Thoughts From Eric Archive

Diverse Reactions

Published 18 years, 5 months past

I had most of a followup to yesterday’s post written, all reasonable and spiked with some humor and maybe a little dry, which I suppose is what most people have come to expect from me in general, and then it fell apart in concert with my inner stability.

I’ve definitely incurred a lesson in “post in haste, repent in leisure”.  The internal aftereffects of the post have been extensive and unexpected.  I don’t have them all sorted out yet; it may take months.  I don’t even have names for all the things that have roiled up.  I may be undergoing a drastic phase change in my thinking, or I may just be grieving something I didn’t know I mourned, or perhaps I’m raging against a world I sometimes feel powerless to alter.  I don’t know.  I do know that if I’d known this would be the effect of posting, I’d never have done it—which is one of the best arguments in the world for having done it.

I’ll not mince words: I screwed up pretty badly yesterday.  The real question is how.  I’m not sure I’ll know the answer for a long time.  Was my mistake in speaking honestly?  Was it in how I wrote it all down?  Was it in the rhetorical approach I took?  Was (is) the flaw intrinsic to me?  Am I the very problem I so much want to eliminate?

If I have erred and caused harm by that error I apologize.  I am as ever human, mistakes and all, flaws aplenty, and while that’s an explanation, it’s not an excuse.  It is never, ever an excuse.

I am deeply sorry today, but not for what I was trying to say.  I might be sorry for how I said it, or for a number of other things.  I know I’m sorry for causing hurt in others.  That was the last thing I wanted.  I was trying to make a positive statement, trying to detail what I find to be an empowering concept.  A lot of people were supportive, but a number of people, many of whom I respect and some that I care for and a few that I love, were disappointed by what I had to say.  I disappointed them, some very badly, which means I’ve let them down.  And I really, really hate letting people down.

And here’s the worst part, the absolutely darkest most awful painful part of the entire situation: I let them down by being myself.

That tears.  It rips ragged claws of paradox across my throat, up my jawline, through my brow.

In my head, I know that the recipe for failure is trying to please everyone, but my heart doesn’t buy it.  I’m human, and no matter how impossible the task I want to be what everyone wants me to be.  Which I can’t be.  I can only be myself.  I can only hope to improve myself.  And I can only do that according to what I truly believe, down at my core, because one person’s improvement is another person’s step backward, and changing oneself to meet the expectations of others is a fool’s game at best.

I am who I am, and it will not be to everyone’s liking.  I will never see the world in the ways that everyone wishes me to see it.  This is an essential truth, something that should be obvious to anyone, the sort of thing one should never think of trying to contradict.

And yet.

I know that there were a number of people who understood what I was saying and agreed with me, who in some cases were proud of me, and that they are no less important than those who didn’t understand or who did understand and were disappointed.  I should concentrate on that balance, see the whole mixture, but I’m just not wired that way.  For whatever reason, my genetics or my upbringing or whatever it is, I can’t help but focus on the negatives.  In this case, on those I let down.

There’s no reason for sympathy here.  I knew the third rail was fully electrified, and I chose to tap dance upon it.  The outcomes of that choice will serve to teach me, if I listen—but what I will learn is still very much an unknown.  I only hope that, in the end, it confers a net positive effect on me and the world around me.

Back in Seattle Again

Published 18 years, 5 months past

An Event Apart is coming back to Seattle in June 2007, and the only major differences are that it will be two days instead of one, and this time we’ve got a roster of nine fantastic speakers.

Of all the Event Apart venues of 2006, I think the Bell Harbor International Conference Center was probably my favorite.  Every place we visited last year had its own unique charms and flaws, but at Bell Harbor I really felt like the charms were maximized and the flaws minimized.  So we’re bringing AEA back to Bell Harbor on June 21st and 22nd, as we announced this morning.

Nine speakers seems to be our target for these two-day events, and fully two thirds of our Seattle lineup will be different than our Boston lineup.  (The repeats are me, Jeffrey, and Jason.)  For your edification, we’ll be presenting:

  • Tim Bray, father of XML and possessor of many fine hats
  • Jeff Veen, Wired alumnus and very tall person, now at Google
  • Andy Budd, leading member of the Brit Pack and our first international speaker
  • Khoi Vinh, dog lover and Design Director at NYTimes.com
  • Shaun Inman, the brains behind Mint, IFR, IPC, CSS-SSC, and a whole lot more
  • Local hero Mike Davidson, CEO of Newsvine and web standards provocateur
  • Shawn Lawton Henry of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)

Oh yeah.

That’s all completely awesome, but there is a catch.  There’s always a catch, isn’t there?  The catch is that the seating available at Bell Harbor is strictly limited.  Once we sell all the seats they have, that’s it, all done, finito.  The seating capacity at Bell Harbor is about two-thirds that of our Boston show, and Boston is on track to sell out.  Registration for Seattle will open March 15th, so now is the time to prepare.  See you in Seattle!

Winter Drifts

Published 18 years, 6 months past

By current standards, the winter storm we’ve just weathered was pretty severe: two feet of snow blanketed our local environs in the course of 24 hours, give or take.  I put a few pictures up on Flickr, for those who’d like to see some of the aftereffects.  The broad nature of the storm meant that everyone got about the same snowfalls; lake effect seemed to play a minor or nonexistent role.

I’ve heard some people are comparing this storm to the Blizzard of ’77, and a few with a slightly better sense of proportion have recalled the storm that hit the area in November of 1996.  Both strike me as rather specious comparisons.  The ’77 storm was near to epic in scope and intensity, dropping four or five feet and stranding a whole lot of travelers.  My paternal grandparents had dropped by to visit the day before it started and ended up staying several days longer than they’d planned; the snow on our roofed patio was three or four feet deep, and many drifts throughout our area were a dozen feet or more tall.  For 1996, we had four or five days of constantly falling dense, wet snow, and tornadoes and thunderstorms to boot.  This week’s storm mostly dumped the light fluffy snow you can clear away with a broom, assuming it’s not too deep.

The truth is that this week’s storm wouldn’t have been very remarkable twenty years ago.  It might have been one of the heaviest individual falls of a given season, and certainly would have caused some problems, but it wouldn’t have triggered historical comparisons.  I remember days with ambient air temperatures of -20°F (-29°C) and stiff winds, which drove the effective temperature down to -50°F (-45°C) or lower.  I remember snow feet thick on the ground which stayed on for weeks.  I remember tunneling through roadside snowbanks and building elaborate snowforts with the neighbor kids, snowy bus stops, sledding parties and ice skating.

Yeah, yeah, okay: “when I was your age…”.  That’s not actually my point.  What I’m trying to say is that for last couple of decades, we’ve had some very mild winters, and it made us complacent.  I don’t own boots, because it’s literally been years since I needed them.  I had cause to regret that as I cleared snow from our walks in my regular shoes.  Thankfully, we do have access to a snow blower, so I didn’t have to shovel, but that didn’t stop the snow from getting into my shoes.  Oh, that’s a cold feeling.

I stayed far away from any conventional media yesterday, mostly to spare myself the histrionics of local news forecasters and avoid the depressingly repetitive comment, “I guess so much for global warming, haw haw haw!”.  There’s only so much moronity I can stomach in a day.  Instead, we all stayed home (Carolyn’s preschool and Kat’s office both being closed, along with nearly everything else in the city) and played games, read books, and went outside for short periods to make snow angels, get cold-rosy cheeks, and eat a few mittenfuls of snow.  Then we came back in to sip hot drinks in front of the fireplace.

People sometimes ask me why I stay in Cleveland when I could find work no matter where I moved.  In response, I can only point out my window to the drifts of snow sparkling in today’s clear-sky sun and the bare brown trees that will, in a month or two, begin to bud green shoots and tiny flowers; the same trees that will be silhouetted against a lightning-torn sky and will roar as autumn winds rip through their branches and brilliant leaves.

While that is not the only reason I stay, I need no other.

Events in CSS and Web Design History

Published 18 years, 6 months past
Here’s a fun Friday question for everyone: what do you consider to be some of the most important events in the history of CSS and web design?  How about some of the most overlooked events in that same history?  (And yes, an event can be both.)  I’m not looking for the “best” answers—I want to know what you regard as important, overlooked, or otherwise worthy of mention.  So tell!

AEA Boston Going Fast

Published 18 years, 6 months past

The rate of registrations for An Event Apart Boston has been, in my eyes and the eyes of our greatly experienced Event Manager, nothing short of stunning.  I generally look deeply askance at exhortations to “hurry before they’re all gone” or claims that “time is running out”, but they’re kind of warranted here.

That’s not because we only have ten seats left or anything, no; but we have sold a solid majority of the available seats in the 25 calendar days registration has been open.  And we already know of a bunch more people who are planning to register just as soon as they can get all their institutional ducks lined up.

At the current rate of registration, we’ll most likely have sold all the available seats before the early bird deadline arrives on February 26th.  My current projections say we’ll sell out on February 28th, but of course there’s no guarantee expressed or implied by that statement.  Space could dry up faster or slower than I currently predict, especially since I didn’t take the expected last-minute early bird registration rush into account with that prediction.  I’ll be sort of interested to see how far off I was, when the time comes.

So, yeah, the show is filling up fast.  So is the special room rate we negotiated with the hotel.  If you’re interested, then, you know… better hurry before they’re all gone.

Wanted: Akismet Warning Plugin

Published 18 years, 6 months past

Okay, with my WordPress install mostly stabilized (I even fixed the archive paging!), I have a LazyWeb request for all you WP hackers.  What I want is very simple:  a WP 2.x plugin that notifies a commenter when their comment has been condemned to the Akismet queue.  I’ve had a few legitimate comments suffer that fate, and I imagine there have been more I never saw, so it’s something I’d really like to have (and something I think other people would also find useful).

At the most basic level, all I really want is for the plugin to die() with a message telling the commenter that their comment has been Akismetted and that they should contact the site administrator about it if they’re legitimate.  If instead of dying it gave that message upon returning them to the post on which they commented, the way “Your message is awaiting moderation” works, that would be extra-cool.  Either way, it obviously only fires if the comment has been marked spam.

I’m guessing this is a pretty simple plugin to write.  I did attempt to write it myself, but was spectacularly unsuccessful in the attempt.  The really frustrating part is that I think I got close to making it work, but, in the end, failed badly.  Then I asked for plugin help on IRC, but nobody noticed.  So I’m throwing the request out to the audience here to see what y’all can do.  Thanks to anyone who can help!

Update 5 Feb 07: Mark Jaquith has come through with Antispam Collateral Condolences, a plugin that does exactly what I requested.  It can put up the warning either as a JavaScript alert box, or a message embedded in the page upon returning them to the post on which they commented.  Totally, completely awesome.  You rock, Mark!

I’d Like To Thank The Academy…

Published 18 years, 6 months past

Among all the other stuff this past week, I let something slip off the radar: an interview with me over at the Lunartics blog.  The interview was conducted via e-mail by Amy Armitage, who I briefly met last year at the Webmaster Jam Session in Dallas.  It’s not your usual “why is CSS important” kind of interview; Amy likes to keep things fun while still covering serious questions.  It’s definitely worth a read.

It also scoops news of a development I’ve never gotten around to mentioning: in October 2006, I was inducted as a member of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.  It’s a pretty incredible honor, given that it’s an invitation-only body of 500 members including “David Bowie, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, Internet inventor and Google Chief Internet Evangelist Vinton Cerf, ‘Simpsons’ creator Matt Groening, Real Networks CEO Rob Glaser, and fashion designer Max Azria”.  The fact that my name appears on the same list as those people is jaw-dropping enough.  To me, it wasn’t the most stunning part by a long mile.

I’ll admit, though I’d heard of The Webbys, I assumed the IADAS was one of those name-collector groups, like those “Who’s Who in America” books where you pay to be listed.  Instead, I found that the IADAS levies no membership fees, and I was deeply surprised and pleased to discover that they invite people based on their actual qualifications.  How do I know?  Because my welcoming letter didn’t praise my web design work.  Instead, it cited my “dedication to promoting Web standards”, my “international recognition on the topics of HTML and CSS”, and proclaims that I’ve “helped inform excellence and efficiency on the Web”.

Yes, the text string “HTML and CSS” was actually in the letter.

It’s a little difficult to express how important this recognition is to me.  See, most of the time, I’m introduced and perceived as an influential web designer, which is frankly insulting to actual web designers everywhere.  If you aren’t reading this post via RSS, look around.  Does this look like influential web design?  Hell no.  At best, we can call meyerweb’s design minimalist and maybe—maybe—possessed of a certain elegance.  And it only took me five years and ripping off ideas from Khoi Vinh to get here!

But I’ve never claimed to be a designer.  I think the perception that I am one arises because I get linked to from people who really are designers.  I’ve always claimed to be a communicator.  I’m someone who’s done his best to explain, promote, and advance the technologies that let designers do their work.  I’ve invested tons of time and effort into making good web design easier without sacrificing clean and semantic markup.  I wouldn’t say that work is done by any stretch, but there’s been a lot of progress.  Sometimes I forget just how much.

And so, to be invited to join the IADAS not for what I’m usually thought to be, but actually for who I am—it’s an indescribable feeling.  A fantastically good one, certainly!  But not one I could describe no matter how many words I threw at the problem.

It’s a delicious irony, and I do so love my irony:  my powers of communication fail me when I wish to express my feelings over being honored for my communicating, over all those years, my love of the web and my passion for getting it right and the inner workings of how to make that happen.

But I can at least say this:

Thank you.  Thank you for coming to read my posts, for reading my books and articles, for listening to me speak.  Thank you for being the other end of the conversation.  Thank you for being open to what I have to say, and for responding with your insights and perspectives, all of which have changed me in untold ways.  Thank you for making everything I’ve done and said and written about the web worth far more than what I put into it.

Thank you for making this honor possible.

Fixing My WordPress Install

Published 18 years, 6 months past

Okay, so my “Whole Magilla” feeds—both full-content and summary—are working again, and the main archive page actually shows content.  The problem in both cases, as I mentioned in my previous post, was that WordPress’ code was throwing 404 responses.  In the case of the archive page, it would literally put up a 404 page generated by WordPress, instead of list the most recent posts.  For the Magilla feeds, the RSS files were being served up, but with HTTP 404 headers.  In feed readers that respected HTTP headers, like Firefox or NetNewsWire (and probably most others), that meant the feeds were broken.  Other feeds, such as the tech-only feed, were unbroken, but of course the most popular feeds are the Magilla feeds.

In the end, a post from Alex King showed me the way to a “fix”.  I put that word in quotes because this is really more of a hack.  No, actually, it’s just gross, but it works.  In order to get WP to stop throwing inappropriate 404s, I commented out lines 35 through 135 of classes.php in the WordPress core.  Here’s the beginning and end of the block I commented out: 

if (! empty($rewrite)) {
   // If we match a rewrite rule, this will be cleared.
   $error = '404';

[...a ton of redacted lines...]

      $this->did_permalink = false;
   }
}

There you go: with one hundred lines of code commented out, my feeds and archive page work again.  This is not a good idea, but it’s all I could figure out to do.  Obviously, having modified a core file, I’m taking a chance that this won’t cause other problems.  So far I haven’t seen any, but you never know.  I’m also making upgrades much harder on myself, given that the new core file won’t have my modifications.

Similarly, I commented out the mod_rewrite.c block WP added to the end of my .htaccess file, so that I can use my own rewrites and not invoke WP’s rewriting.  With every upgrade, I’ll have to check that file to make sure the block didn’t get added back.

I’m mostly posting this as a reference for anyone who might run into similar problems with their WP 2.x installation.  It’s my hope that a future version of WP will offer some kind of hook or option that will let me easily disable WP’s rewriting and error handling code, since I already have a web server that’s configured to do those things for me.  I don’t mind if it’s a hook that I can address via a plugin as opposed to an option in the preferences, but I’d like to have it.  It would make WP a little more attractive to power users as well, since they’d know that they could do their own rewriting and error handling without having to fight with WP’s internals.

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