work and back everyday, and it has so far proven to be less than reliable (it took 2.5 hours to move 45 miles last Friday). I’ve been keeping up decently with the blogs I read over the last few weeks, particularly SxSW this weekend (I hope I can go next year), but I’m still unpacking my stuff, and am still waiting on the delivery of my new computer desk which is now two weeks late (I’ll never shop Office Max again).

I was going to write something up about the problem I have with Lockergnome regressing back to table-based layouts recently, but the I came across this, and although I would have written something completely different, this still sums it all up quite nicely.

I remember when I first came across A List Apart. It was a great e-zine that taught me a great deal about web design, web standards, and how to be an all-around better web guy. It was great. I also remember seeing the teaser for ALA 3.0. I couldn’t wait for the awesome design that would come out of the mind of my favorite web guy, Jeffrey Zeldman. Then it debuted. Ugh. Are they serious? But, as many people commented, the content is key.

Over 400,000 downloads and counting from my webserver alone. This doesn’t count any of the mirrors that are posted. Suprisingly, Microsoft hasn’t said a word to me. I suppose this is a good thing. I was recently made aware that all of this was featured on C|Net’s TechTV, as well as on C|Net’s Builder.com site. Anyways, I just wanted to let you all know that I had a conversation with a little birdie. This little birdie told me something about an upcoming ALA article, and something else about full support for conditional comments, DX filters, and other nifty things that the standalones have been lacking for the last few months.

I woke up this morning and looked outside as I heard the rain beating down on our roof. I got dressed, got my daughter dressed, we both put on our jackets, and left to go to the babysitters. One bad thing about Californians is that they seem to completely forget how to drive when the weather is anything but sunny. Heavy fog? Hi-Beams and 90 MPH speeds. Heavy Rain? Swirving in and out of traffic without a blinker. I always make it a point to be extra careful when my daughter’s in the car, and even more careful when the weather is bad.

I dropped off my daughter at the babysitter’s house this morning. She didn’t want to go, but she needed to because Daddy needed to get to work, and Mommy was already at work. On the way to work, I put in one of my favorite albums, Ben Folds Five. It’s one of the few albums where I like every single song on it. It’s too bad they broke up. If only the recording industry would produce more albums of that caliber, I wouldn’t mind buying more CDs.

I stumbled across a link for a CMS called WordPress today. With all of the rebuilding problems I’ve been having with Movable Type lately, I figured I’d at least take a look. From what I can tell, it’s a pretty solid system. There are a few blogs who use it, and I like the idea of not having to rebuild static files. Other than that, I really don’t know much about it. Has anyone had any experience with WordPress? Should I jump ship from MT to WP?