Category: computing

Ambient Dashboard is weird. It’s weird in a way that makes me tilt my head to the side. But, somehow, it feels right. People are good at reading dials. We do it every time we drive, look at our thermostats or check a thermometer. They’re just translating what we normally think of as digital data to an analog interface. What’s interesting is that they’re using analog paradigms to do so. They’re not trying to create pie charts or graphs, powerpoint slides or anything else that might feel digital. It’s strictly analog, which is the way to go. Use the tools of the medium to display the data.\
I’ve been talking at work about design and usability (on top of standards and accessibility). This is a perfect example of using the chosen medium to display information. Too many designers try to translate the medium instead of use the medium’s particular advantages to display their content. For example, if it’s a designer used to working in the publishing world, their web designs are going to use magazine conventions and not web conventions. Their web sites will look stale, out of place, and be neither compelling or usable. I see it all the time, all over the place. Instead of doing things the web does well (expandable, flexible display of content, interactivity, portability), they hamstring their products by ignoring those things and making everything look like a magazine page.\
I’ve been trying to come up with a better way to argue this point to designers, and I think I’ve hit a wall. The best I can do is point to products that feel “right” and say, “See?!” Yeah, that’s probably not productive either.

Goodness, it’s purdy. I may just use it for nefarious purposes: Typeface Of The Year

One of my the students in my class has set up Movable Type on her own domain and is now blogging!! I’m so proud… I feel like my kid has just started riding his bike without training wheels or something. Ok, without further ado, here she is: ..:WabeSabe:... Godspeed, little blogger!

I was reading The True Story of Audion this morning, and this quote just leapt out at me:

The lesson? It seems you can either be free to do anything you want, to create anything you dream of without answering to anyone, or you can be rich. You’re not likely to be both.

I’m not sure why it did, but it has the ring of truth. I don’t really relate to working for myself, since I’ve worked for the Giant Triangle for my entire adult life (it’ll be a decade in May). But, I do understand freedom. I’ve carved out a nice little spot for myself here, and have a lot more freedom that other folks I know who do the same thing. I can inject myself in interesting projects or just do what’s expected (not that I ever do that).

For example, I can get away with things like the pirate organization (which is going very well, I might add). I can get away with being in the W3C. I don’t know exactly how I did it, or I’d tell you.

I answer to a lot of people, yet I still feel free. Why?

The first class has been posted, and the domain name is live. I’m so excited. I’m teaching a class (starting tomorrow, so register soon!) on Movable Type over at Eclectic Academy. If you’ve ever want to try out MT, and haven’t been able to install it, or have it installed and don’t know what to do with it now, then this class should help. The first class is all about installing it on your local computer to give you a functional sandbox so you can “practice” with the product before replacing a current blog, or getting appropriate hosting for it.

So, if you’re interested, please go sign up. I’d appreciate it and stuff.

I’m in Caaaa-lee-four-neee-ah (that’s the way you’re supposed to say it now, right?) for a CSS Working Group meeting, with my fellow AOL rep, Kimberly (who is an excellent navigator). We’re meeting at the Microsoft Mountain View campus. We went out to dinner last night as a group, and I’ve never been at dinner where half the people there had laptops out on the table. By that point in the day, after eight hours of arguing about what boils down to punctuation, I was ready to not talk about standards anymore. But, my fellow group members are committed (obsessed? fanatic? crazy?) about this stuff, and just kept right on going with the same energy they started the day with. I honestly have no idea how they do it.

Oh, when given a choice, don’t rent a Buick Century. For a 2004, it feels like the car is 10 years old. The steering wheel is narrow, the seats too mushy, and it drives like a bar of soap. I feel old driving it. Honestly.

We are missing one of my favorite CSS WG members, Daniel. I met him in France, and we had a great time at dinner. We talked about French food, American politics, and the history of Netscape. I’m pulling for a meeting in Europe next time so he can make it (Norway, anyone?).

I’ll hopefully get to hang out with Tim and Dawson on Saturday and then get back to my beautiful family on Sunday. I miss them. So much, in fact, that I set up a screensaver of a bunch of pictures (I hate screensavers) of them to scroll by while I’m not working on something. They’re gorgeous.

Need to make a web page and wouldn’t know an HTML tag if it jumped up and closed itself around your head? Well, then go download Nvu!! It’s a great WYSIWYG editor (you know, like Word), and has gotten better with every release. There’s even an OS X build now!

UPDATE: For the uninitiated, WYSIWYG is an acronym. It stands for “What You See Is What You Get”. Programs like Microsoft Word or other word processors are WYSIWYG, as are web editors like the aforementioned Nvu, Mozilla Composer, Dreamweaver, etc. Notepad is a good example of the opposite of a WYSIWYG editor.

Guess who’s a teacher… yep, it’s me! I’ll be teaching Blogging With Movable Type at The Eclectic Academy in November. If you’ve wanted to learn how to install MT, use it, customize it, all written for the blogging novice, please check it out. The course is six weeks long, all online, and I’m hoping it’ll end up being useful for folks (I’m working hard on getting all six lessons done now, and if you have any suggestions for what I should cover, bring ’em on).

I think the class will be a good test of my writing ability. I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a book for the last couple years, and if I can handle writing six classes (they’re supposed to take between 1.5 and 2 hours to complete), I think I can handle writing a book. I probably wouldn’t write one on MT (because who really wants to compete with Jay?). But, I’ve been using it for a couple years and know it well enough that I should be able to write about it without embarrassing myself.

Oh no, I’ve been found!! Two old pals from high school stumbled over here today, and now I’m reliving the last year and a half of high school, realizing that it was more than a decade ago that I graduated from Vicksburg High School. Time flies…

And then I started thinking about how to describe the last eleven years of my life, what I’ve done, seen and how I’ve changed. I can’t really do it. Other than the highlights (getting married, two kids, job, moving to VA), how to do you write up your life in an e-mail?

I do have a record of the last four years though… since July of 2000, I’ve been posting nonsense on this site. I just went back and re-read some of the stone-age posts, and they’re frightening, both for their brevity and well, just not saying anything. I didn’t really get the hang of blogging until April of 2001, and then I just couldn’t stop. The first post I made that isn’t completely embarassing to re-read is my ode to my favorite non-uncle. Pretty much the next year of posts is forgettable… until we get to my post on JenWords. Ahhh, memory lane. All this stuff I would never have remembered if it weren’t all here in the archives waiting to be dug up again (and the old meme’s, like my 26 things).

This is why I love blogging. It’s better than journal-writing (to me), because it’s public. I can share who I am with everyone. Yes, there are limitations (self-imposed) on what I say, but I don’t think that hides who I am, or really how I feel about things. I don’t change who I am, or how I feel while writing – I might tone it down or change names, but the feelings remain the same.

And I rarely talk about sinus infections anymore – that’s progress.

For you lucky Mac people, here a great little app that’ll help save your sanity as you deal with all your open apps. Hide them in tabs with Sticky Windows. I just found this today… where have you been all my life, Sticky Windows?