Ultranormal

  • Black is Beautiful

    I’ve been thinking about this big redesign I’m working on for this site, and I think black is going to make a big comeback. I used to be a huuuu-uuuuge fan of black pages, but I’ve been ignoring it for a couple years and I think it’s time to give it another shot. I’ll still keep black text on a white background, but I think blapck is the way to go… keep your eyes peeled for the new design (ok, don’t forget to blink, it may be a while).

    You know, I love designers. They give me neat desktop wallpaper (my collection is the envy of everyone who sees it), great ideas and lots of funny rules to laugh at. I’ve now worked at AOL for seven and a half years and dealt with visual designers for almost four, and respect what they do. Most of their rules are valid, but they sure do make me laugh. I love the way Jeffrey Zeldman gets feisty about fonts and colors, and the folks at k10k fight about flash vs. html. Why am I talking about them? Well, because I realized I’m not one of them. I am good at what I’m good at, and it’s not what they’re good at. I am really good at interpretting designs into tight HTML and producing functionality (ewww, hate that word) from their requirements. But, I’m at a loss for actually designing things. I think if there were a category for “design critic”, I could be that. I can spot design flaws, but how to fix them is beyond me. I can offer suggestions, but that’s only because I have a good memory and remember how a good designer solved a similar problem in the past.

    So, if you come here looking for design advice, you won’t get much. If you want to know how to build a really cool search box using left floated divs, I’m probably your guy.

  • Cascade My Style, Baby

    It’s paint with mucous day at Chez Lawver! Max has had a cold for about 3 days, Jen for 2, and now me. We’re all irritable, unpleasant and chock-full of mucous in our various snot-containing body cavities. We’re tired… but achey enough that a nap doesn’t seem possible.

    I was going to send myself something to work on while watching TV, but my machine crashed while trying to zip it all up and I didn’t get around to it. How stupid is that? Now, I’m trying to work on the big redesign of this site, but it’s not the same. At work, I have this challenge, and it’s driving me nuts. It came from people who I don’t think understand what it will take to get it done, and even if I do it, I’m not sure that they’ll get how monumental the accomplishment is. Will I tell you what it is? Probably, if I pull it off.

    Did you know that almost no one still uses Netscape 4.x? Anyone who still does has (hopefully) come to the realization that no one cares about the three of them and that sites will look really goofy for them. This is very good news for me. No more compensatiing for old, evil browsers (I will explain the “evil” in a minute) that don’t understand the gorgeousness that is CSS1 and 2, divs, spans and other neat-o things. Why is Netscape 4.x evil? It wasn’t evil when it came out. It was great when it first came out. I used it religiously for years. That last word contains the evil: years. It didn’t keep up with Internet Exploiter. It was fat and happy and didn’t bother keeping up, and people just kept right on using it, and those of us who build sites (and I do mean sites, if I had to list all of the thousands of pages I’ve built over the years, I just couldn’t) had to compensate by building these ugly table layouts with spacer gifs and wacky background images. No longer!! I have shuffled off my regret for those poor people using 4.x. Get with the times! You have alternatives of many flavors. Use Netscape 7, Mozilla, Phoenix, Chimera, Opera… all of which do edible jobs of supporting CSS and neat-o clean pages (in some cases, better than IE).

    Ok, sorry, that was another rant. I don’t know what’s gotten in to me. I just can’t help it.

  • A Marvelous Rant and a Ramble

    This sniper thing in the DC area is driving us all insane. My wife is afraid. Logically, we all know the odds of being struck by space junk while planting pig’s feet in the garden are greater than being a victim of the sniper. But, like Jen says, if you die in a car accident wearing your seat belt, checking your mirrors and following traffic laws, you’ve done what you can do, and it just happened. If you’re hanging out the window, drunk, swerving all over the road, you should have known better. If we decide that going to Home Depot is worth the risk, we’ll go. But, it’s not worth the risk, so we stay home and watch CNN. Personally, I’m not that scared. I’m nervous, and I was sure the bastard would do something tonight, since he hasn’t waited more than seventy-two hours between killing some poor innocent person since he started this thing two weeks ago.

    It’s insane, and it’s terrifying, and it’s wrong. There’s no making sense of it, or finding reason in, or listening to the jackasses on CNN try to profile this guy. If the kooks and dorks they had on TV were actually good at what they did, they wouldn’t be on TV. (sorry, i’ve given up on this making any sense… it’s a rant) And what the hell has happened to CNN? They did such a great job in the first month or two after September 11th last year. Now, CNN blows. It’s horrible. Connie Chung has some mental disorder or something. I wouldn’t watch Paula Zahn on a dare, and there are more feel-good filler crap, I thought I sometimes think I’m watching Dateline or 20/20. I want the news, you idiots, not some story about some (insert heart-warming story of someone overcoming some undetermined tragedy to invent the world’s first nuclear-powered yo-yo) when there’s a mass-murdering truck driver in my backyard, my President rides the short bus to the west wing every morning, my government is dead set on going to war, the North Koreans have nukes, the Saudi’s fund terrorism, but we put up with it because they sell us crude. I don’t care about the biggest damn pumpkin in the world. I want news!! I want to know what’s going on, and maybe why from someone who actually knows what they’re talking about. And will someone please force Larry King to retire He’s a dottering old idiot with nothing important to say, or meaningful questions to ask. I don’t want to listen to him mutter and hunch to a collection of layed off psychologists about who the sniper might be. Retire, give up… whatever you do, just shut up.

    Ok, I feel a little better… but not much.

  • What Pie Through Yonder Window Breaks?

    There are more things in the circus, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Clownspeare, what a concept. I see a big future in the Barnum and Bailey revival of Hamlet.

  • Sudden Urges

    All of a sudden, I have a desparate need to redesign this site. I’ve been thinking about moving all the family pictures in Max’s page to a blog (I even figured out a cool way to take a PhotoShop generated web gallery and turn them into importable entries), and turn the Geekery into a blog as well, just to be able to update the pages a little easier, and be able to add tidbits as I come across them (like installing Apache2 and Tomcat the other day). I just seem to keep putting it off. Since we’re trying not to leave the house except when neccessary (why take a risk when you don’t have to), I should have time to do something this week… I hope.

  • You Are Going To Bed RIGHT NOW!

    See, this is why I love Carol Lay. Her comic today is so perfect. There are times as a parent where you can’t laugh, even though you want to. It’s hard, near impossible for me. Kids do the funniest things when they’re angry.

  • Sniper Skittishness

    So our deadly neighborhood sniper has struck again. We’re not talking about it at work. We talk about it constantly at home. I was up until 1:30 last night watching CNN after the latest one last night at a Home Depot about 30 minutes from my house. All of the attacks except the ones in Fredericksburg have been within about 20 – 30 minutes from my house. I went to get gas yesterday afternoon because I thought he would take Monday off. He almost did, until he had to go and shoot some poor lady going to her car after getting (I’m assuming) home improvement supplies. Her husband was right there when she was shot. There was an older woman at the gas station yesterday who was visibily shaking as she help the pump. I’ve noticed parking lots are a little emptier today than they were yesterday. People are scared even if they don’t say it.

    The randomness and locations of the shootings leave everyone feeling vulnerable and naked in public. I’ve noticed myself walking faster when I’m outside and looking at treelines more carefully. I’ve noticed every white van and box truck on the road. Now that we have a better description, I’ve stopped trying to memorize all their license plates, but I still notice them.

    This is my first experience with a serial killer in my area. It’s gripping to the point of insomnia. I haven’t been sleeping well, and last night I dreamed about chasing a cream colored Astro van with a silver roof rack around Sterling trying to run him off the road. I woke up before I did.

    The weird part is that even though this lunatic is creating terror, I don’t think he’s a typical terrorist. I think it’s some crazed Redneck who’s gone off the religious deepend that’s swallowed those whacked out right-to-lifers who are so for life rights that they kill people. It’s someone who’s morals are so goofy that he’ll kill, but won’t steal a new truck.

    Honestly, I don’t care who it is. I want them stopped and soon.

  • The Weekend Entertainment Roundup

    It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, but I actually got out this weekend (with the sniper on the loose, that’s a feat). Here’s the roundup, in chronological order:

    • The Transporter: So, they gave Turkish from Snatch a chance at his own action movie. Jason Statham is perfect for the action hero thing. He’s buff, has an accent, can deliver catch phrases with a bit of flair and just looks like a guy who could kick a whole boatload of ass if he needed to. That said, the movie was a joke. There were some good fights, but overall, it should have gone straight to video or HBO. Jason Statham and the French cop were the only roles with any depth (and even then, you could see the bottom). The bad guy was a third rate menacer who tried to look tough by feigning constipation and a Sling Blade-like grimage. The other bad guy kept making me laugh because he was the same guy who played to gay club owner in Good Morning Vietnam and had the world’s worst rug on his wrinkled little head. The opening car chase would have been fun if the guy had watched a little less Gone in Sixty Seconds and a bit more Ronin (sorry, at a loss for good car chases this morning…). There were so many jump cuts, it was hard to keep up. If it had been directed better, the sequence could have been top notch. There were a couple other funny inconsistencies like a Cessna going from “graze the powerlines on the highway” to 10,000 feet in a matter of seconds so Jason Statham could jump out of the plane, but it was fun. The fight in the bus garage with the oil was one of the most original fights I’ve seen in a long time, and Jason Statham chews up the scenery when given the chance and more than three words to say at a time. So, rent it when it comes out if you want to see Turkish kick some butt in toe clips (don’t ask), but don’t see it in the theater.

    • Twister: I’ve been watching the DVD on and off just to play with the sound on the new TV. I loved this movie when it first came out. What happened? It has an early (and weird) performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Carey Elwes with another in his pantheon of horrible accents. I think the problem I have with it now is the amazing Wooden Bill Paxton. He just lumbers through each line he has. I liked him in A Simple Plan, and he’s done good work in other movies, but man, he was just wretched in that movie.

    • The Sopranos: It’s nice to see that the first episode didn’t set the tone for the whole season. Last night’s episode was great. The only problem I have is Janice. She bugs me, and I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s that I know too many emotional vultures like her. Maybe it’s the fact that I like the actress, and feel bad that she’s written so unevenly on the show. She goes from complete wreck to her mother in the span of fifteen minutes. Maybe that’s what she’s supposed to be, but it doesn’t fit for me.

    • Sunday Night Football: Wow, what a game. I started watching in the middle of the second quarter, and didn’t leave until the last couple seconds. There weren’t a ton of points scored, but it was the best game I’ve seen all season. It came down to two long field goals in the last five minutes, and either team deserved to win it. There were so many great defensive plays! It was just amazing. If you missed it, you missed the reason I love the NFL.

  • Puzzling Evidence

    The latest evidence that public education is going right down the crapper? In Virginia, the test you have to take before you can progress to the next grade is called the SOL. An adult who should know better came up with that! Next thing you know, kids will have to take the BBW before they can take gym, the STFU before Study Hall and the WTF before they can take Calculus. People, come on! I am shocked and appalled that Virginia did worse than Mississippi on the “You gots to takes this test so’s we knows we taughts you right” test. Mississippi’s is the FLE, which isn’t bad. I don’t giggle when I say FLE, although, if Oh Brother had come out at the time, I would have asked that they change the name of the test to the R-U-N-N-O-F-T, which suits Mississippi a little better than FLE.

  • T-Shirts Forthcoming

    Ok, they’re not really because I wouldn’t go so far as to actually make any, but we came up with a really great one tonight that I may submit to t-shirt hell (not for the faint of heart). I want a picture of Della Reese in boxing gloves with a nice cursivey font above the picture saying, Punched by an Angel. Yeah, it’ll sell a million!