Zebula's birth certificate says that she was born on September 19th, 2002, at precisely 9:25am PDT. That means that as I sit down to write this, she is exactly one year and twelve minutes old. Happy birthday Zebula!

Can I tell you all the ways that she's the perfect child? Actually I suppose I could tell you, but I suspect the exercise would bore you. She's a great little girl, even though she's making whining noises from the kitchen just at this moment.

I don't have any specific reflections to offer on this momentous day. I'm just very happy to be the father of such a terrific girl. Also, I'm proud that her birthday corresponds with the surprisingly popular new "International Talk Like a Pirate Day". So as you go about your day, be sure to use pirate language. And when you do, think of Zebula. Avast!

A couple of days ago, Eric let me know that he now has a blog of his very own (warning -- as Eric clearly states, it's a technical blog about VBScript and JScript, not personal ramblings about his life). He also asked me, in a casual, offhand, and entirely superior way, if my blog had an RSS feed. No, I was forced to reply, it didn't. Needless to say, I was ashamed; after all, RSS is what all the kids are talking about these days.

For the uninitiated, RSS is a way to "syndicate" your blog. You publish it in a format that delineates the entries in a standardized way that a computer can understand. Then there are these fancy programs called "RSS Aggregators" that allow you to subscribe to a whole bunch of RSS feeds (a popular one for the Mac is called "NetNewsWire"). The aggregator tracks all the feeds for new headlines, and displays them as they come in. What's cool is that if your blog is backed by a appropriately-written software, it's not much extra work to publish RSS in addition to plain old HTML. If you're using pre-packaged blogware like BlogX or Moveable Type, this all comes for free. If you're Doctor Thingo, well... it's just one more protocol you have to learn and implement.

Confidentally to Sandy, this might be just the ticket for your eZine project...

In the end, I got up off my butt and added an RSS feed to Thingo. It didn't turn out to be too much work -- because of the way the core of Thingo is written, about a hundred lines of code were sufficient. In fact, it looks like this entire site is running on about 1400 lines of Python, which seems like a pretty good ratio of features per line of code.

If you want to subscribe to Thingo's RSS feed, you can get the URL from the little "XML" icon in the sidebar. If you get curious and click on the icon from your browser, chances are you'll get gobbledegook. You probably need to use the link to "subscribe" from one of them fancy aggregators.

The fine folks at Thingo are pleased to announce that we're relocating in order to serve you better. We'll soon be leaving our current offices on the top floor of Thingo Towers, and taking up residence in the multi-storied Thingo Palace.

In other words, the Thingo family has bought a house. Well, to be more precise, we've made an arrangement with a bank whereby they buy a house, and we buy it back from them in very small pieces over a long period of time.

Actually, it's a great bargain financially. The fact is that we're paying an extortionary rent for our current accommodations, and the monthly payments on the house come to several hundred dollars less. Plus, from what I can tell, our mortgage rate is unbeatable. It elicits consternation and the gnashing of teeth in rival banks.

As for the house, it's just about exactly what we were looking for. It's just off the western edge of the original boundary of this town; technically speaking, we're about two blocks west of our search area, but the house was too good to pass up. From the street, it's an unassuming little thing clad in white siding. But that humble exterior belies the sumptuous appointments and earthly delights that await those lucky enough to pass through its faux-Tudor foyer. Inside, you will find all the space we could ask for, laid out in a sensible modern way, with a minimum of linoleum and avocado colouring. I could continue gushing on the subject, but you'll just have to visit and see it for yourself.

Despite expectations and the warnings of others, the process continues to be entirely painless. In particular, the sellers seem to be bending over backwards to make sure the house is ready for us when they leave. We need only mention some less-than-perfect aspect of the house and they call in people to fix it. Then, for good measure, they fix three other things that we didn't know were broken. And they've suggested that they might hold a party before they leave so that the other residents of the block can meet us. Seems like a good deal to me.