[Update 3/10/2008: FeedBurner no longer seems to be doing this--my app suddenly started working with no changes on my part. Odd.]

When I try to access a FeedBurner feed from my Flex app, FeedBurner decides to hand me an HTML version of the feed, instead of, you know, the frickin' feed. Of course, if I go to the same URL in Firefox, it gives me the right thing. What do I have to do to get FeedBurner to realize that I actually want XML?

[Addendum: I know I can append "?format=xml" to the URL, and I guess I could just automatically add that onto any URLs I get from FeedBurner. But if I go to the base URL from Firefox, FeedBurner knows how to hand it XML; I want to figure out how it's doing that, so my feedreader will work with other sites that try to do the same trick (I've noticed at least one other site doing it).]

Tags: geek, inter-nets[tm], lazyweb

Dear Professor Lazyweb,

Let's say that, for some stupid reason, I'm thinking of implementing Yet Another Blog-Aggregator-Type Thingy that I want to work with most blogs and syndication feeds that exist today. Which formats do I need to support? RSS 0.91? RSS 1.0? RSS 2.0? Atom? Others?

(I know I probably also want to support OPML for importing a list of feeds as well.)

Regards,

nj

Tags: geek, inter-nets[tm], lazyweb

Okay, so I now have my main router plugged into my cable modem, and a secondary wireless router plugged into the main router via a hard wire. Everything's basically working, except...

My "main" router is on channel 6, and my "secondary" router is on channel 11 (same SSID, same key). Because of the way the house is laid out, the secondary router is actually more centrally located, so most things should prefer to connect to it. However, I'm finding that my laptop is insisting on preferring the main router on channel 6, even when it's right next to the secondary router (and NetStumbler shows a much higher SNR to the secondary router). I have to get pretty far away from the main router and manually disconnect/reconnect to get it to look at the closer router. Do wireless devices look for lower-numbered channels first or something?

Tags: lazyweb

In the house we're moving to, the various devices that need wireless access are going to be more spread out than in our current house, so I'm thinking one wireless router isn't going to cut it. I currently have a Linksys WRT54G.

The obvious thing to do is buy a range extender ($99). But it seems like just picking up another WRT54G would be cheaper (on sale various places for around $50).

Is there some way to set up a second router to basically act like a range extender? From my (very limited) understanding of IP routing, it seems like the standard way to get two routers to talk is to have them own different subnets, and then set up a static route between them. I'm fine trying to figure out how to set that up (assuming it's fairly straightforward), but I'm wondering if there's a more seamless way to do it, so it looks like they're basically sharing the same network (the same way a range extender would).

If I do end up carving them into different subnets, should I just make them each be in the 192.168.0 range (e.g. 192.168.0.[0-127] and 192.168.0.[128-255]), with subnet mask 255.255.255.128?

Tags: geek, lazyweb

While rummaging through boxes in preparation for our impending move, I discovered a 4mm backup tape from when I was leaving SGI in 1996. I probably made the tape on an Indy.

I'm guessing there are places out there that I can throw money at to extract the data from the tape onto some more usable medium like a CD-R or DVD-R. Does anyone know of a company that will do this at a reasonable price?

Tags: geek, lazyweb