Posts

Posted on

About Planet Lowcountry Bloggers

Well, now that news about Planet Lowcountry Bloggers has been blabbed all over the Internet, I guess it’s time for me to write a bit about it and how to get on it (if your blog isn’t already there).

First of all, Planet Lowcountry Bloggers is powered by Planet, a feed aggregator. The software vists all of the feeds (either RSS 2.0 or Atom) it’s configured with, grabs the newest entries and spits the entries out into a web page. Currently Planet LCB is configured to update every 3 hours.

To get listed in Planet LCB, I need a URL for your blog’s RSS feed. The URL for your blog just won’t do. Has to be an RSS or Atom feed (usually they have an .xml extension). Most blogging software (Typepad, WordPress, MovableType, etc) generate feeds automatically. Most of those blogs in TBB have already been included in the Planet already.

Some blogging services (Blogger/Blogspot for example) include it as one of their premium features that you have to pay for. If your blog falls into this group, FeedBurner is an easy way to get a feed for your blog. Just provide them with the URL to your blog and follow the steps. You’ll get a bit of URL you can place in your blog to advertise your feed, and they even have some neat widgets you can use in web pages and forum signatures to promote your blog.

Ok, so once FeedBurner gives you a feed URL to include in your blog, just email it to me or leave a comment here. I’ll add your feed you will have joined the Planet.

Simple huh.

Planet LCB isn’t the only Planet out there. There are plenty of others and even one other local planet (which looks much nicer than mine and doesn’t seem to have issues with strange text characters popping up all over the place). Hmm, a few more and we could probably form a solar system…

What Planet LCB isn’t going to be is a replacement for the daily round-ups in Lowcountry Blogs. It’s just a convenient location to go catch up on the most recent blog entries from around here and hopefully to make doing round-ups a little easier.

Oh, and don’t let the times and dates published in Planet LCB throw you off. All times are in UTC, so just subtract 5 hours (4 if it’s DST) to get the original blog entry time.

Posted on

Another ethnic market find

Every now and then we’ll stumble on a really cool find while driving around. Today (well, yesterday now…) we were driving along Dorchester Road looking for this Mexican restaurant the wife heard about. Never did find the restaurant, but we did stumble upon a tiny little West Indian market chock full of stuff from the Carribean. It was fantastic! All kinds of neat seasonings, drinks, canned goods and even a few frozen things. 7 or 8 different jerk seasonings to pick and choose from, several shelves full of Carribean hot sauces and plenty of drinks from the islands. You can even pick up a warm crispy Jamaican patty to snack on while you’re browsing through the store. There’s also a good sized collection of reggae CDs to choose from. It’s a neat place to browse through and a great place to find some of those more obscure ingredients for that Carribean dish you’ve been wanting to cook.
I’m pretty sure I’ll be back.
Mini Mart West Indian Grocery
5341 Dorchester Rd
North Charleston, SC
(843) 207-0777

Posted on

Yes, it’s still storm season

Just in case people had gotten a bit complacent and forgot, TS Beryl popped up this morning as TD2 and soon became the second named storm of the season. No, it’s not a slow season. It’s 6 weeks in and almost 4 months left to go. Remember, the peak of the season happens around August. This is the time to make your preparations, while it’s calm and not with a storm beating down the door.
Fortunately Beryl looks like it’s going to stay mostly out at sea without intensifying much more..
TS Beryl - 2006-07-18

Posted on

Slashdot scraping

A few tidbits today’s daily perusal of Slashdot that set the geeky part of my brain all a-flutter.

  • RFID viruses – apparently scanning a mere 127 bytes of data (if it’s the right data) can really mess up a database. Sounds like RFID systems need more data validation.
  • HP’s wireless memory chip – Doesn’t store much yet, but it has WiFi! How cool is that?
  • A Dragonlance movie! – Dragonlance has long been one of my favourites in the D&D inspired books. Now it’s being turned into an animated movie! Ooooo…
  • Mercury atomic clocks – NIST’s current atomic clocks are based on cesium atoms and are pretty accurate (1 second per 70 million years). This proposed mercury clock would stretch that out to 400 million years. How’s that for accuracy?
  • 3.5 TB NAS – Outgeek all of your friends with one of these and 5 750 GB drives sitting on your desk. Enough to start any geek drooling.
Posted on

Starfish Grill resurrected!

Up until sometime last year, Starfish Grill was the place to go grab a snack over at the Folly Beach Fishing Pier after a hard day of sunning yourself, or just to look out onto the ocean while enjoying a decent meal. It’s since been replaced with Locklear’s Beach City Grill, so Starfish Grill seemed to have gone the way of the dinosaurs. It’s back now (well, soon will be anyway), a little further inland on Folly road in the Merchant’s Village shopping center (where the James Island Publix is). I spotted the big “Starfish Grill Coming Soon” sign on my way to get my hair cut this weekend. It’s not going to have quite the view it used to, but it should provide yet another reasonably priced eatery on James Island to choose from. I’m looking forward to trying it out when they open.