Category: development

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.