apologies if I spelled any of your names wrong..

I can't help but think like a hacker: faced with the desire to see what other folks write, and troubled by the inefficiency of the system, I came up with a solution.

While I'll talk more about this "open source" thing sometime soon, know that the hackery accomplished here are the results of the freedom of both information and software.

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While walking home today I realized a solution to a problem I hadn't even run into yet (though one that would have surely annoyed me). I realized that the RSS feeds I have setup for the several sites across the internet are awesome, and that I vaguely remember seeing the icon on some blogger site at some point in the vastness that is the online world. So a drop-down folder of RSS feeds, one for each student would be as simple as signing up for each blog and organizing the links..

one of the joys of opensource is that nearly all data files are straight, simple, and editable text. You could, for example, open a spreadsheet file with a text editor (instead of the spreadsheet application..) and swap two columns of data manually (but using that speadsheet application is easier..) The implications of something like this may not be so obvious, but understand that they are.

In the UNIX world, anything that can be done manually, can be scripted and automated - broken down into discrete components, run sequentially, and often processed by the system quickly and autonomously.. finally, anything even remotely repetitive should be scripted, or rather, when given the opportunity for efficiency, ++hacker points for ingenuity.

Given that text files can be edited and manipulated manually, I converted the word doc listing each of us and our blogs into straight text, ran it through a quick script and formated the data, signed up for each RSS (manually), creating a folder of RSS feeds, then extracted the important bits from my bookmarks.html

SOOOO what all of this means is that you can:
. grab this file.. (right click, save as, and save it somewhere on your computer)
. open firefox
. click "Bookmarks" then "Organize Bookmarks..."
. click "file" --> "import"
. select the bookmarks.html file you took from me
. enjoy your beautiful list

when you import the bookmarks you'll see something like the following (just delete the duplicate "Bookmarks Toolbar Folder")



Please understand that I take no responsibility for any attempts you may make at this, and while I encourage you to experiment, it is at your own risk.. be sure to backup your current bookmarks.html file in case something goes ary!


EDIT :: what this means is that you can go to this drop down list, and see the title of each post that each of us makes as a clickable link. For whatever reason, it isn't always perfect (some posts don't show up all the time), but it's a start..