2001
Wow. We all made it. Now where's my Pam Am shuttle flight, two-week holiday at the HoJo's in low Earth orbit, and neurotic AI?
I don't really have that much to write about, but of course I had to make sure that I wrote an entry for today. The date alone made it worth it for me. Kat and I did have a really great time at last night's party (at someone else's place for once!) and are looking forward to the New Year with a mixture of trepidation and anticipation—the same mix as usual, I admit, but this year it runs a bit more deeply. If nothing else, we should have a very interesting year... and if you'll recall, the Chinese had a curse along those lines.
May your year-to-come be healthy, happy, and wholly wonderful!
Although things may seem quiet, life certainly hasn't lacked for Stuff To Do. The companion pocket reference to CSS:TDG is getting perilously close to a printer, which means it might be available for purchase sometime soon. It already has an Amazon.com sales rank of 1,667,067 (although that number may have already changed), so obviously the New York Times bestseller list is just days away. In other ink-on-dead-trees news, my next book is nearing the end of the writing cycle, with just a few more things to be done, and technical review to be undertaken. As we get closer to having that book go to a printer, I'll share more details. Then there's the dead-electrons-on-monitors news, which is that I should (he said hopefully) have an article published on the O'Reilly Network tomorrow. Update: looks like it will be published this coming Friday, not tomorrow. I'm anticipating a bit of controversy, frankly, but you can't push at a way of thinking without honking off someone.
...aaaand we're back. So Kat and I made a snap decision to go to Disney World. Okay, Kat made a snap decision, did a whole ton of research on prices and availability, laid all the groundwork, and then convinced Eric that a vacation was needed. As usual, she was right. Florida was sunny but cold, although since their low temperature was higher than Cleveland's high temperatures, I wasn't complaining too much. The only real drawback was the difficulty in swimming in the pool. The water was warm enough, but since it was off-season the pool had limited hours and we were always off doing stuff. Lord knows, there's more than enough stuff to do at the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, and so forth. Being there in the off-season meant basically no lines at all, which was wonderful. So was the food. What is it about our vacations and food? Maybe I should become a culinary critic, which would be some sort of über-dream job for me, now that I think about it: eat great food, write about it, get paid. Where do I sign up?
Jeez, have I ever fallen behind. Things are flying every which way, metaphorically speaking, and trying to duck the swooping events while also being productive has consumed a lot of time and energy. All of which is my lame way of saying, "Sorry I've been so silent." I'm not going to really do penance right now, either, because I don't have time to make up for it. Maybe tomorrow, we'll see. So why am I writing? I have two recommendations to make. The first one is for Clevelanders who want some great Japanese food: go straight to Matsu and don't come back until you have. If you'd like to meet Kat and I there, then let me know and we'll schedule something. Second is for anyone buying technical books: Bookpool. They have great prices on stuff like O'Reilly books, so if you aren't going to use a local merchant to get your tech references, go to Bookpool instead. I get absolutely no money from them for saying this, nor have I ever ordered from them; I just noticed that their prices are outstandingly low, and wanted to give everyone else a heads-up.
Happy Valentine's Day, or whatever.
Okay, I'm not actually bitter this year (for once!), but the holiday still drags at me a bit. I think it's the obligatory nature of the whole thing, the sense that if I don't observe the holiday then I will suffer mightily for it. And that's not even coming from Kat, who is perfectly happy to buy herself a present and then say, "Look what you got me!" I love her for that (and a whole lot more). What I'm talking about is the general all-pervasive air of expectation which the holiday creates all on its own. It isn't nearly so bad as the anti-joy field which Christmas seems to generate, but it's still there, taunting me. Like, I don't know, some kind of taunting thing. Hm, apparently today is not a day for brilliance in letters.
Anyway, time to fill in the blanks in what's been a very blankless life. Kat started a new job two days ago, working as a labor and delivery nurse at a hospital in Bedford, and is interviewing for midwifery positions in and around the Cleveland area. So she's exchanged the stress of having no job for the stress of having to get up early in the morning. She's also been doing some volunteer work which takes two nights a week, so some days are fifteen hours long. You'd think she was in my line of work. Not that I pull fifteen-hour days, of course, but I hear that some people do. She's also been asked to write an article on Kangaroo Care for an online resource, and I suspect that once it's done we'll be reprinting it here on the site.
Speaking of writing, I'm wrapping up two books in the next week. The easy one is the CSS Pocket Reference for O'Reilly & Associates, which required not much more than repackaging portions of the first book, polishing the text a bit, and running with it. The second, the CSS2.0 Programmer's Reference for Osborne/McGraw-Hill, required substantially more work in many ways. For example, I had to figure out some of the nuances of parts of CSS2 which I've never really visited. Since it isn't a tutorial, though, it meant that I could just concentrate on explaining properties and values and not worrying about stuff like illustrations. I suspect they'll both hit shelves within a month of each other. And, of course, there's the start of my HWG-sponsored CSS2 class this coming Monday. Is this too much Eric all at once? You decide.
I was recently asked what I thought, as a liberal-type not-quite-Democrat, of the investigations into the Marc Rich pardon. I hadn't actually thought about it much, but was surprised to discover I had an immediate response: "From what I've heard, the pardon stinks to high heaven. But unless there's some reasonable chance of prosecuting Clinton for it, I would ask the Honorable Congressmen to please stop masturbating in public." Besides, isn't anyone bothered by Clinton's pardon of his own brother for drug-related charges? Is nepotism less reprehensible than bribery? (Note: I have no idea if there was any bribery involved in the Rich case or not, but that's what everyone seems to be screaming about.)
For the love of Mike, people, he couldn't be convicted while he was in office and had much bigger things to distract him, like nuclear proliferation and terrorists. What makes anyone think the teflon will suddenly peel away now that he's a private citizen with plenty of time and money to devote to his own defense? The only thing conservatives are managing to do it perpetuate media coverage of a man they've worked so hard to bury. This is your big chance, dittoheads. You wanted Clinton gone. So why do you keep dragging him back into the spotlight?
Irony patrol: the guy heading up the pardon investigation is none other than Dan Burton (R-Ind.). Yep, mister "Bill Clinton is a scumbag; did I mention I fathered a child out of wedlock during an adulterous affair?" is once again presuming to pass judgment on the morality and decency of our ex-President. Pot, this is kettle; kettle, pot.
I was going to post more political material, but realized that I'm either becoming more activist, in which case I'll soon be writing plenty of political stuff elsewhere; or else I'm going to stop caring again, in which case why bore us both with the transitory partisan nattering? Like you need me to tell you what to think—I can barely figure out what I think. Anyway, the catalyst for this near-ramble was an article titled "Education, Texas Style" which I found on CNN.com. Feel free to read it and draw your own conclusions. Then share them with me, or your friends, or your dog, or whoever.
The CSS2 class I'm teaching is now a week underway, and I get the distinct impression I've overwhlemed the students pretty thoroughly, in a big fly-meets-sledgehammer kind of way. This was not my intention, I assure you, but I believe I've done it anyway. I'm going to try some new approaches in week 2, to see if they help the students reach better understanding of the concepts we're covering. We'll see.
Final edits on both new books should wrap this week, and the titles should hit shelves within a month or so. In theory. Then I get to think about things like "watching videos" and "relaxing," which are oddly familiar terms I've heard other people use and have resolved to investigate more closely.
I surfed past Molly's Web site and found that I'd landed (as had Kat) on Molly's new "Famous People I Know" page (thanks Molly!), so I started wandering through some of the other sites she has listed. Some people I know, some I don't. I came across a striking contemplation from a person I do know, Leslie Veen: "Is [this] what being a part of a democracy means—taking turns at cringing at the one who occupies the oval office?" Amen, sister! Can I get an ay-men from the audience? Thank you.
The HWG class is settling down into some sort of interesting groove. Week 2 went much better than Week 1, mostly because I gave the students something to actually work with, instead of grilling them on theory. Hands-on learning—what a concept! So we're going to stick with that mode for the remainder of the course. I've heard from a few students that while they're struggling and sometimes confused, they're really learning something and enjoying it. On the other hand, roughly half the students have yet to send in any of their homework, which is a little bothersome. Well, I'll deal with that in a bit.
The lead story on CNN.com had the following lead-in:
As the House of Representatives debated, President Bush said today he was "confident they'll do the right thing" on a Republican tax bill that will reconfigure the tax rate structure.
Somehow, I think the President and I have a very different vision of the outcome of the House doing "the right thing." (How like a conservative to assume that there is only one "right thing.") If you're at all interested, one of my co-workers did an analysis of the effective raise people would receive as a result of the competing tax plans. Note that the x-axis is logarithmic, so each major tick is a tenfold increase in yearly income. It turns out that (if you believe these numbers) the very poor get a 5% raise, as do people with an annual income of $600,000. While I can't absolutely guarantee the accuracy of this chart, I dug through the numbers and they seem right—plus, the lines are more or less what you'd expect from each party's position. Of course, the beauty of this kind of chart is that each side of the debate sees it as ringing support for their position.
Gonna be a long four years.
At the risk of making myself sound like a fanboy, I'm going to quote Babylon 5, specifically the end of the last episode of the third season:
All of life can be broken down into moments of transition or moments of revelation. This had the feeling of both.
And so it is for me, at the moment. Life is a continual surprise to me—not in the sense it is for golden retrievers, thank you, but just in terms of how it never unfolds in a predictable way. In the last few days the surprise has deepened into a strange species of wonder and a muted sense of surreality.
Not much new to say this week. We had an out-of-town friend visit us over the weekend, which was really nice, and Kat and I have been discussing plans for home improvements this spring and summer. It isn't so much what we want to do as what we want to do this year, and what we want to put off for following years. I'm also starting to assemble my thoughts on the subject of renegotiating my home finanacing, what with interest rates as low as they're about to be. Hey, if we're going to be forced into a downturn by (insert your preferred scapegoat here), we may as well benefit from it in some fashion.
Kat and I just returned from the company retreat to Curaçao, which was quite lovely and very warm but also lacked Internet access. There was also a distinct lack of stuff for me to do besides sit around, read books, and swim. Sounds like heaven, right? Wrong. My head was in danger of imploding, to reference Babylon 5 once more, and frankly the island pace doesn't suit me. I don't care how relaxed life is down there: it should not take fifteen minutes to screw up an order for three scoops of ice cream in a bowl. I expect that level of incompetence to consume no more than five minutes, tops.
On the other hand, I did at long last learn to snorkel and got relatively good at it, so I was able to enjoy gliding over coral formations, minor shipwrecks, and brightly colored fish while the sun warmed my (SPF45 and T-shirt protected) back. So I can't say the trip was a total loss.
So it's the day after April Fool's Day, and guess who the joke is on? Anyone who believed George W. Bush's environmental campaign promises. You know, last time I checked Washington, D.C. was a coastal city, so it will be one of the first to feel the effects if sea levels do rise to any significant degree. Apparently Bush is okay with flooding many of our national landmarks, damaging and perhaps destroying them. Maybe he's hoping that the sound of waves breaking against the Capitol building will lull Congress into a relaxed state, thus making them more prone to civility. It's so crazy, it just might work.
I can't say it any better than Tycho did over at the Penny Arcade this morning:
...when someone tells you that you can do what you've always wanted, and not just that, what you've always dreamed, and do it as your job, you start wishing that they're right. And you wish really, really hard.
Even when the wish seems dead, you fight to keep it alive, because it's so damned hard to give up. And you keep hoping that it's going to work out, somehow, against what seem like all odds. I hear ya, Tycho. I can't restore your wish any more than I could anyone else's, but I hear ya.
We had more out-of-town friends staying at the Manor Meyer over the weekend, so I was sort of forced into a socializing/relaxation mode, which felt pretty alien. No articles were written, no book material was cranked out, there was no class to check on, and no project deadlines were looming. Weird. I still checked e-mail, of course, but even on that front it was a slow weekend. I was actually considering doing something productive like raking the yard, but then a cold rain started falling and I decided to goof off some more. (Like I need an excuse as obvious as inclement weather when it comes to avoiding yard work.)
I was going to post stupid stuff about how I don't hear from some of my friends and colleagues these days, and then I changed the plan to whining about my life and how confusing it's been recently, but when it gets right down to it none of this is worthy of complaint. I'm just sliding through a moderate emotional trough and really should avoid posting until I've recovered. In fact, this post was probably a bad idea, but too late now. (You're reading it, after all.)
As for recent events, our friends Jeff and Erin got married over the past weekend. As all brides and grooms must be (according to federal law), Erin was absolutely beautiful and Jeff looked mildly panic-stricken. The "rehearsal dinner" was held at our house on Friday night, and it seems a good time was had by all. We saw some of Kat's classmates for the first time since graduation, so there was a great deal to talk about. Jeff broke out the mandolin and serenaded the crowd with such gems as Chinese People Don't Eat Sushi and other original compositions. Jeff's mother was also kind enough to translate the Chinese writing on our many wall hangings and tell us the story behind some of them; thanks to her, we're now sure that our artwork does not say things like "Simple Sketch I Overcharged Stupid American Tourists To Draw." We'd always wondered...
Some dreams are at the last minute reborn; some die before they've had a chance to be born at all.
Ah, three days in New York City. Concrete and skyscrapers as far as the eye can see, the bustle and energy of several million people, the constant hum and the honking of taxis, blasts of pungent bus exhaust. Isn't it funny how the same things I find abhorrent, my wife can find so wonderful? I could probably try stretching that observation into other areas of our life together, but that would be grossly unfair and (more importantly) not very funny.
The trip to NYC (which ended on Sunday) was undertaken so that I could speak at a conference along with Jeff Veen, Jeffrey Zeldman, and Eric Costello. Unfortunately the conference was cancelled at the last minute, so no panel for us. We got together anyway, along with Jeff's wife Leslie (previously quoted on this very page), and spent a pleasant evening schmoozing and eating at The Noho Star. I always like to hang with industry veterans in a social setting, because the conversation always takes interesting swings from shop talk to politics to gossip and back, wending a path through anything which takes the collective fancy. These are smart people leading interesting lives. What could be more compelling?
Kat and I also took the chance to visit with her parents, naturally, and to see some of Kat's friends in the NYC area. For the weekend, we drove up to Hartford, CT to see Peter and Celeste for the first time since their wedding last summer, and to admire their new house. It's funny how being fellow homeowners can provide all kinds of material for conversation, most of it the kind of thing we would have been horrified by not five years previously. Yet there we all were chatting gaily about boring grown-up stuff like wall paint and hardwood floors. I can only imagine what it will be like when we have children.
As for last week's update... there is much to say, but not now.
Beware the Ides of May! Beware!
Today did not go at all well. I had to argue with two major corporations, did a good deal of legwork with two more just to find out if the previous two were smoking crack or not (apparently they were), didn't receive confirmation of certain actions, and consequently didn't get some very important stuff done by the end of the business day. There's always tomorrow, I suppose, but time's a-wastin' and deadlines are beginning to loom. Add to all of that a failure of will, and it was definitely not a good day. At all.
On the other hand, I thought there was at least one very interesting potential development in the online realm today. Slashdot picked up the story, of course, and I realized that Slashdotters were in serious trouble. The Playstation 2 becomes an access point for what's been called the lowest-common-denomintor crowd, and in the Slashdot community the X-Box might as well have "Serial Baby Killer" written across its face. No Slashdotter worth his street cred will be able to admit to owning either console. So how are they going to play cool games next year?
Now it can be told...
I've resigned from The OPAL Group, effective the end of May. I do this not because there were any problems; actually it's a fine place to work and a great group of guys. The decision to leave them actually caused me a good deal of stress and a certain measure of guilt. However, it's all in a good cause: I'm taking a position with Netscape Communications as a "standards evangelist." This move will definitely give me a chance to have a bigger impact on the shape and direction of Web browser development, both now and in the future. Even better, the position does not require me to relocate. This has been more than two months in coming, between the time Netscape contacted me and today. The long delay should help explain some of the stress reflected in my posts here on meyerweb.com.
So that's the news for now. It's scary and exciting all at once, as most major life changes tend to be—but at the very least, I will have followed up all my talk about the importance of standards with a commitment to work towards improving support, and that's worth a lot to me.
After a long and tortuous battle, the Amazon.com package containing The Emperor's New Groove and the official Iron Chef book arrived on our doorstep. It took so long because Amazon's system thought our credit card had been denied when, in fact, the issuing bank had approved the transaction. After a week of trying, I still haven't gotten an explanation of what went wrong, or even a guess at what might have gone wrong. All I get from them is "the card was denied" when I know it wasn't; I got the transaction's approval code from Chase myself, and in about ten minutes, including hold time. Don't even get me started on the length of time it took Amazon to straighten out the situation. As usual, the folks at Penny Arcade summed it up quite nicely, albeit ever so slightly obscenely. (Hey, it's the Web, what do you expect?) As a result of all this, I'm pretty much abandoning Amazon for the forseeable future.
Memorial Day came and went without any real incident, and that includes going to see Pearl Harbor, which we didn't do on purpose. Neither Kat nor I has any real interest in the movie, although I expect that I'll rent it (or better yet: borrow it from the library up the street!) when it comes out on disc, skip to chapter before the battle sequence starts, watch the attack, and then hit the eject button. Well, okay, maybe I'll watch the sequence twice before I eject it.
I have to say that living within a block of a library which has DVDs for checkout is really darned cool. I've at long last seen Casablanca and the entirety of His Girl Friday, for example, and also caught up with some of Ken Burns' Jazz, U-571, and Topsy-Turvy, to name some recent titles. All free! Publicly supported libraries: an idea whose time should never go. Bruce Sterling agrees, so you know it must be true. If I'm going to be taxed by the government, and of course I am, libraries and public schools are kind of thing which I want my money to buy. Wouldn't it be cool if we could check boxes on our tax returns indicating where we want our tax money to be spent? Especially if the converse were true: anyone getting a refund should check boxes indicating the programs which should have to pay for the refund. I'm not suggesting that these choices be binding, at least not at the start, but it would be a fascinating snapshot of what Americans consider to be important.
Geek moment: DSL arrived in the Manor Meyer last week, and my home networking hardware came in today. Next up: wiring the house, setting up a Linux box to run the show, and migrating Web and mail services onto it. By the time it's all done, hopefully before the week is out, Kat might actually be able to send e-mail again...
Hoo boy... life took over again. Here's what happened in the last month:
Kat and I went to her tenth college reunion at Brandeis University, where we met up with friends of hers (in some cases, also friends of mine) and had a lot of fun for three days. Kat even convinced me to dance, which anyone will tell you is both a rare thing and an event to be avoided at all costs. Still, I enjoyed myself. The campus is quite beautiful, and the view from the top of The Rock is pretty nice too.
The day after we got back from the reunion, I went out to Mountain View for nine days to get to know my fellow team members better, and get myself up to speed on what's going on with Netscape 6.1 and the future of the browser. Despite what you may have heard, Netscape is not getting out of the browser market. If nothing else, it would be kind of silly for them to hire someone like me if they weren't going to be a browser company any more. Anyway, my parents flew out a day after I did for a vacation, so we met up for dinner while they were on their way through town to the wine country north of the city. That weekend, Peter Murray (good friend and library automation expert extraordinaire) was in town for a conference so we also met for dinner. It was definitely odd meeting up in San Francisco with people I know who live (literally) thousands of miles from there, just as I do.
A few days after that, Kat flew out, my parents came back into San Francisco, and we all set off on a vacation which we'd had planned before Netscape first contacted me about the job. We went—where else?—to Ragged Point for several days, and put relaxation on the top of our "To Do" list. I'm hoping that my pictures come out okay, because if they did I got some beautiful shots. We also saw a pod of (probably) humpback whales off the shore, which is unusual for that time of year. And, of course, we dined like emperors on the incredible culinary creations of Roger Wall, genius chef at the Ragged Point Restaurant. In short, a wonderful time was had by all.
Just as a side note—the more I think about it, the more I like the idea I proposed in my last update: U.S. federal income tax forms should allow taxpayers to vote for the programs on which they'd like to see their money be spent. For example—and I'm being very hypothetical here—assume that Americans collectively indicated that they wanted most of their money to go to NASA, and very little of it to the Defense Department. We'd know which one should get funding priority, wouldn't we? Of course, in the real world it would likely be the other way around, but that's not my point. What I'm trying to say is that when you ask people what they're willing to pay for, you find out what they consider most important. I think that's worth knowing.
I was going to fill everyone in on events for July, which was not bereft of them. Unfortunately, my right arms hurts so much (for no apparent reason) that I can barely type, so the update will have to wait. In the meantime, please enjoy a comical musing on the joy that is upgrading to Windows XP, as well as a perfect example of how automated banner-ad routines can get you into big, big trouble.
As I crawl back into update mode—last week was Web2001, where I presented quite a bit and met lots of cool folks (and got my picture taken by Heather Champ). I also got Jeffrey Zeldman's Taking Your Talent to the Web signed by the man himself, and then discovered that I'm mentioned in the acknowledgments.
Random thought drawn from the show: although I don't think tables are an evil design tool, I do think they've poisoned and limited our ideas of what is possible in Web design. There is another structure that can be described as a collection of cells: a prison. It's time for designers to break out.
If you're dropping by to see if the complexspiral demo is live yet—no, it isn't, but it will be soon! I'll be doing my best to get it and the material from my talks online in the next week or two. I beg your patience while I get myself reoriented to life without five simultaneous high-pressure short-schedule projects. While you're waiting, you can get an update on nanotech use in military and civilian products from CNN.com and the Associated Press. Thank you—please pull around to the first window.
Kat and I have just heard that her father, whose office is very close to where the World Trade Center used to stand, was not harmed but is still somewhere on Manhattan Island. Apparently he saw everything, which I don't think I can imagine. Or, more likely, I just don't want to.
Our hearts, in the moments when they can feel at all, go out to those who have lost loved ones today.
Kat's father made it home to Long Island last night, having walked about fifty blocks uptown before managing to get off the island. One of Kat's college friends was also very near the WTC when it was hit, and made it out physically unharmed. So far, despite Kat's strong NYC ties, we've been lucky: so far as we're aware, nobody she knows was injured or killed. We're safe, everyone we know is safe; I don't know about you, but for me, Thanksgiving has started a little early this year, even as I mourn the loss we've suffered as a people.
We're home and safe. We feel a little guilty that we're relieved to have made it home when thousands of people will never come home again, but there it is: you cling to what you know and can control, and try your best to move on and accept the rest. And to be thankful for what you do have, and for those close to you.
When everything happened, we were in Mountain View, CA, where I was visiting the Netscape campus. Kat was going to fly down to Los Angeles on Tuesday, but obviously that didn't happen. We were supposed to fly back home on Saturday, but the flight was cancelled, so we ended up taking the Sunday night redeye and arrived at about 6:30am EDT this morning. Tired and weary, we crawled into bed and grabbed a few hours of sleep in our own bed. We even let Gravity sleep with us, which we usually don't permit, chiefly for allergenic reasons. (Also because she manages to occupy an incredible amount of space for so small a cat.)
I've already had a few inquiries about the complexspiral demo I debuted at Web2001, and I assure you that it is coming soon! I want to do a little touch-up work, as well as document browser support and bugs, before unveiling it. I hope to get to that tomorrow, as I've dug my way out from under my e-mail and newsgroup backlogs in near-record time and should be back into the work groove by tomorrow morning.
Found on zeldman.com: photographs by Christopher Casciano of the World Trade Center attack from the New Jersey shore. All 72 images are more than worthy of examination, as they give a much-needed sense of scale to the attack's effects, but for sheer impact it's hard to beat pictures 8, 16, and 31. Some of the images there are better, in a certain sense, than anything I've seen in the mainstream press. It wasn't until I looked through Mr. Casciano's pictures that I really, truly understood just how huge the twin towers were, and how much of a blow it must have been to see them fall and disappear in a massive grey cloud of dust and smoke and ash.
The complexspiral demo is now online.
From the Wall Street Journal's editorial pages: Whooping It Up. Note that I don't condone any of the actions described, and I certainly don't condone terrorist activity. The piece itself may well be totally biased and not representative of the general world. It is still an important piece to read—not to inflame yourself to greater heights of patriotism and paranoia, but to think hard about why the people described in that piece feel the way they do. It didn't happen overnight, or for no reason. You will probably be angered by what you read, but ask yourself this: what are all the roots of my anger? What about the anger of the people in the story; what are its roots? Does it have any legitimacy at all, even in part?
As I said to a colleague recently, "I'm afraid that [an attack] will happen again, and even worse, I'm afraid it will happen because we missed the moment, in our pain and grief, to really listen to the world around us." While he agreed with me, I think this is probably the worst possible time to ask (most of) my countrymen to think, let alone listen to anything except "God Bless America" for the ninetieth time.
Anyway, if this posting offends you, I feel very sorry for that, but again I urge you to ask this question of yourself, so long as you resolve to honestly answer yourself: for what reason(s) do I feel offended?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, my comments on Saturday touched off a spirited debate within my own household. Kat wants to make it clear that she can't understand how anyone, anywhere, could celebrate the death of several thousand people under any circumstance. I actually agree with her, and didn't mean to imply that I supported the celebration (much less the practice) of mass murder. I don't. I'd like to think that nobody does, but a few lines from a song keep coming to mind: "Folks are basically decent / Conventional wisdom would say / Well, we read about the exceptions / In the paper every day."
A thought experiment: consider the massive outpouring of charitable giving for the victims of 9/11, and then suppose that there had been a similarly massive outpouring of charitable aid ten years earlier for the people of Afghanistan, whose country was shattered by Soviet occupation.
Ever felt like you were teetering on a precipice? You should after reading the following: Ashcroft faces congressional worries over proposed law changes (CNN) and Hackers face life imprisonment under 'Anti-Terrorism' Act (SecurityFocus), not to mention Terror attacks revive crypto debate (also SecurityFocus; scroll down to get to the frightening parts). Apparently, the Bush administration has so fallen for its own assertion that these terrorists hate us solely because of who we are and what we stand for, they've decided the best way to ward off future attacks is to change America to resemble the types of repressive regimes that spawn said terrorists. Civil liberties? Who needs 'em?
I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but The Onion is one funny group of people. They took last week off, but they're back with a venegance, covering the 9/11 events in their own special way. Funny they are, yes, but one can tell they're more than a bit angry (and rightly so!) this week. If you're squeamish, you might want to skip the article about surprised hijackers. Just a fair warning.
Another two links to pass along to the (very) few people who will ever see this. First: Roots of Rage (Time). Understanding these things is very important, because in the months to come, we have a choice: our actions in the "war on terrorism" will make our position in the world better, or worse; we will either reduce the dangers we face, or multiply them. I know which one I'd prefer. Second: A Pure, High Note of Anguish (L.A. Times) by Barbara Kingsolver. It's deeply, almost distressingly human.
A new month, a new beginning: I've launched css/edge, a place for some personal (yet public) CSS-based design experimentation. The basic goal: to push CSS as far as I can, and to do things with HTML and CSS that nobody has ever seen before. The first installment was the complexspiral demo; now, with the launch of css/edge, I've added pure CSS popups. Investigate, share, and enjoy!
In the meantime, Kat and I are giving serious thought to renaming our guest room "Heartbreak Hotel"—not out of any love for Elvis, but because several people we know are suddenly leaving long-time partners, and some of them have dropped by/will be dropping by for a few days' retreat. Part of me wonders if it's post-traumatic stress left over from last month, or if perhaps 9/11 shocked a lot of people into realizing (as one person put it) that life is both too long and too short to be unhappy.
I found this to be deeply thought-provoking, if sometimes clumsily written: There Is No Alternative to War (Salon.com). From the same site, one of my favorite cartoons: This Modern World. I'd tell you to enjoy them, but somehow that seems wholly inappropriate...
I was going to slow down posting anyway, and then my Linksys router got fried (thanks to a firmware update I got from Linksys, no less) so going online has been a lot more difficult of late. Nonetheless, I had to put this link up for you: Freedoms Curtailed in the Defense of Liberty (The Onion). The truly scary part is that the article isn't much of an exaggeration over what I've been hearing both on the news and on the street. As an example, someone said on a newsgroup recently about some peace protestors, "Now THOSE people scare me. Really." American citizens peacefully exercising their freedom of speech to oppose violence in the world and support nonmilitary solutions is scary?
Scary.
Not much has been going on of late, at least not much that's worth writing about here. I mean, I had fun going to a Cleveland Barons hockey game with a friend, but is an account of Eric watching hockey interesting? Not likely. (Though Mark and I did have fun playing "What's That Music On The PA?")
In the near future, though—that's something else again. I'll be teaching another CSS class for the HWG/IWA. This one will run a little longer than six weeks because Thanksgiving is right in the middle of the class. The last session went rather well, I thought, and the next session ought to be even better now that I have a chance to tweak the material and avoid some missteps. Also because I'll have a teaching assistant for the first time. Woohoo! Now I can foist a portion of the grading on somebody else!
John Allsopp wrote to me today: "Now you really can say 'my middle name is Cascading Style Sheets.'" I guess so. Thanks, Amazon!
New to the site: Eric's Presentations, which attempts to provide in an organized fashion slides and support files from various talk I give. Newly added to the repository: my slideshows from Web Design World 2001. The CSS files used in the "user stylesheet" presentation are still being polished and so aren't available yet, but the core of every ones of them is in the slideshow. Enjoy!
One point of some small note: the design for the "Presentations" page uses an h2 and a table, but the h2 is not inside the table. Yet more visual sleight-of-hand... although I'm not sure it quite qualifies for css/edge, I was strangely proud of it nonetheless.
This morning, I discovered (amongst all the other spam I receive) a message in my Inbox promising to "ADD INCHES TO YOUR PENIS!!!" The very next message offered a way to "LOSE INCHES WHILE YOU SLEEP!!!" Now I'm all confused.
Here's something that made me cringe in fear: Microsoft top security officer expected to join U.S. cybersecurity team (ComputerWorld). Oh boy, I can hardly wait for our national security policies to be as rigorous as those generally found in Microsoft products.
