Category Archives: Meta

About this blog — design changes, technical notes, and navel-gazing.

Reading

Books, Meta

Ever wonder what we’re reading here at PhotoMatt.net International Headquarters? Well now there’s a sidebar widget that says what I’m reading now and links to the edition on Amazon, and I even get a kickback. Comments welcome. I’ve been doing a lot of tweaks to the menu and navigation in general so if you have any comments on that leave them here.

Papers

Meta

Two major papers due in the next twenty-four hours. Blogging forecast is light. Don’t despair though, check out my blogroll for the latest and greatest in the independent web world. It can keep you busy for hours, as it does to me often.

Source Code Humor

Meta, Web Standards

Source code humor is one of my favorite things in the world. I think when properly done, and ideally involving a pun of some sort, it is the highest form of humor in the world. It was introduced to me by studying the source of Jeffrey Zeldman as a young Jedi, and since I have on some level incorporated it into most of my projects since then. It is meant for a select audience, the elite handful that view source with a critical eye, and is usually either in the form of HTML comments—the blunt way to do it—or subtly interspersed in attributes like id, rel, and class. This is neither, and being server-parsed is never seen by the browser, but I had a hearty laugh after I stumbled on it by accident. Anyone have a favorite example of source humor?

Menu Revamped

Design, Meta

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.

Notes: The Future: User-Centered Design Goes Mainstream

Design, Economics, Meta

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 →

Thoughts from An Old Hand

Meta, Rant, Travel

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.

Notes: The Future: User-Centered Design Goes Mainstream

Design, Economics, Events, Meta

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 →

Getting Started

Meta, Travel

Well I slept a little late but now that I’m awake I’m going to get the last few things ready before I head up to Austin. I’m planning to blog everything this weekend so this should be a good opportunity to start. Most of the major stuff is done, I’m just waiting on an important letter (read: check) in the mail before I leave. I can’t dawdle for too long though, as tonight at 6 I “Break Bread with Brad“. But for now I’m running late, and need to get my rear in gear.

Search Updated

Events, Gallery, Meta, Web Standards

I’ve cleaned up the ht://dig search engine quite a bit, though I still have to hack it to be XHTML 1.1 compliant and fit better with the site, but after updating the index I got these interesting stats:

./htstat
htstat: Total documents: 11490
htstat: Total words: 1933258
htstat: Total unique words: 17660

The bulk of those pages are from the photolog, which is currently 5200 photos, but before the index was huge because my URLs weren’t very tidy and sometimes the same thing would have 10 different ways to access it. That’s still true a bit, but I’m working on it. Also I’ve been working very hard on a new project, but I’m not sure if I’m supposed to talk about it yet.

Because They’re Watching

Meta, Travel

This is just post to let everyone know that you can now browse PhotoMatt securely. The secure site is functionally equivalent except it doesn’t display the Wanderlust code because it will pop an annoying error since it’s loading remotely. It uses a self-signed 1024 bit SSL certificate which will pop up as not being from a trusted authority the first time you visit but if you add it to your trusted certificates (usually just a button click away) it won’t bug you anymore. Why do this? Because I can.

This will appeal to exactly 2 people.

Just a Little Static

Meta

I’ve implemented a very crude caching system on the front page only. Due to increased traffic and my lack of time for a better solution at the moment, the front page will be updated every two minutes. All the other pages will remain as dynamic and random as always. If you don’t see your comment right away don’t worry, it’s there it just isn’t displaying just yet. Update: Nixed it, wasn’t worth it. I’ll just wait ’til Smarty is in the system.