For some time I’ve used Subversion to maintain a remote copy of all my irreplaceable but frequently edited files. For a while this was workable despite my limited comprehension of SVN commands. Recently, however, things have become more untenable. I was using an OS X GUIclient called svnX. That was working fine but more and more I was seeing odd errors that my limited understanding could not explain nor overcome.

I partially understand, now, that my problem may have had something to do with OS X’s habit of creating files that are, to a Unix’s understanding directories but to OS X are just bundled files. You can argue the design choices that Apple made regarding bundle files all you like. I happen to think it’s a fine idea. The benefits outweigh the negatives. However, unix utilities like Subversion have no understanding of these bundled files and so Subversion puts its .svn/ directories wherever it sees a file to track and that includes inside these bundled files. That just won’t work, and doesn’t.

Enter the Git

I’ve been hearing about Git for, I suppose, a year now. There are similar solutions like Mercurial and Bazaar but that Git has at its root Linus Torvalds makes it, to my eyes, a better supported option. There are far brighter folk that can explain the true benefits of Git vs. SomeOtherSystem. I’ll just say that, for me, it feels simple yet, powerful.

I have a base understanding of the workings of Git thanks largely to Geoffrey Grosenbach’s Git screencast at Peepcode. For now, I’ve moved all of those precious text files over to using Git and it is my hope that in time all of my web-facing endeavours will be under the sway of Git’s distributed version control system.

Just one man

While, yes, I am just one person and whatever I write be it fiction, a blog post, or code is only ever touched by me the piece of mind offered by local/remote version control is worth the effort to get a system like Git working. The option to take an entire design off in a slightly different direction by simply branching my code and then having the option to either blow all of that away or merge it into the master code base is elegant at the least. Doing this with Git is, again for me, the best way at the moment.

I’m not terribly familiar with Metafilter. I prefer to let others filter that site even further. If something is really worthy of notice it will bubble to the surface. Do me a favour and read the comments on Condensed: ‘Care, constraint, concise, cut, character, clarity, and charity’. I think it’s safe to say that 90% of those comments have no redeeming value whatsoever. I am unable to determine if the first comment, Nice article. Who is this Vonnegut guy? is an attempt at humour or just one more person failed by public schooling.

Tipping Point

I’m not sure what it was about the Metafilter post that tipped me over the edge. Maybe it was my pretentious, snotty lizard brain screaming, “These people have no right to discuss Vonnegut!” I don’t know the answer but examples of useless (there is no other way to describe it) commentary are strewn all over the internet now. Digg and YouTube are prime examples of Ooh a text field! What inane fucking babble can I insert into the world conversation?

Your special club

There was a time when you might have thought, “I know the best blogs to find smart, focused conversation on the net.” So, you would subscribe to the RSS feeds of these clever sites and revel in the tight community that commented there. You would link to that site and that site would occasionally link back to you. The people that commented there would comment on your site and the dozens of other sites you visited regularly. These were your people, your kind of people.

And then the rabble came.

Rather than this precious forum being stock full of insight and commentary it quickly became more likely that you’d see a thirty page exchange of dick jokes. We all love a good dick joke but there’s a time and a place and that place was no longer for you.

Twitter, the saviour

Twitter changes all of that. It’s a ridiculous name, Twitter. Also, for some time, people were hard pressed to see what the point of Twitter was. I’ve only just realised that Twitter is how we will keep conversation on the internet going. Rather than seeking out a blog or forum to have those great conversations of old we can now seek out just the guests we want at the conversation.

Of course, like a moth or hummingbird or child with ADHD I’m becoming distracted by something else. So, I’m not certain when I’ll finish the conversion of the site to Olympia. I would like to mention one facet of Olympia that I love the most. The entire design is written in ems. There is not a single dimension declared in pixels. Everything is done in ems. That’s been something of a design goal of mine for sometime. I also happen to think the text is better lain out in this design than in anything else I’ve ever done and I can’t imagine ever rewriting the text styling again. I expect I’ll use olympia_text.css for a very long time.

I will get around to fixing things in time. I don’t give deadlines anymore cause I just miss them. Thanks for stopping by, I’m completely amazed you did.

clever start + clever middle + clever end + clever bits of glue == written work

The real artistry of a writer is his or her ability to procrastinate. It is the active sabotage of one’s own time. I am now and have been for some great while actively procrastinating. I am well aware of this.

I have all the time a person could ask for. I have no responsibilities beyond the feeding and watering of my own self. My day begins and ends when I determine it would be best to lay down or rise up. Yet, I procrastinate doing the one thing I profess to be my greatest happiness.

Perhaps the art isn’t so much Procrastination as it is Self-Delusion.

I was going to write a great deal more on this topic but I feel a sudden need to tidy something.

OK, that’s that. That’s all I have. Just felt like pushing some pixels for a minute. Think I’ll watch a movie now. Later.

a very foody Christmas

I’m not sure how it ended up this way but the majority of the gifts we gave and received were in some way food related. I think she and I just got tired of eating out of boxes. My sister snagged a Kitchenaid mixer from me (thanks, Amazon) and I picked up a wok from her (I’ve wanted a wok for a long time). Also, an electric griddle.

Having learned to short-order cook in fast food joints I just don’t know how to manage with a regular frying pan. I require room to manoeuvre my eggs and such-like. Also, there were a few cookbooks. I had no idea there were cookbooks just for woks. Brilliant. Understand I’m one of those pretentious fuckers you see in the food court at the mall eating noodles with chop-sticks. I’ll get quite a bit of mileage out of the wok and the cookbook.

Toys

I’m not so old that I can’t revel in toys. Legos are always a winner. I just like Legos. I also like Apples and it so happens I’m typing this with a new Apple Wired Keyboard. Seriously, this thing is slim. I thought the new iPod Nano was slim. It feels so light not only if you’re holding it in your hands but light in its reaction to a key-press. I expected I’d have a few days of breaking in to get used to a new keyboard but that doesn’t appear to be the case. I’ve only been using it for a few minutes and I’m rattling along as though I’d been using this design for years. The dedicated Exposé, Dashboard and iTunes keys are a plus, though, I believe I’ll have to look into my keyboard shortcuts for a few apps to re-arrange things on the F keys.

The Most Fun

I think I’d have to say the most fun I’ve had this morning is watching my sister drool over her new mixer. I had no idea metallic chrome with a beater attachment could induce so many giggles of glee. I’m happy if she’s happy.

I hope the rest of the world is enjoying their day as much as I have and that you’re all well and in good spirits. I’m happy to say that for once Christmas has not been a huge cause of anxiety for me. You’ve no idea how nice that is for me. Talk to you later.

Prescribing Design

The “aside” element alone is worthy of marked fucking derision. For starters, the word itself is fucking stupid. The Draft describes an aside thus:

The aside element represents a section of a page that consists of content that is tangentially related to the content around the aside element, and which could be considered separate from that content. Such sections are often represented as sidebars in printed typography.

Here’s an idea, why not just call it the “sidebar” element? If we must have these things why not make them as generically termed as possible? Calling it an aside is asinine. Go ahead and look up “aside” in the dictionary{ref1}.

a•side

noun

1. a remark or passage by a character in a play that is intended to be heard by the audience but unheard by the other characters in the play.

2. a remark that is not directly related to the main topic of discussion

Now, let’s see if we can find… oh here it is:

side•bar

noun

a short article in a newspaper or magazine, typically boxed, placed alongside a main article, and containing additional or explanatory material.

• a secondary, additional, or incidental thing; a side issue.

I figured that out without having to leave the house. It’s not just the semantics though. There are footer, header, article, section, and nav elements as well. The footer element:

The footer element represents the footer for the section it applies to. A footer typically contains information about its section such as who wrote it, links to related documents, copyright data, and the like.

The like? So does that mean I can put my search field in the footer or not? Or does that have to go in the nav element? The whole idea of these new (and in my opinion absurdly named) elements is to discourage the use of the div element willy-nilly.

Noble Intention

Just on a Ranting Tear now

• a) we’ll all be writing blogs in the future
• b) most of us are so retarded we need more and more strict rules to enforce accessibility
• c) we must standardise common conventions

The people that don’t design for accessibility now, will still not be designing for accessibility when HTML5 reaches Candidate Recommendation status. Also, the suggestion that improperly used divs will be considered invalid could very well stifle design innovations in future. The very existence of certain elements may preclude the fashioning of new design conventions. I’d tell you what they’d look like but they don’t exist yet.

A div in all its generic connotation is a malleable piece of clay for me to play with. An “aside” (yech!) is only that. I still can’t understand why they thought that name was a good idea. It doesn’t even ascribe itself to common convention. I don’t know anyone that calls sidebars, “asides”. Near as I know the “aside” term is used to describe very short one sentence posts that directly point elsewhere. That’s how I’ve always found the term used. That’s the convention I’ve seen.

Sidebars, however, are usually on the left or right and are usually full of meta data for the post being read as well as pointers to wholly unrelated content found elsewhere on the site being read or as far afield as flickr.

Will I have to markup sidenotes as asides? They’re on the side. That’s why I call them sidenotes. I could continue to mark them up as div class=“sidenote” but do I then run the risk of getting a raspberry from the validator?

I understand the needs of accessibility but I just don’t think this is the way to go about it. It feels like pandering to a design fad that will be out of fashion (I hope) by the time the Draft is even a Recommendation.

I know the W3C just writes the standards and it’s up to the browser developers to implement them, I know. But have you looked at how long it takes for something to go from Working Draft to full-on recommendation? Years… Let’s take a look at CSS 2.1. If you look at the section titled Status of this document you’ll see that it’s just a Candidate Recommendation and does not in fact even imply endorsement by the Consortium. Close reading will also reveal that it should be a Proposed Recommendation as of 2007 Dec 20. It still isn’t.

Why does that matter? Well, a browser developer can continue to drag their feet *cough*Microsoft*cough* citing the recommendation as being incomplete. The retarded bit? If you look at the criteria for exiting Candidate status you’ll see that criteria number 3 reads The CR period will be extended if implementations are slow to appear. That’s rather ambiguous if you ask me. Things like that just make ya foam at the mouth, ya know?

Oh, and if you think I’m being a little nit-picky about the Proposed Recommendation date being 2 days passed as of this writing then I suggest that the next time you set a deadline you instead say something like “on or about” or “in the neighbourhood of”. And no, you can’t use the “but it’s Christmas, we’re busy” excuse. You knew that in July.

Also, don’t forget that once CSS 2.1 reaches Proposed Recommendation status it’s still not a Recommendation endorsed by the Consortium, just a proposal. As though you could turn it down but keep the ring.

It should go without saying that IE doesn’t support attribute selectors. IE, honestly, doesn’t support much of anything remotely cool with the exception of Microsoft’s own proprietary filters{ref1}. Should you be inclined you can see where this design is at the moment by visiting the sandbox{ref2}. If you load the page with IE you’ll see everything is all higgledy-piggledy.

I haven’t figured out what is making IE 7 go nutters but, needless to say, IE is the only browser that can’t seem to centre the page. I’ve no idea why and I’ve just decided I’m not even going to bother to find out.

IE is the most popular browser

I’d debate that IE is just the most used. I don’t think the program has that many real friends, though. If I were designing a site for a client (which I’m not and don’t) I imagine I’d have little choice but to support IE. Lucky me, I don’t care. Tinkering with HTML/CSS is my hobby, my passe-temps. Trying to get things to work in a browser I not only don’t use but can’t use{ref3} is a waste of my time and feels like work.

The bit that upsets me is that IE 7 was supposed to be so much better. It just isn’t. I’m sorry. Early reports suggest that IE 8 will actually be better. If IE 8 can actually pass the ACID 2 test then colour me impressed. If IE 8 ships before everyone else is able to pass a theoretical ACID 3 test then I’ll be amazed.

Microsoft tricked me before when they said IE 7 would be so much better. I really don’t trust them when they say that IE 8 will support this or that. I won’t believe it until I can see it with my own eyes.