Space Feeds - new and improved

Space Feeds - new and improved

I have been fiddling around with the blog template for Space Feeds ever since I first put it up last month. I wasn't really happy with how long it took to load everything, nor with the static order of the feeds. I think I have found the solution though, by incorporating Google Reader "clips". Now, when the Space Feeds page is loaded, Google does a quick scan of over 100 space blogs and several dozen space news sites, and displays the titles of the 50 most recent blog posts and 50 most recent news stories, with the newest ones listed first. At the bottom of the blog feeds and news feeds, there are "Read More..." links that go to my Google Reader public pages, which give more detail on these recent entries.

I have also shamelessly stolen some code from Dick Stafford over at the Rocket Dungeon, embedding NASA TV at the top of the page. I do have a problem with that though; for some reason which I just cannot fathom, the media player starts playing as soon as the link to NASA is established, even though SelectionStart is set to False (and when I tried to set AutoStart to False, the damn player wouldn't work at all). The only change I made to Dick's code was the height and width of the player. Anyone have an idea what is causing this, and how I can fix it? Dick? I don't want to have NASA TV automatically start when someone visits that page; instead I want them to have to actually press Play.

At any rate, the page loads much faster now, and with the feeds displaying newest-first (instead of the more static method I had in there last month). I think that the Space Feeds site is much more useful than it was before. And of course I'm not done fooling around with the design; I will likely keep tweaking it over the course of the next few months or so.

While I was testing the page out over the last few hours, it was gratifying to see the content updatng before my eyes as bloggers published new material. One entry in particular caught my eye, an alternative plan for NASA called Lunar Much Sooner (and Better) by Jon Goff over at Selenian Boondocks. Jon has really been on a roll lately, and this post summarizes much of what he has written over the last few weeks, in a proposal that could return men to the moon as early as 2012. I think his idea is much more in line with what President Bush was talking about in the Vision for Space Exploration speech, compared to what NASA presented yesterday.

Update: Dick pointed out in the comments that there was a problem viewing the Space Feeds site in Firefox. I think I have that problem straightened out... but of course, I can never leave well enough alone. So, I did some more tweaks, added Astronomy Picture of the Day, and moved some stuff around. If anyone has any more problems with Space Feeds, let me know either in the comments here or in the comments section on the Space Feeds site.

Technorati Tags: Space, NASA, Moon, Blog