fire • may 24, 2002 • tucson, az
Faxed my speaker contract for Web Design World in Seattle. Purchased the plane tickets - this will be my first experience with Alaska Air. Now I have about three weeks to finish preparing my talk...
On a (somewhat) related note, a discussion on a Web Accessibility List I'm on led me to this article on the importance of Standards from the January '02 issue of Wired Magazine.
»plink« · May 30, 2002
This weekend was filled with graduation parties and family over for a Memorial Day BBQ. All were good times and we didn't burn the house down, so I guess that counts as success!
If you use OSX, and haven't checked it out already, you really owe it to yourself to take the time to download Chimera. This is a Gecko-based browser written in Cocoa - so it is OS X Native. You get all the standardy-goodness and a fast browser that renders things beautifully (using the Quartz text rendering engine to smooth the fonts). When it catches up to Mozilla 1, it may just become my default browser...
Speaking of standards, I've been working up some new CSS layouts that work with NN4 in support of my Web Design 2002 presentation. These are based on real world layouts that I used in the Kitt Peak Visitor Center pages, the Astronomy Education Review, as well as a Planetary Nebula Sampler.
»plink« · May 27, 2002
With all these promotions Apple's got going (all ending around the beginning of July), you've got to think that there will be some big new announcements made at the MacWorldExpo in New York...
»plink« · May 23, 2002
It has occurred to me, after spending the weekend with a bunch of them, that magicians are perhaps the only group of people who are more concerned than Apple with keeping the secrets of their trade, well, secret.
It also occurred to me that the only thing the general public could care less about than what Apple will be announcing in July, is how a magician creates his or her illusions.
This is not a slam on magicians, I only point it out because both groups (with whom I proudly associate) are a bit over the top in worrying about the secret getting out. With magicians, if the "trick" is performed well, and the audience is entertained, then they don't care how it works.
And for Apple, much as I hate to admit, most normal folks just don't care...
»plink« · May 22, 2002
We made it through the awards ceremony and thoroughly enjoyed the magic convention, where some of the best magicians in the world came to share their performances as well as their craft with us.
I came to work today to slow down a bit and rest...
»plink« · May 20, 2002
My wife and I run the Awana program at our church. We had over 300 kids and 100 leaders this year. Wednesday is the end of the year awards ceremony, and we have been working on the program (over 400 awards to be noted) and the slide show/video all weekend. The work continues. Then Thursday the magic club I belong to is hosting a convention here in Tucson. So if I don't post much, you'll know why...
»plink« · May 13, 2002
I'm not the cycling stud that Charles is (yet), but I did take a few minutes off my time in to work this morning, even with stopping to take a picture on the way in...
»plink« · May 9, 2002
L. Michelle Johnson points to a great series of short articles at poynter.org (the folks behind the redesign of many newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal), called Eyes on the News. Good stuff for bloggers to keep in mind. I particularly appreciated the April 25 article about stand alone pictures, especially in light of my redesign. Sorry, I'll try not to bring it up again...
»plink« · May 7, 2002
I continue to tweak the style sheet, adding another visual element at the bottom right - if you don't see it your browser is using yesterday's cached style sheet - time to force a reload (hold down the shift key while reloading/refreshing the page). Other subtle changes have been put in place to enhance your experience here.
Sorry Opera users, you'll just have to deal with a slightly less than optimal view. Hopefully the next release will get fixed positioning right.
Related (in a round about way) to the updated look here, Jeffrey points to this article from Mac Edition: The Brain Upgrade Initiative . Good points. In fact I moved my Browser Upgrade Initiative disclaimer text (view source if you really want to see it...) and link to the end of my page after seeing search results similar to what is in the article. I had been meaning to for some time and yesterday's redesign gave me the opportunity.
Glad I read the article today...
»plink« · May 7, 2002
Steve Jobs kicked off Apple's WWDC this morning with a sneak peek at the next version of Mac OS X (code named Jaguar). It includes a new iApp called iChat that uses AIM. Anyone with a mac.com email account or AOL screen name will be able to use it immediately. Jaguar also includes some new graphics acceleration along with some nifty networking capabilities, accessibility enhancements, handwriting recognition, and perhaps the most requested feature for OS X - spring loaded folders!
On the hardware front, Apple will also be formally announcing rack mounted servers next week. And there is speculation, based on some of the requirements for this new version of the OS, that there will be more hardware announcements come this summer's MacWorld Expo in NYC. But that's pretty much a given anyway...
»plink« · May 6, 2002
Coming in a little late for the May 1 Reboot, things are nevertheless changing around here. With only minor tweaks to the HTML, I've simply created a new style sheet and uploaded a few associated files.
Voilà - a new look.
Since I purchased a digital camera a couple of months ago, I've been posting images much more frequently. This has added to the bandwidth considerably. So I've decided to feature just one image at the top of the page, with older images (including all the one's I've posted already) placed in an archive, which you can get to at any time by clicking on the featured image.
»plink« · May 6, 2002
You appear to be using a browser that does not implement style sheets correctly, or you have turned style sheets off in your browser. If it's the latter, turning style sheets back on will greatly enhance your experience on this site, and many others on the web. If you are using an older browser (such as Netscape 4) you may wish to know that there are standards compliant browsers available for all platforms. See the Web Standards Project's Browser Upgrade Initiative if you would like to find one for your particular needs. Otherwise, rest assured that you are seeing all of the content that everyone else is - it just doesn't look as pretty...
