October 30, 2002
5:51A
Waiting for the Eagle to Land

This entry won't appear until NetSol changes have gone through. I wait with baited breath.

Nasty spammers hit Moveable Type weblogs. Is it just Moveable Type that's susceptible to this moronic onslaught?

A list of photoblogs all in one place.

PodNews for your iPod, but you must be running Jaguar. Which makes me ask, Steve when are you going to put out a PDA? And can you attach a phone to it?

File under Really Scary: Can't decide what to be for Halloween? How about a CEO? The Martha Stewart mask is really scary.

 

October 29, 2002
5:43A
Falling Back

Daylight savings time—are we on it or off it? Whichever, my inside clock which was already screwy is now more so. It isn't helped by the twilight zone head created by mainlining all of the DVD episodes of 24. Well, okay not all, but 12 down, 12 to go. This is the only way to watch TV.

I'll be changing webhosts/ISPs at the end of the month. Hopefully the transition will be seamless and you won't notice any difference. Nice way to go into Year Eight. Here are some of the urls I traipsed through in my search:

• The Web Host Industry Review
• Host Reviews. See also What to keep in mind
• WebHosting Talk

Make your own Bush speech (Flash) [Thanks, Pat]

Web Style Guide, 2nd Edition, now online. [Thanks, James]

 

October 28, 2002
5:53A
Quiet Monday

The Giants put up a good fight. And was that a moment in a previous game when J.T. or Jeff picked up Dusty's son off of homeplate. What is it about a strong guy and little boy that just gets you right *here*.

Googlism: I put in ‘lmichelle’…hey, how did they know?

Top Ten Digital Photography Tips.

Newly discovered search engines thanks to this Evolt list:

• Ez2www.com (Global Metasearch)
• Vivisimo, cluster searching
• Infonetware Search sorted by topics

A week from now, will be in Colorado. Had to check the webcam at the hotel. Oooo, Fall.

This Friday will begin my website's eighth year on the Web. I've decided not to do The Journey: The Seventh Year page (see last year's journey). Just been too busy redesigning my Resources pages, and time's at a premium. I have several little projects I'm juggling and want to clear off my plate so that I can have some downtime from Thanksgiving to New Years.

 

October 25, 2002
5:57A
Go Giants!

So nice to see the Giants kick a little Angel ass last night.

Raise your hand if you're ready for Halloween. I've had the candy-filled pumpkin in my office for a week or two and have been working in the orange glow of my pumpkin lights. Of course, this is merely the precursor to Christmas decorations. Love gettin in the mood. I must've been a party planner in another life.

On a totally different note: The Homeless Guy's blog. He thanks Bill Gates, for when the government started talking “Anti-Trust”, Bill became charitable and gave computers to libraries. And that's what he blogs on.

From 37signals, Sites that Don't Click (pdf). Or you can buy the full report.

And so begins the best day of the week.

 

October 22, 2002
5:38A
The Glow

It was a very nice Meet the Makers in San Francisco yesterday. A lovely fall day. Since valet parking was $38 at the Grand Hyatt, I decided to take CalTrain up to the City (gave me a chance to get deeper into Sights Unseen) and hitched a ride on the SF Muni and was delivered right in front of the Hyatt on Stockton. Piece o' cake. Was considering taking a cab just for the slight chance of meeting the Night Cabbie, but figured he wasn't on duty yet.

Really liked the meeting style: 30 minute sessions with small groups of people. It was lunch with a view from the 36th floor. Got a chance to have Jeffrey Veen sign my copy of “The Art and Science of Web Design”. Should have brought my “JavaScript for the World Wide Web” for Dori to sign since we sat at the same table for lunch. I also saw that Daniel Will-Harris was going to be there, but didn't get a chance to meet him and lugging around my Photoshop 7 book just to have him sign Chapter 16 was not an option.

Met several nice people like Jenn (graphic designer who had moved here from Boston), Robert (very interesting earrings), and Brian (a friendly fellow).

A highlight for me was hearing the Web Standards and the Future of the Web panel of Tantek Celik (Microsoft), Arun Ranganathan (Netscape/Mozilla), and Douglas Bowman (Wired/Terra Lycos). With Wired just going XHTML it was an exciting discussion.

Thanks to hosts with most, Brian and Jason. Great job!

Go Giants!

 

October 19, 2002
7:51A
Bah-bye

I bid a fond farewell to Heartless's Holey Haven.

 

October 19, 2002
5:43A
What the Hey

Inner clock went off early today. I tried to tell my body it's Saturday and you can go back to sleep, but Nooooo, it had other ideas.

Honey and I are in the process of being harassed by telemarketers which has us screening all calls through voicemail. Glad to see the telemarketers counter-script. Got it posted right next to the call log we put up to track the number of times 'they' call and hang up.

I love this. Something about a series of life photos just gets me. Here's one family from 1976 to 2002.

CSS tricks from Eric.

 

October 18, 2002
6:12A
Gracias a Dios Que Es Viernes

I know. So bilingual of me. Hear the Tex-Mex accent?

Short and sweet today:

• W3C's Evaluation, Repair, and Transformation Tools for Web Content Accessibility
• Larry Lessig's blog
• Dan Schafer's Blog

Adios, muchachos.

 

October 14, 2002
9:06A
Neener

It's Monday and a City holiday, so here I sit at home, waiting for my hair to dry and cruising for webhosts and good stuff.

Following a thread on the CSS-Dicuss list and have already been thrilled as I visited Rupert's example of CSS tabs. Lovely.

Spent this weekend working on a redesign of my Resources area. Want to do the XHTML-all-CSS thang to it, but need four columns. Looking at simple tables. I know, not good for the long-run, but is anyone else missing designing with tables? Okay, smaller corrals are supposed to make you more creative. More thought required.

Speaking of…
Wired gets new look based on XHTML. Here's Devedge's interview with Douglas Bowman, Network Design Manager for Terra Lycos.

Clogging: Calendar Blogging with iCal. Worshipping the personal calendar.

Illegal Art's list of copyright-related issues links.

Totally amazing, a guy's daily photos of himself (long download time but worth it). It's nice that he changes his hairdo throughout the year. Nice experiment with the moustache. I always wanted to try a Fu Manchu. Oh well, got boobs instead, and the girls are probably way more fun.

I'm with Pete, The bottom line is I don't trust this president and his advisors. And he even invokes Molly's name (BTW see her column The reform party's over).

Up Yours and More Helpful Tips, Down Olsen's lively blog. A woman with a sense of humor: I Am A Dildo Enthusiast-Almost. [Thanks, Dazereader]

 

October 11, 2002
11:23A
Busy Bee

It's a good thing my back is getting all better, got a busy schedule over the next few weeks. Look forward to the Meet The Makers conference in San Francisco on October 21st. Looks like I'll be mixing with some interesting people. Should be a lovely day in the City.

Of course, October 31st is Halloween. Last year was a blast at work. I came as a Stanford resident doctor working at Kaiser. The most fun was snapping those rubber gloves. This year will probably see me as a toga party goer. I've still got my sheets, ivy crown, and of course my Converses from several toga parties, so I'm all hot-to-trot. I even have a 45 of the Kingsmen doing the most dirty lyrics you've never heard—“Louie, Louie”.

And later that night, Honey and I are celebrating Halloween in San Francisco by seeing Puppetry of the Penis.

November 2- 5 sees me in Colorado for a couple of utilities website conference/seminar: Taking Your Web Site to the Next Level hosted by the American Public Power Association, and the E-Business Summit hosted by ESource.

I'll be staying at the Broadmoor Hotel where both meetings will be held (here's their webcam).

I had to look up where Colorado was. It was one state farther over than I thought. (I know I have the weirdest mental map of the U.S.) I've changed planes in Denver once. That's the most I've been exposed to Colorado. I'm looking up what's to do in Colorado Springs. Oooo, Pike's Peak is there. Here's a view of Pike's Peak; here's the view from Pike's Peak. I see Pike's Peak inspired Katharine Lee Bates to write “America the Beautiful”. Ahhh, the purple mountain's majesty…makes sense now. Will have to check out the fruited plains while I'm at it.

Utility websites have a tough row to hoe as they don't necessarily see an ROI by having online bill paying. In fact, most customers don't visit utility websites. I don't. Customers have rated utility sites about a 6 on a scale of 10. Long distance service and cable service websites have a higher rating (about an 8). It's an interesting dilemma.

Oh yeah, and there's the Aerosmith concert on November 14th.

Okay, back to my Friday!

 

October 10, 2002
5:38A
Another New Sheep

File under: What Was I Thinking. Got very tired all at once of red/orange and sheep images. The green here, which I've never used, seems kind of…something.

The story behind the background image
The pictures (except for the Golden Gate Bridge) were taken by me as Sherah drove us to the San Francisco Flower Show one rainy Saturday. We were just chat–chat–chatting like we do, when suddenly I looked ahead and saw a rainbow arcing towards our side of the freeway.

I had just made the comment to Sherah about how neat it would be to actually be at the end of the rainbow, when there it was—two cars in front of us—the end of the rainbow.

I barely had presence of mind to remember—camera—hands, and snapped a couple of quick ones before we passed laughing through the end of the rainbow.

It was one of *those* moments.

Back to the Web: Managing traffic spikes. [Thanks, Tomalak]

Sad news for We The People: Copyright extenstion law gets support at U.S. Supreme Court. After their decision during Bush's election, why am I not surprised. Everybody got plenty of KY?

BTW finished Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Wonderful, warm way with words. I can imagine her poetry must be very rich. Will have to look for more. Next book: Kaye Gibbon's Sights Unseen. After reading her “Charms for an Easy Life” last month, I am ready for more.