I have no idea what I'm doing

I knew this before this morning, but as I stumbled around this morning with xml errors (after yesterday's slapdown from the scionette, who chided me for the lack of css on the podcast page, which she's now corrected, q.v.) I realized I have no idea what, exactly, xml is, or how it works. I mean, I know that we're RSSing stuff hither and back again, but I looked at the nostrum.xml in Safari, Explorer and Netscape, and saw three different outputs (once it was working, that is, which leads me to believe I may only think it's working -- only iTunes will tell, when they run their RSS next). Jeesh. I had just posted #3 of Nostrum, which started this whole mess; instead of FTPing, I just uploaded it, and IX, the host, added a garbage character at the top and all hell broke loose until I finally found the offending wingding and deleted it.

Aaaaarrgghhh!

From now on, assuming that this works, I will FTP at home like a good old member of the Legion of Doom, and leave the funny business to the WTFers. Who am I kidding, putting an xml link on the podcast page? (I need CLG to stop gallivanting and start doing some real programming!)

In any case, I'm getting the hang of this recording stuff, although I realize I haven't gotten into any true acting. I used to read to the aforementioned scionette when she was in knee pants, and got quite a kick out of it, especially the Oz books. We had gotten past Ruth P T by the time Kt decided to go read things on her own. (We'd even ventured into Copperfield by then, which really cracked me up at the time -- gotta love those Murdstones!) I used all sorts of voices to read the Oz stuff, and Kt, being about 7 at the time, didn't yet recognize bad imitations of W.C. Fields and Mae West and the like, the voices familiar to me growing up, so it worked fine. Any famous, imitable voice I could think of, I put in. Humphrey Bogart. James Cagney. James Stewart. Cary Grant. The ones I could marginally imitate, in other words, as could anyone my age given the opportunity. But I don't think that will work in Nostrum. First of all, should Tarnish Jutmoll sound like Jimmy Cagney or Marlon Brando? Tough call. I read something this morning about Jim Dale doing the Harry P books, and, well, I'm just not Jim Dale. So I'll stick to a plainer read, I guess, unless I get inspirited somewhere along the line to do elsewise. The Nostrumite says he's perfectly pleased with it as it is, but then again, he's not exactly a Speecho-American, so who knows?

In any case, with 3 Nostrums in the can, the next project is S&S. I blocked it out on paper last night, and should get to it over the weekend, which means it should be posted early next week after editing. Then Caveman, then God knows what as far as modern theory is concerned. I've got quite the library of pomo and cultural studies stuff at home. Any suggestions?

And, oh yeah, two more days till the Little Trooper comes home. Pip the Wondercat is all atwitter. I just hope he realizes that the Trooper is meant as companionship, and not dinner.