Posts from 2002

Digital Web has published an interview with yours truly, conducted by Meryl K. Evans.  I get to babble on for a bit about CSS, the W3C, Netscape, and my radio show.  Now, if only I could figure out what they did with the picture I sent them… I just hope I don’t get Photoshopped onto Salacious Crumb’s body, or something.  (Update: I found out what they did with the picture.  Whew!)

Scott Andrew LePera’s brilliant Netscape 4 birthday gallery has a new home on his site.  If you haven’t seen it already, go forth and partake of its artistically acid bounty.

• Wednesday, 12 June 2002 was published on Wednesday, June 12th, 2002.
• It was assigned to the Browsers and Interviews categories.
• There have been no replies.

Today, on the fifth anniversary of Navigator 4.x’s release, the Web Standards Project rebirthed itself.  Check it out—the sprightly new site is remarkably free of birthing fluid!  And even this soon out of the womb, the WaSP has some things to say to you, not all of them soothing.

Speaking of NN4.x turning five, Scott Andrew has some things to say about that.  Go now, before the day is over.  In addition to some lovely digital artwork, it’s haikuriffic!

• Tuesday, 11 June 2002 was published on Tuesday, June 11th, 2002.
• It was assigned to the Browsers and Standards categories.
• There have been no replies.

The last paragraph of Wired’s article “Browsing Around for New Targets” caught my attention:

But one HTML contractor, who asked not to be named, illustrated the uphill battle the WaSP faces in getting programmers to lay aside their old browser-specific tricks: “Do you know how much I get paid for knowing this stuff?”

Yep.  And can you imagine how much more you’d be paid if you knew how to code to standards, thus delivering a superior product with outstanding delivery capabilities?  Not to mention what kind of reputation you’d build up for doing so, and how much more you could charge then?

Actually, it occurs to me that something the WaSP ought to do (if they haven’t already; we’ll find out tomorrow) is create an executive-level whitepaper that basically says, “If you’re still shelling out for multiple versions of a site and 80KB HTML source, you’re paying way too much for way too little.  Stop paying people to know how browsers worked two years ago, and start paying for people who know how to make your site work two years from now.”

• Monday, 10 June 2002 was published on Monday, June 10th, 2002.
• It was assigned to the Browsers and Standards categories.
• There have been no replies.

The power supply arrived today, thanks to a “I’ll pay for overnight delivery” call to Arescom, and we’re back on DSL.  You can still expect me to take longer than usual to reply to any e-mail you may have sent, as I was effectively offline for three days and the latest session of my CSS2 course just started up on Monday.  So I’m going to be a touch busy.

• Tuesday, 4 June 2002 was published on Tuesday, June 4th, 2002.
• It was assigned to the General category.
• There have been no replies.

The power brick for our DSL modem fried itself late Friday afternoon, so now I’m sipping the Internet through a 45.2Kbps straw.  Expect longer-than-usual delays in responses to e-mail and newsgroup postings.  I hope to have a replacement brick in hand by tomorrow… keep your fingers (as opposed to your wires) crossed for me.

• Monday, 3 June 2002 was published on Monday, June 3rd, 2002.
• It was assigned to the General category.
• There have been no replies.

I experienced a touch of techno-frisson this evening.  The phone rang, and when I answered it, it turned out to be a sales call offering to refinance my mortgage.  Just as the words “we’re calling to offer competitive interest rates on mortgage refinancing” left the guy’s mouth and grated across my eardrum, e-mail dropped into my Inbox with the subject line current mortgage interest rate.

I had no idea I seemed so desperate for a new mortgage.  (Which I’m not, thanks.)

Spam continues to stay in the forefront of my (mostly negative) thinking.  I do have to give major honesty points to a message I received a few weeks back.  When I opened it up (I still don’t know why I did) I found what’s depicted in the accompanying graphic.  They may be the scum of humanity, but at least they’re up front about what they do.  I have to respect that.  I admit I laughed out loud when I saw it, then took a screenshot and deleted the message.

The other thing I wanted to mention is from the “this is funny but I’m laughing as much at the audacity as the humor” department:  The Onion managed this week to put a surreal  perspective on current events.  You know, it almost does make sense…

Brief correction: apparently the painting I liked so much isn’t called “Deception” any more.  Now it’s called “Ear Drops”.  Personally, I think the original title worked better.

• Thursday, 30 May 2002 was published on Thursday, May 30th, 2002.
• It was assigned to the Technovertigo category.
• There have been no replies.

Now available: the pre-publication Web site for Eric Meyer on CSS, which contains information about the book and its author, a preview of some project files, and more.

I was particularly proud of this morning’s edition of “Your Father’s Oldsmobile.”  You can grab a copy to listen for yourself by going to WRUW‘s Wednesday archive.  It will be a 56kpbs copy of what I broadcast this morning, which for two hours of music still clocks in at almost 50MB—but if you like Big Band-era music, you might get a kick out of the show.

I realized just recently that I was out of my home state for 17 of the last 33 days, spread out over three trips.  Bleah.

• Wednesday, 29 May 2002 was published on Wednesday, May 29th, 2002.
• It was assigned to the Books category.
• There have been no replies.

Kat and I just got back from a six-day trip to be with her family, to celebrate her father’s birthday.  I returned to 1,334 messages in my personal mail account, most of them from mailing lists.  But about 345 of those messages were spam.  I’m reluctantly coming to the conclusion that if there’s one hanging offense on the Internet, spamming is it.

Granted, I’ve been online almost a decade and never really went to much trouble to disguise my e-mail address, a policy for which I am now paying every day of the year, as I try to clear my Inbox of crap without accidentally throwing away messages from people who legitimately want to talk to me—about CSS, about what I write here, about life in general.  It’s an annoyance I really could do without, but it’s way too late now.  The spam will stop when I go permanently offline, and not a day before.

The point of all this is not just to whine, although I admit it feels a little better to have vented.  The point is that if you really want to talk to me, don’t give your message a subject like Hey there :), as one correspondent did in the last six days.  I very nearly trashed it out of hand, along with a few dozen urgent appeals for help from Nigerian mining widows, detailed make-money-fast schemes, offers of herbal viagra supplements, and so on.  Please, I beseech you, make your subject lines descriptive in some way, and try to make them unambiguous.  Otherwise, your message may find itself in the bit-bucket.

• Tuesday, 21 May 2002 was published on Tuesday, May 21st, 2002.
• It was assigned to the General category.
• There have been no replies.