Bruce Sterling on his post-SxSW part. I was there, but now feel like I missed a lot. Hat tip: Joe Clark.
No Recording
Well it looks like I won’t be recording with the Calvin Owens Blues Orchestra in two weeks. The person I was replacing in the band showed up to the rehearsal and it turns out there had been a misunderstanding with he band leader. I’m still going to be joining the band in a few weeks, but I won’t be on their upcoming CD.
Standards Police
The Standards Police, I think Keith is totally off here, as I began to express in Dave’s comments. A laissez-faire approach to compliance isn’t helping anyone. Someone needs to set an example, and if it’s not these guys who will? Jeffrey and Doug, each with no small amount of content on their site, seem to have no problem keeping things compliant. Neither does Eric, Tantek, Joe, Lars, Anne, Mark, just to name a few. Don’t tell me “validation is very hard and takes quite a bit of effort.” That’s a weak cop-out. Accessibility is very hard, design is very hard, music is very hard, driving in between the lines is very hard. If you don’t want to make the effort, then don’t dabble and make flippant comments that hurt the field as a whole and insult the people who work “very hard.”
I’m coming out. This site is to the best of my ability valid XHTML 1.1 sent with the proper MIME to browser that can handle it. Even the photolog, which took me hours and hours of work to get to the point where it is now, and for a long time was far from decent markup. However I am fairly certain that there are some comments (particularly on the mosaic thread, which now has almost a thousand replies) that have broken validation, and though I am very busy I will personally check each of these. WordPress helps a lot. The WordPress site is also XHTML 1.1 with the exception of the forums, which are compliant by default (more hours of work) but which could do a much better job of validation input. These are my weaknesses, out for the world to see. Even though the sites work just fine, and “validation doesn’t pay the bills,” I’m going to devote my time to fixing these problems because how can I presume to be a member of an organization devoted to standards without following them myself?
Update: Pulled and republished.
XML Content Sink
“The XML content sink is non-incremental, so, all XML documents start laying out only after the entire content model has been constructed.” That includes XHTML documents sent with application/xhtml+xml. You just can’t win. Hat tip: Henri Sivonen.
PingOMatic
Pop the champagne! Ping-o-Matic has broken a million pings in the two weeks or so that we’ve been counting. Keep the pings coming. 🙂
Harris County Jury
New Apple Displays
If these new display rumors pan out they look mighty tasty.
PictPress
Out of Order
Because of the size of the photolog, I had to break it up and move everything over by hand. However now it is badly out of order. The thought of manually reordering 282 albums is terrifying. I need a way out. I’m watching this thread closely.
photojunkie
Rannie is in the middle of his Blogger Week pictures and today I make an appearance. Thanks Rannie. 🙂
Howdy
Well hello there. Welcome to the new server.
Staticize Plugin
Staticize Plugin for WordPress. Drop in your plugins directory, create a directory for it to put stuff, and activate. Instant on-demand caching. I’m going to try this out here as soon as I finish the server move. (The photolog may be broken for a few hours.)
SuperfluousBanter: First Publication
I just finished reading Budget Design: Increase Profit by Improving Process by Dan Rubin and Dider Hilhorst. It’s free for a week ($9 later) so now’s a good time to grab it. It was enjoyable and well-executed with lots of valuable insight. Highly recommended.
Microsoft Expression
Microsoft Expression, a free vector image tool for Macs and PCs. Hat tip: Cheryl Wise.
Sunny
It seems for blogs.sun.com WordPress was considered at one point, but they decided to go with the Java product Roller instead. Too bad, because their feeds seem strange, they have terrible URIs, and I have no idea what’s the permalink for a page. Anyway.
Periodic table usage
Brian Alvey on periodic table usage. His problems sound like nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a little overflow and some non-float layout tricks. The WIN sites really need a makeover, or a markover, because it looks like tag soup to me. “My readers are more important than the year I’ll spend in purgatory for using a single table in an otherwise modern layout.” Say three Our Zeldmans and you should be alright. (Another note: WIN sites don’t support pingback or trackback yet?)
It’s Over
An address that has never been on the web in text or javascript form has begun receiving large amounts of spam, starting a few days ago. This is not a dictionary attack, it is specifically targetted toward this single address. The address is not guessable or a dictionary word. Luckily the address is disposable.
The only form this address has ever been online is in a PNG screenshot I posted about a year ago.
Public keys for SSH authentication
Sillyness
Chris Davis has put together an alternate admin UI for WordPress. He modifies a few of the files though, which could make upgrading a real pain.
Noel does Japan
Noel goes to Japan (and blogs it with WordPress). Unicode support should come in handy.