My friend Roger managed to articulate my day in a nutshell (I guess this Friday’s been a rough one for everyone):
”Roger, [so-and-so] was looking for you.”
Roger: “Yeah…I think I’m just going to start handing out darts.”
Monthly Archives: January 2003
Of Cliés and Superbowls
No, I did not watch the Superbowl this year. When I asked Sarah if she wanted to watch the game Sunday night her reply was, “Not really. Do you?” To which I replied, “No, not really.” Instead, we stayed at home and watched Being John Malcovitch for a little more context to Adaptation (which was a great flick). At any rate, from what Jai was telling me, we didn’t miss much–the football was good (but, who really cared, aside from my Aunt in Sarasota?) and the ads were awful. I found this in my travels:
The Morning News: Super Bowl Ads: A Postmortem. Michael Jordan playing one-on-one against his younger self is existentially depressing in a thousand different ways, but heres the worst: TV ads are so lifeless that they resurrect an aging legend from his advertising heyday and it still falls flat.
Ouch.
In other news, Sarah and I got back our much-anticipated tuition reimbursement from my company and are now gleefully able to pay off our Christmas-season headiness. That, and I was finally able to act on an eBay auction for an almost new, well priced Sony Clié with free shipping. It gets here tomorrow. I can’t wait!
Am I Missing Something?
So John Bell and I were talking about the Opera web browser (did you know version 7 was released today?). John said it seemed to hande more websites much better. I’ve since downloaded the new version and am declaring that the site still looks pretty cheesy.
What’s weird, though, is that my knee-jerk reaction is to declare that O7 just doesn’t support web standards–and that would even seem to be confirmed by the fact that Mark Pilgrim posted a CSS workaround hack today. But then it occurs to me that it doesn’t make sense for a brand-spankin’ new production browser (as opposed to a brand-spankin’ new beta browser) doesn’t support standards that have been around for two years. Then it occurs to me to wonder what the rest of the standards-based sites I can think of off the top of my head look like. Dive Into Mark? Fine. Dooce? Copasetic. A List Apart? Spiffy. Wired? Well, er, not so great (at least I’m not alone).
Now the kicker: I go to Opera’s own site to see what their markup is. To my surprise, it’s XHTML 1.0 Strict. And it even validates.
So what am I doing wrong?
By the way: Opera may have mouse gestures, but Phoenix has mouse gestures and type-ahead-find. I’m sticking with Phoenix.
Do Not Adjust Your Browser
If you noticed that the site is slightly different than when you were last here, don’t worry, it is. I did a bit of work over the weekend to add some subtle design ideas that I had rolling around through my head. Not the least of these was the NN4 fix that I implemented. Read on to see how I handled this relic of a browser and how it added to my overall site design.
Continue reading
Template Hacking
Hi!
You have reached the Internet home of Ken & Sarah Walker. We’re not here right now because Ken is busy hacking templates on the beta site. If you’d like to leave a message, please leave one at the tone. Be back Monday!
*beep*
The Age of Spiritual Consumerism
Mark Riddle: Consumer Church. Instead of ‘An exciting, relevant, contemporary, family church with dynamic ministries for God’ that really translates into: ‘we’re a bunch of boring people who want to be exciting, we’ve recently added guitar (or synthesizer) to our services… we don’t really know each other very well but we have things for everyone in your family to do while your here.’
Wow, that first quote is almost exactly what my church’s homepage says. Mark Riddle is a pretty insightful guy, even if he doesn’t return my emails. 
Update: Mark got back to me, which makes me a dork and him still insightful.
We Miss Tom
But if I must go
Things I trust will be better off without me
But I don’t want to know
Life is better off a mystery
So keep ‘em coming these lines on the road
And keep me responsible be it a light or heavy load
And keep me guessing with these blessings in disguise
And I’ll walk with grace my feet and faith my eyes
—Caedmon’s Call, Faith My Eyes
Netscape 4 Research
So, I decided that it would be a good idea to look into NS4 development. This, not because I like it, mind you, but because I think it’s really necessary in order to open up the site to a larger audience, and that it would be a great learning experiment for content presentation (nevermind that I’ll be able to tell my kids that I had to come up with clever ways to deliver my content over this antique web-thing, in the freezing snow, up hill both ways, etc.). The first thing I did was hit Netscape’s site for old versions of NS. Yes, I downloaded 4.76. Yes, I feel dirty.
As usual, the next step was to scope out what Mark Pilgrim had to say about NS4. Here were some articles I ran across.
==
- A List Apart: Backwards Compatible Stylesheet Switcher.
Ridiculous! Impossible! Why on earth would you want to? Go back to your cave, Neanderthal! All these responses are valid, but I have a peculiar angle on the situation. I do all my web design, however impractical it sounds, using CSS layout that displays reasonably well in Netscape 4. And I saw no reason to change now.
This ALA article seems to express that the best way to handle the issue is JavaScript. This might be a good idea (figuring out the browser signature and doing a document.write() wouldn’t be that hard). - Mark Howells Online: CSS and Netscape 4.
It is possible to create some quite good sites for NN4.x using just CSS for layout, but there are a few things that you need to be aware of, even before you open Photoshop to do the initial graphic design.
Brief list of pointers. - Website Tips: CSS (Style Sheets).
The CSS Section below is filled with links to some of the best articles, tips, tutorials, editors, and templates on cascading style sheets (CSS).
Some nice articles referenced here, including some of the above. - Mark Pilgrim: The neverending saga of Netscape 4 compatibility.
CSS and Netscape 4 Issues. I’m battling this in my day job. (Yes, I have a day job, and yes, it currently involves creating a web-based application that works in Netscape 4. Life is full of little ironies.)
A brief commentary on Mark’s NS4 adventures.
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All in all, I may just serve up raw content (i.e. not formatted with CSS) for anyone who is using Netscape 4. This is similar to what already happens for users using, say, EudoraWeb for Palm. The message being to NS4 users: the site might look boring, but at least it doesn’t look like garbage.
Web Design Ennui
I’m just now looking at kennsarah.net via the Solaris stations here at NJIT (I’m killing time until I can talk to some guy about class registration–of course). These terminals only support Netscape Navigator 4.76. Not suprisingly, the site is near-unusable. I guess I’ll be looking for some tips from Mark to fix it.
Stinkin’ Netscape. I’d love to just totally ignore this browser as it is finally becoming totally obsolete on the web. Thing is, though, if NJ’s “Most Wired University” is still running it, it makes me wonder what other public institutions still are, too.
Sarah’s Palm
Here I sit blogging in the NJIT computer lab (we love wireless networks) because I know going to the Registrar at lunch time is something tantamount to water torture.
So Sarah’s Palm IIIe crapped out the other day due to what appears to be a screen-related failure: when I powered the unit up after a long stretch of having been off, the screen was all streaky and unreadable. This was a bitter-sweet event for me because, in my heart of hearts, I know that it means spending money on gadgetry. That this otherwise mortal sin is passed over by the Walker Household Budget Committee and my Best Buy recipt forgiven.
Right. Anyway, I immediately went to the web and tried to figure out what replacement Palm would be best for my wife. Generally, when I consider purchasing a Palm for someone who isn’t an obsessive, pathological, geek-monger such as myself, I try to go for value. And, there are a great many Palms available for around $150. I’m not talking about the trash that Palm has been trying to pawn off on unsuspecting newbies such as the Zire, but older Palm Vs and Sony Clies that, while a few years old, still deliver a great form factor and some wonderful features.
So, like any good husband, I discuss this with my wife to alert her of the situation and discuss with her the possible options when she stuns me with the words “I actually really wouldn’t mind taking your Palm.”
(beat)
I probably heard her wrong, “Well, I figured that maybe we could upgrade each of our Palms like every 18 months or so and sort of switch off who gets the new Palm, just to be fair…”
“No, I just really wouldn’t mind your upgrading each time and my just taking your old one.”
And it sinks in: not only do I get to spend money on a gadget, but I get to spend money on a gadget for me. This is huge. I ask my wife if she’s sure; yeah, she’s sure. I kiss her and thank her and can’t wait until dinner’s over when I can start pouring over eBay and Amazon and SonyStyle to find the uber-handheld that would be a significant upgrade and a good value.
This is what I found.
I love my wife. 
Note: Don’t anybody ask why in the world I wouldn’t get a Pocket PC: Here’s why.
