Ah, I figured out why my BlogThis! posts weren’t showing up. It seems to post by default to the first blog in your list alphabetically. I’m sure there’s a way to fix the problem, but I currently don’t feel like doing it. I’ve moved about 5 posts from the 29th to the 2nd into their proper places.
The system goes on-line on August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic searching. Google begins to learn, at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 am, eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
Google fights back.
Proving once again, his superstar studliness, the k gets a nod from Google News.
A great comment from mefi:
Oh yeah. Native NYers (and by “native” I mean anyone who has lived here more than ten years) love to complain about the Disneyfication of Times Square, and it’s patently ridiculous. I mean, no NYers actually GO to Times Square anyway. Before, they didn’t go because it was just porn, drugs, and crime. Now, they don’t go because it’s touristy crap and megachains. What’s the big deal? I mean, nowadays, you get your porn online, your drugs delivered, and anyone who is lamenting the lack of crime can just go to Jersey.
OK, back to web stuff. I’ve been thinking a lot about the state of web design recently. [This follows from my previous ramblings*.] Of course, now I get paid to think about some of this stuff, which is a bonus, and the production angle is related. See, despite the limits of tables and spacer gifs, what “traditional” web design offered was a stable design medium with which to work with. The web design ‘vocabulary’ could be extended and experimented with because the basics, the grammar, was relatively well agreed upon.
The further improvements and standardizations which in theory would make the lives of web developers easier, have instead had the opposite effect, turning client-side presentation even further polyglot and unmanageable (wow, what incredible irony). Compound that with deficiencies within the presentation language (I’ve moaned, you’ve moaned, we’ve all moaned about CSS – some more recent talk on css-discuss), and implementations, and we have a royal clusterfuck. Sure we’re in the “technical era.” Why? Because it takes the majority of one’s creative energy, time, and effort to get even the simplest layouts to work in v4+ browsers. Sure you might be able to style it, but if you’re creating production designs (where relatively acceptable visual layouts on common browsers are required), those constraints largely preclude even the option of writing even validating transitional code much less strict codes.
Hmm, do I sound frustrated? Of course I am. I want to move on with separating style and content and validating, if only for accessibility and aesthetics’ sake – random($foo) has been completely visually formatted with CSS since I put it on it’s own domain name back in the beginning of 2000 – however, it’s just impossible to do when one also needs to figure out increasingly convoluted methods of backward and forward compatibility. All these, of course are arguments for why 1) one shouldn’t do web development and 2) why it’s much more pleasant to work on the back-end.
Hmm, wow, this preface has turned out much longer than I intended. It’s 4AM. I was originally going to talk about web development being similar to game development, with client-side design being equivalent to the graphics engines, where backwards compatibility and graceful degradation are similarly important (and vexing) issues, a discombobule of working around vendor and implementation specific bugs and peculiarities and dealing with various standards. As the web matures, these things will stabilize. I see a lot of independent designers these days experimenting and pushing the technical boundaries of the DOM/CSS as analogous to the role once filled by the demo scene. OK, it’s not a perfect analogy, but this is at least as good as Aaron‘s rollerblading one. 😉
Mark your calendars. Jason Schwartzman‘s band Phantom Planet is going to be performing in front of Tommy Trojan at noon on February 26th. I’ve never heard or heard of Phantom Planet and I have know idea what instrument Jason (or any of the other bandmembers) play, but I thought I’d mention it because… hey, who cares if your new movie is universally loathed, its Max!
Oh, now I know what he plays. And that he is/was dating Selma Blair last year. Whoa, she’s 8 years older than he is. Hmm, I can see how people might get caught up in celebrity’s personal lives, but it doesn’t appeal to me all that much.
One more reason not to live in the midwest: Winter makes deadly comeback. Makes for nice pictures, though.
The ArsTechnica Cookbook of “Bachelor Chow”, a 51 page PDF compiled from recipes by Ars Technica readers. No, really.
I happened John Weir’s site, smokinggun again today. John of course is the genius behind the IHT design. Anyway, one of the more interesting things about his new smokinggun design is the use of div overlapping as design element. I’ve noticed seeing around more and more. I think we’ll be seeing a lot of that in the near future. As tables spawned a rash of grids, CSS will start spawning a lot more of these overlaps.
Speaking of CSS stuff, it’s pretty damn annoying to have to redo one’s prototype wires because IE can’t understand CSS2 selectors properly.
A fascinating read from Imaging Resource: The Great Battery Shootout
The Rayovac 1600’s came out on top, but the Powerex 1700 and GP 1800’s come within 0.2% of the Rayovac’s performance and are available much cheaper. I’ve been buying batteries from Thomas Distributing for years and highly recommend them (they also sell the much more expensive battery packs most new prosumer digicams are using).
Groovetech kicks much booty. If I were into vinyl, I’d be all over it (it’s cheaper than CDs to boot), but alas, I have no turntables to play with. Ahh well, one less vice. At least I can entertain myselves with their streams. That and submedia have been my new faves.