Thoughts From Eric Archive

It was ten years ago this evening that I marked up my first HTML document.  I know this because I did the whole thing using Microsoft Word on a Mac laptop in the course of a Friday evening at the CWRU Film Society, and I put a “last updated” line on the document.  I never really changed the page after that first burst of effort, because it wasn’t long afterward that I started to get really busy with setting up and running the first Web-only incarnation of www.cwru.edu and, a short time thereafter, writing the first of three HTML tutorials.

A lot has happened to me in the last decade.  Did you know I was the project leader for the online conversion of the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History and Dictionary of Cleveland Biography, and that it was the first encyclopedia of urban history to be fully and freely published on the Web?  Or that I worked with some CWRU co-workers to create the Borealis Image Server in 1995, which led to a paper presentation at WWW5 in May 1996, where I saw the CSS presentation that changed my life?  I could do those things because I worked for a university, particularly one as advanced (Internet-wise) as CWRU.  I missed out on the dot-com bubble, I suppose, but it was worth it for the low pressure and intellectual freedom that an academic setting promotes.

Even in the real world, a decade is a long time; in Internet years, it’s practically forever.  So when I get, as I sometimes do, crabby and reactionary, just remind yourself that I’m ancient.  Damn kids and your fancy-schmancy gigahertz chips and gooeys… why, when I was a young buck, we were lucky to have a command-prompt system that would compile PASCAL programs in under an hour, but did we complain?  Hell no!  We felt lucky to have so much computing power!

Sorry, I drifted off there for a second.

So, want to see that first document of mine?  It’s right here, still serving after all these years.  Does it validate?  Oh dear Lord no, not even when you force the validator to use HTML 3.2 and ISO-8859-1 character handling.  That was back in the wild days when I thought (as Bill Amend still does, apparently) that <p> was just a shorthand way of writing <br><br> and you could wrap any element around any other element, like putting a named anchor around a heading instead of inside it.  I’d never even heard of a DOCTYPE, let alone “DOCTYPE switching;” my first exposure to CSS was still two and a half years into my future; and David Seigel had yet to show us how to create “killer” Web sites.

Back then, the killer browser was NCSA Mosaic.  Mosaic Communications Corporation was being formed—it was only later that legal wrangling forced a change of name to Netscape Communications.  I still fondly remember the slowly spinning panes in the upper right-hand corner of the first MCC betas, and I wish they’d just changed the “M” to an “N” and kept the animation.  After the name changed, they replaced that interesting and aesthetic effect with a big ugly “N” that went from outset to inset and back, thus causing a mass coinage of the term “throbber” to describe the little animation that tells you the browser is busy doing something.

I also recall the day I found out that typing about:fishcam in Netscape’s address bar would get you The Amazing Netscape Fish Cam.  When I got to create a redesign for the Fish Cam page early this year, it was like a dream come true.  Okay, not really, but it was a thrill.  To remake a page that I remembered so clearly, that wowed me and intrigued me—that alone would have made taking the job at Netscape worthwhile.  (If you’re interested in seeing one of the camera feeds, you should probably go do that as soon as possible.  There’s no way to know when the Fish Cam, rather like Netscape itself, will suffer a pulled plug.)  A close second was when I ended up taking the lead editorial and design role for DevEdge, another early site that I visited quite a lot.

Now that I look back, it seems like fish have been a recurring theme; after all, Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide has a pair of fish on its cover.  Not only that, but they’re different fish than were initially marketed, because I apparently pulled off the impossible in persuading O’Reilly’s “Animal Lady” to dump the original design and use my idea instead.  I didn’t know it was impossible before trying it, which is no doubt why I succeeded… but that’s a story for some other day.

You might think that after a decade I’d be sick and tired of the Web, but not so.  I’m gearing up for the next ten with my new consultancy, including some awesome clients that induce the same thrills I had working at Netscape; working on a new forum for bringing detailed and useful information on standards-oriented design to you; contributing to an interesting new social-networking technology; and exploring some ideas for ventures that will build on what I’ve already done.

Professionally, it’s been an amazing ten years, and I’m convinced the next ten will be even better.  However much I might complain about writer’s stress or proprietary solutions or what have you, I still enjoy what I do and look forward to doing it.  I’m not always quite sure how I got to where I am, but believe me, I’m deeply grateful that I’ve had the chance to do what I do, and even more so that so many people have supported me over the years.  Thank you, one and all, and I will do my utmost to continue earning your respect and trust in the years to come.

• Ten Years On was published on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2003.
• It was assigned to the History and Personal categories.
• There have been no replies.

Thanks to friends and family, we had a great weekend in New York City.  There was barely enough time to breathe between each visit, but seeing everyone was a great way to recharge ourselves and remember all the things for which we are thankful.    It was also rather surreal to watch Adam Greenfield (whose picture I’d seen on CNN.com not too long ago), his wife, and my wife help Carrie decorate the Zeldmans’ Christmas tree.

Not as surreal as seeing the first part of The Two Towers played at one-eighth speed, mind you.

Back at the beginning of the year, Jeffrey proclaimed that every author wishes he (or she) were not writing a book, and I said I generally felt differently, that when a book was underway I was glad to be writing.  Now I understand his pain.  Until now, I was writing on weekends for the most part, with a nice long writing schedule, and had a full-time job to keep my brain doing other stuff during the week.  Now writing and working are all mixed up together, and in a valiant effort to finish primary writing by the end of this year, I’m working on two books simultaneously.  This means I spend at least a few hours of every day writing, and still put in a lot of writing on weekends.  It’s really wearing me down, and I have every intention of taking a nice long break from book writing come 2004.  I’ll get back to articles, I hope, but I expect that books will go to the back burner for at least six months.  Well, except maybe for one that I’m thinking about co-authoring.  But other than that, nothing else, I swear!

• Gotham Goodness was published on Tuesday, December 2nd, 2003.
• It was assigned to the Writing category.
• There have been no replies.

Random observations and thoughts from the drive from New York City to Cleveland:

• There are these signs along Interstate 80 in northern New Jersey that read, “UPGRADE – MAINTAIN SPEED.”  They come just before each hill, and I thought they very nicely captured what it’s like to be a computer user.
• Peppered along the Pennsylvania stretch of I80 (all six hours of it), there are signs that read, “BUCKLE UP – NEXT MILLION MILES.”  My first thought was, As compared to what reference point?
• In the middle of Pennsylvania, we discovered that hunting season is underway.  There were a lot of cars pulled off to the side of the interstate, and we saw quite a few men wearing faded camoflauge and bright orange vests, which seemed like the ultimate in contradictory clothing choices.  Later on, we saw a truck with a deer carcass lashed to a platform extended from the back bumper, right underneath the rear window and its stickered slogan: “Life’s a bitch – then you die.”
• I’ve decided that if you’re a civilian and driving a Hummer, you’re basically piloting a giant self-propelled declaration of just how big a jerk you really are.  (I considered words other than “jerk” but this is, at least most of the time, a family site.)  As a civilian, you have no reason to own one, and even less reason to have it on the road.  That goes double for the H2, frankly.
• On a very related note, I spotted a bumper sticker that said, “Supprt OPEC: Buy an SUV.”  No kidding!  I can’t tell you how pleased I was to learn that Saturn plans to introduce a gas/electric hybrid next year.

• Roadmarks II was published on Monday, December 1st, 2003.
• It was assigned to the General and Travel categories.
• There have been no replies.

Random observations and thoughts from the drive from Philadelphia to New York City:

• A New Jersey license plate reading I4GOTT.
• Back home in Ohio, gas pumps give you all kinds of directions, almost to the point of silliness.  After you insert your credit card and quickly remove it, they’ll tell you to LIFT NOZZLE and SELECT GRADE and BEGIN FUELING.  Out here on the Eastern Seaboard, the pumps read your card and tell you to OPERATE PUMP.  That’s it.  I guess if you can’t figure it out from there, it’s not their flippin’ problem.
• There was a big sign right after we got on the New Jersey Turnpike that read “URGENT MESSAGE WHEN LIGHTS FLASHING – Tune radio to 1610 AM.”  There were no lights anywhere near the sign.
• If you’re the driver of the large white Durango that was cut off twice by a yellow hardtop Tracker approaching the Verazzano Narrows Bridge, and almost cut off a third time getting onto the Belt Parkway East, early this afternoon, I’m really, really sorry.  Between the dense fog and the unfamiliar territory, we kept realizing we had to be in your lane at the last possible instant.  I swear to Doug it was nothing personal.

• Roadmarks was published on Friday, November 28th, 2003.
• It was assigned to the General and Travel categories.
• There have been no replies.

Wow.

Kat and I have just returned from Morimoto, where we had one of the most amazing meals of our entire lives.  Although we’d been seated at a table to start, Kat decided (and rightly so) that we should move to the sushi bar.  So with a little help from the hostess, we moved to sit at the end of the bar, just a few feet from Morimoto himself, and after a bit of debate we decided to start out with the seared kobe beef and green tea soba noodles.  These were by themselves amazing, but they were just the beginning.  From there, we moved into the omakase, or chef’s tasting menu.  The best part of this was that we were seated right in front of the chef who was creating our meal, a sushi chef by the name of Alex, so we could ask questions and make requests while he prepared our courses.  And what did we have?

1. Toro tartare (one of the restaurant’s signature dishes)
2. Japanese oysters on the half-shell with four different sauces
3. Seared scallop
4. Sashimi salad of striped jack
5. Mango sorbet with tiny wasabi beigniets
6. Grilled half lobster in ginger sauce and rice noodles
7. Grilled kobe beef with pan-seared foie gras
8. Nigiri sushi including toro (fatty tuna), kanpachi (juvenile yellowtail), sawari (kingfish), Japanese tai (red snapper), needlefish, fluke, and fluke fin
9. Chocolate temple dessert

It’s difficult to even imagine being able to come up with the words to describe how good everything was. Take the scallop, for example.  Alex scraped the meat off of a shell, then sliced it in half and bent over to closely inspect the two halves.  We couldn’t figure out what he was doing as he switched his gaze from one to the other, then back.  After a few moments he beckoned us close and said, “Look at this one.  See around the edges?”

We looked.  In the light, the edge was puckering and moving slowly.

“It’s still alive,” he said happily.  And then he sliced the meat into chunks, seared it on the sushi grill, and served it up with spicy extra-virgin olive oil and cherry tomato halves.

Even though I hate scallop to the extent that it makes me feel ill, I somehow just had to try a piece.  It was actually rather tasty, although I did keep it to that single piece.

The whole time, Alex graciously answered our every question of “Ooo! What’s that?” and “How is that made?” and “How do you get a meal prepared by Morimoto himself?”  He didn’t even take that last question personally; I’m sure he gets it all the time.  From our perch we got to watch Morimoto make mini-sushi, which we’re told is all the rage now in Japan.  Each little piece was maybe a centimeter long.  Not only did we think they were too cute for words, so did most of the staff.  We saw one waitress run after the server calling, “Wait, let me see, let me see!”

It was, in every sense, an incredible experience.  If we ever do make it back to Morimoto, we’ll not only try the omakase again, but we’ll ask to sit at Alex’s station on the sushi bar.

• Morimoto was published on Wednesday, November 26th, 2003.
• It was assigned to the Food and Travel categories.
• There have been no replies.

When I woke up this morning, it was gray, chilly, and rainy, the way fall is supposed to be.  For the past several days, it’s instead been warm, which is fine in September or maybe even early October, but not at the beginning of November.  It just feels wrong.  So today, as much as the weather was less pleasant than yesterday’s, I felt a little more comfortable with the world.

As I stood in the kitchen looking out at our back yard and contemplating the week ahead, the rain suddenly shifted to what we call a “wintry mix”—rain, snow, and ice pellets all mixed up.  It literally went from one to the other in the space of ten seconds.  Now, an hour later, it’s snowing.  The ground’s still warm enough that it’s mostly melting upon landing, except for the few lucky flakes that manage to cling to the tops of grass blades and give the lawns a pale frosted look.

I dislike it when writers use weather and seasons as a metaphor for their internal states; it’s a cheap device and a rather tired cliché to boot.  So I won’t actually do it here, but instead allude to the fact that I could have very easily done so, if it weren’t for my pride.

This week we have the American holiday of Thanksgiving, and possibly not a moment too soon.  Kat and I have suffered a great deal in the past year, and it’s easy to become a tragedy diva in such circumstances, focusing on and complaining about everything that’s wrong and terrible in one’s life.  This week we need to dedicate some energy to remembering the good and positive things that happened in the past year, and give thanks for every one; to remind ourselves that life, no matter how hard it seems, is not uniformly dark and painful; to celebrate the good instead of dwelling on the bad.  In that way, we can together light a candle rather than curse the darkness, and use that light as a guide toward happier days.

• Seasons Change was published on Monday, November 24th, 2003.
• It was assigned to the Personal category.
• There have been no replies.

If you’re on the east side of Cleveland and want a nice warm caffeinated place to get online, the new Arabica on Lee Road, just a block or so south of Cedar-Lee, is the place to be.  The network SSID is 2WIRE173; it is a closed network but they’ll tell you the password at the counter.  Note to Mac users: you’ll need to enter the password as a 40-bit hex key, not as a plain password.  Something about their security setup causes this, although neither I nor they knew exactly what that might be.  I figure it’s no big deal, since once you enter the information and add it to your Keychain, you’ll never have to worry about it again (unless of course they change it).

• Hot Steaming Internet was published on Sunday, November 23rd, 2003.
• It was assigned to the Cleveland and Tech categories.
• There have been no replies.

Thanks to those of you who wrote in with the answer to my Dock question.  It turns out that I’d been trying to drag folders into the same Dock region that holds my application entries, and that’s no good.  Folders can be added in the area where the Trash can, minimized windows, and running applications not already in the Dock sit.  It hadn’t even occurred to me to try to add them there, because that’s where active stuff (and the Trash) goes.  Static links to resources go in the other area, as far as I’m concerned.  Just another little shove toward jettisoning the Dock and registering DragThing.

As for iPhoto plug-ins, I did find BetterHTMLExport pretty quickly, and the 2.0 version has exactly what I want—and about ten times that in stuff I won’t ever need.  If I were creating galleries, it would be a godsend.  I’d register it.  But all I really want is a plugin that lets me set the size and image quality of exported JPEGs, and that then exports them with smooth scaling instead of the jagged scaling iPhoto uses.  Frankly, iPhoto should do all this without needing a plug-in, but it doesn’t.  This seems like a simple little widget, one that could be created quickly and released as freeware.  Anyone have any leads on one that exists, or interest in creating such a tool?  Heck, point me at a good beginner’s resource on how to analyze and create iPhoto plug-ins and I could take a swing at it myself.  In my copious spare time, of course.

Panther’s been pretty cool so far—it certainly feels much snappier than Jaguar did—although there are (as always) things that annoy me.  The behavior of drag-selecting in the List view changed, and not for the better.  The reintroduction of labels (and where were they until now?) is nice, but I would have preferred a better presentation of them in OS.  Then again, Exposé thoroughly rocks not just the house, but the neighbor’s houses as well.  The fact that I can shuffle just those windows associated with the current application is just too darned awesome.  Exposé also revealed that Mozilla-based browsers create a small hidden window offscreen, one that you can’t really access but is still there.  It comes zooming in from the upper left when you invoke Exposé, and zips away when you un-expose everything.  I wonder what it’s doing.

In case you didn’t see this pointed out elsewhere, the main page (at least) of the Sprint PCS site is an XHTML+CSS layout now.  One of these days I’m going to have to compile a list.

• Panther Patter was published on Thursday, November 20th, 2003.
• It was assigned to the Mac and Standards categories.
• There have been no replies.