I haven't really seen this spelled out in a really clear manner on the web, so let me help out. YouTube's got useful programmatic feeds. You can specify a feed for a user's videos like:

http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/base/users/communitychannel/uploads

You can also specify the order in which you want the videos.  Note the "orderedby" parameter in the urls that follow:

http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/base/users/communitychannel/uploads?orderby=updated
http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/base/users/communitychannel/uploads?orderby=published

So far, so great. Now, suppose you want to make a lifestream, and you want to include the videos that you've favorited. They've got a feed for that, too:

http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/davidblume/favorites

But it's not right.  If you look at the data you get back, you see that it's not what you wanted. Those videos are going to be associated with the timestamp with which they were updated or published, not the time that you favorited them. And that's the time that matters to your lifestream! Given the way the programmatic feeds are organized, you'd think that there's a way to specify that, and that feed would be as follows, right? --

http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/davidblume/favorites?orderby=favorited

Nope. After living with a workaround in my lifestream for months, only today do I learn that YouTube did create the feed I needed, but calls it this: v=2. Yeah, like that jibes with their feed explanation.

Lifestream writers, the favorites feed (ordered by time favorited) that you want is constructed like this:

http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/username/favorites?v=2

(Replace "username" with your username, of course.)  Now I can go delete my workaround.

Did I really not post this before? I've had to set this up multiple times, and it bites me every time.

In my household, the four of us share some computers, and we all have our own accounts on them. Some of us use Gmail and the Gmail notifier, and some of us don't.

The problem: Gmail notifier installs for all users, no exceptions. So the accounts that don't use Gmail still get the annoying login screen every time the computer boots up. No one should ever have to deal with a modal dialog that doesn't enrich their lives.

My workaround is this: Use RegEdit to tweak the GMail startup behavior.

Remove the individual value from HKLM's Run:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\"{<GMAIL'S GUID>}="C:\\Program Files\\Google\\Gmail Notifier\\gnotify.exe"


And for every user that wants it, add it to their particular HKCU's Run:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\"{<GMAIL'S GUID>}="C:\\Program Files\\Google\\Gmail Notifier\\gnotify.exe"

That should now disable the Gmail Notifier on the accounts that don't want it.

I've got an old home WDS system set up made up of two Linksys WRT54G gateways. It's awesome. I love Linksys for allowing the WRT54G to be "the first consumer-level network device that had its firmware source code released to satisfy the obligations of the GNU GPL."

The WRT54G wasn't configured to build a Wireless Distribution System, but the hardware was capable of it. I installed DD-WRT and followed an online recipe that gave me the configuration I needed:

• One gateway in the office upstairs for all the local devices and the wi-fi devices.
• One access point in the family room downstairs to extend the range of the network and for local (media) devices to speak to each other at high speed directly across the local switch, while still getting out to the internet when necessary.

This all worked great with my old DSL connection. But recently, we migrated from DSL to cable modem, and the new provider was Comcast. The Comcast technician came over to hook us up, but had a little trouble getting the computer online.

I had a sinking feeling that it was the WDS system I had in place. After a few early attempts, the service guy listened to me, and removed the WRT54G from the equation. Sure enough, when the cable modem was connected directly to the computer, the computer found the internet right away.

I was pretty upset that my WDS might not work anymore. I searched the web for terms that included DD-WRT and Arris and Comcast. Sure enough, half the hits I found indicated that the devices were simply incompatible. Wouldn't work.

But a few of the others suggested I set the local gateway to clone the computer's MAC address. That seemed like an advanced and bad thing to do, but if they were right, and Comcast had blacklisted the default MAC address that  DD-WRT uses, it was worth a try.

I navigate to the gateway's administration page expecting to have a lot of trouble, but it turns out to be really easy!


So I told the gateway to clone the PC's MAC address, crossed my fingers, and ... it worked!  It turns out Comcast was blacklisting the default MAC address the gateway uses!  W00T!  My home network is back in business.

... Until I upgrade to 802.11n.

(This is posted to add just another reference page on the net where a fix was found.  Hope it helps somebody.)

Installing PyGreSQL isn't trivial, especially on Dell computers.  Here's a recipe that worked for me and Python 2.5:

1. Download and install postgresql-8.3.5-2-windows.exe  (You shouldn't need the whole install.)
2. Add C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\8.3\lib to your PATH for libpq.dll.
3. Add C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\8.3\bin to your PATH for ssleay32.dll.
4. Hide System32's copy of LIBEAY32.dll  (If you're on a DELL, and that one is far smaller and older than the others.)
5. Download and install PyGreSQL-4.0.win32-py2.5.exe

And here's some explanation with accompanying error text so that people searching for a solution to this problem can find it.  Here's my experience:

Downloaded PyGreSQL first, before realizing it had dependencies to a postgresql install.  Got some nebulous ImportErrors when I tried to "import pg".

from _pg import *
ImportError: DLL load failed: The specified module could not be found.

Great.  What module?  Searching the web, I discovered I needed to install postgresql.  So I did, but I still got the error, even after updating the system's PATH variable.  (Note, sys.path and os.environ("PATH") are two different things.)  Eventually I discovered this great tip:

Try doing the failing import from the Python command line.  (Start->Python 2.5->Python (command line)).  Doing that will actually display a modal dialog that says exactly which dll could not be loaded.  Yay!

Finally, I got the LIBEAY32.dll error mentioned above, the exact text of which follows:

The ordinal 2821 could not be located in the dynamic link library LIBEAY32.dll

and once I hid the old LIBEAY32.dll, I got pg linking with the correct libraries, I was good to go.  Hope this helps somebody.

Yeah, I know that that subject text is hard to read. Blame it on the insomnia. I like the LiveJournal them "Expressive" by Jared MacPherson, but one thing that bugs me about it is that list items at the top of the post tend to overlap with the userpic.

Here's an example:


Yuck. A fix for it is the following Custom Stylesheet code:

.asset-body ol { list-style: decimal inside; }
.asset-body ul { list-style: disc inside; }

If you customize Expressive with the CSS above, then your journal won't have list bullets that overlap the user icon.  Here's a link to the corrected page in the picture above.