Posts in the Personal Category

If you’ve been waiting to register for An Event Apart Boston, running March 26-27, the detailed schedule has been announced and the brand-new store has opened its doors.  Hie thee hence to sign up for two great days with nine amazing speakers in Boston’s historic Back Bay!  You’ll be glad you did.

(Pssst!  Just between us, you’ll be even more glad if you input the discount code AEAMEYE when you register.  It’ll give you a further $50 off the already-discounted Early Bird price, for a total savings of $150.  Add to that the discounted room rate at the conference hotel, and you could save something like $450 off the regular conference registration and room rates.)

The overwhelming feedback we got from 2006 attendees was that they wanted more, more, more.  More speakers, more insight, more time.  So that’s exactly what we’re doing with AEA Boston.  This is going to be the best Event Apart yet—with that speaker lineup, how could it not be?  Ethan Marcotte’s “Web Standards Stole My Truck”, Dan Cederholm’s “Interface Design Juggling”, Steve Krug’s “The Web Usability Diet”… and eight more sessions just as fascinating.  Furthermore, we’ll close out Day Two with live critiques of sites submitted by attendees, making recommendations on design, copy, code, and more.

One thing we’re not changing as we move from one day to two days is how we take care of attendees.  We’ll have delicious food for lunch and breaks both days, so you can relax and chat with your colleagues in attendance and not have to worry about finding a food court and running back to catch the afternoon sessions.  Our buddies at Media Temple will be throwing a first-night party for everyone so you can unwind and maybe do a little networking.  The fine folks at Adobe will have some great stuff to raffle off, with your registration as your raffle ticket.  In fact, it’ll be so great that they can’t even tell us what it is yet!  And those are just the high points.

Amazing speakers, a great location, great service, and big savings.  What more could you ask?

• Register for AEA Boston! was published on Thursday, January 11th, 2007.
• It was assigned to the An Event Apart and Projects categories.
• There have been three replies.

I got tagged by Matt Bailey a couple of weeks back, shortly before the meme started spreading through my feeds, but I didn’t have time to post then.  In fact, I did a lot less blogging in 2006 than in previous years, thanks mostly to the work that’s gone into An Event Apart and my latest books.  Well, a new year, a new start.

So here’s five things you may not know about me.

1. I played piano for seven years, and violin for eight, becoming fairly good at both without ever really becoming great.  I showed a fair amount of talent on the violin, actually, but wasn’t disciplined enough to push through to the next level of proficiency.  I also did a little drumming, though I never really studied, and still own a (disassembled) five piece kit with a cowbell.  Ya gotta have cowbell.

2. I once nearly killed myself in a car accident.  Five days into driving on my license, I hit a large rock on a back country gravel road.  I very clearly remember thinking to myself, as I lost control, If you don’t know what to do, do nothing.

   The car slid into a ditch at speed, plowing into the far bank on the front right corner of the car, and rolled once, coming to rest upright.  My friend and I walked away with only cuts and bruises, thanks to our seatbelts.

   I can still see the cornstalks rotating just beyond the windshield as we rolled, but I barely remember anything from then until my parents arrived on the scene, almost an hour later.

3. I have been married more than once.

   And that’s pretty much all I have to say about that.

4. Something I’ve come to realize late in life is that my senses are more vivid than most people’s, or else I have less of a dampening filter on the input, which really comes to the same thing.  As the man once said, “All my nerves are naked wires, tender to the touch…”

   You know what it sounds like when a speaker is driven past its abilities, the way the sound gets crackly and distorted?  That happens in my ears when sounds get too loud, and they don’t have to be terribly loud.  When it happens, I can actually feel the muscles around my auditory canals trying to slam them shut.  I get similar effects in all my sensory channels: push the input too far, and it starts to overload in uncomfortable ways.

   Because of this, I cannot stand alcohol, carbonated beverages, chocolate, coffee, or hot spices.  Every aspect of my being is influenced: how I act in social situations; my handling of personal relationships; my taste in art; my sexual responses and interests; my perception of world events; my reaction to stress.

   I don’t know if I’d trade this for a more ‘normal’ sensory response or not.  On the one hand, turning down the dial would open up whole experiential areas I can’t currently access.  On the other hand, I’d lose the ability to truly savor a subtle and complex flavor or scent.

   In what is perhaps simply a desire to extend what’s already there, I’ve always wanted to (temporarily) experience letter-color synaesthesia.  Seeing colors from license plates doesn’t count.

   What’s really odd is that I have a fairly high pain tolerance.

5. In private and around people I know really well, I have a tendency to swear to an extent that would probably shock regular readers.  I avoid that kind of stuff here because I know there are people who visit or read this site from work while researching CSS and I don’t want to trip their content-filtering proxies and get them in trouble with middle management.  That kind of stuff leads to all kinds of icky paperwork, and who needs those kinds of headaches, you know?

   Besides, I generally find that when I do want to start cursing in writing, there are better and more effective ways to express myself.  I agree with Mr. Twain regarding the utility of profanity, but it’s no way to frame an argument or plead a case.  Not for me, anyway.

I’m not going to tag anyone specific, because I’ve decided to stop propogating these sorts of memes for many the same reasons I don’t forward chain letters.  Instead, if this post inspires you to post five little-known things about yourself, then consider yourself tagged and let us know a little bit more about you.

• Five Things You Might Not Know About Me was published on Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007.
• It was assigned to the Personal category.
• There have been thirteen replies.

Thanks to everyone who gave me suggestions for something to do on a Saturday in London.  There were far too many good choices, as one expects in a millenia-old city.  I found the prospect of the Tate Modern to be very, very tempting, but as it turned out I crashed hard and slept very late that morning, so I didn’t feel like I could really do the Tate justice.

So instead I decided to walk south and pay a visit to the person who’d pleaded for CSS help in the comments, since their offices were only five minutes’ walk from my hotel and on my way to other points of interest.  You might wonder why I would do that, why I would in effect work, when I had only one day in London, but you know what?  London’s been there a long time, and will most likely continue to be there a long time.  I could never see all of it, not even if I were to move there.  Helping others out is something immediate, vital, and it’s something I like to do when possible.  I was there, he was very close by, and so why not?

As it turned out, he didn’t actually have a CSS problem, but we had a lovely lunch at a gourmet burger place right across the street from St. Paul’s Cathedral.  That didn’t seem weird or anything.

From there, I crossed the Thames at the Farringdon/New Bridge/Blackfriars bridge, and made my way along the south bank to the Westminster Bridge.  In the broken late afternoon sun, I took in living statues and the Eye, a combination which seems far more Tolkienesque than is really necessary.  Perhaps fittingly, there was also a book fair beneath Waterloo Bridge, albeit one I regretfully did not peruse—I was afraid I’d be there until the next morning.  Once I reached Westminster Bridge, I cut inward to check out the Imperial War Museum—what can I say?  I’m a history geek, which you might have guessed from the fact that it was my major field of study in college.  I’d also given thought to seeing the Cabinet War Rooms, but again, time was short.  I spent a couple of hours wandering randomly through the nooks and crannies of the IWM, and then skedaddled out of there to catch a train to the BBC Backstage Bash.  It was loud, it was fun, I traded conference organizer war stories with Patrick Griffiths and got into a short conversation about nihilism with a lovely young lady, and I met more people than I can remember but not nearly as many people as I’d have liked.  A whole kettle of thanks to Ian Forrester and the BBC crew for inviting me to such a great party.

If you’re interested in a short visual record of the day, you can see my photos from the War Museum, two pictures from the Bash, or just the whole general collection of all London photos I’ve Flickred.  Thanks again for all the suggestions!

• London Trod was published on Monday, December 18th, 2006.
• It was assigned to the Travel category.
• There have been seven replies.

So I’m here in London, midway through a two-day workshop on CSS and XHTML.  I’ll be doing that all day Friday, collapsing into a coma, and then rocking out at the BBC Backstage bash on Saturday night before boarding a flight for America on Sunday.

That leaves me all day Saturday in London to do… something.  Anyone have any good suggestions?  In a past visit, I’ve seen St. Paul’s, Buckingham Palace, and the Houses of Parliament from the outside; ridden a double-decker; and wandered a few of the parks; but beyond that London’s a pretty well unknown realm to me.  I’m up for a last-minute group gathering or just pointers on what a tenderfoot ought to make sure he does before setting off again.  What say you, gentle readers?

• London Fogged was published on Thursday, December 7th, 2006.
• It was assigned to the Travel category.
• There have been forty-five replies.

“Daddy, what old is Bear?”

“Do you mean how old is Bear?”

“How old is Bear, yes.”

“I don’t know, sweetie.  How old do you think he is?”

“Sixty two.”

“Sixty two?”

“One.”

“Oh, he’s sixty one, not sixty two?”

“No.  Bear is sixty two one.”

“Sixty two one.”

“Right.”

Honestly, the most impressive thing is that she knows any numbers above fiveteen.

• That’s Pretty Old was published on Sunday, November 19th, 2006.
• It was assigned to the Carolyn and Humor categories.
• There have been fourteen replies.

Last Thursday, I came down from the office to discover a stack of five boxes on the front porch.  Three were for Kat, who is one of those annoying people who plans way ahead for Christmas, and two others were my author copies of CSS Web Site Design (formerly “CSS Hands-On Training”).  This is a title I did for lynda.com, and published by Peachpit, and it’s most tersely described as “Eric Meyer on CSS, but for beginners”.  It’s also the hard-copy version of the video training title “CSS Site Design“, and includes all the videos and exercise files from the video title on a CD-ROM bundled with the book.

After I’d hauled all that into the front hallway, I grabbed my car keys and headed out the back door to run my errand.  At which point I nearly fell over two more boxes, these containing my author copies of the third edition of CSS: The Definitive Guide from O’Reilly.  This is of course an update of the second edition, which contains some updates based on the latest version of CSS 2.1, expanded selector coverage, updated compatibility notes taking IE7’s improvements into account, and corrected errata from the previous edition.  It’s not a major update compared to the second edition, admittedly, but if you don’t already own the second edition, it’s well worth acquiring (if I do say so myself).

It’s a bit funny that both sets of books arrived on my doorstep the exact same day, considering that the two projects started out well separated, and gradually synched up.  At first I was going to write one and then the other, but various complications set in and they started to interweave.  I finished their final reviews with a whole lot of overlap—that was a fun couple of weeks—and now, the waves have fully amplified.

What really cracked me up was that the next day, I got packages from both Peachpit and O’Reilly, each containing a single copy of the respective books, and each containing a note along the lines of “Here’s your advance copy; the rest should arrive in a few weeks!”.

• Two Books Together was published on Friday, November 17th, 2006.
• It was assigned to the CSS and Writing categories.
• There have been six replies.

Let’s cut right to the chase: An Event Apart is growing to become a two-day conference.  We’ll have at least four two-day shows in 2007; see the announcement for more details.

The first show, in Boston, is already confirmed.  We’ve signed the contracts and everything.  Registration isn’t open yet, and won’t be until early January, so you have plenty of time to get the budget approval and be ready to sign up as soon as seats go on sale.  Like I said, early January.  A more specific date will most likely emerge near the end of December.

You’re going to want to get geared up for this, because the speaker list is flat-out amazing:

• Steve Krug (that’s right, Mr. “Don’t Make Me Think!” himself!)
• Dan Cederholm
• Molly Holzschlag
• Andrew Kirkpatrick
• Cameron Moll
• Ethan Marcotte
• Jason Santa Maria
• Eric Meyer
• Jeffrey Zeldman

Honestly, I can hardly wait to hear everyone on the list.  Well, except me.  I hear me all the time.  But everyone else?  Total gold!

Note that this is the speaker list for Boston; the other cities will have different lineups.  Obviously not 100% different, but I expect each one will be fairly different.  Still awesome, of course.

So what are we going to cover?  Best practices.  That’s really what it’s all about, whether we’re dissecting code or talking about usability or whatever.  Jeffrey and I are going to push every last speaker to pack their talks with insights regarding the current state of the art in their respective fields.  We’re going to push ourselves twice as hard to do the same.  What we want is to have everyone walk out saying, “Now I know where things are and where they’re going”.

The size of the event will increase along with the days, from our usual 100 seats to 400 or so.  AEA is now, as I said, a full-on conference.  It’s a big step, but it’s the right one.  The most common feedback from this year’s attendees was that one day just wasn’t enough, and looking back, we have to agree.  That’s especially true given that the feedback from our only two-day event of 2006 indicated that people really liked the length and the amount of information they got out of it.  So it’s time to step up.

Even from this side of the Atlantic, I hear the cries of our European brethren.  When will we visit your worthy shores?  It’s a fair question.  It could happen in 2007, or it might not be until 2008.  How’s that for precise?  I’m sorry, but I can’t do any better than that right now.  Our original plan had been to run a year’s worth of events to shake out the bugs and then look to other lands.  Instead, we discovered that the events were too small, temporally speaking, and needed to be dramatically revamped.

So now we need to run a few of the larger events to get the bugs worked out before going afield.  The good news is that a lot of the bugs are already smoothed out.  We just need to get a handle on the larger format, which has a whole new set of requirements.

So we’ll be at the Boston Marriott Copley Place at the end of March.  I hope you’ll be there too!  (And if you are going to be there and are a member at Upcoming, add yourself to the listing.  Otherwise, feel free to leave a comment here.  Thanks!)

• AEA To Grow in 2007 was published on Wednesday, November 15th, 2006.
• It was assigned to the An Event Apart, Speaking, and Standards categories.
• There have been seventeen replies.

It’s been very nearly two years since the last time, and that’s way too long.  So: it’s time for another caption hunt!

Leave your caption(s) in the comments.  Who knows?  There might even be a prize or two involved.

(Update: comments are now enabled.  Oopsie.)

• Caption Hunt 2 was published on Friday, November 10th, 2006.
• It was assigned to the Humor and Politics categories.
• There have been seventy-seven replies.