Popcorn Songs

This week was a total computer geek-out festival. First, I was in training for web application programming. The course was roughly five years behind current web technology. (Despite the fact that I just started blogging and being a more serious internet *user*, I've been developing intranet web applications for 7 years or so.) So, it was hard for me to pay attention to the material. Add in that Google released a public API for developing custom homepage modules and it was all over. I've been hacking XML, javascript and learning AJAX and JSON since Tuesday morning. There will be more to come on this, but I think I want to start a different blog for my techie babble. Popcorn Songs was supposed to be my artsy-creative outlet, intentionally less-techie.

You may have noticed I've changed the layout again. In my explorations for something interesting to turn into a Google homepage module, I discovered some cool RSS feeds. Since I had to edit my Blogger template to include them, I made layout changes at the same time. Oh, and I also opened comments up to non-registered users. I didn't realize that was an option until now. As Old Blue Eyes sang, "Handle my heart with care, please be kind."

As I get more into this world of public web services there will surely be more changes. When I create the new techie blog, I'll announce and link it here. I was hoping that usePerl would work, but it doesn't seem to provide RSS feeds or several other features I'm looking for. I'm not sure I can describe it's service--it's more like Slash than a blog, I guess.

And the guy who sat next to me in class pointed out cheap MS .net hosting providers. I'd been aware of cheap LAMP providers for a while, but not .net ones. I just may have to check them out more closely.