Matthias Pfefferle blogs about a clever way to render OPML in browsers using JavaScript, via @jlelse. I'm going to look into doing this for Micro.blog's OPML too.
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Working on more layout fixes for the iPhone Duo. I'm not sure Apple made the right trade-offs with the design of this thing. Vertical nav controls still feel weird. And with the device backordered for months, hard to justify the time to rethink everything.
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My current publisher, which happens to share the same name and face as me, is a terrible marketer.
Therefore, I’m at this time forced to remind you that I have books and guides I think you’ll enjoy and, perhaps, may even make your life better.
Scripting News: Monday, October 19, 2026
Anyway -- I figured out what I want to do. I want to go back to the point where CSS and JavaScript were added to the web. Everything is a document. It's a writer's web. The reader owns the look of the pages. The writer has no say in colors, or arrangements, it's just writing. No character limits. Simple styling. Full fidelity text. Reading and writing, and then the developers can come up with a million different ways to read, and everyone gets to use their favorite editor, always, and store all their writing where they live, and let everyone read it where ever they read. Any structure they can think of, but all the rendering code is with the reader. I think we can take what we've learned since the web got corporatized, and bring it back to the basic platform we had then. And btw, no HTML, just Markdown. :-)#
Anyway -- I figured out what I want to do. I want to go back to the point where CSS and JavaScript were added to the web. Everything is a document. It's a writer's web. The reader owns the look of the pages. The writer has no say in colors, or arrangements, it's just writing. No character limits. Simple styling. Full fidelity text. Reading and writing, and then the developers can come up with a million different ways to read, and everyone gets to use their favorite editor, always, and store all their writing where they live, and let everyone read it where ever they read. Any structure they can think of, but all the rendering code is with the reader. I think we can take what we've learned since the web got corporatized, and bring it back to the basic platform we had then. And btw, no HTML, just Markdown. :-)# I would like to have one day when Claude Code doesn't fuck everything up by doing things it is explicitly prohibited from doing. I find things that were changed in critical parts of the program, that were indefensible. One of the things we're doing is trying to establish a language for frontmatter for Markdown files that are meant to be displayed by a browser. It just invented one, gave it wrong default. I have to find these things on my own. And what happens when it wipes out a site without checking with me first. It has done this, this year. #
Postscript: Of course the blame for the wasted time this morning goes to me. Claude tries to do what it thought I wanted. If I calm down, figure out what the confusion really means, and reconsider the path I chose and pull back, we get much further. And I think the way I was trying to go was a mistake. I think film editing is a lot like this. Anyway we got past the problem, and today was a very productive day in the end. #
About XSLT -- I remembered that I thought it was a bad idea. Let XML look like XML. Trying to make it look like an HTML page, how does that make any sense. Like opening the hood of a car and seeing a big picture of the outside of the car. People aren't really that dumb, but some people like to complain a lot. The rule of the web is if you don't like what you see, that's what the freaking back button is there for. Probably just a troll anyway. Show them your JSON and RSS. If it's done nicely it can be quite illumifying. #
Ode'imin: In Defence of the Berry Pickers
On #RezTok, a berry picker is a man who comes home without the moose. On fruity men and Canada's fruit machine, Man the Hunter and the women who hunted anyway, and pemmican, the food made of meat, fat, and berries that the Métis Nation first stood up for at Seven Oaks. On the serviceberry and its many names, saskatoon wood that became arrows, and the Michif word for a little pear. On bananas being berries and strawberries not, a Supreme Court that decided the tomato is a vegetable because of when you eat it, and a Eucharist that was already made of fruit. And on ode'imin, the heart berry: love, emotional truth, healing, forgiveness, the first medicine of spring.
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In other Anthropic news today, I’ve been thinking about this bill that Anthropic proposed where it’s not a show-stopper if only 50 people might be killed or seriously injured:
The bill would let the government block a model's release or use only if it poses a foreseeable, imminent risk of more than $1 billion in damages, or of killing or seriously injuring more than 50 people, according to the report.
It's weird to even put a number on this. But also, if gun manufacturers had to meet a similar standard before putting semi-automatic rifles on the market, the world would be a better place.
Interrogating influences in sci-fi novels
Murderbot (2017) pairs the snarkiness of Alan Rickman’s robot in the Hitchhiker’s Guide movie (2005) and the character Lore from Star Trek TNG (1988) with the emotional distance of Imperial Radch‘s Breq (2013). The narrative combines the found family of Becky Chambers’ Long Way (2014) with the forthright, humorous narration of The Martian (2011). Murderbot‘s robots and androids owe little to Asimov (1942), and more to Blade Runner (1982). AI ships are right out of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). To me, the hyper-corporate world tastes more of Fifth Element (1997) than Blade Runner.
The Expanse series (2011) leans on Gateway (1977) for mysterious alien transports. Some Rendezvous with Rama (1973) alien creepiness / scary dead space stations and Andromeda Strain (1971 — I’ve only seen the movie) mysteriously spreading alien matter. The whole Mormons-in-space thing has to come from The Sparrow (1996), and the noir-ish mystery plotline of the first book echoes Blade Runner (1982). The ragtag crew feels Firefly (2002).
Murder by Memory (2025) calls on Murder She Wrote (1984-1996) plus classic village mysteries like Miss Marple (which I haven’t actually read) and the snappy wit of 1930s films like The Thin Man (1934 — apparently based on a Dashiell Hammett novel). The idea of uploading one’s consciousness owes something to Altered Carbon (2002) and Frederik Pohl’s Heechee Saga (iirc book 3, 1984). (I haven’t read enough generation ship books to say what influenced that aspect.)
This is How You Lose the Time War (2019) connects back to The End of Eternity (1955). In the love letters across space-time I see Griffin and Sabine (1991). Its theory of time travel is rooted in ‘A Sound of Thunder’* (1952), and shares something with Kage Baker’s Company series (1997). I could squint and glimpse Sherri Tepper’s Beauty (1991).
Mickey7 (2022) borrows vibes from The Martian (2011) and Redshirts (2012). Character-wise, reminded me of Jason Wander (2004) and Old Man’s War (2005). For sci-fi tropes: the first contact / Hive Queen stuff from Speaker for the Dead (1986); the clone disposability from The Prestige (2006) and a dash of Endymion‘s space travel tech (1996) infused with the hilarity of Edge of Tomorrow‘s death cycles (2014); the stand-in sufferer from ‘Omelas’ (1973); the food recycler from Soylent Green (1973). The miserable / failing colony is a little Cibola Burn (2014).
Thank Your Software Developers
In 1999, I got hired to work doing Quality Assurance for PowerOn/Now Software. Among their software offerings was a pair of programs, sold together, called Now Up-to-Date and Contact. They were calendaring and contact applications for true power users. Folks that not only needed a ton of unique features above your average calendaring and contact software but, perhaps most importantly, needed to be able to share that information with others in a team/office/company or even family basis.
The best way to test software is to use it and so I did.
Ever since, Now Up-to-Date and it’s evolution BusyCal (which is still developed by the original developers Dave Riggle and John Chaffee) has been an essential part of my and my family’s life. We often say in our house “if it’s not on the calendar it doesn’t exist” and it’s true. The elegant design of the shared calendaring feature is the only way we can keep track of what everyone is doing and when.
In other words, the software Dave and John wrote decades ago has been a part of my life for almost half of it.
We don’t often think about how important software can be in our lives. How it can make it better. How it can become essential to it. How, by extension, the humans behind that software have in no small way made our lives better.
I thought about that today upon meeting Manton Reece, the lead developer of my favorite blogging tool, Micro.blog. Not only what an honor it was to meet someone who has created something that makes my life easier and better in no small way, but who also developed a little program called Clipstart years and years ago that I used and loved. I got a chance to thank him, in person, for making my life better.
I’m sure there is software and services you use daily that makes your life better. Remember that a human made that. If you ever get the opportunity, thank them.
