My day in photos: Alfred Hitchcock would cringe. Mmmm, texture. New do. I love the arrow. Flowers for my Mother’s birthday. Blue steel.
Not pictured: my mid-term being delayed until Saturday, birthday dinner, evil Starbucks, rude and ageist salespeople, how wonderful this day was despite the occasional annoyance, and my funny elated look from being happiness-hungover from SxSW.
Oh my goodness! I’ve had a pre-pay T-Mobile account because Starbuck’s are so ubiquitous, but when I tried to log in right now it said my account has expired, even though I know I’ve hardly used it. Not that big a deal though, I can just refill it, check my email, post, and go along my merry way. So I start the refill process, and it wants $50. WTF? Let’s take a look at each of their plans to see what a ripoff it is:
These plans are ridiculous, and I’m going to take my WiFi card elsewhere. Or maybe I’ll stop in and try some of their very reasonably priced coffee. I feel strange saying this, but McDonald’s has the right idea. I would be happy to get a meal and some WiFi, or pay a reasonable $3 for an hour of access. Plus I assume that cash is an option, which is a plus. Of course there are some very good independent coffee houses around which I frequent, but unfortunately none of them are convenient to my next appointment, so I’m stuck without access. I guess it’s time to go war-driving and find some good nodes in the Montrose area.
I’m not trying to say that the above plans are wrong for everyone, just that for my planned usage of quick, infrequent stops here and there is no plan which I won’t pay out the nose for. I have come to the conclusion that T-Mobile is the devil though. Now I’m just going to head to my haircut, and then to the long-anticipated mid-term.
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A group I’m a part of is preparing to form a number of “working groups” and each group may prepare a number of documents. The proposed format for these documents is plain ASCII text wrapped at 74 characters. It’s not the IETF, and on the whole it seemed like a rather restrictive format to develop documents in, an opinion which I’ve been trying my best to communicate. The discussion is still ongoing, but there was a brief tangent where several people misconstrued my argument as being one for HTML email, which is a totally separate beast.
Anyway it got me thinking about how HTML email is almost universally condemned among tech-savvy email groups. The problem, I think, is not technological but in fact human. HTML email has the potential to be clean, structured markup that can add a number of rich elements that there is no standard way to add in plain ASCII, such as emphasis, links, quotes, and in general represent things in a more meaningful way. The problem is generally not in the receiving client; I can’t think of a client with no HTML reading support (even Pine does some). Also the MIME standard allows and encourages a plain text equivalent of all rich content. It’s a problem, to put it into Spiderman terms, of great power and great responsibility. Someone very near and dear to my heart sends me email with garish background, text that varies between large and red or some purple script font, and any number of images speckled about. To me an ideal solution would be an email composer that enforced strict separation of style and content, and a client which allowed any CSS attributes to be toggled at will. Someday, perhaps?
I just added the last of my SxSW pictures. As many of you know Monday was my last day, so I don’t have any from Tuesday. Also for those that asked it actually turned out the Ethics mid-term wasn’t today, but is on Thursday, which was actually a big relief. Coming back I was utterly exhausted—physically, emontionally, and intellectually—and I crashed for about 6 hours in a very satisfying nap. There’s no bed like home.
Okay, per Tantek’s suggestion I’ve made the menu entirely a nested list, and adjusted the CSS accordingly. I had to work out a few kinks with the specificity of the contextual selectors, but after that it was a breeze. However this has brought to my attention how terribly ugly the CSS ridge effect is in Mozilla—really unattractive. It’s a shame because a lot of people seem to like it, but I’m exploring other options. Structure is groovy. Hell is a world without the style attribute.
What if there was a gathering of the leaders, speakers, visionaries, teachers, mentors, and founders of the web? What if there was non-stop, extensive discussion of the pressing issues of web development and practice? What if this meeting of peers had the nicest people you will ever meet, every one of them so friendly and accessible that it makes you appreciate humankind? What if you were given the opportunity to meet with the very people who shaped your education and development in your most formative years? What if this magical event ended too soon?
I wanted to say goodbye, at least for now, to all of the wonderful people I met at South by Southwest Interactive this year. I feel really privileged.
Update: Doug Bowman has some similar thoughts.
Did you know Dreamweaver can tunnel its connection over SSH using Putty? Neither did I. I haven’t quite gotten it to work yet, but I’m pretty excited about it. I’m just thinking about it because all of the unencrypted traffic flowing over the free wireless here at SxSW. Someone with a simple sniffer could cause a lot of trouble. Encrypt whenever you can! You can even browse PhotoMatt over SSL.
These are a day late and a little short but I thought I should put them up anyway.
Parrish: Strong claims: power, justice, and change. Aim to strengthen and not quash these principles. Limiting concerns to blogs. Many questions regarding accessibility. Blog tool developers have made many efforts to keep their tools flexible. Celebrate those efforts and use it as a starting point. Other barriers to access: technical, socio-economic, political. If all barriers were gone, would anyone publish anything. Continue reading Notes: The Future: User-Centered Design Goes Mainstream
The latest pictures have some random shots throughout the day, some of the Bloggies, and a few blurry ones from Fray Café. Enjoy! I’m just skipping lunch and trying to catch up with things.
Micheal: K10K began with our dissatisfaction with the other sites out there, they didn’t update enough…
Heather: I realized that photographers have been taking pictures of themselves in reflective surfaces for a long time. Originally called “Jezebel’s Mirror”. Starting working with Aaron Cope (?) to do all of the back-end. Started very slow, but then grew to 700 and that’s when they moved to the back-end. Continue reading Notes: Surviving Your Own Collaborative Project
I was sitting next to Derek when he wrote this. Some interesting thoughts, and I’m as guilty as any of being weblog-centric in my thinking. I think WiFi, which I’m involved in through the Houston Wireless group, and weblogs, which you are experiencing now. I see a tremendous potential for enfranchisement, which I’m not even sure if that’s a word but it’s the best suited I can think of. My confession: I used to hate the word ‘weblog’, ‘blog’, and every variant thereof. At one point I spent hours scouring this site for every mention of it and removing on sight. I’ve gotten over myself.
Here is a collection of some notes I took at the Between the Stylesheets panel, complete with linky goodness. Update: Tantek’s post.
Jeffrey: The thing about CSS, it’s hard to understand unless you first think about markup. It’s hard to rethink the way you approach X/HTML. There’s so much to do that it seems strange to think about HTML, but in fact it’s important. We now have the chance to party like it’s 1993, we have the chance to write it like it was meant. We (designers) could do that until browsers became compliant. Saves Bandwidth. Work is now more accessible. Continue reading Notes: Between the Stylesheets
I’ve come to conclusion that it’s impossible to keep up with everything I’ve been doing and everyone I’ve been meeting, so my plan is to do a giant post once I get back in town.
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Photos from Kick and much else now up. Enjoy! Email me if you want originals. While I’m thinking about it, does anyone have a charger for a T68 with them? I left mine at home and my battery is getting ready to run out.
My laptop gave out hours ago; I continued. It’s half a hour drive from the Omni to my sister’s house. I’m going to put the photos up, then crash. Today was an absolutely fabulous day. I can’t even begin to describe it.
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These are the notes I took, it’s a cross between transcription, commentary, summary, and BS. Hope they’re helpful if you were in another panel or would just like to review what you heard. Leave comments if you got a different impression of the talk or disagree with something I wrote.
Molly Steenson – Professor, GirlWonder.com
Marc Rettig – Professor
Jesse James Garrett – adaptive path; Elements of User Experience
Definition: Throwing away the assumption that you know your users and starting by using techniques of observation, interviewing, and co-designing to create better interfaces.
Marc: Design a vase. Design a way for people to enjoy flowers. A shift from the desginer focusing on the object, and more towards the effects. Understand, then make something that fits.
Jesse: Not existence but rather that it has taken so long for the idea to catch on, new yet obvious thing. Design culture has been so focused on the properties of the object rather than how it actually works. Companies are so turned in on themselves is an amazing revelation.
Marc: Design for the Real World. Industrial designers from 50s and 60s.
Molly: Why has it taken so long to take hold?
Jesse: Increasing complexity of consumer products. As a result, more products that have been brought to Marcet and have failed for reasons the producer couldn’t comprehend.
Marc: It’s stayed in the design camps, just in the last 4-5 years has it been talked about in business circles.
Molly: Will it have an effect? Continue reading Notes: The Future: User-Centered Design Goes Mainstream