Posts in the Personal Category

Hitting a link shared by Unstoppabot, who really needs to get around to fixing his feed linking policy (“View this site”?  Lame!), I was seized with another spasm of appreciation for the deliciousness that is SketchUp.

I did a moderate amount of 3D modeling back in the day.  The specific day in question would be the one where we all thought that images of rendered 3D models and, whenever possible, blobs of text were the absolute last word in Great Web Design.  Remember that?  Wasn’t it fantastic?  When every page title could be a bunch of extruded and beveled sans-serif letters viewed slightly from above, with the whole mess of text angled away from the observer?

Good times.

So anyway, while I was cranking out renderings of page title text and university logos, I also spent some time creating scenes of other stuff.  You can find some of the results if you dig deeply enough here on meyerweb, but that’s not my point.  What I’m trying to say is that I enjoy a bit o’ three dee more than most, and have some knowledge of how difficult it can be to construct models.

When I first heard about SketchUp, I was intrigued but didn’t really buy into all the hype.  It couldn’t be that easy, could it?  And then I watched someone using it—at An Event Apart, as it happens; and no, it wasn’t one of the attendees—and was captivated.  I downloaded the installer while I was sitting there, watching him create and modify shapes as easily as sketching them on paper.  And then I left it uninstalled, because I was afraid of what it would do to my free time.

A few days ago, I finally broke down.  I actually did have a legitimate reason to install and use it, a really good one, but of course I’d been waiting for any reasonable pretense to launch the .dmg and make with the modeling.  So I did.

Color me deeply impressed.  While you’re at it, add some heavy tints of addicted.  I started by modeling our kitchen, and now I want to do the whole frickin’ house.  I’m starting to eye local landmarks for recreation and contribution to the Warehouse and Google Earth.

I don’t have time for this.  I need help.  Stop me before I model again!

• Another Soul Lost to SketchUp was published on Monday, September 17th, 2007.
• It was assigned to the Projects and Tools categories.
• There have been eleven replies.

This evening, we decided to cap off the weekend with dinner out.  Carolyn was in the mood for french fries, and the rest of us were looking for decent dinner fare, so we decided to hit Brennan’s Colony.  This is one of the more fascinating restaurants on our side of town.  From both the outside and the inside, it looks like a low- to middle-rent bar, all uncushioned wood benches and odd angles and dimmish lighting.  The baseline menu is burgers and fried food at very affordable prices.

And then you get the dinner menu, and you wonder from which other restaurant they swiped their menu.  Chicken breast stuffed with goat cheese in a bearnaise reduction, or words to that effect.  Mint-crusted New Zealand rack of lamb.  Et cetera.  It is, to use a word I picked up on my last trip to Ye Jolly Olde Englande, a gastropub, only with really good food.

We hadn’t gone for a while because, being a bar, smoking was permitted, and while they had an area labeled “No Smoking” it was about as effective as setting up a ring of buoys just offshore and marking that area “No Water”.  We used to go every now and again in olden days, but after Carolyn’s arrival, it was stricken from our dining list for the obvious health reasons.  However, Ohio voters passed an indoor smoking ban late last year, so we could once again eat and breathe.  Everybody woohoo!

Only when we arrived and asked for a table on their newly opened outdoor patio, we were told Carolyn wasn’t old enough to be seated there.  We could eat indoors, but the patio was off-limits to anyone under the age of eighteen.  This baffled us just a little all by itself, and then we turned around to behold a pre-teen boy sitting at the bar, eating a sandwich and drinking a Coke.  At least we hoped it was a Coke.

We brought this oddity (and, if I’m not mistaken, violation of Ohio state law) to the staff’s attention, and were told that he was seated there because they were so busy.  But no kids on the patio!  No no!  That would be, um, whatever they feared would come of allowing children to eat at an outdoor table.  The apocalypse, no doubt.

So we ate at The Tavern Company a little way down the street, where they were more than happy to have us sit wherever we liked, indoors or out—the presence of a smallish, well-behaved child notwithstanding.

I think we’ll keep to that seating arrangement for as long as the policy at Brennan’s remains.

• Odd Seating Arrangments was published on Sunday, September 16th, 2007.
• It was assigned to the Cleveland and Food categories.
• There have been four replies.

Ma nun me lassà, Nun darme stu turmiento!

Luciano Pavarotti died last night of pancreatic cancer at the age of 71.

Among my “classical” recordings, the original Three Tenors concert holds a special place, one that has survived nearly every iPod reorganization I’ve undergone.  What I find most fascinating about that recording is the marked contrast between the three stars, and just how much Pavarotti stands out.  I’ve thought about the reasons why that is, and I think it comes down to his restraint in the use of vibrato.  Whenever I hear a singer whose long notes are more warble than tone, I wince.  I recognize the physical skill that goes into producing the sound, but the result is actually uncomfortable to me.  This is why there’s hardly a soprano I can stand; they all seem to exist solely to find long notes to strangle.

Pavarotti, in contrast, used vibrato as a shading on his notes.  At their core, they were long and pure and steady.  Yes, at times he went for all-out vibrato, but it always seemed to make sense when he did.  He wasn’t warbling to show that he could do it; he did it when and how it was right.  That, coupled with the sheer power of his voice, creates an emotional punch that I’m powerless to comprehend but joyful to behold.

I listened to some Pavarotti this morning, and though his heartbreaking renditions of “Nessun Dorma” and “Torna A Surriento” have always misted me up a little, this time there was an extra tightness in my throat.

Part of me hopes that nobody is asked to sing at his memorial services; or, if anyone is, that they turn down the invitation.  Nobody could do the job as well as he would have.

E noi dovrem, ahimè, morir, morir!

• Torna A Surriento was published on Thursday, September 6th, 2007.
• It was assigned to the Culture category.
• There have been ten replies.

Despite my best efforts to cut back on travel, the 2007 world tour seems to be continuing apace.  In addition to my sessions at An Event Apart in San Francisco at the beginning of October, I’m due to hit (at least) three four other stages before the year is out.  Here’s the skinny:

• I’ll be doing a short bit on microformats at the Cleveland Web Standards Meetup.  If you’re in the area and interested, please do sign up for the group!  We’ve been growing quickly and, having shifted our meeting place to the Tri-C West campus, now have room for a lot more growth.  We’re also moving beyond simple gathering, with some great ideas for helping out local organizations and sharing knowledge and skills.  Even if you can’t make this month’s gathering, you should still join up so you’re in the loop.

• I’ll be delivering the keynote at the first annual CIW Partner Conference in Destin, Florida, at the end of September.  No official title for the talk as yet, but the general theme will be how we’ve gotten to where we are, what I see as the best ways to train the next generation of web designers and developers, and the best tools currently available to current designers/developers.  I may also participate in a panel, depending on exact scheduling.

• In mid-October, I’ll be on stage at the first Voices That Matter: Web Design conference in San Francisco (which will make my second trip to the city in the space of three weeks).  We’re looking to do sort of an open “Conversation With…” format with lots of audience questions and commentary, which is a little unusual for me.  Jeffrey and I did a conversational session with Brian Alvey at ‘Meet the Makers’ back in the day, but I haven’t really done a Merv Griffin since.  Should be fun!

• Then, in mid-December, I’ll be doing three hours of CSS at Web Design World Boston.  It will pretty much be like it was last year: a mix of deep dives into obscure (yet important) corners of CSS, assessments of current trends, fun with cutting-edge techniques, and open-format Q&A.  We’ll have three hours (with breaks) to play around, so that’ll leave plenty of time to wander into the weeds and come back mostly intact.

I’m starting to do some rework on the sidebar here on meyerweb, and a “coming soon” list is one of the things I have in mind.  Those of you who actually do drop by the site will probably notice the sidebar mutating over time, since I’m going to do my reworking live and in public.  That sounds so much more grandiose than the reality of fiddling with markup and making mistakes, doesn’t it?  It’s editing 2.0!

• Staging The World Over was published on Tuesday, September 4th, 2007.
• It was assigned to the An Event Apart, Cleveland, and Speaking categories.
• There have been two replies.

CSS Sculptor got a very nice write-up from King Z over at The Daily Report, for which I thank him profusely.  I think he’s pegged the tool pretty well in terms of its intent and target audience(s).

What mystified me was the turn the comments took: suddenly they went from giggling over the splashimation and exhortations to port Sculptor to other environments (Coda got several mentions) to an multi-party argument over which was better, Sculptor or Project VII‘s CSS Layout Magic.

Um, why?

As Al Sparber, creator of Magic, stated quite accurately, “They are two very different tools conceived in very different ways”—nothing to add to that, really.  But even if we were to imagine a world where they were very similar tools that operated in very similar ways, I still don’t see why it would have to be a “battle” situation.  It’s not like our world is so small that there’s only room for one of any given thing.

I mean, take a step back and look at the wider development landscape.  There are a whole bunch of web development environments out there (Dreamweaver, Expression, Coda, Firefox with extensions, etc.).  All of them serve the community, each in its own way.  Each is used by a community of people, many of whom gather to help each other improve their skills.  Why try to create conflict between those communities?  What useful purpose could that possibly serve?  We’d be as well served to start a Mac vs. Windows vs. Linux debate.  Which is to say, not at all.

And so it is with the artificial conflict that so mystifies me, that of Sculptor vs. Magic.  Project VII has very loyal customers, and rightly so: they put out great stuff.  I hope that we’ll also have loyal customers, because that will mean we also created something great.  (Obviously, I already think we did, but then I would, wouldn’t I?)  It seems kind of obvious to me that these two communities have way more in common than they do differences.  My usual reaction on encountering someone who’s a huge fan of a web site or a piece of software is to smile and nod knowingly, like we’re part of a secret club or something.  Because in a sense, we are.  We get fired up by the same kinds of things.  We’re our kind of people.

I admit this is veering dangerously close to plaintive “can’t we all just get along?” territory, but c’mon, folks.  There’s already more than enough tension and conflict in the world.  Let’s try not to add to it, yeah?  Now everybody throw the hörns!  Seriously, throw ’em, and put in a little “ROCK!” just for me.  You’ll be amazed at how much better you feel.

• Contrived Conflicts was published on Thursday, August 23rd, 2007.
• It was assigned to the Culture and Web categories.
• There have been thirteen replies.

I alluded yesterday to “backstage work”.  One of the things going on back there was my work with the folks at WebAssist to create a tool that allows both novice and experienced web developers to create and alter CSS-driven layouts.

The end result is Eric Meyer’s CSS Sculptor (v1.0.0), a Dreamweaver extension that gives the user tons of options and outputs pretty darned clean markup and CSS.  (Even if you’ve no interest at all in Dreamweaver tools, you should still follow that link.  How many chances are you going to have to see me throw the mëtäl hörns?)

Well you might wonder how much code I contributed to this software.  Well, okay, none.  What I did contribute was guidance on the interface and its organization; on what options to present, and how; on ways to handle things like print styles and the print CSS options; and on the CSS and markup that results, including the optional explanatory comments in the CSS.

One of the primary goals with this project was to create a tool that would expose as much CSS as possible to users without overwhelming them, and that would actually teach by dint of showing all the options.  One of the things we heard a lot in the beta test was users saying things like, “Oh, so that’s what that CSS thingy does! I’d always wondered.”  Which was exactly what we’d hoped to hear, along with “Hey, I’ve never heard of this CSS property before!”.  (We heard that one too.)

There are some things I expect will be improved in future releases, like shorthand value minimization—the simplest example of that being a condensation of 0 0 0 0 down to just plain 0.  We discussed including that feature but decided to postpone it for a variety of reasons, not least of which was working out the logic required to figure out when to minimize, which isn’t as simple a problem as you might first think.  There were a few other things we didn’t get in the initial release; such is the way of software.  We’ve got a list of potential features, of course, and are looking forward to hearing what users suggest.

As for what features did make it in, there’s a fairly large list, so it’s probably best to check out the Features page or take the product tour—with video commentary starring, you guessed it, yours truly.  So if you’ve ever wanted to see me greenscreened over screenshots and being intermittently goofy, then at long last your prayers have been answered!  (Or will be, once we get the load problems resolved.)

What makes this whole thing an especially interesting experience for me is that, for the first time in my life, I’m participating in an affiliate program.  Basically, what I earn from sales of CSS Sculptor depends on affiliate fees earned by referral links like this one here (and also earlier in the post).  That might sound like a rip-off, but it has the potential to be quite the opposite.  The affiliate cut is literally an order of magnitude greater than any reasonable per-unit royalty would be.

This compensation scheme (as they say in the UK) is actually an experiment on both sides: WebAssist has never really worked with an outside individual on a product like this, and so they honestly don’t know if the affiliate approach will pay better than a per-unit royalty, or worse.  So we’re going to try it out and see what happens.  Fortunately, I’m in a position that I feel I can afford to experiment like this, allowing both myself and WebAssist to find out what works best in the long run.

Thus, if you’re planning to buy CSS Sculptor or know someone who is, I’d be grateful if you either clicked through one of the links hereabouts or linked to the product using my affiliate URL.  I’ll have a link in the sidebar in the near future as well.  The sidebar’s due for an overhaul anyhow.

So that’s one of the things that’s claimed my time over the last few months, and I’m pretty excited that it’s seeing the light of release.  I’m even more excited about finding out what people think could be better about it so that we can improve what’s already a pretty darned nifty tool.  If I do say so myself.

• CSS Sculptor Released was published on Thursday, August 23rd, 2007.
• It was assigned to the CSS and Projects categories.
• There have been fifty-seven replies.

Amongst all the travel, there’s been a metric ton of backstage work going on.  This is generally true of me these days, which is why posting has fallen off in 2007.  Unfortunately, it’s meant that I’ve been lax about keeping you folks up to date on what I’m up to—and also to keep you informed about An Event Apart, which is what accounts for most of that backstage work.

For example: last week, we announced publication of the complete schedule for AEA San Francisco, which will be 4-5 October 2007, and I didn’t say a word here.  I should have; honestly, it’s amazing.  I already want to see it.

I know, I say that every time, but it’s always true.  One of the things that makes me proudest about AEA, and that makes me continue to work hard on AEA, is that it fulfills one of the core requirements Jeffrey and I set out: to create the kind of event we’d want to attend.  I’m not satisfied with an AEA show unless I can look at it—and I mean all of it, from the schedule to all the organizational details that aren’t always obvious—and say, “I would pay money out of my own pocket to see this show”.

And so far, I’ve always been satisfied.

So we end the 2007 series with another great lineup and incredible set of talks in San Francisco, and it makes me proud all over again.  I hope you can be there to see it.

• San Francisco Schedule was published on Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007.
• It was assigned to the An Event Apart and Projects categories.
• There have been two replies.

Some news for folks in London (UK) and Cleveland (US).  If you don’t fit either of those descriptions, well, I don’t know what I can do.

For those of you in or near London, I’ll be at a Geekminidinner the evening of Tuesday, 14 August 2007, which you can read a bit more about over here.  (Apparently, I need to print out an article I wrote a while back and staple it to Ian‘s forehead.)  Come on ’round and join us!

About four and a half hours after that starts, I’ll be missing (in both senses of the word) the Cleveland area Web Standards/Web Design Meetup.  Once left for dead, this group has come roaring back thanks to the tireless efforts of a COBOL dude who is much less scary than his profile photo would seem to indicate.  He does run the Ubuntu Satanic Edition, but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.  Seriously, he’s a great guy.  I have never once heard him say “SATAN!” in a deep growly voice, no matter how many times I ask.

The point being, 18 people have already said they’ll be at the Meetup, and you should absolutely add yourself to that list.  Assuming you will actually be there, of course.

As for London, I don’t know how many will be there, but probably not as many as the Cleveland gathering.  Hey, it’s okay, folks.  Don’t feel down about it.  Not everyone can be as cool as Cleveland.  We’ll do our best to have a good time regardless.

• Come Tuesday was published on Friday, August 10th, 2007.
• It was assigned to the Cleveland, Food, and Travel categories.
• There have been eight replies.