vanderwal.net

New politics

Two articles from the Washington Post today, Haliburton making nearly $2 billion from war in Iraq and Bush holds Federal employee pay raise to 2 percent.

Microsoft is vulnerable is reason for attacks

Robert understands Microsoft being the target of hack attacks.

Kottke and others on standards and semanticsk

Kottke provides a good overview of Web standards and semantically correct site development. Jason points out, as many have, that just because a site validates to the W3C does not mean that it is semantically correct. Actually there are those that take umbrage with the use of the term semantically for (X)HTML, when many consider it structural tagging of the content instead, but I digress. A "valid" site could use a div tag where it should not have, for example where it should have been a paragraph tag instead. Proper structural markup is just important as valid markup. The two are not mutually exclusive, in fact they are very good partners.

One means to marking-up a page is to begin with NO tags on the page in a text editor then markup the content items based on what type of content they are. A paragraph gets a "p" tag, tabular data is placed in a table, a long quote is put in a "blockquote" tag, an ordered list gets "ol" tags surrounding them with items in the list getting wrapped with "li" tags, and so forth. Using list tags to indent content can be avoided in using this method. Once the structure has been properly added to the document it is time to work with the CSS to add presentation flair. This is not rocket science and the benefits are very helpful in transitioning the content to handheld devices and other uses. The information can more easily scraped for automated purposes too if needed.

It is unfortunate that many manufacturers of information tools do not follow this framework when transforming information in to HTML from their proprietary mirth. A MS Word document creates horrible garbage that is both non-structural and not valid. The Web is a wonderful means to share content, but mangled markup and no structure can render information inconsistent at best, if not useless.

While proper development is not rocket science, it does take somebody who knows what they are doing, and not guessing, to get it right.

Others are posting on Jason's post, like Doug Bowman and Dave Shea and have opened up comments. The feedback in Doug's comments is pretty good.

Apple to get serious redesign

Great things should be in store for the Apple web site, as Jeffrey Zeldman and Doug Bowman will be teaming up with Apple's in-house crew to redesign the Apple site.

This is a dream come true. Well, it would be better in one way.

IBM information history flow visualization

IBM history flow visualization is well worth checking out. The whole of this article is very good. The layered visual dimensions not only can indicate the contributors to information history flows in documents (including Web pages and Wikis) but also the age of the contributor's content.

Congrats Nick and Crystal

Congrats are in order for Nick and Crystal who were married this past weekend. We wish them a joy-filled life and comfort in each others arms for all the years to come.

Mac Cocoa interface for MySQL

A Mac Cocoa interface for MySQL looks promising.

Neal Stephenson interviewed in Wired

Wired interviews Neal Stephenson about his upcoming book, Baroque Cycle, and past works.

Beeb to open archives to the Web

The Beeb is open its program archives to the Web. This is a deep and broad repository and will be a great addition to the public around the globe.

Bobby Bonds passes

Bobby Bonds dies. He was one of my early sports heros, along with Willie Mays and Willie McCovey. He was able to coach his son, Barry, and got to watch him dominate the game like no other. Bobby was a San Francisco Giants as well as a New York Yankee, California Angel, Chicago White Sox, Texas Ranger, Cleveland Indian, St. Louis Cardinal and the Chicago Cub. He will always be remember a Giant in my eyes.

Organge cone comes to life

Last night I stumbled across orange cone, the weblog from Mike Kuniavsky. I am looking forward to following his site and see how it comes to life.

Calling for messages

Yesterday I left my mobile phone in my car parked at the metro station. I had to use a landline phone to call my stationary mobile phone to get messages throughout the day.

I did have my Hiptop, but many of the stored numbers are not up to date, like Joy's new cell number. Numbers not updated is attributed to the non-synching ability of the device. The phone qualities of the Hiptop version 1 were are not too good. I do really like the ability to get POP e-mail, IM, and Internet from anywhere I get a service.

Good gatherings this week

This week did have some good points. I got to spend time with friends from San Francisco and meet some new folks at a cocktail hour and dinner that followed. This year there were no photos, unfortunately. The gathering did end up at Lebanese Taverna again, which was just as fun and tasty as before.

I got to spend time with a few local bloggers and Jesse. The gathering started early as most were not able to work as their e-mail and networks were down or were greatly frustrated. Nearly everybody that arrived early was victim of their organization moving to MS Exchange in the past six months. The conversations at dinner were very witty, insightful, intelligent, and hence very enjoyable, but the green pill rendered me more observer then participant.

Frustrating week

The floppy sneakernet returned this week as networking access to servers was blocked except port 80 (Web traffic). I have not used a floppy in two years and forgot how slow they were. E-mail was up then crashing. Access to the outside world via the Internet was also up and down. The ability to work easily and efficiently was shot to hell thanks to a company claiming to make an operating system, but its OS product only resembles flaky insecure software.

I was also uncovering many more undocumented features in Microsoft products, such as the save dialog causes Visio 2003 to want to crash. It took 5 minutes to diagram a small application database and 25 minutes to save and print the diagram. Outlook would intermittently hang my workstation for 5 minutes by eating all the computing resources as I clicked to move an e-mail to another folder.

On top of this I took the little green pill. This was to help reduce the itching from a rash on my arms (the rash and itching caused me to go to the doctor who said "you seem to have a rash"). The doctor warned the pill could make me drowsy, which to me translates to tired and cranky for me. I get cranky when I am tired because my mind slows, which I find very annoying. Yes, the pill helps to some degree, as does the cream for the rash.

We have been having some housework done by a contractor and his workers. It was supposed to have been seven days. We are on day 20. The workers don't really seem to know what they are doing and the workmanship is poor as the number cut corners is high. The contractor came highly recommended, but he used to do his own work with his brother-in-law as his partner. We had window frames painted, which seems to mean the window panes get cracked. This week the contractor finally agreed to fix the panes his workmen cracked. Fixing meant taking out the panes and replacing them five days later. We have had plastic food wrap and packing tape covering the holes to keep the bugs out. But being that it is humid the tape gives way and the bugs and hot air come in and cool air goes out. I came home the other night about 11pm to our garage door wide open due to a flaky garage door controller and nobody with a clue to unplug the one door and then lock it. This is the tip of the ice flow as nothing was done properly the first time.

Needless to say by today I was very cranky with the language of a sailor at sea for month or years. I was not even able to write a short coherent e-mail to explain that a PocketPC browser emulator did not actually emulate the functions of the PocketPC browser's use of CSS. It seems that the emulator ignores the external CSS when the media="all"@import attribute is used. A real PocketPC will actually render the page properly. I have been rather impressed with the browser capability in the current PocketPCs, but not enough to get one.

Express news for hair trigger attention spans

In this past month the Washington Post has started giving away the Express, which is something like a selection of RSS feeds on newsprint or USA Today for those with short attention spans. I have no idea if these are handed out free anywhere other than Metro station entrances. I see a handful of folks reading these infant-sized newslings then leaving them on the trains. I have picked up a couple, but fond not much that I missed in a half hour read over coffee and nosh at the computer.

Site clean-up and other bits

Yes, we have done a little house keeping here by updating the links, fixing some of the "Previous Month" links in this section, fixing more non-standards snippets that have remained a bee in my bonnet (more still remain), and creating more continuity in the presentation layer. It is a continual update of design and development of the application that runs the site, but that is what makes it fun. I have been planning some of these fixes for months, but other things cropped up. I am trying to get many of these things done, as well as a long list of other items, before the baby arrives.

Yesterday's diversion was baby CPR class and baby safety, a power outage, trying to track down the contractor who was supposed to have been at the house all day finishing fixing the gutters, roof, and putting storm windows back on (along with a long list of other half done tasks).

Today I woke to a dead car battery and a dead PC. The car had a light that had been left on. The PC seems to have had the power supply die. Joy has been working on some stationary for the kid and printing cards for a small gathering at her sister's and needed to finish printing out the final cards today. I have only been using the PC for playing some older games and syching my Palm to applications that I have not ported or others have not ported to Mac as of yet. I got the car jump started by myself and ran the PC to the shop, it may become a Linux box in the near future, if Joy gets a new PC for work. I am also considering the G5 for a desktop in the Fall or Winter.

10 year anniversary but still not home

Today was the 10th anniversary of my arrival in the Washington, DC area to live. I moved to this area from San Francisco, which I was ready to leave but always ready to return to, to go to Georgetown University for a Masters in Public Policy. I initially planned to get my masters in two years then give Washington up to two more years then move on.

Well it has been a lot more than the initial three or four years I planned on. Actually this is the longest I have lived in any one geographic area. I like and have liked where I live and have lived, the streets and areas, but the Washington Area as a whole has never felt like home. (Oddly I have New York and San Francisco categories for the weblog, but no Washington.)

I have great friends in Washington, well those that are left, but I also have kept friends from previous homes via the Internet and have made friends that I think of as close in mind and focus thanks to the Internet. Actually the Internet is what made Washington a place to live for 10 years. I guess most any place could be livable with the Internet keeping a community I know and trust close by.

Another asset of the Washington area is its proximity to other cities that do feel a little more like they could be home. Baltimore, Philly, New York, and Boston are all a relatively short trip away. Europe is about as far a the West Coast and that has made the experience here enjoyable too.

I am not sure if it will be another 10 years in Washington, but who knows. We enjoy our house, even in its disruptive state of updating and repair. We really like our neighbors and neighborhood (as much as I did living in Arlington, VA too). I guess it is all up to jobs, winds, and other powers that drive us and blow us as to where the next 10 years will take me.

Streaming motion icons in iChat

Rael explains about the streaming iChat icons from the iSight. I noticed Matt had this going on the other night. It was very cool to see live movement in the chat icon in my buddy list. At first I thought it was an animated image with one insanely long loop, but soon realized that the mannerisms of Matt were not perpetuating in the same order.

I was very close to picking up the iSight today, but am holding off for just a little longer. A digital video camera is also on my purchase list, for parental reasons (also some of the reason behind iSight).

Blackout for posterity

From Thursday and Friday's Blackout, John Wehr's photos, Jeffrey's tales (and request for prayers), Capn Design's photos, Paul Ford's "As Brooklyn Slowly Drunkened", David Werthheimer posting via dial-up and laptop, Cam's photos stories and links, Moblog photos, and Damien's 5 hour trek.

Updates from home

Things are finally calming down after our vacation and adventure. We have mostly unpacked from the trip, but are just starting laundry. I am just finishing digging through a huge pile of e-mail (well over 600) and flagging those I need to get back to, which should come in the next week or so.

We were able to get Joy to an orthopedist on Thursday and she is now in a removable support boot to hold the foot in place and allows for walking. She will be able to take the boot off for showers and swimming, as long as she does not push off with the foot with the fracture. Today she shed the crutches, but will be in the boot or another support device for six weeks or so, yes that means she will be out of the devices (if all goes well) one or two weeks prior to the delivery date. Joy is lucky in that the fracture did not require a cast or surgery, which could have been an option.

We only thought we were home

We had a good week at the shore, not quite relaxing enough or long enough. I have been truely enjoying The Discovery of Heaven, which reminds me of a cross between a Neil Stephenson and Milan Kundera styles with cross currents and bon mots for those who are well read in classical lit and philosophy.

We are home 15 minutes and we are off to the emergency room to have somebody's foot x-rayed from a mis-step in cruddy shoes. Yes, the misses has a small fracture in her foot and will be on crutches the next few weeks, laying down, or hobbling during her last 8 weeks of pregnancy. I will be helping her get to an othopedist tomorrow to get the final judgement on her foot.

Things are quiet here

Things will more than likely be quiet here for a week or so. I am heading out to a land with out Internet connectivity to a room with out a phone (other than the ones in my pockets). I need to decompress, read for fun, and write.

Please keep your self busy with offerings over at the links page if you wish. Good choices are InfoDesign, Zeldman, Digital Web (and DW New), Doc Searls, Curious Lee, Purse Lips Square Jaw, O'Reilly Net, and the Beeb among many other offerings.

Take care of your selves and I will try to do the same. Be sure and write.

Antartica goes DHTML not Flash

Tim Bray explains why Antartica will be using DHTML and not Flash for its Visual Net application. These are some of the same problems I have with using Flash as a user in applications. It is very hard to get the interface close to right in Flash, which when compared to relatively easy to get it exactly right in (D)HTML (and yes I know the exactly right is a comparison of HTML to HTML, but there are millions, if not billions of people that have learned this interaction process).

How to install Windows XP

Mark Pilgrim offers How to install Windows XP in 5 hours or less. Five hours is about the time of lost production at work in the past two or three weeks due to critical Microsoft patches to my work machine and a development server (this does not include the time making sure the entire Web team was fully patched).

Real Underground gets Flash right

Yes, I get crank when I experience Flash in places it fails (like the Macromedia site for ordering and their Forums for the tip of a very large iceberg), but there are some things that Flash just kicks ass. Experience the The Real Underground an interactive display of Beck's original London Underground map, the current map, and the actual geography. This Flash experience shows what would be very difficult to do otherwise.

Another good use of Flash is Gabe Kean's portfolio site, which scripts the pointer hand to only show over what is clickable, the site is meant to display past projects (and does it very well), and provides a good interface. One thing that does bug me is Gabe's address and other info one may want to grab for easy use in a PIM has to be retyped by the user, which greatly increases the ability to transpose info. Yes, I know this info can be lifted for unscrupulous means, but...

Sports venues go high tech for added experience

There are two recent articles about how technology is changing the experience at sporting events. Chris Monicatti adds flavor and details to St. Paul Hockey and Safeco Field swimming with data and replays at will. These technological advances are now in the luxury boxes, but the ability to add to the experience for the fan the the nosebleeds, should not be that far behind. Although the venue modifications in St. Paul can enhance any event, including concerts by changing the content of the images on the walls and the content available in the devices, which is a little bit more of a challenge for those in the cheap seats.

Currently, for the rest of us, the best it gets is box scores and news on handhelds while we are at games. Sports are data and information treasure troves for those of us that love delving into the info. Digging in the box scores and stats are how many learned to love math and statistics. Having updated info at the tips of your fingers at games would be incredible. The SF Giants had (and may still have) in 2001 a beaming portal to beam updated game day info to those with Palm OS devices so to keep score and keep up on the stats of each player. It was a nice treat. What is being touted is so much more.

Take me out to the ballgame.

Earl Morrough's helpful Information Architecture book

This past week I started reading Earl Morrogh's Information Architecture: An Emerging 21st Century Profession, which is a great short book that looks are communication technologies and their impact on society and how information in each is structured and each of their information architectures. It is a wonderful quick read that draws on what has come before the Web and building upon how information is structured in each of the mediums for best communication purposes.

One thing that surprised me early on in the book is I am quoted. It is odd to be reading along and find yourself quoted in a book that is bound. The quote comes from a discussion in the comments on PeterMe's site, actually it is the same discussion that sprung the void, which in turn inspired the Model of Attraction.

Understanding the Web Medium

Joe Gillespie has posted a current feature Factor-X about understanding the medium of the Web and digital information. Joe explains many that come from the print work of graphic and information design will create the information in graphics and slice and post that information. The Web is not only for reading information, but also reusing information. HTML pages can, if marked-up properly (which is not difficult at all), be read by audible site readers for those with visual impairments or for those that are doing other activities like driving. HTML pages, if built to the standards can also easily be used in mobile devices with nothing more than a browser.

Understanding the medium is where Joe is taking the readers of this article. One of the advantages of the Web is having the ability to structure the information easily and modifying the presentation as needed or wanted. There are standard interface conventions that are easily understood with HTML that get broken in Flash (the hand pointer on for all content, including that which is not clickable). The great advantage of HTML is having access to the information directly so one can quote and have an easy means of attributing quotes through linking to the source.

Go read Joe's article, actually bookmark Web Page Design for Designers and go read monthly, you will be happy you did.

Information Design Explained at Design Council

The Design Council has a fantastic overview of Information Design, written by Sue Walker and Linda Reynolds. This series covers why it is important to business and public service along with examples, challenges, where to find out more, and so much more.

NNG Usability ROI debunked and Web Traffic Analytics at B and A

Boxes and Arrows is currently running two wonderful articles. Report Review: Nielsen/Norman Group's Usability Return on Investment by Peter Merholz and Scott Hirsch. The second article is Web Traffic Analytics and User Experience by Fran Diamond.

Go read, I will be back shortly.