September 25th, 2003
Just today, I was waiting in the queue for the bus when the secondary school girl (probably 14 years of age) who was behind me in the queue dropped a coin. I think it was a 20 cent (the currency is the Singapore Dollar) coin. And she didn’t pick it up. I’m pretty sure she’d noticed it, and it is easily within reach if she just bent down. She wasn’t carrying anything that would inconvenience her picking up the coin. She just stared at it for a moment and then promptly ignored it as she whipped out her Nokia 8310 handphone and started pressing the buttons.
I remember back when a 10 cent coin used to matter (10 cents could get you 3 sweets), not to mention a 20 cent coin. In fact I’d pick it up if I dropped it, now. Why not? Should anyone feel embarassed to pick up a 20 cent coin? No. Should a 20 cent coin have so little value that it isn’t worth the effort to pick it up when dropped? Not yet (at least until inflation gets real high). I realize I’m being critical of the young lady without giving her the benefit of the doubt, but I make no excuse for that.
September 23rd, 2003
A fellow Advisor at SitePoint Forums, Vinnie Garcia, has a blog! And how’s this for a 3rd blog entry? In that entry titled “On tables, layouts, and CSS“, Vinnie makes a very coherent argument on using tables for layouts - probably one of the most practical viewpoints to date.
We can love using CSS for our layouts fanatically, but we must also come to realise that sometimes tables will allow you to design truly cross-browser sites. At this time I’ve yet to find a 3-column CSS layout that doesn’t break with varying column heights, without resorting to hacks. If a hack is required, I think I’d stick to using a table, thank you. At least until browsers are capable.
Vinnie sums up pretty nicely with this
I guess the moral of this rant is to remind everyone that while using Web standards is a smarter way to work, let’s not get bogged down in theory and worrying about validation.
September 23rd, 2003
Zeldman has given us a sneak peek into the new A List Apart. I’m not too sure I like the pinkish tones. Probably has to do with the online dating sites that now support ALA(A List Apart).
Supported by XDate Speed Dating, 30Dates Speed Dating, and for free online dating, xdate.com.
There’s no doubt it’ll look awesome as it was before.
September 22nd, 2003
Thanks to Matt Thornton for pointing out this technical paper on Haggis growth and the use of Remote Sensing and GIS (PDF). No it’s not your run-of-the-mill technical paper. If you’re in need of a good laugh as I was, read that!
After reading a whole bunch of (non-humourous) technical papers that one really strikes me as being particularly funny.
On an unrelated note, wish me luck for tommorrow. I really really need it.
September 20th, 2003
I’d recently installed the StumbleUpon extension for Mozilla when I came across it being listed as mozdev’s Project of the Week for the week of September 8, 2003. StumbleUpon is not just a Mozilla thing - its homepage has toolbars for IE and Netscape 7 too.
What it does is to allow you to ’stumble upon’ sites that are recommended by peers with interests similar to your own. You can recommend (as well as disapprove of) sites yourself too. Pretty neat idea if it doesn’t get abused by webmasters.
And before you ask, yes, I was bored - I was “running out” of sites to visit.
I did manage to uncover some interesting sites in my stumbles. Like Acronym Server (decodes acronyms - great stuff!), Make A Shorter Link, a feisty new Linux distro, and even this essay on “How to Write Unmaintainable Code“!
Kids these days…
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