rullzer

Over the last week I have been reading up on xmpp, I started out with reading two RFC’s: 3920 and 3921. These gave me a more in depth understanding of xmpp. However I am mostly interested in the publish/subscribe extension for xmpp (XEP-0060).

Publish/subscribe can be used for a lot more (see XEP-0163) but one of the most logical implementations to start with would be publish/subscribe as a rss-polling replacement. Right now a lot of people get updates for a website via an aggregator, this basically works by fetching an rss or atom file on a given interval and then parsing the result. Lets say your interval is 1 hour, then a worst case senario would be that you get the update 59 minutes later than it is published. A “solution” would be to set the interval to 1 minute. However this creates unessesarry bandwidth (and load) to the server.

For all this publish-subscribe seems to be the solution. The best way to see it is as a one-way chat. When a news items (or blog post or whatever) is post an item is published to a node. That node then sends out the notification to all subscribed clients. It is clean and simple (for a more in depth explanation you should read the XEP or google a bit!).

Now it would be awesome to see this implemented in some aggregator (especially Akregator since I am a kde-man), of course that would have to be done in such a way that I can use my existing JID (Jabber-ID) but that it does not appear online or receives other messages.

I think a good way to start is for me just to check-out the sources of Akregator, yet another project

Since my webhost had a php upgrade some the php scripts that generates the bash.org rss feed did not work any more. However after some minor fixes it now works like a charm again!

I was looking around in the world of QR Code today and found that you can share your WiFi (SSID, password and network type) via a QR code! It works flawless on android and probably also on other platforms. Will safe me a lot of time to tell people the password every time!

1. Go to a QR code generator site (I used this one“).
2. Choose “WiFi Network for Android” from the drop down list.
3. Fill in you network details and export (to SVG of course since vector graphics rule!).
4. Print the code and put it on the refrigerator or something .
5. Let your friends scan the code.

Awesome stuff those QR codes!

This year I will be attending FOSDEM! Together with Sander and Daan I will be in Brussel from Saturday morning till Sunday evening! I am very excited and really looking forward to all the talks and discussion with everyone!

Now I finally get to put the famous button on my own website:

See you all at FOSDEM!