Hello. I am Paul Kinlan.

A List Apart, a popular website found via Technorati, uses Ruby on Rails. I'm curious about Ruby on Rails and its benefits for web development. The site's neutral color scheme and articles are visually appealing, possibly utilizing color theory.

My site's bandwidth usage spiked mid-month, and I discovered the culprit was MSN Bot repeatedly accessing my Atom.xml feed. It was hitting my feed every minute, consuming a significant portion of my bandwidth. The bot is apparently part of a syndication search engine, constantly checking for new content. I added a robots.txt file to throttle the bot's access frequency, which solved the issue.

I discovered my Apache server doesn't require file extensions for URLs, meaning both www.kinlan.co.uk/AjaxExperiments/AjaxTag and www.kinlan.co.uk/AjaxExperiments/AjaxTag.html lead to the same resource. This is convenient for using Technorati tags, which often omit extensions.

I've downloaded the Google Desktop Search 2.0 Beta and I'm liking it so far. My only complaint is not being able to force indexing when not idle. It seems to be lightweight, which is great for my computer. I've installed the Adsense plugin and the Gmail plugin is a plus. The feed detection is excellent, even better than IE7 Beta 1. I'll post more thoughts after I've used it longer.

I'm exploring OPML and trying to understand its purpose and potential uses. I've come across mentions of it by Robert Scoble, who suggests it could connect various forms of media like podcasts and photo-sharing. However, I'm struggling to grasp how this would work in practice. I'm also looking into resources from Dave Winer and others to learn more. I'd appreciate any helpful links or information on OPML.

In this installment, I reflect on the limitations of Blogger.com as a blogging platform. Despite its user-friendliness, several features fall short of my needs. The "Blogger For Microsoft Word" integration isn't particularly helpful, the WYSIWYG editor is inconsistent, and the available tags seem outdated. I crave more innovation, especially regarding feed customization and ping configuration. While AudioBlogging.com intrigues me, its practicality for someone in the UK is questionable. Ultimately, I desire greater control and configurability, but acknowledge Blogger's value as a free service.

Many complain AJAX breaks browser navigation, but I believe that pressing the back button should exit an AJAX application entirely. It's not AJAX itself, but poorly designed applications that break navigation and bookmarking. Google Maps has addressed bookmarking, but some applications aren't suited to web-style navigation or bookmarks. More thoughts on this to come. Comments welcome via email or the comments section.

I'm considering redesigning my blog and like the single-post focus of penandthink.com/niggle. However, my blog has frequent posts, so I'm unsure if that style would work. I'm asking readers whether they prefer a blog with a single featured post or a list of recent posts (like my current design showing the last 30). Feedback can be sent to paul.kinlan@gmail.com.

I'm aware my writing isn't great - my vocabulary, punctuation, and grammar could all use improvement. Even though I'm using Word to help, I know I need to do more. I'm considering getting "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" to brush up on my grammar. I want this blog to remain personal, but I also want it to be more readable. So, my goals are to learn about commas, semicolons, sentence structure, and paragraph structure.

This blog post, the sixth in my "Successes and Failures of my First AJAX Application" series, discusses how my blogging style is evolving. I'm focusing on improving my grammar, the topics I cover, post length, and what I include in my blogs. This self-reflection aims to improve how I communicate with my readers. More details on each area are available via the provided links.