April 30, 2001
My recent rediscovery of adolescent fantasy fiction continues. Last
night I read half of
A Wind in the Door, having finished
A Wrinkle in Time a month ago or so. I don't know why I'm
suddenly enraptured by books like these. (I can't say
"enraptured again" since I never read them as a kid in the
first place.) Maybe I'm just sick of what passes for adult fiction
these days. Also on the to-read list:
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,
The Dark is Rising,
The White Mountains.
I enjoy L'Engle's work but her extremely didactic tone is
starting to bug me. 12:44 PM
April 27, 2001
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.
"Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound." 10:08 AM
April 26, 2001
More signs that AOL plans to drop it's Internet Explorer-based browsing engine and replace it with Komodo, a browser based on Netscape's Gecko technology. Hmm, would the sudden appearance of 30 million more Mozilla users convince you to begin coding and designing with standards in mind? 10:55 AM
April 25, 2001
Today, a few new entries to the DHTML API collection, for your pleasure.
Here's something
that may have the potential to get JavaScript the respect it deserves.
A colleague pointed me to TIBET, which is
a development tool for writing JavaScript applications. Seems these
guys at Technical Pursuit have taken the idea of wrapper scripts to
extreme ends (all DHTML
libraries are just wrapper scripts, encasing the different
functionality of browsers in nice, common API code). But they've
gone far beyond simply bridging the incompatibilities between
browsers. They've apparently come up with an IDE for JavaScript
(itself written in JS) that includes things like class-based
inheritance, a model/view/controller-style GUI, event notification,
reflection, debugging and a whole host of other goodies, the absence
of which have (arguably) held back JavaScript as a serious contender
to server-side languages. The beta release is scheduled for May 1st.
Speaking of JavaScript silliness: I'm about a week away from releasing something, well, interesting. Some people may find it useful; others may just stare and wonder why the hell I bothered. 12:55 AM
I suppose the time has come. I've been updating this site by hand
ever since abandoning Blogger a
few months ago, and while I enjoyed the initial feeling of "look
at me, coding by hand" puritanical superiority,
it's just plain silly to continue on like this. So the hunt is on
for a new content management system. Greymatter is a serious
contender, having most of the features I'd ever need, but I'm
open to suggestions.
And yeah, I considered hand-rolling some Perl or PHP. For, like, about
two seconds. There's so much good, free stuff out there. Why
reinvent the wheel? 1:26 AM
April 23, 2001
Hello, I am writing you about walkingbirds.com and would
appreciate discussing some ideas I had about building your
website.
Oh boy! That's me! They're talking about
me!
Our development team is focusing on websites that are
functional with effective navigation, while customizing the brand look
and feel desired by our clients, and I thought this concept would
interest you.
Oh, most certainly! This site is so lacking in look and
feel, I can't even look at myself in the mirror some days.
I'm quite anxious to demonstrate this software with
walkingbirds.com, and I would like to talk to you or your
webmaster.
That's me again! And he said "I'm" instead
of "our company." What a nice personable tone! They must
really care!
Here is a list of ideas that I thought you would be interested
in:
- A custom website design (which involves the use of one of our
designers)
Sounds good! I'm sure they must have spent hours analyzing my
current site design.
- A shopping cart to sell your products or services (Including
several sophisticated functions)
What?
- A classifieds section which can accept company information or
offers by website visitors (Monitored by yourself.)
Hey, wait a minute. This isn't --
- Have marketing tools that inform and educate your clients
--
Marketing? But --
features like News Pages and Newsletters, etc.
Wait, I --
- An "Advertising Section", where clients can post
banner advertisements
[sobbing sounds]
(Disclaimer: The preceding was a work of fiction. Total fantasy,
actually, because I would never have read past the subject line.
But some people do. Unsolicited email marketing causes
millions of people to weep uncontrollably, hugging themselves and
rocking softly back and forth. Is that what you want, you heartless
market-bot spammer? Don't you know everyone hates you? Even cute,
cuddly dolphins hate you. Please get a job with better karma.) 2:08 PM
April 18, 2001
Holy crap! Dithered has complete DHTML API only 1K in size. 11:15 AM
So. The word of the day (two words, actually) is Krispy Kreme, as in doughnuts. Apparently, Krispy Kreme is a relatively new phenomenon here in California; I've heard tales of people forming lines outside of newly-built KK's that rival the ticket lines for Star Wars: Episode One. Or something like that. Back in oh-hi-oh, there were plenty of Krispy Kreme's to be found. Even in Akron. 10:26 AM
April 15, 2001
Perhaps as retribution * for the MetaFilter Board Game, Matt has provided a an imaginary Walkingbirds album cover. 12:34 PM
April 12, 2001
By moonlight, I followed a vague trail of ancient links to this: Publishers on
Push. Published at Stating the
Obvious way back in May of 1997, it's a collection of brief
essays by 11 Web writers on "the nature, future and implications
of push technology."
Push was long dead, I think, before I even got on the Web in late
1997, as I have no recollection of any push technology grabbing my
attention. PointCast? Never used it. Push is like a dead-end on the
evolutionary tree of Web technology. As one of the writers points out,
we already have a killer push app: email.
Sometimes I think there's really nothing better than email. 2:36 AM
April 11, 2001
You really should be reading Jon Udell's Talking About Mozilla right now. Especially if terms like XUL, XBL and XCOM are foreign to you. 12:36 PM
April 10, 2001
After reading this
blurb about a missing UNC server that was found behind the drywall
four years later, I can't help but think of
Poe.
For the love of Linus, Montresor! 10:23
AM
April 8, 2001
DynAPI 2.51 is released! Improved Mozilla/NS6 support, several serious bug fixes, and better support for keystroke vents, dynamic images, and drag n' drop stuff. Unfortunately, still seriously lacking in comprehensive documentation, but in spite of this, the DynAPI is still an extremely powerful DHTML library for only 120K. And it's starting to attract the attention of Java enthusiasts with it's AWT-like implementation. 6:34 PM
April 6, 2001
Reciprocal Links of Gratitude:
To Matt, whose generous
link to the Walkingbirds music
page resulted in nearly 200 downloads of One Sure Thing. (See, Matt's got
his very own Kiss Army.
Don't mess with the best.)
To the tireless Jeffrey
Zeldman, for his mention of this site in his latest column for PDN-Pix
magazine, which addresses the "relatively relaxed attitude
toward the 'stealing' of HTML, JavaScript, CSS and Flash
source," and authors who give away such things for free. Other
links of note: Lance Arthur's Glassdog
Design-O-Rama (HTML, CSS and JavaScript), Brent Gustafson's Assembler (DHTML with design
cool, now celebrating it's one-year anniversary) and Josh
Davis' PrayStation
(FlashStravaganza!).
I wish I could tell you more about what I've been up to recently.
It boils down to two things. One is a secret to be revealed at an
unknown date. The other may or may not happen, depending upon other
circumstances. Am I all fascinating and mysterious yet? 1:24 AM
April 3, 2001
Another True Story For No Particular Reason:
Carrie and I were in kindergarten and we were going to be married and that's all there was to it. We would lay beside each other during the afternoon naptime and whisper about how we couldn't wait to grow up and get married. At recess we would play close to each other but never hold hands, or anything like that. But we would be married, nonetheless.
The wishing rocks were scattered in a corner of the recess yard, behind the brick school building. Small multicolored stones, red and blue and green and yellow. Carrie scooped some of them up and poured them into my palm.
"You drop them into water and make a wish, and your wish comes true. I dropped one into water and wished I had a milkshake, and my Daddy took me and bought me a milkshake."
At home, I showed the wishing rocks to Mom. "I think someone just dumped out a fish tank behind your school," she said.
I sat myself at the snack bar that separated the kitchen from the dining room. The bar was yellow and had little rounded triangle patterns of blue and red. I had a plastic cup filled with water.
"I wish it were Saturday morning, and cartoons were on." I dropped a rock into the water with a plop! and nothing happened.
"I wish this house was covered with flowers." Plop!
"I wish I had a real horse, in the basement." Plop!
"I wish the SuperFriends on the poster in my bedroom would come to life." Plop!
A few days later, Carrie told me she wasn't going to marry me anymore, but she was going to marry Robbie instead. I said okay. 12:10 AM
April 2, 2001
Today is Emmylou Harris' 54th birthday. At the very least, everyone should have a copy of Wrecking Ball and Red Dirt Girl, if anything for their astounding, dreamy production values (courtesy of Daniel Lanois and Malcom Burn, respectively). 1:15 PM