The activation process didn’t work correctly and I had to call and read numbers to them that their automated system should have prompted me for. A couple weeks later, I got a text message saying that my phone had “exceeded $20 in text messaging charges this month” so I called them up and apparently the text messaging plan I’d selected was never actually applied to my account, but that was easily taken care of and retroactively applied.

Device review

I have been extremely satisfied with the device itself. My initial reservations about the on-screen keyboard have gone away; I have a very decent typing speed on the phone, especially with two free hands. I wasn’t really able to type one-handed on my Windows Mobile phone due to the device’s design. I’ve never owned an iPod before, preferring standalone usb key-type players, but I find myself using the integrated iPod functionality on a fairly regular basis, especially the “Genius” mode.

While the voice recognition is neat, it can’t really distinguish things I feel that it should; and there are certain people/song names that I can’t get it to recognize, even after repeated tries and variations on pronunciation. The funniest of these is Monty Python’s “The Lumberjack Song.” I also don’t know too many commands, which is sad because you could probably do some very neat things with voice recognition on a phone.

Service review

Signal is generally good, although I live in a major metropolitan area so I’d hope it would be. I didn’t get any signal in the panel/conference rooms in the Sheraton (one of the Dragon*Con hotels) although I did get signal in the deepest rooms of the Hyatt, which didn’t work for me under Verizon.

At the recent football game against Clemson, I went from having five bars when the stadium was half-full to not being able to connect to the network at all with the stadium full. That’s a pretty serious problem to me; big sporting events are one of those places where you use/need/depend on your phone. Hillary has Sprint on an ancient phone and was able to connect just fine.

Today, June 30 at 12:30 PM (afternoon), I received an email from AT&T stating the following:

Unfortunately, we cannot validate your credit card number. Please call us at your earliest convenience with a different credit or debit card number so we can complete your order: 1-866-499-8008, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Eastern Time.

So I called the number listed there, which apparently the number for their web services division or something along those lines; the part of the company that deals with orders placed through their website. Their system has an hour hold time, as opposed to the general support number which had a (generally) very short hold time.

After what was likely an hour of listening to their surprisingly catchy hold music, I explained my experience from the previous day and asked him if a similar thing had happened to my card again. This guy suggested that it had, and recommended that I call my bank (Wachovia) to find why they are denying the transfer, despite my strong suspicion that the problem was actually on AT&T’s side.

First, I checked my Verizon voicemail just in case Wachovia had left a message; they hadn’t. The person I talked to at Wachovia did see some activity on my account, so they transferred me to their “loss prevention” division so that I could find out exactly what was going on. Each previous time I’ve had suspicious activity on my account, Wachovia Loss Prevention had called me to verify, so I found it mysterious that they didn’t do so here as well. After several detailed identity checks, the guy at Wachovia Loss Prevention told me that my account had initially been charged on the 19th, and that charge was still in the system, so the two subsequent charges (on the 23rd and the 29th) were rejected as duplicates of that one. He did give me an authorization number and a term id for the charge on the 19th that was supposedly valid, so that I could give those numbers to AT&T. Finally, I had what I needed to know to solve this, or so I thought.

I wasn’t free to call AT&T until about 6:30pm that evening. I called their general support number this time (1-800-331-0500, Mon-Fri 7am-10pm, Sat 9am-6pm) under the theory that they would be able to use this new information. Fun fact: it apparently took me three minutes to explain my story (up to that point) to this guy. He told me that he (regrettably) could not solve my problem, and that he’d need to connect me to the 1-866 number in the email, but that he was going to give me a $25 credit on my account for my trouble. He also conferenced me into the other number because “it has better hold music” something that he didn’t need to do. This was a guy I’d probably have a beer with, and high five. He could only stay on the line on hold with me for ten minutes, so I sat through another hour of holding to give the transaction information to this AT&T web rep.

Around 7-something, I was connected to a very nice girl, and explained what I had experienced so far to her. This was by far the most informational and productive conversation; the kind that you experience once in your time with a company. She was initially confused by the bank’s provided authorization number and transaction id for the charge on the 19th, and consulted with her supervisor a couple times. She then suggested that I needed to call Wachovia back and tell them to drop/reverse the charge from the 19th (which was “pending”), as it was apparently canceled on AT&T’s side.

This sounded like I was getting passed back and forth, so I tried a different method; I inquired as to why the order/charge from the 19th was canceled in the first place. After consulting the notes on the account for a few minutes, she determined that because I was switching from Verizon to AT&T, AT&T submitted a “port request” to Verizon. When Verizon didn’t return my port request in time, the transaction was automatically canceled. Then a human looked at the order on the 23rd (the second working day after I had ordered); the port request had presumably been returned, so they resubmitted the order, and recharged the card, which (again, as far as I know) was then declined by Wachovia as a duplicate charge.

The girl I was talking to then discovered that the charge from the 29th was actually going through, but whoever charged my card hadn’t updated my account status or notes, which is why the email was (apparently mistakenly) sent out on the afternoon of the 30th. That does not answer why the first person I spoke to on the 30th did not realize this, but I don’t pretend to be a support tech, so I don’t have the answer to that. So to this date I didn’t receive an email when I should have, and received one when I shouldn’t have. Classy. I did get a “confirmation number” from this girl, should I have any further problems, and which will presumably work in some field on their website. This girl also provided me with a free upgrade to priority shipping. She put a note on my account that I wanted more than a $25 credit, but was not authorized to provide it herself. Presumably, my order has been rectified, and I’m doing pretty well at this point.

I asked about getting a copy of these mysterious notes on my account emailed to me (mostly for intellectual curiosity, partly because they might be useful in actually getting a damn iPhone in my hands, partly for the purposes of writing this entry) but she apparently wasn’t able to do so, but said that the general support division might be able to. So, another transfer and a short hold time later, I explained what had happened to yet another person and made my request for some sort of record of what had happened emailed to me. She wasn’t authorized, so she transferred me to a “resolution specialist” who verified my information and almost immediately transferred me to a “manager.”

Out of all of the people I talked to, this “manager” guy was the least useful; from his voice, I pictured a douchey-looking white guy in a cheap suit with an MBA. No offense if that’s describing you, dear reader. He was pretty hostile to this request for the account notes; I clarified that I simply wanted a written record of my plight sent to me, preferably through email. Apparently any description of what has transpired would include AT&T’s “specific business practices” and that he could not even send me a summarized version; “nobody in AT&T can.” Again, I tried a different method; I walked him through some of the people I’d talked to, and pointed out which were most helpful to me, emphasizing the girl who (hopefully) fixed my order and gave me free priority shipping. After I’d run through that, I said that I still wanted more than a $25 credit, and he transferred me to another number.

At this point it was around 8:30 pm, I believe. This hold period was blissfully short, too. She had my account notes, but we worked out that I would tell her what had figured out so far (as detailed above) while she read the notes that corresponded to my story. She put me on hold for a few minutes while she verified my story and “found out what [she can] give me.” She came back and briefly asked which text messaging plan I’d selected and said that she was talking to a “resolution specialist” before I was put on hold again. When she came back, she told me that she was able to give me an additional $100 credit on my account, for a total of $125 and free priority shipping on the iPhone 3GS. I was pretty satisfied with that, and we joked a little and I told her to have a good night.

So, to summarize, I talked to two people at AT&T on the 29th; one AT&T and two Wachovia on the afternoon of the 30th, and six at AT&T on the evening of the 30th, for a total of eleven people over two days. I received a credit of $125 on my account for my trouble, and free priority shipping on my iPhone 3GS when it is available. The only downside here is that the order was technically placed on the 29th, when my bank account was (re)charged, so the 7-10 day wait starts from there, and not from the 19th, when I had originally placed the order. Throughout this process, I was always calm and respectful to the people I talked to, as they’re just doing their job, and (in my opinion) if they can’t do something, it’s better to ask them to transfer you to someone that has the ability to do so instead of yelling at them. Let us all hope that this truly is the last “My Problem with AT&T” post.

Update (June 30 @ 9 PM): much has happened since I posted this, and my issue has been resolved through many, many hours on the phone with AT&T. I am in the process of writing that up.

I’ve had Verizon since August 2004, and after several years of mediocre service (that is to say, nothing horrible or particularly exceptional happened) I decided that I wanted an iPhone, which meant switching to AT&T. Now, I have particular reservations about using AT&T as a service provider for anything due to delivering your world… to the NSA. However, the allure of the iPhone and my several iPhone-toting friends won me over.

Compounding this issue is my rapidly deteriorating phone. I have had a VX6700 (which I previously reviewed) for 2.5 years; this phone worked great until a few months ago. The battery rapidly showed signs of memory effect culminating in a grand total of three minutes of talk time, until it wouldn’t charge at all. It will no longer turn on, even when it’s plugged in, so I am currently without a working phone. I particularly loved the 6700’s full, tactile keyboard, a feature that the iPhone lacks; the keyboard is also the primary reason why I didn’t purchase an iPhone years ago. My wittiest summary of the 6700 is that “you know it runs Windows because you have to reboot it every day.”

For the past year, I had been looking forward to switching to the HTC Touch Pro 2 which features an absolutely beautiful interface, large screen, and the full keyboard that I love so much. Unfortunately (as far as I know), its availability date on Verizon is still unknown; I believe it’s only available on T-Mobile at the moment, and their coverage is too limited for my needs. One of the things that pulled me to want an iPhone was the innumerable apps; my favorite example is being able to find the name of a song that’s playing. The application support for Windows Mobile is generally lacking, to say the least.

So after much deliberation and urging from my many Apple fanboy friends (love you guys) I decided to take the plunge. I was advised to wait for the next generation of the phone (which I did) and on June 19, 2009 I placed my order on AT&T’s website to migrate my number and purchase an iPhone 3GS. I received a confirmation email for my order that stated:

We estimate your order will be shipped within 2 – 5 business days pending approval if applicable. We will notify you by email when it is approved and shipped.

Your order may be subject to AT&T eligibility and credit requirements. If we have any questions about your eligibility or your order, we will contact you via email.

I realized today (June 29, 2009) that it was the sixth business day, and I hadn’t heard anything. The order status page stated that the order was “processing” and was last updated on June 23, 2009, the second business day after my order. So I went to AT&T’s website and went to their online chat; they simply referred me to the 1-800 number despite my having told them that I didn’t have a working phone. No problem, I just borrowed my girlfriend’s phone. Still, though, it’s silly to give a phone number to someone without a phone.

The customer service representative I talked to was very nice, and apparently called several (presumably internal) numbers to find out what happened to my order. She said that my ordered had been canceled because it had been entered twice and reentered it on the 23rd. After spending forever on hold, she said she’d call me back when she found out more about what happened. A call back yielded the news that my order had been canceled due to “insufficient funds.” I find this hard to believe; the order was apparently around $320, and I have had far more than that in my account since I placed the order. I wouldn’t have purchased an iPhone if I didn’t have the money to pay for it. If my bank had canceled the purchase because it thought it was suspicious, they would have called me and asked if I’d made it, as they have before when someone tried to buy overseas plane tickets on my account, and when I ordered a flat-screen TV online. Simply, there was no attempted charge by AT&T on my bank account. I verified the number over the phone, and it was correct, so it is unlikely that they charged another account.

My customer service representative transferred me to a billing representative, who proceeded to (supposedly) charge my account again. Both representatives as well as the confirmation order quoted above stated that I should have received an email saying there was a problem with my order, but no such email ever came. After I had already agonized over switching to AT&T for a number of reasons, this experience has already left a bad taste in my mouth, and I haven’t even used their service yet. I didn’t imagine that it would be this difficult to switch carriers and get a new phone, something that must happen on a fairly regular basis.

For my trouble, I thought I might try politely requesting that an activation fee be waived or some other credit be given to me, as this has been a serious hassle, particularly given that I expected to have a new phone by now, and that this has left me in a particular lurch given that my existing phone has completely stopped working. The billing representative seemed surprised that I would even ask about this, and flat out refused to work with me on that matter. The activation fee itself was only $36 and I would settle for even a part of that credited to me for my inconvenience.

I don’t make requests like this to be petty or difficult, but even Comcast (a regular finalist in Consumerist’s “Worst Company in America”) will credit back portions of monthly bills and fees upon request (and sometimes even without a request) when they mess up. And I would certainly consider the cancellation of my order without notice a mess-up, regardless of the company involved. Considering that I am committing to pay AT&T around $2,000 over the next two years, I’d expect that they’d want to make a good impression, at least to start with.

Image from NathanBowers.com.

First, it’s important to know what classes I need to take to graduate, and to create a list. When I was earlier in my degree, it was also important to consider which classes were prerequisites to which. The College of Computing has a handy list on their website. First, the core requirements are always good to have a look at; if you can knock out any of those, they’ll count if you switch majors, threads, et cetera. I always like to take at least one core req each semester if I can.

The next step in compiling your list of potentials depends on which path you’re on. If you’re on the “old system” (pre-threads) then go here to see the relevant “course plan.” If you are on threads, a study plan for your combination of threads is available here. For examining threads, I find their description pages to be relatively useful.

Now that you’ve got a list of potential classes (and for those of you on the old system, I recommend glancing at a couple threads – you may be closer to graduation that you realize), write it out simply. For example, I have this in a text file:

GENERAL REQUIREMENTS
MATH 3215 – Prob/stat
LCC 3401 – Technical writing
CS 4980 Research Project or CS 4911 Studio Project
—
OLD SYSTEM
CS 2200 – Assembly/C
CS 3510 – Algorithms
CS 3240 – Languages and Computation
—
PEOPLE THREAD
PSYC2015 – Research Methods and Practices
PSYC2210 – Social Psychology
CS3790 – Introduction to Cognitive Science
+ electives?
—
THEORY THREAD
CS3510 – Algorithms
MATH4032 – Combinatorial Analysis
CS3240 Languages and Computation OR CS4510 Automata and Complexity Theory
MATH4640 Numerical Analysis OR MATH4305 Topics in Linear Algebra
+ electives?

You know how many hours you’d like to take in a semester, so now that I’ve compiled this list, you now have to pare it down to what you’d like to take this semester. Obviously, the core requirements are more important, so I’ll add all of those to my priority list. Algorithms is in both the old system and the Theory thread, so it’s probably important as well. To round out my list of potentials, I’ll toss in CS 3240 (Languages and Computation), CS3790 (Intro to Cognitive Science), and PSYC2210 (Social Psychology) as they might fill in my schedule better than some of the core classes may. At this point you should also consult the prerequisite chart as it may limit what you can take. A class higher up the prereq food chain should be taken earlier on to broaden your options later in your degree.

My short list is now the following:

PROPOSED FALL SCHEDULE
MATH 3215 OR MATH/ISYE/CE 3770 – Prob/stat
LCC 3401 – Technical writing
CS 3510 – Algorithms
CS 4980 Research Project or CS 4911 Studio Project
OTHER POSSIBLE CLASSES
CS 3240 – Languages and Computation
CS3790 – Introduction to Cognitive Science
PSYC2210 – Social Psychology

At this point I like to fire up my favorite calendar application; I am most experienced with MS Outlook and Google Calendar, although I am sure others will work just as well. I like to go to OSCAR and look up all of the available times for each of the classes on my list and put them all on a calendar. I find using different colors important; in Google, this means using multiple calendars, and in Outlook this simply means changing the category for the event.

It is also at this time that you may wish to compile a list of available professors and ask around to your friends/mentors/advisors about them. They may not know, or they may have strong opinions on a professor. You should also check SGA Course Critique for class GPAs and feedback. Be especially cautious of classes with low GPAs (obviously) and high drop rates (not as obvious). It’s also helpful to Google the professor to find their website. Also be wary of the course feedback if the number of respondents is significantly less than number of students that took the class. Be concerned if they don’t have one, and be concerned if it’s difficult to read or hasn’t been updated since 1994.

So, I’ll show you how my calendar is doing; by the way, Fall 2009 starts on Monday, August 17, 2009.

It’s pretty crowded, but I can easily see some ways to weed it down. First, the different colors let me pick out which blocks belong to which classes. I really want to take algorithms, so I’ll copy that to my main calendar (Google) or change the color to my “normal” calendar color (Outlook). Next I had a certain statistics professor recommended to me, so I’ll copy his block to my main calendar and hide all the other ones of that class by hiding that Google calendar. Using this process of elimination, I arrive at a fairly good schedule for me:

I don’t actually intend to take all of those classes, though. It is always nice to have a few backups handy in case one of the classes you intend to take fills up before your time ticket begins. Once you’re satisfied with your list, look up each of the CRN numbers so that as soon as your time ticket opens, you can register for all of these classes at once.

Andrew Guyton
Computer Science major at Georgia Tech

Andrew has lived in three states in the US: Colorado, Florida, and (most recently) Georgia. He lived in Heidelberg, Germany for three years. His areas of interest are math and history, doubling up on the former in 11th grade as he set curves in his IB courses in the latter. He worked over a summer as a historical reenactor at a local museum, and but eventually chose a more mathematically inclined career path. He attributes this path to his “incredible” AP Calc BC/IB Higher Level instructor, James Bobbitt. At Georgia Tech, he entered as an electrical engineering major, but eventually switched to computer science. He is involved with GT’s student newspaper, “The Technique,” and has co-oped at GTRI since Summer 2005. His primary hobby in recent years is editing Wikipedia, especially articles pertaining to Georgia Tech and its history; as it now has several well-written and well-sourced ‘Good Articles’ and a few ‘Featured Articles.’ So while he has not performed any literary analysis or been able to employ his French studies, he has been given back to the world on Wikipedia through his love of history, and continuing my education with more math-based subjects.

When asked how the IB experience has influenced him, Andrew says, “If it wasn’t for IB, I probably wouldn’t have gone to Georgia Tech. While I didn’t get that many credit hours from my IB or AP classes, IB taught me how to do well in this environment, so the first few years of college were actually easier than my last few years of high school. IB also got me interested in mathematics, which has gradually led me to my current degree/profession as a programmer and computer scientist.”

Andrew formed a group on Facebook called, “IB Survivors.” Andrew remarks on his idea for the group, “IB has never had a very strong social network as far as I could tell. While there were smaller groups and organizations, there was no over-arching group for IB students at the time, so it struck me as an obvious step to form it and invite my existing friends from IB. From that point, I’ve been relatively hands-off, letting the discussions that occurred happen organically.”

Here is a link to his blog: http://disavian.no-ip.info/

A tasty crepe I made

I’m certainly no master of the stove, but I’d been craving some crepes for a while now. My first step when cooking, given my extreme love of the internet, is to use Google to look up an appropriate recipe. I then attempt to follow said guide to the letter.

I picked the second result; the first was the Wikipedia article, which I highly doubted would instruct me on how to make one. The recipe? Basic Crepes at Allrecipes.

It’s fairly easy to mix things together, assuming you have the ingredients handy. The tricky part is the cooking. I tried variations of the recipe, such as:

• hot skillet and oil spray
• hot skillet and too much olive oil
• hot skillet and some olive oil
• (finally arriving later in the night at) cool skillet and oil spray

Despite the instructions, having a (relatively) cool skillet when you start allows you to pour the batter without it cooking before you’re done making your pretty flat circle. Also, too much oil will fry it, and you’ll have more of a pancake than a crepe. All of these methods produced delicious results, but as far as the stereotypical crepe goes, the latter was the most successful.

Background

Shortly after I decided to change majors from Computer Engineering to Computer Science, I wrote this explanation of my intent, and included some problems I felt caused the change. First, though, a quick education in Georgia Tech’s organization: it is composed of six “colleges,” two of which are the College of Engineering and the College of Computing. The college of Engineering has several schools that are loosely integrated; the schools all have relative independence, and act as somewhat independent entities (as far as students are concerned) that happen to be categorized into “Engineering.” My old degree, “Computer Engineering” (abbreviated CmpE) was in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) in the College of Engineering. The College of Computing, on the other hand, is tightly integrated; while it also has three “schools,” they are more organizational in nature. For reference, the College of Computing is about the size (in both numbers of faculty and students) of two or three “schools” within the College of Engineering.

Everyone thinks about changing majors at some point in their academic career. You wonder if you’d be happier/smarter/better in this school or that one; find you can’t handle a certain curriculum, or learn something about yourself that causes you to take a different path. For me, that time came this past spring semester. I decided that my current degree path wasn’t what I expected when I attended FASET oh so long ago. There were several reasons, and the decision was an agonizing one. Now, don’t take this editorial as an attack on the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, because there are many good things the school has to offer, especially their impressive Professional Communications Program. Rather, consider it a series of suggestions.

Work experience

I really liked my (now former) school, but the reasons I wanted to switch were complex and, in my opinion, represented deeper difficulties than one or two poorly taught classes could explain. In fact, a quick brainstorm shows about six separate reasons that (to me, at least) justified the change. I’ll start out with the easiest one-being a co-op taught me how to program, and how to design programs. It showed me a skill that I didn’t know existed, and it’s something that I enjoyed then, enjoyed today, and will enjoy doing tomorrow. In my opinion, designing programs and working on more established code bases are fun, as long as you don’t need to touch COM.

Poor teaching

Now, this next reason isn’t a cop-out, but I had a poor teacher along the way. I’m not going to say who, or what subject, but I knew more about that basic ECE subject before I started the class than when I completed it. I don’t know how that happened, but it did. It was ultimately the underlying reason that made me consider a major change. How could it have been fixed, though? In my opinion, the ECE department needs to follow the model they have been using with DSP and turn 50-student classes into large lecture classes. Since all students need to learn the same things, it makes sense to give them the same (high-quality) education, and employ other professors on hand as section TAs. That way, the basic education each student receives is the product of multiple professors.

Attractive culture

Aside from teaching, there’s a culture difference between the School of ECE and the COC. As far as I can tell, the COC is nicer. Difficult subjects are taught more humanely. Not that the COC is perfect, but the vibe the school gives off is a more positive one. The dimly lit halls of the Van Leer building can’t hold a candle to the bright corridors of the buildings associated with the COC, especially the Klaus building. Also consider the scope of each; the College of Computing is a college, and contains several schools devoted to related topics. The School of ECE is a School, and is therefore more limited in the academic freedom available to them. They’re grouped in with all of the other types of engineering, whereas the COC is free to think of inventive programs.

Reorganization?

Organizationally, it would make more sense if the School of ECE was placed under the College of Computing, and the curricula were integrated. It’s a huge change, but consider that a student should be able to pick a point along a spectrum that ranges from computational media to pure software to pure hardware, and take classes accordingly. Consider it an extension of the COC’s interesting “threads” program, for which there is no ECE equivalent. Furthermore, the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering is lacking on the “computer” side of things. Anyone who has spent time majoring in CmpE (or at least studying the recommended curriculum) knows that there is virtually no difference between EE and CmpE at the lower levels. I’ve been told that they differ around the fifth year; however, a good education in computer engineering, in my opinion, should be a synthesis of CS and EE concepts rather than an EE degree with a different name. A merger with the COC would solve those problems and more.

I don’t doubt that such a merger has been proposed before, and I don’t doubt that it won’t happen while I’m a student here. However, it is a needed change. I don’t doubt that having them separate holds some benefit or another, but are these supposed benefits so important that you would put them before my education? I started out as a happy Computer Engineer, and through several paths, learned that I was actually an unhappy Computer Scientist. What, other that intangible organizational boundaries, really separates an engineer from a scientist?

Social bookmarks

The way to promote websites these days tends to be through social networking; typically, sites like del.icio.us, digg, reddit, etc. If a user enjoys what you write, it’s gotten incredibly easy for them to “spread the word.” Thus, I wrote a bit of php that takes the article name and generates handy bookmarks like you see on so many blogs today. I use my del.icio.us account pretty extensively, and if you haven’t tried it, you should. Nothing will replace having a good bookmarks toolbar, but for all of those “interesting” sites you don’t visit every day, del.icio.us is invaluable.

Search and Navigation

As per my original goal, I wrote a search box that will search my blog using the google engine, and has an option to search the web instead. Unfortunately, squashing a css bug in the nav/search bar made the (previously working) search box not show for IE users until I came back to the problem a week later. The top bar would slide past the rest of the content when the screen size was narrower than the columns (about 870 pixels). One thing I learned is that putting <div> inside of a <p> element breaks xhtml compliance. Go figure.

CSS Debugging

As a corollary to “Search and Navigation,” one of the most egregious problems I’ve had to deal with is buggy CSS; you change one thing, you break another. The afformentioned search bar bug was the most recent example. That took gutting the css for that section, and rebuilding it. The only problem? The search bar didn’t show up in IE. I called it a night, came back a couple days later, and knocked the problem out. Lesson learned: when you try and fail, take a break from the problem. It also taught me that I don’t know CSS as well as I thought I did. The code isn’t perfect, but it does what I want it to now.

RSS

Learning how to create a proper RSS feed has been interesting. Of great use was the Feed Validator. I started out with the basic definition; a channel, an item, a link, and a description. Then the validator said I needed to fix a few things:

• Add the string “AddType application/rss+xml .rss” (sans quotes) to my httpd.conf
• Add the <guid> element to make sure rss readers didn’t misread entries. I wish ThinkGeek would learn about that one, because I’d get what felt like three duplicate items from their feed every day.
• Add the <pubDate> tag; without this, a newsreader identifies the feed item as dated whenever it was downloaded. It’s not required for valid rss, but it’s nice to have.
• Add the <ttl> tag; it specifies how often a newsreader should check a feed. As I don’t update that often, it’s unnessasary for a newsreader to check every four seconds.

To see all of these improvements in action, take a look at the source of my rss feed.

What’s next?

I’ve definitely been saving the harder things for last:

• SQL back-end. I know that the more interesting modern websites are front-ends to databases, but I don’t really know where to begin on this one. I know it will involve creating a database and placing my articles in it, and then using PHP to load the articles from the database upon request.
• Comments. Comments are sort of a collary of the SQL problem. Once you’ve got a database of articles, each article can have its own database of comments.
• Flash. I’d like to find something that looks as nice as the static flash text, but doesn’t require a plugin. Images will probably work, but that will take time to do. Also, I’m not keen on generating an image for every article that I write.
• CSS Cleanup. I’m not using all of that crap, so it’d probably be a good idea to clean up and comment the code wherever possible.

Mine: http://del.icio.us/disavian
Hillary Lipko: http://del.icio.us/lamenta3
Ethan Trewhitt: http://del.icio.us/courtarro

DeviantArt
Georgia Tech Webspace
Facebook
Del.icio.us
MySpace
Wikipedia
Slashdot
Halo 2 Player Stats
Distributed.net
Amazon.com
LiveJournal

I’m sure I’ve missed some. All of these profiles make up part of my online identity. From my facebook/myspace profiles to my old “website,” they’re a part of what defines “disavian” online. Literally.

Someone, preferably google, needs to find a way to consolidate all of those. Imagine if each of those had an rss feed, or a way to summarize their content; that would then be loaded onto a clean, well-organized central “place.” Just a thought.