I had a long Dim Sum lunch in SF yesterday with Matt Mullenweg, the lead developer of WordPress. We talked about a lot of things, it was very pleasant and very productive. 
This comment is becoming more frequent in the OPML community, and I’m glad people are thinking about how long the free hosting is going to last, because, while I have no plans to stop hosting sites for free, it will eventually happen, and when it does, it’s better if people are prepared. One thing that’s cool is that all the data resides on your system, I’m just rendering it, so you won’t ever lose the data because the server went down. Also, since all the software is GPL, it’s possible that at some point a commercial service will offer hosting. In fact, I’m kind of trying to drive things that way, so that at some point the idea will occur to a business-person, hey I could offer these people a service and make some money. It hasn’t happened yet, but I hope it will someday, hopefully soon.
In tech, when someone says something is complicated, check it out, they’re probably trying to confuse you. That’s why I called it Really Simple Syndication, as a clue. If it’s really simple, what could be confusing?
When I meet someone who says they’re thinking of quitting, but they hear it’s really hard, I say nahh, that’s just what the tobacco industry wants you to think. It’s actually much easier than they say. You quit smoking by not smoking one day, then not smoking the second day. And so on through the first week. All you have to do is deal with the cravings, which can be really irritating, because the drug is addictive. There’s an drug called Wellbutrin that can diminish the cravings. Anyway, millions of people have quit, so how hard could it really be? After the first week it’s much easier. And then it gets ridiculously easy. Eventually your body tunes in to how harmful it is, and that makes it no trick to stay unaddicted.
Amyloo has a gorgeous mockup of an OPML Editor site. Oooooh. I like it!!
Essay: Why the backchannel is bad for RSS.
Brad Feld posted the letter that prompted the essay above.
Eric: “Every time somebody decides to ‘fix’ the standard, I get one more RSS variant to crawl.”
Scripting News Annex 
Posted by Astro on February 25, 2006 at 4:18 pm
Re: Wellbutrin: YES, it does make quitting a ton easier. My doc prescribed it, and while I only took it for much shorter length of time than intended (I had a rare hypersensitivity reaction after a couple of weeks), it I think helped immensely in quitting.
I quit after smokng for 16 years, immediately after which, ironically, my Dad became ill and died of lung cancer after smoking for 35+ years. It sucks, it’ll kill you, quit smoking now!
Posted by Jonno on February 26, 2006 at 4:20 am
I quit after 10 years, by accident really – I was 28 and wanted to get myself fit enough to play rugby again,so I went to a park and did some sprints, till my lungs felt they were going to explode and I spewed up the vilest black bile – I couldn’t stand the smell of cigarettes after that.
Posted by Niall on February 26, 2006 at 10:07 am
I’m on my fifth week clean after 12 years of smoking. Just woke up one morning and said “No more”. Really wasn’t that tough. The important thing is to want to not do it.
Thing is, I’m not giving anything up, as the ‘baccy companies seem to want me to think, I’m stopping doing something that’s pissing off people around me and making me stink (and may kill me, but that’s not immediate). Worked for me so far. Hardest thing is to work out what to do with all the time I save!