inquiline weblog

Trying out an album

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 01:43:00 +0000

Here's some shots of me, old and new.

Too much good to post

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 22:15:00 +0000

Time to check in again. There's just been too much exciting stuff going on to even try and keep on top of it all.

It's winter in Seattle, and while that means gray days and rain in the lowlands near Puget Sound, it means snow in the Cascade mountains. After trips to Whistler Blackcomb at Web Directions North, Stevens Pass, Gold Creek at Snoqualmie and Crystal Mountain resorts - it's just been a whirlwind of winter wonderland. I'm in a constant state of slow recovery from one sore joint or another, but it's totally worth it.

Web Directions was a great experience this year. I made a boatload of new friends and I really hope to meet and toast our collective nerdy-ness again in the future. So many exciting presentations and events were had there. It really was a top-notch conference. Kudos to the hosts (that I got to meet), John Allsopp, Derek Featherstone, and everyone else that helped make it such a seamless operation. I'll continue following what's going on with all the great speakers that were there on my feed aggregator at Google Reader. I call it my web-directions-north feed, and you're welcome to peruse the content yourself.

Web Directions North 07

I think it's about time that I get over to my corporate blogging duties and make an inaugural post or two...

Pardon the dust on my boots

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 04:46:00 +0000

I'm heavy into trying to get this blog-ish mess redesigned and in the style of the template I'm using on my googlepages presence. Give me another week and I'll have some thing presentable.

Well, maybe.

Innovation Extermination

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 16:44:00 +0000

Top ten tips for preventing innovation -Tyner Blain

1. Hire employees looking for safety in their roles. Innovation happens when people stretch outside their comfort zones - don'?t let them stretch! Find people who primarily want security and a nine-to-five role, stay away from those troublemakers who want to "change the world."?
2. Hire incompetent employees. What better way to prevent innovation than to have people who have to focus just to do the bare minimum? For extra safety, try and find someone who can take credit for other people'?s work and hide their own incompetence - these people are easier to promote, which will become important later. If we are forced to hire someone who is competent, it's critical that we make sure that they only have one area of expertise. People with more than one area of expertise, switch-hitters, just cause trouble by talking to people on other teams."

This goes on and on just getting better as it goes. I love reading stuff like this - it forces you out of your comfort zone of "reading any old blog post" and makes you challenge everything. In the end you're really paying attention, and that's just priceless.

Most businesses do a great job of rooting out and squashing innovation. It's rarely conscious, and all to often a consequence of conflicting agendas, a general deficit in trust, and negligent management practices.

If you have the opportunity and the foresight, I highly recommend asking a potential employer about some of these qualities before you accept a job. It can make a world of difference.

Code like a what?

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Creating Passionate Users: Code like a girl:

"I think 'girl code' is quite a compliment. Because caring about things like beauty makes us better programmers and engineers. We make better things. Things that aren't just functional, but easy to read, elegantly maintainable, easier--and more joyful--to use, and sometimes flat-out sexy. A passion for aesthetics can mean the difference between code that others enjoy working on vs. code that's stressful to look at. And whether we like it or not, most of the world associates an appreciation for beauty more with women than men (especially geek men). Women may have a genetic advantage here."

There's a good point stuck here in this mashup of quotes and references. I've always been a fan of readable code - it sure makes for less comments and documentation when you have a coding style that enables quick re-learning of something you'd worked on months ago.

I won't go as far as to say the most important thing is writing code that makes other coders drool for the sake of the slobber. The documents I've seen which fell into that category certainly did have pretty code, but it wasn't about formatting or naming. It was all about an elegant solution to a problem. It was about brevity and wit in programming. I guess you could call it beauty if you were of that frame of mind, but I don't think the two are connected in many minds.

That being said, I would wear a code like a girl t-shirt. Mostly because I think girls are cool, and that there's not that many of them coding out there. Or rather, not enough of them coding out there.

what's a craftsman?

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 20:40:00 +0000

Def. "skilled labor applied towards practical ends"

More importantly...

What's a craftsman doing with a WYSIWYG editor?

Shortly, it's about constraints. If you increase the set of rules governing what you can do in an environment, it forces you to be creative to accomplish anything. It's a certain kind of challenge that can be refreshing to creative minds.

I take a cue from music, first of all. Consider the system of pitches found on a piano. It's known as the 12-tone system, and is based on 12 semi-tone notes between octaves. An octave is basically the first and last notes in the simple scales that children sing in with the phrases, "do - re - mi ... la - ti - do". Assuming you're with me, you may also know that the 12 tone system is used in virtually all music in the known world with only a handful of exceptions. It's responsible for an almost infinite variety of types and genres and has provided a solid structure for mankind's musical aspirations for centuries.

Once science had caught up with our musical ears, and around the time that some people in western culture started discovering psychoactive substances, a new movement took hold. "Why only 12 steps between octaves, we know the frequencies, we have the tools (e.g. synthesizers), we can do it better!" Enter a short-lived stint of modern music. Composers like John Cage and others decided to blow the doors off the restrictive 12 tone system and go explore uncharted waters. They composed in 13 - 2000 tone systems, and tried to write the rules along side the music.

If you've never heard anything in this style of composing, you're not missing much. It sounds awful. It's without direction, or sense, or emotion, or resolution. Take my word for it, at its best, it's barely listenable. This comes from someone who studied music, and who loves most everything in music for one reason or another. Modernist music is a serious challenge to even begin to appreciate.

Leaving aside all the highly geeky science which attempted to link brain patterns and human-animal hardwiring to the reason we gravitated to the 12 tone system in the first place, I choose to focus here on a simpler reason why music in 12 tones is better than music in 365. The reason is constraints.

If you've ever come as far as trying to write music, you'll find only some things work, and those things are worked a lot. Only certain combinations of music sound happy or sad. There are a small number of chords that can take you out on the ledge and push you over, resolving that tension. These methods can be taught and learned, or rediscovered all on ones own, but in the end they represent a set of rules for how you hear and what it means. Some things work and others just don't.

Back to the web, please!

I write in a WYSIWYG editor because only some things work on the web. I choose to follow this convention that has been tested and documented, and proven time and time again. My purpose here is not to show you how far out there my design is, or that I don't accept your say-so that this is right or not. Frankly, I'm more interested in getting out some content, and "good enough" in the markup department is just that. If it looks good and works well, I'm happy.

Beyond that, there will be some things that I want to experiment with, and an editor like this can make you really have to understand the mechanics of a system to be able to stretch it beyond it's theoretical limit and see what's really possible. Coding in an environment like this gives me that ability by imposing those constraints. It forces me to put content first (a challenge for any nerd who're more comfortable hacking on someone else's prose than their own), and it limits the range of possibility down from 1,000,000 different design directions and possibilities, to maybe just the first 1,000 or so.

I don't need a full LAMP architecture and a XUL parser for the limited audience I'm trying to reach. As long as I can still convince them that I could install and operate XSL Transformations for their uber-geek Web2.0 enhanced application, than every thing will be just fine.

got model

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 22:06:00 +0000

Couple reading/discussion items...

http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2006/03/the_freemium_bu.html
I think I like this model better than the "all or nothing" model - it seems more attainable. But certainly it isn't a cash-cow.

Like these guys:
http://www.touchstonegadget.com/

It seems like they have a great idea, and are just running with it - not sure if they're students or what. Maybe that would be an option: a return to student-dom. I've always fancied a lifetime of education, and there's definately financing options for that plan.

The Search: what ready access to everything always means

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 21:03:00 +0000

I read Boing Boing, an online magazine-turned-blog, for updates on current net-topics. It's got great editors and a huge contributor base. Today's columns had a quote that really struck me. In a post about Battelle's The Search: what ready access to everything always means, the reviewer, one Cory Doctorow, had a great reaction to the book:

"I had a search a-ha moment just last week. I went looking for an out-of-print cassette recording of a radio play. None of the used-goods dealers on Amazon had any copies listed, but Amazon knew that there were several who likely had copies, and it sent them bids on my behalf. I ended up with a copy of the tapes within a couple days, for less than the original retail price. Now I'm considering giving away the 15,000 books I put in storage because I thought that if I ever wanted to read them later, I'd never find them on the used-book market. The bottom has fallen out of the search-costs for used books and buying a title I'm looking for is likely to be cheaper than paying to keep it on the shelf in London."

While it's partly a dime store epiphany, it also struck me with it's new sense of value. I'm a self proclaimed major collector and "memorabilia packrat". Is this really where things are going? I need to think on this. Frankly, those 15,000 books have to live somewhere other than a landfill. Where do you then 'dump' your stuff so that it will be saved by someone until you decide you want to find it again? Does this extend beyond media items? What about that t-shirt from my 1988 IMEA All-state concert band? There's no way that some one will keep that for 20 years and then try to sell it on eBay, is there?

Long time absent

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 18:20:00 +0000

Yes, it's been a while. Sometimes blogs need to go on a fast, so they can come back with better perspectives. That's sort of what's happened here. I've been on hiatus - but I'm back for a spell and will be breathing some new life into this property.

OnLoad and Event Handlers

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 16:35:00 +0000

When you start dealing with web applications using more advanced functionality on and through the web, you definately need to learn to speak the sometimes arcane language of Javascript. One of the most entertaining chapters in the "big book of JS" is the one on Event Handlers. If you've spent any time glancing over this chapter, you'll have encountered the mythical "onload".

To master this beast, put down the manual that you've read 2-3 times and pick up the article at: wg:Breaking onload limits where some really smart people are going way beyond traditional thinking about the beast.

I'm consistently impressed by the quality and increasing quantity of FETs these days. Lots of them weigh in at the Comments heading, too.

CSS Alternative to Lorem Ipsum

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 16:01:00 +0000

Picked from the daily links for light reading published by Australia's WSG was this charming little article on the unspoken rules of graphic design. The first quote below made me laugh out loud:

"17. If you ask for more copy it will be sent as a .jpg. If you ask for images they will send powerpoint presentations."

Oh how true! (Chuckles to himself...). The second one made me think for a second. Not just because it was another choice quip, but because it gave me a spark of inspiration:

"35. Clients who do not provide content upfront will complain about the use of Lorem Ipsum."

By nature of familiarity, I often design in HTML. It's probably not a good habit, but I have a hard time separating my thoughts about how I would do something from what I would do in the first place. If my end product is going to be an HTML document or template, then the sooner I start, closer I am to the finished product.

Lorem Ipsum is that text you put into the space reserved in a template for text. You don't have the actual copy, but you need something to see how text will look and operate on the page. It's part of the process of determining readability and correct document flow and other esoterics of being a front end architect.

The joke is a good one, however, because I'm not the only person to have been faced with a colleague noting in their most concerned tone, "I entered a bug report today because there's Spanish text on the new page design." The first time it happened I took about 20 seconds to figure out what they were talking about. Then I smacked my forehead thinking, "if they're going to be an idiot, at least get the right language - it's supposed to look Latin!"

So what's a coder to do? Your options are limited, but are improving steadily.

Write all the copy yourself
Leave the Lorem Ipsum in place and get a sore forehead
Educate the unwashed masses about the practices of 16th century typesetters
or maybe there's another option...

CSS to the rescue.

Enter cheesy template example. I know you'd rather be caught dead than build a table-based layout (I nabbed this one from Dreamweaver, no less) but in this case, the example serves us well because even the DW one comes with Ipsum by default.

Your basic template comes up looking like this:

Disadvantages: Confusing presence of Lorem Ipsum and other "Spanish" text all over the page.

What if it instead came up looking like this? Notice how the lines of text in the paragraphs are gray bars instead of text?

Advantages: Keep using Lorem Ipsum in the template; You can still see where body text is going to appear; Flow of text is maintained

The technique.

It's super simple. Build your template with Lorem Ipsum - you have your reasons. Apply two selectors to the page, then mark the paragraphs containing the mischievous text and you're set. The basis of the fix is color - we're going to wash out the contrast of the text in a background.

p.ipsum {
color: #CCC;
font-size: 9px;
line-height: 18px;
}

The font-size and line-height properties preserve the illusion of a line of text, complete with space above and below each line, and irregular line lengths (for justified text). Apply the above class to all paragraphs which contain your placeholder text.

Next, we'll have to do a tiny bit of dirty work. We need to style the background of the lettered lines with the same color as the foreground text. Two steps this time. Add the following style declaration:

p.ipsum span {
background-color:#CCC;
}

Then go into each paragraph and wrap the inner contents with a span element like so:

<p class="ipsum"><span>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,
... no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor
sit amet.</span></p>

Span elements have the benefit of rendering "inline" by default, which means that they only take up the space in a line of text, and thus are dependent on the line-height of their parent element in this case for their dimensions. The result is akin to the "placeholder image" styling found in that same Dreamweaver template.

Conclusion

Yes, it's messy and requires cleanup, but so is the entire integration of your template with a larger application. If the worst code-bloat that your site commits is a few extra span elements inside the fewer and further between actual paragraphs of text, then consider yourself ahead of the game. It's not particularly standards-based, or compliant or accessible. More importantly, it
is a simple solution to a common problem, and it doesn't require eight pages of javascript to implement. It will save you from getting hoarse from repeating "that's placeholder text" over and over.

DOM caveat: There's probably a way to use Javascript to access the child node representing the text component of the paragraph and apply a style from there, avoiding the necessity of adding the span element inside the paragraph, but I didn't feel up to tackling that possibility this morning. The simple CSS seemed more attractive at the time.

Bonus! To other coders and template builders...

Do yourself a favor, and don't let placeholder text run (ruin?) your life by letting too much of it creep into your application. If there's a heading needed, write one. If a link needs some copy, make it. If you don't know what the page will be called, guess. It can be changed later - the web is malleable. Writing it up front can relieve your overworked editor/copywriter from the task, and can add clarity to the page/application/template earlier in the process. You could be credited with that clarity. Of course, you could hide behind the flimsy shield of "it's not my responsibility," but that's rather cowardly. (I'll make allowances for smoothly operating organizations where everyone knows exactly what they're role is and you've all worked together for 10 years and everyone gets along and projects come off like clockwork. But that's it. No other allowances.)

Case in point: image "alt" attributes. Nearly no one else but HTML and accessibility experts are emphatic about the use of "alt text" on images. The result of this fact is that specifications for that text rarely (if ever) make it into the requirements documentation. So who writes the copy for the "alt text"? Of course you do. If you are capable enough to write the alt text, it shows you understand enough about the page, it's structure and the architecture of the site to write some simple descriptions where they're called for.

Believe me. Those early decisions make it into the application way more often than you realize. Save yourself the hassle of an 11th hour emergency meeting to address unformed copy on some random (but critical) page of your site.

Hackers & Painters

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 16:21:00 +0000

Hackers & Painters is a highly recommended read. Paul Graham's essays are simple, straightforward, insightful, funny and poignant. I can't tell you how much I'm enjoying them.

Being a bit of a computer nerd who found solace in music at an early age - I escaped much of the fate of most nerds. But some of his material on nerddom and computer science in general has led me to redefine some of my passions about work and life.

Online Business Networking in Chicago

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 14:54:00 +0000

I'm a web designer or developer working in Chicago. Even in such a big city, it's pretty easy to forget that there's a whole world of opportunity beyond just the paths that we travel each day. Not that long ago I spoke on a radio show in DeKalb on the topic of Internet Development for Small Businesses. After the interview, I drove all the way into Chicago from the west, listening to the same radio station from my car. The reach of that station was amazing! It was still coming in clear over 50 miles away. The thought of how many people were in the range of the broadcast was staggering.

Every business should consider this idea: your business can reach as far as you can imagine - so don't limit your thoughts about where your "ideal audience" is. Communication of mediums like radio and the world wide web can transcend any narrowing ideas you may have about who your customers are.

Say you're a small coffee vending store in a train station. You may think that only people who live or commute through your station are your potential customers. Not true - think around some corners! Take a look at niche or specialty coffee suppliers. These businesses make their way by differentiation amidst a sea of commodity. Say you carry their coffee, and your regulars love it. It's a local success. But don't stop there - take it online. People can exhibit fierce brand loyalty. You can leverage this by peppering the internet with content on your business, and it's experience with this brand of coffee. Here's just a few options for maximizing the online marketing opportunity presented by this scenario:

Build a web site - basic business facts and personality for your business. Gives you basic online visibility and a base for communications.
Send thank you's and testimonials to the your specialty supplier. Recommend that they publish the messages online and link to your site in a "Where can I find your brands?" context.
Share your business success story with other mediums: Chamber of Commerce newsletters, newspapers, online networking groups-

Enjoy the fruits of your new networking prowess!

What fruits, you ask? Well think of these scenarios: People looking for a good cup of joe, and people who know that specialty brand will go out of their way to find that brand: often to neighboring communities or further. I'd even go as far as to say that someone may take a job in your little community based on the fact that they could get that good cup of coffee at your store.
If you make your business really and truly visible on the internet - you have the potential to communicate with a broad and deep audience. Doing online networking, simple business building, will really help grow your business both online and offline.

How To Grow Your Business

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Fri, 18 Mar 2005 21:22:00 +0000

Late yesterday morning I received a call from a deep-voiced individual, asking me to appear on a radio show in DeKalb, IL at WLBK, 1360 AM. I'd contacted the station's anonymous inbox last November, to find out more about the show on the recommendation of one Jen Swanson of TicketsNow.com who had appeared on the show with their president, Mike Domek. Her feedback was that there was a large number of questions from call-ins to the show about basic, get-online-for-the-first-time peoples. Since that time, I'd heard neither hide nor hair until the mysteriously-voiced caller.

I was excited to hear from Jen about this show because it smelled like opportunity, and I really enjoy just talking about internet strategy, technology, and solving problems on and off-line for people. This show seemed like a natural fit.

Boy were we right! I can't say how much I enjoyed speaking with the host, Mike Bellamy on and off air about internet and business. We talked up what I do as Inquiline, and what people can expect from attempting to do business online. There's lots of challenges and pitfalls, but also great rewards. It's difficult (like getting over nerves about appearing on the radio), but few things worthwhile are easy.

A guy smarter than myself professed:

... if you're trying to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right.

Even better, they're going to be supplying me with a recording of the show, so I can go home and listen to my geeky self pontificate and use overly big words. This will be immediately followed up by my agonizing over how I sound in the 3rd person. Hearing your own voice from outside your head takes some getting used to - believe it or not.

How do you interact with forms?

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 16:28:00 +0000

I got into a debate at the office about the differences between the default and the expected operation of form elements. I'm curious about other opinions on the subject.

Examples>> w/ questions.

You encounter a text field and a submit button which is part (or whole) of a form. The default behavior for the form in standard, vanilla HTML is that you type in the text field, and click the button to submit. Other default behavior here is that you can type into the field and press enter, and the form will submit.

a. Which do you do more often, Click or Enter to submit? Do you expect the form to work both ways?
If you have a stand-alone select box (sometimes called drop-down lists), do you expect it to operate like a "jump-menu," utilizing Javascript to submit the form when you change the menu? Does it depend on the context? (i.e. if it appears in a navigational area on a page.)

a. Which behavior do you prefer - the one using onchange, or not?
If a select box has a submit button next to it, and you alter its state (by choosing an option) do you expect to be able to hit enter and have it submit the form?
If you encounter a field set within a larger form collecting a telephone number in a segmented format, meaning that there are 3 short fields for the different "parts" of the number, do you expect that the form will use Javascript to advance you from field to field?

a. I know most heavy web users have tripped on forms that have and haven't implemented this "feature". Is there a way to indicate to users, "keep typing"?

In examples 2-4, there's a clear difference between the default behavior, and an often encountered "enhanced" behavior. My perspective is that if the enhancement makes things easier and faster, then it makes the interface better as long as it's "intuitive" for people learn how to operate. But if you're trying to keep things a simple as possible, then perhaps using only the default set of behaviors would be a better option.

What do you think?

skizzip navigizzle

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 19:11:00 +0000

Two things, back to back, got me laughing my arse off this morning. Damn funny stuff.

Gizoogle - Transizlatin' Page - http://www.inquiline.com

A company... For Me to Poop On!

Coming home soon: The Apple Mac mini

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Fri, 18 Feb 2005 21:43:00 +0000

So do you think this might make my new Mac mini look too feminine?

Early February I ordered the new Mini - with only a HD and RAM upgrade to use as a testing machine and to learn the OS a little better. The blasted thing's taking over a month to arrive.

It's one of those situations where you'll just as likely completely forget that you ordered anything at all, and then one Tuesday afternoon... BAM! On your door step - a little surprise!

Reports of my experience with the newest addition to the family are forthcoming.... (like so much else around here).

Wi-Fi Networking News, Imagine Electricity

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Wed, 16 Feb 2005 21:40:00 +0000

In place of wireless data, Imagine Electricity! It was a long time ago in some views, but people actually believed this:

"Businesses are also not interested in electricity, the PMRC states, noting that horses, railroads, coal, and the Irish are the driving forces of the economy."

Good grief! What I'm left wondering is this: In this interesting analogy where we try to map the emergence of wireless to the propagation of electricity, who exactly represents "the Irish" in today's economy...?

I'm certainly engaged by the idea that there's such a clear similarity between the two industries.

TypePad - What's a weblog?

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Tue, 15 Feb 2005 21:53:00 +0000

Sometimes, you need to get a forum - a space to fill - before you can really find your muse to create.

Merlin Mann's 43 Folders answers for himself the question, What's a weblog? In most cases, he says, it's the internet equivalent of Macram�: crap. He has some good points.

I agreee that not publishing crap makes for better weblogs, better focus makes for better reading. So, my intrepid readers may be wondering, "why's this particular blog pretty much all over the map?" It just so happens, there's an answer:

I'm a renaissance man. I'm a jack of all trades, master of none (as the saying goes).

That last statement may not be true, but according to my own metric - I'm no master. Even the things I do the best in this world are things which can receive further refinement. Even Itzhak Perlman practices, and finds new little nuances in the music he performs that require extra attention. Funny that I fall back to a musician reference. I haven't thought of my current craft as related to my history with the musical craft in a long time...

Personally, I'm good at a lot of things. Some people would stop and think, "jeez! Another know-it-all.." and roll their eyes. No one wants to come off that way, of course, but it happens. What also happens is that sometimes you get enough experience with a thing or two, and just want to share that experience whether it's wrong or right. So up here, I have an experience or two, and I share it. It doesn't come out refined and processed all the time, but it comes out. It's a space, and I'm a voice, and even if it's not narrowed to a lazer-like focus on my customers' needs they may still find a scrap of usefulness from time to time. Not everyone who has a string of words to share with the world has the refinement of a seasoned journalist. It can take more than 30 days for some people to find that voice, and to sort out their passion, and limit it sufficiently that it fits neatly into a category.

Reject categories, speak your voice. Simple. That's why this weblog is here.

A Presentation Layer Valentine

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Tue, 15 Feb 2005 15:39:00 +0000

Roses are #FF0000
violets are #0000FF
all my base
are belong to you

Things to say when you are losing a tech argument

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Sat, 29 Jan 2005 17:41:00 +0000

I've grabbed an excerpt from things to say when you are losing a tech argument to share with you here.

I've never said any of these things, really - never passed my lips. Although I may have heard one or two used in my office from time to time...

# That won't scale.
# There are, of course, various export limitations on that technology.
# The syntax is idiosyncratic.
# That can't be generalized to a cross-platform build.
# Unfortunately, the license would contaminate our product.
# Our support infrastructure simply can't handle the volume that change would involve.
# Yes, well, that's just not the way things work in the real world.
# I like your idea. Why don't you write up a white paper and we'll review it at the next staff meeting?
# I think you need to stop taking this so personally. We need to think about what's best for the project, not about our own little pet theories.
# Why don't we make a generalized solution including both options, and let the administrator decide with a config-file setting?
# We can't afford the transaction overhead.
# What kind of benchmarks have you been running?
# Let's table this for now, and we'll talk about it one-on-one off-line.
# This really doesn't jibe with our core competency.

And then there's the one that I wish I'd used before I heard about it here:

# Yeah, or we could all just plink away on Amigas or something.

Who else lives in this world besides me? I know you're out there, with your little Dilbert neckties!

World66 travel guide

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Tue, 21 Dec 2004 15:25:00 +0000

create your own personalized map of the USA or write about it on the open travel guide

create your own visited country map

Ski Stunt Simulator

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Fri, 10 Dec 2004 18:50:00 +0000

Ski Stunt Simulator

Can someone call a helicopter? I'm stuck.

Hot date tonight!

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Wed, 27 Oct 2004 21:02:00 +0000

Does this sound like fun?!? WOW I mean, learning how to Output mySQL data as XML with PHP is a sizzling evening in my book!

v3 on it's way

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Thu, 30 Sep 2004 03:18:00 +0000

I'm writing you from the desk of a furious web developer furiously developing the next incarnation of inquiline.com, complete with preview as it were.

The new site was a personal mandate based on my feelings that v2 doesn't represnt my current level of capability with web standards and CSS layouts. v3 really tackles some funky layout issues, and makes it work more like a web interface, an application with some fancy DOM-based interactive components.