I have spare Spotify and Dreamwidth invitations if anyone would like one. On the other hand, I'd love a Google Wave invitation.

This entry was originally posted at http://tobyaw.dreamwidth.org/163253.html.

I’ve mostly been listening to the Manic Street Preachers’ Journal for Plague Lovers this week.

Graze are still sending me a box a couple of days a week. I can’t work out whether it feels like good value, but the contents are nicely presented and I enjoy picking at them (and sharing with Kate and a very enthusiastic Beth).

I have a spare Dreamwidth invitation code, if anyone wants it.

This entry was originally posted at http://tobyaw.dreamwidth.org/149909.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

A while ago I wrote a little script to show which of your LiveJournal friends exist on Dreamwidth. I’ve reworked it as a web page; you can try it at:

http://lj-friends-on-dw.filmgold.com/

This entry was originally posted at http://tobyaw.dreamwidth.org/149587.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

I read a lot of RSS/Atom news feeds; many blogs, some news sources, some automated updates. I’ve moved between various solutions in the past, but never found one I’ve been particularly happy with.

In the past I’ve used NetNewsWire on my Mac, then added the feeds as syndicated accounts in LiveJournal, then back to NetNewsWire, then Google Reader online, then NewsFire on my Mac, then back to NetNewsWire (with its syncing to newsgator.com, keeping the same ‘read’ status between the Mac, online, and iPhone).

For a while I had most of my LJ friends added to NetNewsWire too, using the digest authentication so I could read friends-locked posts, but this wasn’t ideal for keeping up with comments.

Now I’ve moved around again, adding most of the blog-style feeds to Dreamwidth; I’ll see how I get on with them here. I find that reading longer articles works better in a web browser, whether on Mac or iPhone. I’ll keep the news-style feeds (like various BBC news feeds, The Register, MediaGuardian) in NetNewsWire; I don’t think feeds that add tens of items a day are a good fit for LiveJournal-style reading.

This entry was originally posted at http://tobyaw.dreamwidth.org/146170.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Don’t know whether there is an easier way to do this. This script will read a user’s LJ friends list, and check to see whether DW accounts with the same names exist.

#!/usr/bin/ruby

require 'open-uri'

friends = Array.new

ARGV.each do |lj_user|
  open("http://www.livejournal.com/misc/fdata.bml?user=#{lj_user}").readlines.each do |line|
    friends.push line.slice(2...line.length).strip if line =~ /^<|>/
  end
end

friends.sort.uniq.each do |friend|
  puts friend if open("http://users.dreamwidth.org/#{friend}").read !~ /^<h1>Unknown User/
end