WordPress.org

Why did you write this plugin?

1. I am new to wordpress and wanted to learn how it worked. What better way then to rip the off the cover and start playing with the insides?? Unlike my dad’s CB radio I was able to put WordPress back together.
2. My wife and I have a new son and I wanted a blog to brag/boast/show off. However, I didn’t want to manage the content myself. My wife is pretty technical, but using a plugin helped keep things consistent between our posts.
3. I've been writing code for well over 10 years and figured it was finally time to contribute to the open source community.

Why are feeds cached, doesn’t WordPress already cache RSS feed requests?

Yes, but the feed request is not the only point for added latency. Once the feed is downloaded you still have to parse all of the feed requested. When dealing with several large galleries the latency was significant. By only parsing the feeds once we can select a random image with a single DB query, super fast!