The current CNN.com homepage was begging to be remixed… Decapitation Attack!

You know blogging has hit the big time when your mom starts a weblog. Unlike most new webloggers though, she’s already found a confident and compelling voice. Highly recommended, even though I’m a little biased.

eBay offers the option of e-mailing new results of saved searches, but they’re very sporadic and incomplete. Instead, I whipped up a PHP script that queries eBay for a set of keywords and converts it to an RSS feed for syndication, allowing you to subscribe to recent eBay search results ordered by date or high bids. The code is here. (Just rename it to ebayrss.php and drop it somewhere on your own webserver.)

You can test it out for a short time on my server, but this is a very temporary demonstration. Please don’t abuse it.

By the way, I don’t see why developers should have to pay the ridiculous fees for the eBay API, especially when augmenting eBay’s own broken functionality and developing free software that makes them money.

July 8, 2003: eBay removed the Javascript array that I was parsing to gather the auction data… I don’t have the time to modify the script, but please feel free to e-mail me a patch, and I’ll post it here.

December 28, 2003: The script is fixed, but eBay may eventually break it again. It’s broken again.

April 12, 2004: This script is no longer maintained. I recommend FreeBiddingTools.com, which hosts RSS feeds for eBay searches.

August 19, 2004: RSS Auction is a new site that does the same thing, in a much more flexible way. Go use it.

“Beat it, Waxy!” — Homer Simpson, Episode EABF09, aired March 9, 2003

Here’s a strange quote by Wanda Barzee’s son Derrick Thompson, buried in an article profiling the couple who kidnapped Elizabeth Smart.

Mark’s brother, Derrick Thompson, suggested that the couple had started taking LSD about 10 years ago. “They said they weren’t on drugs, but we think that was a lie,” he told a television reporter. “We think that’s how he could communicate with God. That and listen to the Steve Miller Band.”

So, is Derrick saying that listening to Steve Miller lets you communicate with God, or that dropping acid is the only way to tolerate listening to Steve Miller?

While performing in London earlier this week, the Dixie Chicks’ lead singer Natalie Maines said, “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas.” The comments and the followup explanation stirred up some controversy back home, leading to boycotts from country radio stations and the largely-conservative country music audience.

The comments from the online forums show how polarizing politics can be to a community of fans. The unofficial Dixie Chicks news forum thread has 63 posts so far, almost entirely by estranged (and often insulting) former fans. That’s relatively civil compared to Usenet or the always incendiary Yahoo Message Boards. It looks like their official website is offline, and the rest of the fan sites are getting slammed this morning from too much activity.

Crispin “Hellion” Glover will be on Late Show with David Letterman tonight for the first third time since his disastrous appearance in July 1987, when he took the stage in a wig and big platform shoes, offered up a brief and bizarre interview, and delivered a high kick inches from Letterman’s face. The producers cut to commercial and he hasn’t been seen on the show since. Here’s a collage of eight screen captures from that episode. (If you have a video clip, send it to me!)

So it should be an interesting show tonight. Unfortunately, Dave’s out sick; maybe Crispin will try to jump-kick guest host Will Ferrell instead. (Or maybe he’ll sing “Ben.”)

I’ve included a full transcript below of the 1987 appearance below.

July 16, 2003: Consumption Junction has the video clip of the original Letterman appearance (careful at work).

Continue reading “Crispin Glover on Letterman” →

The Google Dance has begun, and it looks like I finally overtook the Scott Baio fan club in a search for “baio.” Take that, Chachi! (If you still see the old results, try the Google Dance Tool to search all their servers.)

For all you Scott Baio fans ending up here, here’s a little something special for you. In the late 1980s, Chachi hosted a series of sex-ed videos targeted to pre-teen and teenagers. You can buy them online, and preview the video clips for each. That’s Edutainment!

Some RSS readers are vulnerable to security exploits and other annoyances embedded in RSS/XML feeds. This morning, Phil showed me a proof-of-concept sample for Newsgator, the Outlook-based RSS reader, triggered by VBScript code in an RSS feed that e-mails a random person in your Outlook address book.

Other readers may not be vulnerable to Outlook-style hacks, but they can still be screwed up by Javascript. Try subscribing to this RSS feed I created with your reader of choice. Syndirella displays the popup window and crashes on the Javascript alerts. How about other readers?

Just to be clear, I’m not saying this is a serious issue. Users only subscribe to trusted RSS feeds, and feed providers are extremely unlikely to put malicious code in their feeds. It’s just interesting that it works.

My friend Mat Honan and his wife Harper have been backpacking across Southeast Asia for the past five months. While staying in Laos, the country sandwiched between Cambodia and Vietnam, they contracted the dengue virus, or “break-bone fever.” His weblog entry is a gripping survival story.

I stayed home sick from work today with a head cold and sore throat; now I feel like a big sissy.