My Exercise In Futility

As if it weren’t already obvious, I traveled down a path that definitely confirms my geekiness, not that there was ever any doubt for some of you. Today, I have spent most of the day writing an application for Facebook. The only break I took today was forced upon me by Coley and Jason and that was so we could go eat Sushi. The two of them have spent weeks poking fun at my ‘manorexia’ or extra skinny appearance; I couldn’t give them additional ammunition for the future. But fear not my geeky brethren, as soon as I returned home, I dove right back into my coding. With every passing hour, I could feel my imaginary spectacles transforming into imaginary horn-rimmed spectacles, my skin became even more pale and pastey, and I’ve grown a pocket protector on my polo shirt.

The fruits of my labor are a relatively simple application that I built for Facebook. When I say simple, I am only referring to the complexity of the application; I am not referring to the difficulties I encountered when creating it or the hours I spent browsing the web to correct buggy code. The application is just a simple RSS reader that is fed by this blog. After installing the application, the feed displays in a Facebook user’s profile page along with the hundreds of other useless applications they have already installed.

I came up with the idea when browsing del.icio.us, a site I discovered during my search engine optimization research yesterday. While browsing through someone else’s bookmarks, I stumbled on the article How To Set Up A Facebook RSS Reader Application For Your Blog. I read through the 8 pages of material that are covered in this article and thought I would be able to complete the steps in a relatively short period of time. Although I was correct, there were a couple of traps that I fell into. I learned some useful information I should share with all of you.

Useful tip #1 dictates that first and foremost, one should always check the post date of a HOW TO blog/blog entry; this tip is especially crucial when the post relies on any sort of code, software from other vendors, or third party applications. One of the biggest problems that I ran into involved the use of outdated code that was posted in the guide. Granted, at the time the article was written, the code was perfectly valid. However, Facebook had made a few revisions to their functions and thereby rendering a few of the listed functions as errors.

I could have avoided this if I would have followed useful tip #2, which is, always read the comments, discussions, or follow up postings included with the original HOW TO post. More than likely, and is such with this case, the author or other readers may post updates regarding outdated code or bugs that were already discovered.

Useful tip #3 is more of a personal tip that I think only I will benefit from, as I have the world’s smallest bladder. The tip is, don’t drink so much coffee that you find yourself having to use the bathroom every 15 minutes. It interrupts your goove and can be quite annoying.

Anyhow, coding is how I have spent the majority of my day. I plan to finish the evening off with a few blog entries. I might want to invest in some acne medication to go along with my pocket protector and my imaginary horn-rimmed spectacles.

Oh, and in case you missed the link in the second paragraph, here it is again. You should be re-directed to Facebook and the application installation page. I have invited a few of my Facebook friends to my application already. It can not be globally listed with Facebook until five of you install it, so install the application damn it, and invite your friends!