03.21.04
Posted in General
at 6 pm
So Dwelling has finally switched over to the structure that OrederSomewhereChaos has had for some time: a separation of 1) Document Structure, 2) Page Content, and 3) Visual Styling.
Document Structure is the most basic outline of what an HTML file needs: the HTML, HEAD, and BODY tags plus the barest outline of the overarching layout table that I use to set up the columns, the header and the footer.
The Page Content consists of very basic markup: H1-H6 headings, P paragraphs and a few DIVs and BLOCKQUOTEs. These also have a certain amount of class structure attached to them as well. These classes are “semeantically rich”. Instead of having a class named “smallblackcenteredtext” that would set the styling of the text, I’ve used classes like “sidebarnote” or “calendar”. These classes say nothing of the look of the elements, but simply give me hooks to make them visually distinct.
Finally, I use a style sheet to provide that visual styling. By hooking into symantic classes rather than classes that are tied to a specific look, I can reuse and modify the look of the elements without altering the Page Content or the Document Structure.
So what do we have? Three separate pieces of each page that can be modified with little regard to the other pieces:
A) I can rearrange the major elements of the Document Structure (the header location, the number of columns, etc.) without worrying about getting the visual look to be consistent for the other exisiting pages, or worrying about the content on those pages as the words will flow into their proper ‘buckets’ just as before.
B) I can add and edit the Page Content of any (and every) page and will not have to worry about the HTML structure that it flows into or the look of the page that it gets from the styling.
C) Finally I can change the look: the typefaces, the sizes, the spacing and the margins. I can alter these to my heart’s content, without touching the Document Structure or the Page Content.
I must say that GreyMatter doesn’t take to these concepts very easily. Particularly in the Document Structure arena, it doesn’t really fit well. It’s not bad, it simply has bad default templates and a few tools that have to be ‘massaged’ to make it work.
(I should note that there is a “D) Behavior Commands” layer that could be referenced here as well, but I use JavaScript quite sparingly.)
I can already see that I will eventually want to move away from GreyMatter and into a system that better supports these concepts. I’ve been keeping an eye on {{link http://www.wordpress.org/ WordPress}} and I hope that it will actually be as easy to transition to as it says.
However, for now, I will continue to use GreyMatter simply because it doesn’t require SQL or any other database, or even PHP.
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03.20.04
Posted in General
at 11 am
This is hillarious: {{link http://broken.typepad.com/b/2004/03/rewind_dvd_labe.html DVD Label}}
This is Broken has been a great blog of weird and bad designs in many ways. I actually helped Mark move forward from the old version of this site which was basically hand coded (and had a poor user experience) to a blog-orriented version. I originally had recreated TiB on a Blogger and had repopulated the most recent 10 entries.
He had started working in that direction and got help from a friend who gave him a grat deal on his TypePad account. The story here is that I went to all that work simply to be able to do what I just did: Link to one entry that really caught my eye.
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03.19.04
Posted in General
at 1 pm
Great, as if I needed more excitment in my life right now:
{{link http://www.aad.org/pamphlets/bcc.html American Academy of Dermatology on BCC}}
{{link http://www.emedicine.com/med/topic214.htm Basal Cell Carcinoma}}
It looks like this is a pretty common, highly treatable situation. Let me rephrase. It’s common in people over 40 who have had prolonged sun exposure.
That fits me to a… well, it doesn’t fit me at all. I’m rarely in the sun without a shirt, and I’ve still got 10+ years before I hit 40.
So I get to see the dermatologist again next week, and then again in a month, again in 3 months after that, 6 months after that and a year after that.
It’s all well and good, right? Easily taken care of, very treatable and it doesn’t end up roaming around the rest of my body.
Maybe I should rethink this whole Karmann-Ghia convertible thing…
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03.17.04
Posted in General
at 2 pm
It’s been 28 days since I last rebooted my iBook. 28 days is nothing for a server, but for a laptop that constantly switching networks gaining and losing file servers and having USB devices swaped in and out, even while sleeping, that’s pretty damn impressive.
If it weren’t for the upcoming 10.3.3 upgrade, I’d probably keep running for weeks.
The only hitch has been a few times were I’ve begun to note some Finder wackiness. For instance, when using the pop-up menu off of my Apps folder that I’ve got on the dock, and then opening up the proper submenus to get to the app, and then releasing my mouse button while the app is highlighted there would be a problem. Instead of opening and running the app like it should the Finder would open up the folder that contained the app. Very odd. But also easily fixed.
One way would be to relaunch the Finder, and I may try that next time, but this time I simply logged out and logged back in.
Every once in a while I’d notice odd things about Mail and Camino and such and I’d simply quit them and relaunch them and all would be fine.
This whole microkernal thing seems to be working out pretty well for Apple. Now if they could just get the file server services to not hang or pause the Finder, we’d be really in business.
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03.16.04
Posted in General
at 11 pm
This is really quite cool: {{link http://www.neen.org/demo/clinger.swf Liquid Man}}
It’s a variation on the old mouse tracks effect that’s been way over done in both Flash and JavaScript, but the twist is the cool part. Whatch how the figure twists, front to back when the mouse is moved from the left to the center to the right.
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03.15.04
Posted in General
at 6 pm
These are not quotes, but summaries of the situations that are depicted:
A. Marriage shall consist of a union between one man and one or more women. (Gen 29:17-28; II Sam 3:2-5)
B. Marriage shall not impede a man’s right to take concubines in addition to his wife or wives. (II Sam 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chron 11:21)
C. A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed. (Deut 22:13-21)
D. Marriage of a believer and a non-believer shall be forbidden. (Gen 24:3; Num 25:1-9; Ezra 9:12; Neh 10:30)
E. Since marriage is for life, neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any State, nor any state or federal law, shall be construed to permit divorce. (Deut 22:19; Mark 10:9)
F. If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother’s widow or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe and be otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law. (Gen. 38:6-10; Deut 25:5-10)
I hope this shows how today’s definition of marriage is different from the Bible’s “definition” of marriage.
The argument that says “marriage is based on how the bible defines it and that will never change” when used against Same-Sex Marriage fails. Would someone please find an arguement that can stand on *some* merit, or at least something greater than opinion? I’m really struggling to find a valid reason to argue against SSM.
PS, that last Deuteronomy passage gets followed up with a great one:
“If [two] men fight together, and the wife of one draws near to rescue her husband from the hand of the one attacking him, and puts out her hand and seizes him by the genitals, then you shall cut off her hand; your eye shall not pity [her.]” (Deut 25:11-12, NKJV)
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Posted in General
at 11 am
Sam Ruby has a great slide that categorizes project contributors. It matches pretty well with my experience, though I need to figure out if there are more clumps of participants out there.
{{link http://intertwingly.net/slides/2004/etcon/63.html Sam Ruby on Contributors }}
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03.12.04
Posted in General
at 8 pm
If you have come to Dwelling (this journal) because of a search engine result, that result may be off by a about 400. When I imported some of my old journal entries, I had to renumber them all so that the newer entries increased their values by quite a bit.
Look at the URL for this entry (this assumes that you’re looking at a page that only has this entry on it.) and you’ll see a really long number with a lot of zeros in front of it. That URL needs to have 400 added to the numbers in order to find the new number for it.
For those of you playing along at home: if the entry you’re looking at has the number “000000245.shtml” then you simply need to change the 2 to a 6 and hit return. You’ll end up looking at entry number “000000645.shtml” which will have the content you’re searching for.
Since some of my entries are more highly linked than others I will manually put forwarding links on the entries themselves in order to save people the trouble.
The search engine indexes should be up-to-date in about 6 months. The other links to these entries from other people’s archives and sites may take a lot longer, if not forever. Oi.
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Posted in General
at 12 pm
From {{link http://www.stratnews.com Strategic News Service}}:
What is the latest news? Not good. Let’s look at the jobs figures for a moment. The latest figures showed a 21K pickup in jobs, about 10% of what would be required to simply maintain employment levels at past GDP growth rates. But at least companies are hiring again, right? Wrong. If you dig a bit, you find out that all of these hires were done by the government, not by corporations. Very bad news. That means, from a business perspective, no new jobs were created last month. Zero.
Of course, it gets worse. If you look more closely at unemployment, two aspects leap out at you. Here they are, in numbers: in 2003, one half of all black males from 16 to 64 were unemployed. That’s right, 50%. What’s all this talk about 5-6%, Whitey?
And here’s the other: while the current administration trumpets the fall in employment from June last year (6.3%) to now (5.6%), this figure appears to be measuring the disappearance of the young from those seeking jobs. The labor-force participation rate of 16-24 year-olds hit a 32-year low in December, according to BusinessWeek, at 60.5% – thereby accounting for ALL of the fall in the employment rate. What if those kids were still looking for jobs? The current unemployment rate would be 6.6%.
The next time someone cites productivity increases or lower benefits costs for these great low unemployment figures, just laugh at them. Better yet, tell them the truth.
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03.11.04
Posted in General
at 12 pm
No I’m not talking politics! I’ve added entries from my old Journaling system. Let’s see… I stopped using it in 2000, so now, 4 years later I’ve finally imported them into this system.
Neither my script nor this system (GreyMatter) have import or export tools, so it was mostly manual. The biggest stumbling block was the lack of documentation of the GreyMatter files (though they’re all very easy to access Perl scripts). However when I got pointed to foshdawg.net/gm/dev/ via the ongoing greymatterforums.com it started to be something that I could accomplish.
GM has a weird background. It was created by a guy who wanted it for a photoblog, but then he dropped it after some nasty personal stuff. It was already in pretty wide use, so instead of migrating away from the abandoned ware, a bunch of people picked it up and continued working on it.
This week I moved the latest ‘official’ release, which mostly added security features. It was released last October, so it seemed to have been pretty well accepted by the users without any big issues.
So after making that updgrade (which consisted of uploading 5 .pl files.) I decided to dive into getting the old journal entries in the system. First I had to figure out how many old entries I had, so that I could renumber the ‘new’ entries. Tuned out I had 389 old entries and it was easer to simply add 11 blank entries and then add 400 to the serial numbers.
Finally I combined all of my old entries into a single master archive (only about 500k) and then I used BBEdit to strip out the extra HTML and BBEdit’s RegEx search and replace to get all of my data in order.
My saving grace was that I had added a time/date stamp that was at the start of each entry and I never varied it the three years that I was using the system. That allowed me to keep the all of the entries in order and organized.
The last step was splitting the master archive into each individual entry file. I used an old Classic app called TextSplitter 2.2.1 that Dejal Systems released for free now that it’s ‘old tech’. It had a few hang ups and I had to split the Master Archive in half in order to get it all the way through.
End result? My archive page is now twice as long and the entries from 1998 to 2000 need to be edited to look somewhat decent. Over time I guess.
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