I’ve been resistant to OPML, feeling that “outlining” wasn’t a comfortable format for things I do. Fact is, I think I didn’t quite get it, but I’m perhaps a bit closer now thanks to a problem I wanted to solve.
I have spent a lot of time forwarding stuff to other people, and indeed I think finding-and-forwarding is probably a pretty good summary of my specialty as a librarian. This morning I started hand-coding a table of things I’ve sent to people in the last couple of weeks. How very Web 1.0. And then OPML Manager fortuitously crossed my path, and I decided to give it a whirl as a more grownup way of solving the problem. I’m pretty pleased with what resulted, at least for starters.
I’m not sure just where this leads, but it’s been a couple of months since last I was so involved in emerging technologies, and it feels pretty good to be at it again.

I’ve been experimenting with Suprglu as a means to put together what I’m paying attention to, but I’m not sure that it’s helpful to add a lot of sources –especially ones that update frequently. Sort of like having a braided stream of RSS feeds, all in one place… but one doesn’t know how effective something will be until one tries it out.

Bryant Adams sent me a pointer to a Slashdot article on Ted Nelson’s Transquoter and I’ve been playing with its possibilities, via the skeletal directions available (download the .exe, edit .edl file, double-click .edl and specify that transquoter.exe is the program to use…), but just how to aim it at the desired place in a file is less than completely obvious (how do you count the characters, and the spans, except [ugh!] manually).

It hasn’t yet occurred to me just what I’d want to DO with this, but that’s probably because I’m not really paying attention… I hope for revelation. Which reminds me of the Auden lyric:

Revelation came to Luther in a privy
Crosswords have been solved there
Rodin was no fool
When he cast his Thinker
Cogitating deeply
Crouched in the position
Of a man at stool.

(from Auden’s The Geography of the House, but for many years just a remembered fragment)