Muskblog: Homesteading the Internet since 1995

The CFA exam(s) are approaching and that means more traffic for some old blog posts I wrote, it also means some folks are likely in for a rude awakening when they sit their first practice exam or on actual exam day. Since most people are lazy and impatient here is the direct link to my [...]

I never set out to build a miniature painting news aggregator. I had time to do it because I remain #unemployed. I was just trying to help a fellow blogger out with a problem they were having. You know me, always helping other people, when I should be helping myself… Anyway I spent even more [...]

Although I perhaps should have been using the time in other ways, I’ve spent considerable time and effort building a custom news aggregator.  I was able to leverage SimplePie and PHP to do a lot of the heavy lifting, but I also wanted to scour the Internet, social media, and all the trendy Web 2.0 [...]

So I’ve been building something. And while doing so I discovered there are three different types of feeds on the Internet. Feeds that return useful information in chronological order that can be displayed and manipulated easily. Feeds that do not conform to an established standard or otherwise do not behave as expected and cause SimplePie [...]

About a week ago the iPhone App for Fitocracy, a niche social network, that tries to ‘gamify’ fitness came out. Prior to it’s release I used two other iPhone apps to track my workouts then I would dutifully enter the information into the Fitocracy website in order to earn points, badges, and the props of [...]