Thoughts From Eric Archive

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.

• Wednesday, 5 December 2001 was published on Wednesday, December 5th, 2001.
• It was assigned to the General category.
• There have been no replies.

John Allsopp wrote to me today: “Now you really can say ‘my middle name is Cascading Style Sheets.'”  I guess so.  Thanks, Amazon!

• Wednesday, 24 October 2001 was published on Wednesday, October 24th, 2001.
• It was assigned to the CSS and Humor categories.
• There have been no replies.

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!

• Saturday, 20 October 2001 was published on Saturday, October 20th, 2001.
• It was assigned to the CSS and General categories.
• There have been no replies.

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.

• Wednesday, 11 October 2001 was published on Thursday, October 11th, 2001.
• It was assigned to the Politics category.
• There have been no replies.

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…

• Tuesday, 2 October 2001 was published on Tuesday, October 2nd, 2001.
• It was assigned to the Politics category.
• There have been no replies.

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.

• Monday, 1 October 2001 was published on Monday, October 1st, 2001.
• It was assigned to the CSS category.
• There have been no replies.

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.

• Friday, 28 September 2001 was published on Friday, September 28th, 2001.
• It was assigned to the Politics category.
• There have been no replies.

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.

• Wednesday, 26 September 2001 was published on Wednesday, September 26th, 2001.
• It was assigned to the Humor category.
• There have been no replies.