Using Ruby to parse HTML and create RSS

I can't remember if it was jaylake or Charlie Stross who first turned me on to the blog SF Novelists, a group blog which quickly entered my daily feed of things to read. There was one problem with this blog: it had a secondary feed that was completely worth putting into an RSS Feed, but which the purveyors of the website had somehow neglected.

If you look at the second column, "What our members are saying," it's a list of things the website's contributors are doing elsewhere. That kind of niftiness should have its own feed but doesn't. Naturally, your Elf has a solution.

Many RSS programs can take a script as a source, rather than a URL. The script just has to spew out RSS like any other RSS feed. Either you can use that facility, or you can put this script somewhere in a CGI-aware portion of a website and run it like any other script, and use that URL as the source for your feed. (Note how blithely I assume everyone has access to these sorts of things.)

Hpricot uses XPath, so it was easy to find the second column, and then disassembling it was little more than regular expressions. I used RSS/Maker not because it was the best thing I found, but because it was the first that did the job.

( Source code! )

Ow! Frakkin' Knee!

You know that the day you really, really don't want to go to the gym is the day you should go. Well, today I went. I did okay. There was some yoga/pilates class going on in the room with the bags, so I did legwork instead, then arms and abs. I did my legs hard, since my physical therapist has more or less confirmed that at my age the only way to convince my muscles to stay where they are is to abuse them mercilessly.

There are two muscles running down my thigh, the hamstring and the medius. My medius is weak; it's why I'm going to the physical therapist. Since it's weak, the hamstring is pulling my kneecap off my knee and that's the source of my pain when walking.

My workout at the gym only made it worse, I'm afraid. I strained the medius hard to build it up, but now it's tired and my hamstring is doing an even better job of inflicting massive pain. I can barely walk, and climbing stairs is right out of the question. Hopefully, this'll clear up in an hour or two when I head out for the buses and home.

And why would I do such horrible things to myself? So I can walk when I'm 50, that's why.

I can has relaxation?

It has more or less been go-go-go for the past few days. Tuesday, Omaha and I took the girls to Coven night, where we sang pagan Yule songs, ate a delicious meal, and had a great time. It was so good to see kaelisinger and the rest of the crowd there. The girls had a blast singing all the songs we could dig up, even those that were obviously adaptations from more Christian heritages.

Yesterday was the wedding of Alex and Tabbi, and The Reverend D. Omaha Sternberg officiated. It was likewise lovely, but really, the groom is supposed to be nervous before the ceremony. Saw many lovely people, including lisakit, with whom I seem to be developing an odd but not unpleasant vibe or two. Kouryou-chan and Yamaraashi-chan were the ringbearers, and aside from a few cracks about Mount Doom courtesy yours truly, they did their duty with obvious joy. Tabbi was radiant, as brides should be, and far too concerned with being both bride and hostess. We tried to alleviate that as much as possible, but y'know, so many of my friends must have it their way.

But it's been two nights since we were last home in time to take care of any chores: no dishes have been done, no laundry has been washed. The house is a bit of a wreck. We got the tree up. It looks lovely. The tinsel from last year was wrecked and unrecoverable, and that the gods for that; dressing the tree up so much that you can't see it obscures the treeishness of it.

I also haven't had much time for personal projects. I wrote only about 800 words today, mostly in the Darzi and Peren storyline, and I'm trying to figure out what the real conflict is here. They seem to be getting along well enough. Now that I have a laptop I have a chance to put my website back together again better, and put up the Lulu store, and start producing books.

But, whew, I so need a few days of rest. So tired...