return of the king for best picture

Another good call by Doug:

You guys still owe us reparations for giving the best picture to Annie Hall instead of Star Wars in 1977.

timex data link

Mr. Gorman was correct I could develop for my new watch. Wonder if I could write foosball lineup picker?

Update: the data link yahoo group has a files section with a number of programs that people have written, like Pong and Master Mind. Doubt Master Mind will be too cool on a monochrome display, but it's probably still a fun little thinker of a game.

first posts

Here are a couple first blog posts via Keith Robinson to go with the new beginnings theme of this time of year, but with the ulterior motive of further harassing Mister Jon Plummer about taking his design chops off the shelf to share his brilliance and innovation with the rest of us.

• Why? (kottke.org)
• Stopdesign | Something New

keira knightley

YUMMMMM!

Seen most of these before, but there are some nice higher-res pics in this multi-page set.

On a similar note, the Christmas Edition of Ass of the Week is also worth a gauk or 12.

region free dvd

Probably a year ago or so we got a Coby DVD player. The reason for choosing this particular model was that it was advertised as region free, so we could play DVDs from different continents, specifically region 2 because British TV and Film is so much better than American. But we hadn't gotten a chance to test it yet until I got Cybil the Cold Feet boxed set for christmas. Let's just say that the Pal/NTSC button failed utterly. But thanks to jfred's link to regionfreedvd.net I found the proper meaningless combination of keys that had to be pressed to make it work. Score yet another successful trouble shoot for Josh! Now if I can just find a copy of Windows 95...

scary image map alternative

Over at A List Apart Stuart Robertson presents a CSS alternative to image maps which you can see in use at Dead Ends (featuring a choose your own adventure, yeah!)

It's clearly the first take on a new way of thinking about coding artistic experience oriented websites. The design is superb which is why a breakthrough technique was called for, but the implementation falls short on several counts.

First, the XHTML is pretty weak. There are a bunch of anchors left to fend for themselves within unnecessarily nested divs. And those anchors have within themselves <i> tags.

I think the root of the problems comes from not thinking about what structure this list of links should have independent of what it was going to look like. It is, clichéd as it may be these days, an unordered list. The elaborate drawing of a book is the background. The div's are just meaningless containers, we don't need them. The links could have span tags inside them if an image replacement technique was strictly required (it is a nice thought to be different and use <i>, but if you really need a meaningless tag use one). Personally, I would have talked it out with the artist to see if they would compromise on the 2 or so link words that are slightly askew and go with HTML text. Plain text has many advantages. It is re-sizable, selectable, loads first (!important with a heavy site like this), and is readily editable. I'd give it the text-transform: uppercase; treatment, pick a font that anti-aliases in most modern browsers, and do the hover effect with background images. It would be a comprimise, but very worth it.

On to the CSS. My biggest beef here is in the shortcuts used in the positioning of the anchors. All anchors are top: 31px; except for these two which are top: 531px;. The anchors are then individually given their left: properties. This means that when you want to figure out the placement of a single link you have to reverse engineer how it is being positioned. I don't think people have been actually working with and maintaining CSS based layouts for long enough to know which shortcuts will be clear to others (or oneself a month later), and which are overkill attempts at efficiency. Shorthand hex is fine, using 3 rather than 6 digits. Shorthand properties defining top, right, bottom, and left in one declaration are also perfectly usable long term. But spreading the layout aspects of a single element throughout the document just isn't helpful when somebody has to go back in and move something.

There, rant done. Über cool idea, could use a little cleanup before I would show it to the folks back home in Maine on their dial-up connection.

carrom

Carrom is this awesome game my best friend in middle school had. It's one of those manual dexterity oversized board games that I dig. Not up there with Table Tennis or Foosball by any means, but fun.

critical element

I just put in a critital part of the interactive contact form that I've been playing with. There's now a cleanup function that fires onsubmit to remove the labels from fields where they haven't changed to prevent them from being submitted as data.

Now I need to write an abstraction function or two in order to get it to work with textareas, and decide how i'm going to handle radio/checkbox inputs. I suspect default label formatting may work (the way it looks with just my CSS and the JS hasn't done its thing yet.) Eventually I'll post it to a form submittal backend so that it actually works.

js alternative

Here is an alternative (by Andrew Clover) to the fixed line length vrs flexible layout question, just use this JavaScript: minmax.js. It brings IE up to speed on the CSS properties min/max-width and height. Coolest thing is it's completely external. I haven't tested it yet though, that's why it's getting posted here so I can find it later.

Blue Man Group & Zumanity

We're off to Vegas to see Blue Man Group and Zumanity!

interactive form

I've been playing with a little DOM scripting to enhance interactivity between form fields and labels in this Contact Form Test.

The fun part, for me anyway, is getting to expirement with this alternative label syntax:

<LABEL>
   <INPUT type="text" name="lastname">
   Last Name
</LABEL>

except I cheated and wrapped a span around the label text to make it easier to style and grab with the DOM. I was careful though to make the form usable before the JavaScript comes in and does it's thing. But with CSS turned off you'll be wishing I put in some break tags or paragraphs instead of just turning the labels into block level containers.

saddam

Wow, they finally got him. Hopefully it won't help Femalegenitalhair too much in the upcoming election, but maybe that's too much to hope.

I may be forced to become involved in whatever campaign is opposing him. The last time I gave a shit enough to do anything about politics was in protesting his father's war.

#21

Ass of the Week - nice ass in the sun. I must be getting soft, it's gone down into the upper 50's and I'm looking at that ass thinking it'll be nice when it's a bit warmer here.

quiz

Programming Language Inventor or Serial Killer? - I got 8 out of 10, didn't trust my gut on 2.

pen tricks

Now here's a useless skill that I'd pick up if my job were boring.

ie vulnerability

So if you haven't downloaded Firebird yet, check out this Internet Explorer Vulnerability and then go download it! That's what happens when undead browsers are allowed to go around infiltrating operating systems.

ha

Man 1, Bank 0 (because it's so long i can't finish it now but so outragious i want to read it later)

checkershadow illusion

Jon showed me this illusion as an extreme example of what's going on with some colors in this design I'm coding. I'd seen this happen many times, even (accidentally) used it to create artificial gradients, but this example is just mind blowing. Squares A and B are both #6B6B6B, drag it into photoshop and check out the hex values yourself.

ain't it cool news

HOBBIT-MAN: THE KING RETURNS

[at an early LOTR ROTK showing] I saw the one dude in front of me who was with this girl, and the President of Warner Brothers came out and said, “This movie is three hours and twenty minutes,” and before I could say, “So what, gaylord” the chick says to the dude she’s with that she has to GO. And he LET her go because this movie kicks so much ass you can SENSE it even before it starts. And this chick was a stone fox, and he probably could have made out with her, but he was like, “I’m going make out with this movie,” that’s how good it is. See ya, hottie.

One cool thing about the Lord of the Rings movies is that early reviews can't be spoilers because we already know what's going to happen.

photos

Autumn in Kyoto

craig's list

There are some really hilarious writers hanging out on craig's list, this love letter for instance is an excellent peice of satire.

1 down

I did the first thing on the list below (adding the events from outside using only the DOM) which is good enough for me. Now I've just gotta apply this to my links page. Here's how I used the DOM to isolate the anchors in the main list from the anchors in the sublist to apply the events.

First I grabbed all the anchors in the list:

getElement('linksList').getElementsByTagName('A');

Next I had to loop through all the anchors and see how deeply nested they were. With the DOM there are two directions to look, down into the children or up at the parents. To me the simplest way to determine how deep a given anchor is was to create a negative test case looking up 3 levels. What is up 3 levels? Well, if you are an anchor in the sub-list there's a list item up there (a > li > ul > li ). If you are one of the main list anchors you outside of the lists altogether (a > li > ul > div ), but that doesn't matter because I just tested to see if you are not in the sub-list:

a.parentNode.parentNode.parentNode.nodeName != "LI"

and then assigned my events

a.onmouseover = function(){showSiblingList(this);}
a.onfocus = function(){showSiblingList(this);}

Here's the JavaScript: linkList.js

3rd dhtml menu type

So we have DOM based menus that do the tree collapse thing, and DOM based horizontal drop-down menus, but what about those sidebars that pull out lists to their right? I've been running out of room above the fold on my links page for some time now, and that 3rd type of menu is well suited for such out of control link collections.

Here's a first cut of a remake of my Links page. Rolled it out in like 30 minutes, so there are a number of things left to do:

1. figure out how to add the onmouseover and onfocus events using the DOM without adding IDs or classes to the links.
2. button styled links, which will bring up the cursor path problem (accidentally mousing over the button above and opening a different category on your way to the sub-list) which I'll have to mitigate with a setTimeOut.
3. if this is the left sidebar navigation instead of the main contents of the page I'll have to work out a way to hide the subnav, it never goes away as I've mocked it up here.
4. oh, and I guess it would be cool if the subnav could come in to the right of the particular nav item instead of all top aligned.

blo.gs

My blog reading habits just got more efficient yet more complicated at the same time. I have given in to the blo.gs trend, so now I will be instant messaged whenever a blog I follow is updated. But not all of them. So now the People section of my Links page is broken into two groups, those who ping blo.gs, and the rest. Hopefully this will mean less time wasted loading pages over the crap network at work. But then again it might just encourage the habit and have me reading even more.

P.S. I could never stomach the idea of reading RSS feeds, for me the visual experience of the page is an important part of reading a weblog.

ass of the week

Here is the latest addition to the ongoing quest to find ass not blocked by websense: Two Tall Socks: Ass of the Week Archives

logo design contest

Breath & Shadow Logo Contest
A design contest with some money behind it for a change. Not much mind you, but how many entire site re-design contests are out there with no prize at all?

mtg

Hello. My name is Nils and I'm an addict. Even without cards I continue to build. It is sad.

Vischeck: Downloads

Vischeck has a Photoshop Plug-In that simulates Deuteranope, Protanope and Tritanope color blindness. Yes, I go out of my way to support physical impairment, while gleefully mocking geographical impairment.

onion article

continueing on the confederate state bashing theme: New Alternate-Reality Series Puts 12 Strangers On Island Where South Won Civil War

bad santa

Random brief movie review. In theaters now, Bad Santa is a must see. We saw a rough cut early last summer, since then they've really fleshed it out as a movie (character arcs and such) while keeping it up there among the most vulgar films I've ever seen. Vulgar as in a mall santa that likes to fuck big&tall women up the ass in the changing room, not vulgar as in toilet humor (except for the snotty little kid, the boogers were just in poor taste).

black horn nut

A souvenir from Thanksgiving in a confederate state, the one with Atlanta in it. Why the hell was I down there? A friend recently moved out there for some reason, beats me why anyone would want to live down there. I guess if you grow up in the California you aren't taught in school how evil (cotton/slaves) and slow in the head (from the heat) people are in the South East. Ayup, that's my Down (i.e. North) East education shining through ;-).

links

I've got too many browser tabs open and not enough time to do anything with them, so here are notes to my future self:

David Shea's CSS Crib Sheet

there must be something to add from my recent re-design, I make the same stupid mistakes every time I do a CSS layout, now what were they? Don't forget z-index...

Nice titles

yes! That's what I was trying to do on my links page last night, have to borrow it and apply my styles. Wonder if I can grab the accesskey too?

Unobtrusive DHTML unordered list dropdown

I've been using Dave Linguist's version and it's clunky as all hell, especially since I maintain my links page by hand, updating at least weekly. It's time for something cleaner.

Revised Image Replacement

Caught up on my FIR variant reading. Unfortunately my professional portfolio uses transparent images, so I'll stick with image tags there. Otherwise I think the Gilder/Levin Method is the best option (best meaning accommodates the most users), and I'll have to add Shea's enhancement (title attribute on the header tag) on my H1 here. Today I almost had a solution to the text resize problem (the remaining problem with using images of text), but 1em is not the same size cross-browser, so there went that idea.

Labels.js

I'm thinking this would be really cool layered on top of pixy's fieldset and label formatting, so you've got a foundation of solid XHTML, with CSS enhancing the layout, and JS taking the interactivity up a notch. To test it out I'm thinking this site could use a contact form. Hmmm, where to put a link to that? Maybe top left across from the skip to text link?

pixy

ok, so I knew this guy kicked ass, what with his color scheme picker, and FIR varient that I'm using here (not sure if he is original creator of that one) but man, take a look at his css work here: Pixy's English Homepage.

There's a super clean 3 column header, footer layout with no positioning, no hacks, and all columns full height. Side columns are floated, center has left + right margins to make space on the sides.

The fieldset and label formatting is also pretty killer for simple forms.

ok, so maybe none of that is as cool as the color picker, but what a body of work. impressive collection of favelets as well.

"mind's eye"

simply beautiful asian bondage photography by Steven Speliotis. While you're trying to find the navigation check out "Peaches" and "The Ropes That Set Me Free", my favorites. Time for me to re-visit knots.

oA - Goldilocks

"Holy crap! Come and look at this! There's some skanky bitch lying in our bed!"

"Maybe we should eat her." Said one of the large carnivorous mammals.

"Are you kidding? Have you seen the state of her crotch?"

from orange Afro

heads up!

Of blogging and unemployment
Well now. Time to give the photos page a little cleanup, and maybe even a recent post. Certainly not going to dial down the obscenity, maybe just go a little more anonymous when talking about work.

re-launch

Here we have it. And with the re-launch i've just noticed that blogger finally let's you make permanent link to posts, so I've wrapped an anchor around the timestamps and called it good. Yes, I still use blogger because I'm too cheap to pay more than $5 a month for my basic ftp hosting.

drop-up

I just have to say that my new Drop-Up Menu kicks a fair amount of ass. This is why:

1. you can Tab to all the links
2. fully accessible with or without JS
3. doesn't freakin' disappear if your cursor slips off
4. it pulls up not down :-)

The only thing that's really bugging me is getting the subnav gradient background to work like in the mockup. The bottom corner backgrounds from the nav anchors need to be over-ruled, but I want to see through to the subnav list background. Playing with transparent.gif :-/ UDATE: no yuckiness necessary, had just forgotten background-color: transparent; on the anchors.

enlarged text, fixed layout

check out the nav on my New Design Prototype. To see something pretty sexy (though it would never survive translation into another language) watch the nav while you enlarge the text in your browser (Ctrl + for Moz users, View > Text Size > Larger in Internet Explorer). It expands up, but not horizontally or down.

Next up is the DOM scripted subnav drop-up menu, then I suppose a decision must be made about the box model problem.

inductive user interface followed by "talkie" rant

Why technical writers should love Microsoft's Inductive User Interface is an overview and tech writer's take on this longer article from MSDN who on this rare occasion appear to be submitting a good user interface paradigm. The principle behind IUI is that most screens in a given application leave far too much un-stated, forcing new users to figure out what they are supposed to do. With IUI each screen has a purpose which is explicitely stated. So rather than having a page that lists all of one's accounts and the actions that can be performed they split it into two pages. The first page is titled "Pick an account to use", the second page would then let you act on that account. It's the same number of clicks but makes each step completely unambigious. And the reason tech writer circles are psyched is that it involves the writer early in the design process. If a page can't be clearly titled then there's a problem with the page and it gets re-worked. It shifts the writer earlier into the process where their skills might actually make a difference. Pretty cool if you ask me.

I've been trying to slide in a jibe at this chick who attempted to do some tech writing at work whom we have dubbed "Talkie" because she talks to much and won't shut up and is replacing someone who is moving to NY and is her superior in every way possible and the only reason that "Talkie" is still around is because someone has some shady deal going on with a recruiting agency, but I couldn't decide where to slip the jibe in, probably because it is such a long and heart-fealt rant that she who is leaving for NY should be replaced by somebody with the mental capacity to be a part of this high-caliber team, so, well, I guess there it is.

re-code has begun

Rebirth One has begun. Need to wrangle some sliding doors into the admittedly tight frame (which I only get away with by choosing short words).

Then there's the IE5 box model problem, deciding which hack to use being harder than the actual patch (more on that once I choose one).

I also have a problem where when you make the text larger in IE a gap problem (that I had shoved under the rug earlier using a -3px top margin on the content) re-appears. Maybe I should just shove harder with a -.5em top margin *grin*. Ok, so Jon is the only person I can think of that would find that funny, deal. (Update: it worked, disgusting hack though, would like to know what causes the gap in IE)

Oh, and speaking of Jon I'd better do what he said and make it so the very bottom of the page doesn't look chopped off, especially on bigger screens where you can see all the contents at once.

subnav design

and with a subnav design something like this (14K Image) I might as well start re-coding this site. yup, the drop down menu will drop up. Here goes nothing.

color blindness

Nothing But Dots
kinduv haunting actually.

prior art

After I wrote that last post about clipping the wings in my design on narrower browsers I caught up on my zen garden viewing and found this design: Dune Temple. And guess what? He did exactly that - provided additional design elements at higher resolutions without causing the page to scroll sideways when the window is narrower. It's still a fixed width design, but I like the monochromatic color scheme (so what if those two statements have little to do with eachother).

2nd design, flexible/fixed thoughts

Here we have a second take on my new layout (100K Image, 1024x528 pixels). Of course the image is extra wide, when it's an actual page I'll be able to put the wings as a centered background, so they'll get clipped if your browser is narrower, but there's no horizontal scrolling unless you are running at lower than 800x600 or surfing extra narrow.

Might as well weigh in on the whole fixed width vrs. flexible discussion that has resurfaced because of an actual argument on the side of fixed width - that being that full screen width text is hard to read. Yes, full width text is crap typography, but that doesn't rule out the multi-medium accessibility benifits of liquid layout, or mean that liquid layout can't be done well.

The most effective flexible layouts that I have seen (such as douglas bowman's stopdesign) and mimicked in my own work are those that have their body content set to somewhere between 50 and 60 percent of the screen width. That way the content is a good width anywhere between 800 and 1024 pixels wide, and reasonable at other sizes. I think the key part that many flexible layouts lack are good margins. We're not printing out cheap paperback novels with ink to the edge of the page leaving no room for thumbs, let's let our layouts breath a little. I'd also be impressed to see more layouts done with their margins set in em or %.

With this site I have gone over to the dark side because, as with the force, power is more easily acheived. I have always had trouble coding layered designs into flexible pages. Part of the reason most of the zen garden designs are fixed width I suspect.

icons

Firewheel Design : Icons just me or is looking at good icons like eating candy? (site pointed out by cssvault)

new layout

i'm considering this new layout (48K image) of my personal site. The current layout doesn't give me enough room for content, has really a really gaudy header that's starting to wear on me (not that the color theme isn't still out there, but i'm happy with that), and has it's navigation haphazardly slapped on the top rather than integrated. Two of the four tabs, Words and Play, will open sub-menus, though I may have them appear above, depends on how the CSS is treating me at the time of coding. I think now there are too many sections to invite exploration, at the time I just needed a single place to gather everything, now it needs some organizing.

patterns

don't know if i could bring myself to actually use patterns like this, but it's one of the rare web design trends that i actually appreciate. one of the patterns is made up of roses with a dropshadow on them and reminds me of the Medieval Books that were showing at the Getty (the web page on the exhibit is utter crap compaired to the exhibit itself). Anyway, today's tiled background trend is so much better than that of the 90's, probably because nobody is trying to make us read text on them :-)!

TWENTY-THREE STORIES UP AND ALL I could see out the windows was grey smog. They could call it the City of Angels if they wanted to, but if there were any angels out there, they had to be flying blind.

That's the opening paragraph from Laurell K. Hamilton's A Kiss of Shadows. Her Anita Blake vampire hunter novels kinda suck (generic paranormal detective stuff), but these faerie novels she puts out every few years kick ass. Lots of sex with biting and stuff. Strange obsession with clothes though, comes from living where we live I suppose.

Row+Col highlighting really cool idea (a work in progress so link may well go dead). be cool to see if it could be distilled down to tighter code.

Oblivio > Road > Pillow entering being the second best part (rubber-less anyway) i'll often not bother with such manuevers. But yes, monkeying around is lots of fun which is half the point of the act, right? Well, that and making babies to be promptly terminated. Oh wait, didn't want to do that (the making not the terminating, death to babies! abortions should be legal until 48 months, after birth).

no, you're gay dude, the undead army in Episode 2 being frikkin' hilarious.

Los Angeles traffic when it rains:
(25KB GIF Image, 634x327 pixels) Check out the amusing note from a weather chopper in the Santa Monica bay.

get well soon... uhhh.. or else the puppy gets it. These are just too damn funny

the Creatures in my Head. / Daily illustrations by Andrew Bell

Float: The Theory is one of the more thorough and advanced float tutorials I've read. Wonder if I can solve that danged Key problem yet?!

delightfully obscene

[regarding mass email] that you send out to every sodding person you?ve ever met but never talk to just to tell them how fucking better your fucking children are than mine! I don?t give a god fucking ass sucking monkey-dick licking sodding piece of gnat-wank pussy shit! SO JUST FUCK OFF!

- Daddy Fabu

Now how could I resist quoting that gem from orangeAfro, a british mag of sorts which the author of htmldog.com (though he himself is not quilty of the above quote) contributes to? Actually, orangeAfro is worth a visit for more than just it's insightful news, reviews and letters, their use of block level anchor tags is refreshingly innovative and "very clickable" to quote a friend's old boss whom I never met.

HTML Dog - this is the first set of standards oriented tutorials for beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels. So next time your kid brother, or your friends younger brother, says he wants to make a website point him here. So much better than having to un-learn old habits like the rest of us!

My brother's site leifdevine.com is starting to get off the ground. I'm going to polish up the design of the player a bit. The mp3s probably need to be compressed further, it needs a dowload status bar, probably underneath the progress bar (which needs to look different from the volume control), and I've gotta make sure the music will play while streaming, and not just wait for the whole thing to load.

Some might consider this working on one's day off, but I thought it was fun. I've transformed a table into a bar graph using a little bit of DOM manipulation. It has plenty of room for improvement but i'm sure we'll sort out the remaining issues fairly readily. Then to write it up and publish it somewhere? This one might just go in the archives if Jon and I put together a site for our JS (etc.) Expository.

If you haven't grabbed your Standalone versions of IE5.0 and IE5.5 yet to run along side IE6 on the same box what are you waiting for? I don't know how long these will be there!

Extreme Pumpkin Carving, now there is motivation to buy a condo/house and get out of the restrictions of apartment living.

The ReUSEIT! Contest Entries came out yesterday. It is a re-design contest using CSS to makeover Jakob Neilson's attrocity of an un-readable "usability" site useit.com. What struck me is how very little it took to make the site work. Just a basic understanding of visual heirarchy is all that is necessary, take this design for example: 2col's. The layout stayed the same, the designer just softened up the color pallette and gave it some proper indentation. Or maybe it was just use of proper HTML tags naturally presenting a structured document (combination of both i bet). Other entrys worth looking at (it's a very long list) are Jakoblog - 'cause black/grey is always cool, Bluey - ditto about aqua/grey and the pull-quotes with photographs are super slick, and Minimal Jakob - for the tight little icons and the alert box that is actually an alert box!

This weekend I have to get over to the Westside Table Tennis Center. I need to play pong.

After consulting with Jon I have decided that I will be writing my article entitled "DOM Table Sorting, No Training Wheels." Now I have to find a real world example to work with to show that it can be done outside of a test case environment, and scope out the initial hurdles.

Useful and logically legitimate use of afore mentioned global variable hack. window.childWindow = window.open("thechild.html"); window.childWindow. document.write("i am the child window"); window.childWindow. window.document.title = "satanic spawn"; unfortunately you can't give the child window an attribute that can be read by that child, but you've always got window.opener, so control can go both ways. My previous problem was not solved by this, you still have to go window.open("","popup"); window.close("popup"); in order to close a popup window when you don't know if it exists.

window.globalvar = "Boo!"; wonder if this ugliness could solve a problem i was having losing my reference to a popup window? have to remember exactly what the problem was.

PPK wrote a solid little essay on The Future of JavaScript that's worth a read. To me it reads as a call to arms for all Front End developers to invent, document and distribute powerful DOM scripts. I'd like to write an article entitled "DOM Table Sorting, Minus the Test Case Training Wheels" wherein I explore the use of client side table sorting within the context of real database data and application functionality. Of course I'd have to get the sorting working better where I am using it now. I'll write an outline of the problems I'm having that would become the outline of the article and discuss them with Jon.

Weather.com Sucks! Providing content on the web is all about scannability. Nobody wants to have to un-pack information, we just want what we are looking for to be right there in bullet points. It rained last night which cut the ash out of the air from all these fires. Cybil and I have been saying that next time it rains we're going to the Getty museum to check out the gardens, it couldn't be more perfect. But Cybil works 11-3, so I went to weather.com to find out when the sunset is. Put in my zip code, and the information is right there smack in the middle. Only I didn't see it because they had put it in this strange half sentence format Today's sunrise/sunset times for: Los Angeles 6:13 AM/5:01 PM Why they couldn't just put it in the standard label: information pairing that they use on the rest of the page, or call attention to it with small icons? But no, they use icons to call attention to their internal advertising. Lame. At least we'll have time after Cybil gets out of work to go visit the Getty before it's dark.

FLY GUY is pretty chill. Turn your sound on and press the up arrow. A nice little escape into a rare not-obnoxious Flash land.

Fox News Considered Suing Fox's "The Simpsons". Fox must be run by Satan and his minions, but hey, at least they've got the Simpons.

This is a reminder to myself to check out the ReUSEIT Entries this weekend. Even the Exhibitions that people tossed off are 100 times better than Mr. Neilson's current site.

Debbie Does Dallas - classic porn flick poster, part of a collection currently housed by the Reel Poster Gallery, London. Check out the Zorro poster in the bottom right!

CSS Destroy - had to download the latest Opera to properly appreciate, but this is some really crazy CSS

evidently i'm not going to burn to death. at least not yet anyway. but it is going to be the worst drive home of the year if i leave at anything resembling a reasonable hour, so i might just not. we're missing what was probably the press screening of The Matrix: Revolutions. it's out soon so that's ok, but after the 2nd one i'd rather not have paid for it. anyway, not on fire good.

Simi Valley fire jumps 118 freeway. yeah. that would be just over the hill from where i work in thousand oaks. there's ash on the ground in the parking lot, and a certain amount of smoke in the building. the 118 is several people's alternative to the 101 commute. presuming it doesn't all go up in flame, i'm glad daylight savings has finally kicked in, makes it easier to drive into work extra early if the sun is out. first time in my life i've ever been getting up early enough to notice daylight savings.

I know, everyone is linking to this: A List Apart 3.0, but how can you not? Killer content in a nifty new package. Oh, and the usable archives, may just have to read some back issues...

Here is some sick CSS design: 3D Border Demo 2 by Chris Hester. Well, CSS hack anyway. Still very cool.

Baby Got Back in Latin - there's nothing better than intelligent vulgarity.

So I'm slogging through some HTML formatting and copy editing here at work. To keep myself sane I've been taking mental breaks and going through zeldman's blogger nation on his externals page and adding cool new people to my links page, like this guy michael with his awesome work with forms: DOM Form. Also, check out the killer legend styling on his comment form.

Dragon Duel Division 3 - I've opened up the development side of my Div III (senior thesis) project to the public.

Compatibility of Weblogs and ISSN - because something as fundimental to the recognition of what we do here as a legitimate form of publishing should be linked to by everyone.

The team at Advoy has been working to get me back ever since the massive Baxter BioScience layoffs, and it looks like I will be next week at least. Then it's off to Maine for a visit, hopefully working again when I return. So I may wind up too busy to ever give this site the semantic HTML + CSS overhaul, but at least the portfolio got done.

Max Design - News - Twenty-five full CSS sites? wow, these people are kickin' some ass! I just sent them my checkbox style list (used in my portfolio) as a contribution to this: Listamatic

Retro Collection Note Cards from Closerie Publishing. I have issues finding good cards. I guess it's because I haven't in the past looked for cards before I needed one, oh and I'm a bit of a card snob. Anyway this birthday card ought to get one laid, yes? Too bad they don't sell them online, gotta go to Whole Foods.

Ugly first pass at the Intersmash design challenge. We'll see if my lazy, errr, busy ass finds the time to fix the many problems (esthetic and structural)

Fast rollovers, no preload needed - gotta try this for my checkboxes in my portfolio. The example here is crap in IE, but then again what isn't?? Perhaps a smaller image will help.

Intersmash Design Challenge - this one will bug me until i figure it out, or get distracted and forget. Hopefully this post will remind me, cause we all know i'm just talking to myself because my bookmarks are a mess and stuff like this doesn't merit a spot on my links page.

LAPL Catalog - on a web theory book binge, but technical books are so expensive. Los Angeles Public Library system to the rescue. I can get New Riders and other such books from 2002, and be on the waiting list for the 2003 books that they are in the process of aquiring.

Fatboy Slim - Weapon of Choice Video. If you haven't seen Christopher Walken dance and want to see the man that walks into rooms and scares little children cut loose you gotta see this.

The Sun Report: Pocket PC Sans Style gotta read this and research further before worrying about pocket pc.

Portfolio home page in Pocket PC emulator - looks like i need to use a varient of the FIR image replacement method if I want to work in various half-assed medium such as this.

some observations on the failures of the IE5.5 box model as pertaining to my new Resume page. Given that the box model looks like this: [margin[padding[border[content]border]padding]margin] when absolutely positioning a box the top: left: is the outside of the [border. Also, while a background-image may appear within the block's padding, the background-color does not, leading me to use a 42px border. A simplified test case may prove something else to be at fault, but since my test box is still down I'll not be driving to the library again.

Personality Test (Myers-Briggs and Keirsey) - I'm IxTG (x being 50/50 N vrs S). That is, if you think these things mean a damn thing.

given the Bonsai photographs that are available nic's bonsai club project is looking more and more appealing. On black backgrounds too so they'll be easy to mask!

nic has a new ride (temporary link, don't expect it to necessarily be there), i've got a new DOM explorer, and DOM scripting kicks ass for enhancing the client side calculations for online timesheets. Knee deep in Phillip Kerman's latest book, and almost done with my updated portfolio in pure symantic HTML and CSS. One of these days I'll find a new job too.

Actually de-lurked and commented on a discussion the other day: mezzoblue  §  Digital Web Article Posted my comments are clear enough to be read outside of the context of the very long discussion, but the article they are about does need to be read: In Defense of Fahrner Image Replacement

The motivation behind the afore mentioned re-code; I got let go from my job. Severe cut-backs globaly by Baxter International. I've always said that anything that comes down from corporate is bad, and they've only proven me right yet again. So I am very busy, but not getting paid except for unemployment. With any luck the team will get some more projects and be able to hire me back. Or I might find someplace else that I'd like to work.

DivineNTD.com - Nils T. Devine's front end development portfolio I am re-coding my job seeking site with pure symantic HTML and CSS. Also injecting a little bit of color for warmth, but nothing crazy like this. This site will be next up for a behind-the-scenes re-code, though I might change some things about the design as well.

REI-OUTLET: How to Choose Trekking Poles

Pacific Crest Trail. One day perhaps. Never did hike enough of the AT when I was back east. I certainly enjoyed more than my share of time out-of-doors, but I didn't backpack all that much. 3rd or 4th day out I'd be grumpy as hell from not eating enough and carrying too much weight on my back. But after reading around on this here internet thing about "Ultralight" hiking I'm thinking about getting out there again on more than my weekly day hikes. Don't think I'll give up bringing a tent, but the single peice leather hiking boots may take a rest if i can find something else that suitably supports my pathetic little ankles.

Knowspam.net: Tired of Spam Yet? going to have to break down and buy something like this. Free trial isn't free, if you've taken the time to put in your friends, and made people verify, then you really gotta pay. But not getting any spam really does seem like a dream. I probably waste 10 or 15 minutes a day deleting crap email, and I'm sure I delete real letters from people I don't know who find my site (I know this because a few have made it past my manual spam filter).

were i to consider doing some backpacking i would have to go lightweight. no more freakin heavy backbacks for me, it's too hot here.

Labels.js - the DOM is just so fucking sexy in ways only a geek could grok and love.

Client-side Table Sorting!!!!!!!

finally found a good site with lots of hikes, doing the Temescal Canyon Loop today. LocalHikes - Hikes and trails near U.S. Metropolitan Areas

Inline Skate Primer - me thinks i need to both get better skates (mine were cheap peices of crap 5 years ago) and get better at skating on tar.

Hikes in and around the Santa Clarita Valley - did the mission peak hike this morning, have to try it at night sometime like they do.

JsUnit - note to myself here to look at this.

StrangeBanana: Computer-generated webpage design - now this is one odd website. The CSS is generated randomly by some algorithm, so the style and even the layout changes each time you refresh the page. Madness!

There's this idea that I've been playing with that came out of a test document at work. The concept is that of a "self documenting document". That is, a document that seeks to convey or test some idea, and the document itself speaks of the subject, while at the same time exhibiting it. Here is the most elegant example I've seen: css Zen Garden: The Beauty in CSS Design

stock.xchng - the leading free stock photo site

Digital Web Magazine - Forms, usability, and the W3C DOM we've been doing this at work using dhtml, but as the application gets more complex we are looking for a simpler way to hide and show stuff without making a trip to the DB. i think jon had something like this in mind, but we'll see if this has any impact on the way we end up implementing it. seem to remember hearing him griping about lack of custom attributes support, but don't remember what browser/app he was talking about.

FingerWorks - Inventor and Developer of MultiTouch Technology Jon ordered an iGesture Pad. Very cool concept in ergonomic periferals, one of my favorite aspects of computing. No buttons, just a flat pad that acts like a mouse, but more advanced than just a touchpad. It's mouse pad sized, and gestures involve 2 or more fingers, so less carpel-tunnel tendancies.

Tracked down these foolish passes. Adventure Pass Vendors in Cities Starting with "L"

I really got into computers at about the same time that I came in from the woods. Not a coincidence I'm afraid, but that doesn't mean I can't do both. Anyway, now that I'm hiking again all my gear-head tendancies are coming back, and being fueled by the wealth of resources online like this cool toy: Gear Weight Calculator

A link for josher: Campmor: All-Weather Writing Paper

Field Guide to the SGM: Trails - more places to hike

a little news story about one of Baxter's competitors: 2 Paths of Bayer Drug in 80's: Riskier Type Went Overseas

Want to learn this trick, but should probably learn the Power Slide first Skate a Grapevine - Online tutorial

Los Angeles County State Parks.

Here's a new addition to my "movies that you may have missed" list (which i haven't posted yet): Equilibrium: Grammaton Cleric Equilibrium You gotta watch this, it introduces some of the coolest action sequences i've every seen, rivaling The Matrix, based around this idea of "Gun Kata".

OR sun protection - lookin for a hat

Adventure 16 Recommended Hikes - A hiker's guide to bagging Southern California's best peaks.

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished me to the Ninth Level of Hell - Cocytus!
The Dante's Inferno Hell Test

Dvorak related experiment attempts to use an evolving program to be more efficeint than Dvorak. So far unsuccessful. Great link to quantified measurements in the second paragraph.

The WThRemix Winner is so far above and beyond the Honarable Mentions. This is the best example of what CSS can do I've ever seen. Check it out in NS4 to see how good the symantic markup is.

Life is a game (at list this american capitolist life that I am living is). Given that premise, i've been analysing some of the key playing peices, credit/debit cards.

Discover: my first choice, the reason being the obvious cash back. Takes a small dent out of sales tax.
American Express: of dubious value at this point, given Discover's quality customer service, but still have never failed to settle a dispute. Most useful for purchasing plane tickets for their travel insurance and if the airline folds you can get your money back. So far have more than made up the annual fee in purchase refunds.
Visa/Mastercard: necessary as backup only. Good to find one with some side benifit. AT&T Universal Card often offers 0% interest for a while, or LLBean card for free shipping.
Debit Cards: avoid actually using since the money comes out directly breaking the monthly cycle of tracking finances, but useful to have the after hours access to the checking/savings account.

You're lookin' at it, my new personal site! whoohoo! My hubris knows no bounds!

The Game Neverending - from the creators of the 5K Contest, an intrigueing multi-player game concept, all online. Personally, i don't think i could find the time to play, too many projects going, but if you have time to game this looks awesome!