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.
Joe Maller.com
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
Tonight I made the mistake, or maybe it wasn’t a mistake, of turning on the TV. Planning I suppose, to flip around, but when it came on there was footage from September 11th on MSNBC. I had planned on avoiding the media frenzy, fearing it would be nothing more than a montage of slow-motion, American Flags, somber music and other emotionally manipulative pap. But this was mostly just footage, and nothing MSNBC did could diminish the memories. Considering that it’s Rosh Hashana I guess this was appropriate.
It’s the little things; knowing so many of the stores in the background. Interviews on the corner near a friend’s house. The look on a man’s face in the background, staring into a video camera recording people crying on the sidewalk. I still wonder about the detachment that lets someone point their camera at other people while this was going on, but then I’ve never really aspired to journalism. Usually I carry a camera with me wherever I go, but on September 11th I didn’t take any pictures, or for a week following. Until Lila was born in March, I had almost stopped taking pictures completely. Those I did take were mostly of friends and their kids, with a few occasional attempts to do something creative again.
My screensaver of Lila photos came on and distracted from the TV every five minutes. In just our little circle of friends, seven new people opened their eyes since last September.
For the past six years I lived around the corner from Ladder 11 (and Engine 28). They lost six men and both trucks on September 11th. I didn’t know any of them personally, but we used to see them in the market all the time (Key Foods on 4th St & Ave A). Ladder 11 is a fixture of the East Village. When we first moved into the neighborhood, I kept hearing “Low Rider” blaring from a car but could never figure out who was playing it so loud. It turned out to be the PA system of the fire truck. All fire trucks in NYC tend to get customized in one way or another, Ladder 11 had a sign on the side of the ladder with an airbrushed “Ladder Eleven” and a hand-painted pair of dice. The sign, partly burnt and twisted, was recovered from the truck and mounted outside the station.
It took me a week before I went past the station. I remember wanting to say something but having absolutely no words. I stood there for at least half an hour staring at the photos of the missing men. Someone left a pair of dice near the flowers.
At the time I was also walking by the Ladder 9 “Bowery U” station on an almost daily basis. Now I live across the street from Engine 5. Engine Company 33 & Ladder 9 lost 10 of 11 men and both trucks, Engine 5 lost one man although I remember pictures of six or seven. We’re also very close to Ladder 3, which lost 11 men. Every time I see photos of September 11th with a fire truck in them, I try and see if it was one of ours. For reasons I can’t explain, I really want to know where they were and how far they got.
This might have been Ladder 11.
Most all of the lost trucks have been replaced by now, and Ladder 11 is once more serenading the East Village with the intro to Low Rider.
Photos of all rescue workers lost in the World Trade Center collapse:
New York Times Rescuers Memorial Page
Thank you to Charles Johnson’s for his posting about Ladder 11 firefighter John Heffernan, which led me to post this. Station photos taken September 18, 2001, Ground Zero fire engine photo taken September 25, 2001. What I was posting during that time: Site Notes Archive – September 2001
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