I’ve been taking something of a news break for the past week or so. A lot of factors contributed: Most of the sites I read regularly have been annoying me, the US government (both sides) have been disappointing me, the outlook for the world seems bleaker and bleaker.
So I’ve been working that much harder and lots of things are closer to finished. As usual, everything is wrapping up at the same time.
Common sense wins in the end (that or massively reduced sales volumes):
[ Editor's Note: Due to the overwhelming response of our distributors and readers... as of March 2002, O'Reilly book spines are reverting to the traditional, colorful design as depicted here, on the far right. ]
This has been bothering me since I first noticed the change and I haven’t bought several books because I didn’t want to visually pollute my shelf. Design that doesn’t consider human emotional response is decoration.
This is an excerpt of a letter I sent them in January:
The design of the O’Reilly book spine is as distinctive as the McDonalds
arch or the Coca-Cola swoosh. Aside from the high quality of O’Reilly
publications, another unmentioned pleasure of buying your books is how great
they look on the shelf, and how easy it is to distinguish subjects by color.
I believe this move to redesigned spines is a mistake and one that I hope
you will reconsider. Glancing over at my O’Reilly library is satisfying, the
new spines look naked and feel out of place.
Maybe I exaggerate, but within the tiny little world of computer books, I think the first line holds true. I guess this means I can start buying O’Reilly books again though it’ll be a while before the white ones clear channels, so no Amazon purchases for now.
XHTML, XForms and Device Independence a presentation by the W3C’s Steven Pemberton. The quote about Google forcing usability was noted on Boing Boing, but there’s plenty more about structural HTML, why XHTML is a good idea and how some common practices make the web harder to use. The source code is worth looking at, as an example of how clean HTML should probably look. I just wish he would have used ids or named anchors to make it easier to link to specific items on the page.
There was a strange symmetry to the wind today. Gusts were strong enough to scatter papers above buildings. I saw two flags blowing through the sky, one landed near my feet. The World Trade Center’s courtyard was almost always windy. It was almost as if the air was remembering too.
Shortly after the downtown memorials ended, I walked by the Ladder 11 Fire Station on 2nd St. There must have been a half-dozen fire trucks parked nearby, and firemen and their families were gathering and eating. The mood wasn’t outwardly somber, there was laughter, smiling and a lot of food. At Engine 5 across the street from my apartment, the firefighters and a few family members were standing in the doorway for most of the day. People would stop to greet them, and cars would honk as they drove by.
Permanent location of my wtc 9-11 page
Last night I went out at almost midnight to deface a political flyer. People are free to believe whatever poisonous nonsense they want to, but just as they’re (somewhat) free to post those ideas I’m free to counter-post against them. The flyers are offensive on any number of levels, but using swastikas is either irresponsible stupidity or a calculated, manipulative use of hatred to try make a point. I don’t much care which it is, if they’re in my neighborhood, I’m going to go out of my way to scratch them out.
Then on the walk home something wonderful happened, a cosmic/kharmic reward or whatever. I bumped into Anil and Matt. These kinds of things happen all the time, and are never any less wonderful. A few hours prior, I emailed Matt about meeting up this week and he hadn’t even gotten the message yet. I used to intentionally misspell coincidence as ‘coincidance’ because ending with ‘dance’ often seemed more apropriate. This would be one of those times.
Miracles emerge from debris from the USA Today series 9-11 A Year Later
