Thoughts From Eric Archive

I think that, overall, the workshops went very well indeed.  Probably the most frustrating thing was that the hotel lacked net access for the entire time I was there.  Oh, they had a network, with drops in the rooms and a first-floor wifi cloud.  It’s just that the network was completely broken for the entire five days, save a two-hour window in the middle of one of the days.

But that annoyance aside, everything else was great.  The attendees asked a lot of interesting questions and soaked up the firehose of information I was blasting their way.  There was some good (and good-natured) give-and-take on the subject of tables versus CSS for layout, with plenty of examples of where each approach might be better or worse than others.  And hey, I wore a tie!  Both days!  Ryan has the picture to prove it!

He also has the British spelling of “favorite” to prove that he’s been away from Colorado for too long.

Anyway, I’d like to send a huge thank you to everyone who attended for making it a great experience.  I had fun, and I think you did too.  Now for two bits of trivia about the attendees:

• The quiet, bearded man who sat house right in the third or fourth row on Saturday was none other than Michaël Guitton, a significant and early contributor to S5, the slide show system I used to present the morning notes.  I didn’t find this out until the end of the day, or else I’d have made him stand to take a bow.  (Which might be why he waited until the end of the day to introduce himself.)

  He was also the only person at lunch to order the salmon, although I came very close to doing so myself.

• On Friday, as a number of us headed up the street for social hour, one of the attendees mentioned he’d been in Cleveland and Columbus many years ago.  I asked what had brought him there, and he said he’d been touring with a band.

  “Oh, really?” said I.  “That’s cool.  Um, any chance it’s a band I might have heard of?”

  “The Jesus and Mary Chain”, he said.

  “WHAT?!?!?”

  I had to ask him three times if he was having me on.  Turns out he wasn’t: I was talking to Dave Evans, who was their guitarist in the late 80s.  Seriously.  I could not make this up even if I tried.  I really had a former member of the Jesus and Mary Chain in my CSS workshop.

  That’s so far beyond incredible that I can’t even describe where it ends up.

• Workshop Wrap-Up was published on Wednesday, June 8th, 2005.
• It was assigned to the (X)HTML, CSS, and Speaking categories.
• There have been six replies.

Earlier this evening, I ventured from the Hilton Kensington to find dinner.  I ended up at The Mitre, an upscale pub a block east of the Holland Park tube stop.  I found the food to be quite excellent, and on a Thursday night things were fairly quiet.  I proceeded to slowly kill two bottles of still water and a full three courses.

As I was eating, a few degrees to the left of my straight ahead sat a couple, sharing a pint and talking animatedly to each other.  Gradually, I came to realize that there was something unusual about the young woman, but I wasn’t quite sure what.  I watched them a bit more closely for a while, and then as she reached up to brush back her hair it hit me: her left hand had only the thumb and first two fingers.

To be nakedly honest, I experienced a deeply visceral reaction—not revulsion, but a certain kind of personal horror.  There is something about physical deformations that primally disturbs and scares me.  Every time it does, however, I confront the reaction and examine it as if it were a stranger.  I stare into my own bias and try to understand it a little more fully, to lessen its power.  I think that perhaps my reaction springs from a projection of the observed deformity onto myself.  What if I were without fingers, or blind, or had an amputated limb?  I feel some faint echo of an alternate self, alien to me and yet all too real.  Most real of all is the fear that given such a burden, I would not bear it well.  In the distorted mirror that reflects my deformed body, I see a darkened face and an angry soul.

As I force myself to stare into that face, I wonder if it is an accurate self assessment, or a projection of my fears.  I tell myself it is a projection, believe that it is with all my might, and perhaps believing will make it so.

After watching a few minutes more, I could clearly see what had initially seemed odd about her.  She had a distinct tendency to wedge the deformed hand between her crossed legs, or to keep it in her lap under the table.  If the left hand came up, it usually rested next to her ear, the hand buried in her hair.  Every movement was natural, her body at ease in every moment; she’d obviously had a long time to develop these tendencies so that they were not affected, but totally unconscious.

When she had to pick up a plate with her right hand and reached out with the left to move her glass as well, I could see why her habits were so ingrained.  The shape of her hand, wrist, and arm convinced me that no accident had befallen her except that of birth: she’d never had the fingers.

I studied her again in this new light.  As before, she was quite pretty, with a wonderful smile and an easy laugh for her companion, who was clearly a romantic partner.  Her movements were animated, and she had that enthusiasm and energy that only the young seem to truly possess.  In every observable way, she was a very happy and lovely person.

I wondered what it was like for her, growing up with a deformed hand.  Children need little enough excuse to be cruel to other children; how must she have been taunted?  And yet it did not seem to have made her angry or bitter.  I cannot claim to know the details of her personality based on an hour’s observation, but I am convinced she was not that way.  If anything, she seemed like the kind of person to whom happiness came almost naturally.  She seemed like someone it would be a joy to know.

When people asked Kat and me what kind of baby we wanted, our answer was always, “A healthy one—ten fingers, ten toes, that kind of thing”.  Yet here was a woman who was, to all appearances, fully healthy except for a malformed hand.  And is such a thing really unhealthy?  It is different, but that isn’t the same thing.

We are all imperfect, some more visibly than others.  Between the two of us, this bright young woman and me, who was the more flawed: she with her hand, or me with my fears?

• How Many Fingers? was published on Thursday, June 2nd, 2005.
• It was assigned to the Personal category.
• There has been one reply.

The other day I hit a situation that pushed me to come up with a way to simulate the child selector in a way Internet Explorer could understand using two rules.  I doubt I’m the first to think of it, but I’d never seen it before, so I thought I’d document the solution here.

The deal was that I had a column of text featuring white background with some black flecks in it.  On top of that went some near-black text.  All fine, except where the text sat on top of a fleck, which made it next to impossible to read.

To counteract that effect, I decided to set the background of the various descendants of that div to be white, so they’d mask any flecks they were overlapping.  Thus I wrote:

#main * {background: #FFF;}

It worked great for about a second.  That’s when I realized that I had links in the column, and some of them were sitting inside table rows with a non-white background.  The rule I’d just written was giving the links white backgrounds, which had the visual effect of punching holes in the row backgrounds.  That was no good.

What I really needed was a way to just set white background on elements that were children of #main.  CSS has a child selection combinator (>) but neither version of Internet Explorer supports it.  After a few moments’ thought, I realized that I could add a rule that would make transparent the background of any element that was at least a grandchild, but not a child, and it would still work in Explorer.

#main * {background: #FFF;}
#main * * {background: transparent;}

The end result is that there is a way to simulate child selection without actually using the child combinator.  The general pattern is to use a normal descendant selection in your first rule, and then “undo” the first rule with a second that has a universal selector in the middle.  Suppose you want to boldface any p element that’s a child of a div, but no others.  The solution:

div p {font-weight: bold;}
div * p {font-weight: normal;}

It might not be something you use every day, but if it’s needed, there you go.

Update: Lachlan points out that you’ll need to watch out for specificity conflicts when using this technique.

• Universal Child Replacement was published on Tuesday, May 31st, 2005.
• It was assigned to the CSS category.
• There have been thirty-five replies.

Okay, so it’s been almost three months since the last time I updated S5.  During that interval, I’ve been quite busy, but I still feel disappointed that I haven’t put more energy into the project.

As a partial salve, I’ve made a few changes to the S5 information pages.  The main page now has links to the latest official version and latest revision, as well as quick links to useful information.  I updated the FAQ a bit as well, to clarify the licensing situation.  At some point, I hope to create a separate page that contains a feature list, but that’s on a back burner right now.

What I really want to do is finally make S5 1.1 a full, final reality.  Therefore, I’m pushing it to version 1.1rc1 with the knowledge that there’s a new bug to be addressed.  In Safari 1.3 (and I assume 2.0 as well, though I haven’t had a chance to install Tiger yet to find out) the arrow keys double-advance, or even more.  So if you hit the “right” or “down” arrow keys, you’ll jump forward two slides; “up” or “left” moves you back two slides.  On incremental slides, you’ll advance to the end of the slide, or the next incremental element.  The space bar doesn’t evince the same problem.

I assume this is a keystroke handling problem, but I’m not entirely sure—the behavior of incremental slides makes me wonder if maybe it’s something else.  Either way, if we can get that fixed and don’t uncover any other major problems, I’d be happy to call this bad boy done.  Help, as always, is welcomed and appreciated.

Update: Pritt left a comment on another post providing a solution for the Safari bug.  Look for 1.1rc2 shortly!

• S5 1.1rc1 was published on Monday, May 30th, 2005.
• It was assigned to the S5 and Tools categories.
• There have been nine replies.

A few people have asked recently if, given that I’m going to be in London in early June, I’ll be showing up for @media.  I’m sorry to say that the answer is no.  Why not?  The honest answer is that I’m not speaking there.  These days, if I’m not speaking at a conference, I can’t spare the time and expense it would take to attend.  In fact, it’s the default case that if I can’t at least break even on a conference, I won’t be there whether or not I’ve been asked to speak—which I wasn’t, in the case of @media, so there you go.  There are exceptions, like SXSW and WWW2005, but those are rare and require a good deal of justification.

Too big an ego on our boy Eric?  Maybe.  What it comes down to is this: I can make money to support my family by staying home and working, or by traveling to conduct customized training for clients.  To lose money on an event that will take me away from my wife and daughter just doesn’t make sense.

Besides, it’s not like @media is going to be lacking for truly excellent speakers.  You’ve got Jeffrey, Joe, Doug, and Molly in the lineup, plus all the others I really ought to list individually but am clearly too lazy to do so.  It should be a great time for all, and while I’m sorry I’ll miss it, with all those high-powered rock stars on stage I seriously doubt I’ll be missed.

• Not Going To Be @media was published on Thursday, May 26th, 2005.
• It was assigned to the Speaking category.
• There have been nine replies.

Since I’m going to be arriving in London a week from today, I wandered over to the Professional CSS / XHTML Techniques Workshop site to see how things were going.  I discovered that there are only three seats left for the Friday session, Saturday having sold out long ago.  So if you’ve been hesitating, might be best to overcome that hesitation in a timely fashion.  I’m just sayin’.

• Limited London Seating was published on Thursday, May 26th, 2005.
• It was assigned to the (X)HTML, CSS, and Speaking categories.
• There have been eleven replies.

Dear Democratic Party:

I have a few suggestions on how you might improve your relationship with centrists who would like to support you.  Well, all right, it’s really all about how to improve your relationship with me.

The primary rule is this: stop annoying me.

You might wonder which of your policies, pronouncements, or other points of politicking have triggered this reaction.  In all honesty, none of them; from what little attention I’ve paid to political debate in America, you’re batting about even with the Republicans, though I tend to give you a slight edge due to my internal biases.  No, what’s raised my ire is the one-two punch of clueless marketing you served me today.

The first one was a fund-raising letter sent to me by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.  It’s nice to know that Mrs. Clinton is interested in involving her constituents in the political process, at least as far as their wallets go.  Slight problem: Mrs. Clinton is not my senator.  She doesn’t even represent a single person in my state, as I live in Ohio, not New York.

Of course I realize this was a national campaign, not a matter of local politics.  That being the case, though, the name on the envelope should have been that of your national party chairman, Dr. Howard Dean.  If he’s not popular enough to be attached to such an effort, then you need a new chair.

The follow-up fumble was a telephone call I got early this evening which also exhorted me to donate to the cause.  Now, part of the reason I get these calls is that, as a political entity, you’re free to ignore the Do Not Call list.  Both parties took shameless advantage of this oh-so-convenient exception last fall, as I observed at the time, but since the election you’d both pretty much shut up, thankfully.  The other part of the reason is that I gave a small donation to a chilly, rain-soaked young woman who rang our doorbell one evening.  At the time, I did it because I was marginally less opposed to your Presidential candidate than I was to his opponent, and because I can be a sucker for young idealists caught in the rain.  What I didn’t reckon, though I should have, was that it would put me on the “contact this guy a lot” list.

Where “a lot” isn’t usually more than twice a month, I admit, but still.

Anyway, your telemarketing temp launched into her spiel, which was nicely written, but I decided to inform her that I wasn’t interested since the last time I’d made a donation, it had gotten me onto a bunch of mailing lists.  Her response was that what actually happens is when you go out on the Internet and use search engines, they hang onto that information.

So here’s my last tip, which comes in two parts.  It goes like this.  If you’re going to give your marketdroids some kind of response for complaints like mine, try to make sure that it’s:

1. Not a lame attempt to shift blame to some other quarter; and
2. Not complete bull[censored].

If you haven’t written a response for that kind of complaint, then you should at least instruct your temps that ad-libbing their own bogus responses isn’t kosher.  Tell them to try a little sympathy and understanding—and, even better, have them tell prospects that their name won’t be put on every liberal-leaning mailing list in the universe!

Although please only have them tell people that if it’s actually true.  Leave the lying to the politicians.

Anyway, that’s it in a nutshell.  Remember that I’m only saying all this because I care.  Good luck.

Sincerely,
Eric

P.S. to the Republicans: stop looking so smug, because you know damned well you’d be doing the same stuff if I’d given you any money.  In fact, last year you sent me two surveys soliciting my opinions as a representative of “a select group of Republicans” in my area.  Leaving aside the pathetically transparent lie it represented (that you were only contacting a few select people in every area, as opposed to sending one to everyone you could find), it was at best insultingly biased to anyone who possesses more than an milligram of functioning brain cells.

You’re no better than the Democrats; in many ways, you’re a lot worse, and I occasionally toy with the idea of donating some small amount just to see how awful your subsequent mailings and phone calls would get.  You know, do a comparison with what the Democrats are sending me.  But honestly?  I’d really rather not hear from either of you until you learn to behave like adults.

• Party Contacts was published on Monday, May 23rd, 2005.
• It was assigned to the Politics category.
• There have been ten replies.

Our Man Stan recently posed these questions:

…first, what would you do if you needed to make a parallel change in careers? Meaning, same industry, different role; like moving from waiter to cook in a restaurant. Second, what if you had to make a perpendicular jump and get out of your industry all together? Meaning, different industry, different role; like moving from rodeo clown to encyclopedia salesman.

The first question is actually a little tougher to answer, because the answer depends on what you consider to be “the same industry”.  If we’re talking the web industry, I’d probably move to project coordination, since at this point I think I have a pretty good handle on all the technical pieces.  If we’re talking the computer-programming/human-computer system industry, I’d love to get into virtual-scene modeling and CAVE systems.  If we’re talking the general technology field, I would definitely love a chance to work in the field of self-organizing microsensor networks (I’ve written about that before).

Were I to switch fields entirely, I think I’d become a meteorologist; weather systems have long fascinated me, and I did consider that career path at one point in my life.  Failing meteorology, it wouldn’t be much of a radical shift to be a climatologist, which seem a lot like being a meteorologist except in terms of the geographical and temporal scales of study.  Besides, both fields do a lot of computer-based simulation, so my existing skills wouldn’t be completely useless.

I do have to admit that both are practical choices: they’re fields in which I could very likely get a job.  Those would be in contrast to my absolute top choice, which is to be an astronaut.  That was always my dream as a youngster.  I can still hope that the orbital tourism industry will get up to speed just fast enough for me to make it up there before I’m too old to survive the trip… but reality has a way of squashing those sorts of dreams.

How about you?  What would you do?

• Great Jumpin’ Career Paths was published on Monday, May 23rd, 2005.
• It was assigned to the Personal category.
• There have been fourteen replies.