Garden Of Blog

Here’s some documentation on constructing a multipart email I should have read sooner. I’d never embedded inline images in an email before (programmatically, that is), and was floundering until I found this. The attachment was coming through just fine, but damned if I could refer to it in the image tag and get it to show up it the HTML email.

Embedding images in your HTML email is far preferable to loading the image from a webserver, especially if your audience is large. Let their email clients deal with the bandwidth of loading attachments, rather than your webserver. Plus, this makes the images available, once downloaded, even when the user isn’t online.

I’m using Perl and the Mail::Sendmail module for this work, for which this FAQ on the module also came in very handy.

For me, the lightbulb came on when I realized that in order to refer to an object in one “part” of an email from another “part”, I needed to use the cid: notation in the image tag and set the Content-type to multipart/related (not just multipart/mixed). Good luck!

Right now I’m in the middle of Michael Chabon’s novel Wonder Boys. Of the three Chabons she’s read, this is Jessica’s least favorite, but thus far I think I like it a little better than Chabon’s first, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (which had nonetheless blown me away). His latest novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is Jessica’s favorite, about a couple of comic book creators, or something like that. My buddy Jake liked it too, so I am looking forward to that one.

I’ve actually seen the film version of Wonder Boys, starring Michael Douglas. I remember loving it, but thankfully it was long enough ago that I do not remember the plot points.

Another book-inspired film that I saw before being tempted by the book: The Mosquito Coast. Harrison Ford was great in that movie, which I recall seeing in the theatre as a kid. I have a copy of the book now, after Jessica and I recently discovered Paul Theroux through Rhythm Ship singer Maggie Woods.

Beck’s news feed.

I can’t seem to stop thinking about how RSS technology can be brought to the masses the way web browsers and email have. As a web developer I am ashamed (and disoriented) that it has taken me this long to catch on myself.

Although I’ve been happy with SharpReader, I couldn’t deny the cumbersome aspect of adding another client application to the running list. Wouldn’t a browser plugin make more sense to receive, read and organize content “feeds” (as I’ve been learning to call them)?

In fact SharpReader comes with an embedded browser, but the two need to get married once and for all. Googling on this theme I uncovered Pluck, and snappy looking plugin that pretty much does everything I imagined and more. (I admit that I am still using Internet Explorer about 75% of the time— that’s where I installed Pluck).

As cool as Pluck is, I can’t help but wonder why Microsoft hasn’t made sure that RSS doesn’t steal any of it’s IE-wrangled real estate. Why isn’t IE equipped with RSS features? Does anybody know? In fact, Microsoft’s own FAQ on RSS recommends you cut and paste the URLs for feeds into your RSS news aggregator. Are you kidding me Bill?

One thing I did notice on setting up SharpReader though: it required the installation of the Microsoft .NET framework. Is there some master plan at work? Stay tuned. If I find out, I’ll let you know.

I noticed some sites (including the WordPress application used to generate this blog) using the feed: prefix in their links, similar to mailto:. And this did indeed pass the news feed link over to SharpReader on my Windows system. I’m not sure if this is a standard yet, but it works for me.

Is it working for you?