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The last three months

Monday, March 31st, 2008

Sun behind clouds

How can it be the end of March already?!

It’s not just me, is it? Easter felt infeasibly early this year. I happened before the clocks went forward (from GMT to BST). In fact, it happened before it had even stopped snowing!

And now that Easter is passed, Jesus has risen again (Alleluia!) and in a strange way I feel as though I’m emerging back into the sunshine. Have I been hibernating for the last few months?

I’ve certainly been fighting more bugs than is healthy in the first three months of any year. I don’t remember any other year when I’ve been inundated with so many illness bugs, and viruses and the like. Just as soon as I’m getting over one the next wave of attack hits me. It’s not funny … I want it to stop. Please!

In many ways the last couple of months have been a whirlwind of activity and emotion, which has largely been responsible for the dearth of blog posts here this year.

I’ve pretty much been doing the following:

  1. Waiting
  2. Coding
  3. Reading

Waiting

When the calendar clicked over to 2008, a couple of months ago, and we got (another) green light from the hospital to say that our IVF treatment would begin (again) this year a strange thing happened: I felt a though I began to retreat into myself.

I’m not entirely sure why, except that I guess I wanted to protect myself and from the relative safety of my ‘inner cave’ examine how I felt about this enormous step we were about to embark on (again!). It’s not an all-together bad thing to do, all things considered. In some ways, quite responsible. (Perhaps this means that I must be a grown-up now.)

One of the hardest things about the whole IVF programme (so far) is the waiting.

There’s a lot of waiting.

And unlike many of the procedures involved in the In Vitro Fertilisation process it’s something that the man can do equally well as the woman. In fact, it’s something that they can do together … since they can’t do any of the other things that are normally involved in trying to start a family!

So we’ve been waiting. And waiting some more. And in between the waiting … well, actually it’s mostly been waiting if I’m honest.

At times it’s been quite unbearable. We just want to know. One way or the other.

Coding

For the last few weeks I’ve hardly known what to do with myself. I’ve felt like a kid waiting for Christmas.

Jane started on the IVF drugs in July 2007 and it dragged on and on and on. One more month, another month after that … and then in December it was cancelled. Brought to an abrupt halt.

We could have had a child in that time!!

So in order to distract myself I’ve been bringing work home with me. I’m currently working on a recoding of the University’s website. And with the recoding a bit of a design tweak here and there.

Bringing it home has given me something to focus on. Something consistent. Something that has a beginning and an end. Something that I have been able to create.

I’ve been really enjoying it too, which has been the important thing.

Reading

And when I’ve not been sitting in front of my monitors I’ve been reading. Sometimes curled up in bed, other times on the sofa keeping Jane company.

Here are a few of the books I’ve been waiting through.

So I’m still alive and well, just keeping my head low just now.

Posted in Books, CSS, Family, Fertility, General, Health, IVF, Reviews, Web, XHTML | 3 Comments »

Transcending CSS

Sunday, January 6th, 2008

Transcending CSS

Transcending CSS: the fine art of web design by Andy Clarke is one of the best books about cascading style sheets (CSS) that I’ve read in a long time.

As a designer Andy Clarke has produced a book that’s far from the hundreds of other dull books on CSS which are packed full of dry code examples and pages and pages of text. This is a beautiful and colourful book, filled with hundreds of images, that takes a real-life approach to designing sites and writing accessible HTML and CSS code.

While this book isn’t aimed at beginners, it assumes that you have at least a good, working knowledge of XHTML and CSS, it is very easily read and if you’re looking to get into modern CSS layout methods then this book could be an inspirational introduction to the subject. Because of the design of the book it’s also more accessible than Jeffrey Zeldman’s excellent Designing with Web Standards, now in its second edition.

The book is organized into four main sections:

  1. Discovery
  2. Process
  3. Inspiration
  4. Transcendence

Discovery

In the first part of his book Andy Clarke introduces us to what he calls Transcendent CSS, that is code that looks to the future, building on current web standards to create accessible, cross-browser-compatible websites, rather than relying on outdated layout methods such as non-semantic tables.

He argues for web standards, acknowledges that not all browsers display the same design, advocates that web designers use all available CSS selectors and semantic code, use CSS3 where possible to look to the future, avoid using hacks and filters, and to use JavaScript and the DOM to plug any gaps in CSS.

One particularly useful exercise is where he takes real-life examples and shows how he would present these in XHTML, in a section entitled “translating meaning into markup”. His examples include a horse race, marathon runners, a taxi rank, books on a shelf, and a museum display of mediaeval helmets.

Process

Having set the scene over the first 100 pages (lots of pretty pictures on the way, so don’t worry!) Clarke explores a usable process for designing with web standards. It’s quite a good introduction to certain elements of information architecture, such as wireframing/grey-boxing and usability.

Taking the example of a design for Cookr! (his made-up recipe website) he adds mark-up to the design to show you how to best mark-up and organize the XHTML and CSS code. It’s a very visual and practical approach which is strengthened by excellent explanations of what he’s doing and why.

Inspiration

In the third part of the book Clarke moves away from code and gives us an insight into where he finds inspiration for website designs. And it’s not just from other websites but newspapers, magazines, buildings, streets … anywhere really.

This section offers a good introduction to grid and layout theory, and his advice about keeping a scrapbook of inspiration examples is really helpful, either a real scrapbook or something online like Flickr. He finishes off the section exploring why design is more than just creating attractive visuals.

Transcendence

In the final section Clarke brings it all together in some practical examples of how to take particular designs and mark them up using semantic XHTML and CSS. Of particular note is his extensive and creative use of lists for marking up particular content.

This section has the best explanation of relative and absolute positioning that I’ve read in any book on CSS. It’s really worth buying it just for that.

He finishes off the section with a look ahead to what CSS3 has to offer. I’m looking forward especially to the :nth-child pseudo-class which will make creating zebra-stripes on tables easy (currently available via hand-coding and jQuery), multiple background images for elements, and multicolumn layouts (currently available in Firefox via the -moz identifier).

Conclusion

I found this a really inspiring book which got the balance between code theory and practical design application right. I’d certainly recommend it to anyone who’s looking to improve their CSS coding or simply wanting inspiration about how to take their CSS to the next level.

Available on Amazon UK.

Posted in Accessibility, Books, CSS, General, Reviews, Usability, Web, XHTML | No Comments »

The Present Future

Thursday, August 16th, 2007

Book cover for The Present Future

While reading around the subject of Jesus saying:

“You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?”
(Luke 12: 56)

I picked up this book off my bookshelf: The Present Future: Six tough questions for the Church by Reggie McNeal.

Wow! Well there’s an author who doesn’t miss with any of his punches! It’s a book written with courage, insight, humour, honesty, a passion for Jesus Christ and a desire to see the Church move beyond its seeming current obsession with preserving the current status quo and moving towards being a powerful missionary movement: to face the future with imagination and courage.

While his focus is on North America, I’m quite sure that the picture McNeal paints in broad brushstrokes about the “current church culture in North America” can equally be said about the church here in the UK, if I understand correctly what the likes of John Drane have been writing about the situation this side of the Atlantic.

New reality #1: The collapse of the Church culture

Here’s what McNeal says on page one of chapter one:

The current church culture in North America is on life support. It is living off the work, money, and energy of previous generations from a previous world order. The plug will be pulled either when the money runs out (80 percent of money given to congregations comes from people aged fifty-five and older) or when the remaining three-fourths of a generation who are institutional loyalists die off or both.

Please don’t hear what I am not saying. The death of the church culture as we know it will not be the death of the church. The church Jesus founded is good; it is right. The church established by Jesus will survive until he returns. The imminent demise under discussion is the collapse of the unique culture in North America that has come to be called “church.” This church culture has become confused with biblical Christianity, both inside the church and out. In reality, the church culture in North America is a vestige of the original movement, an institutional expression of religion that is in part a civil religion and in part a club where religious people can hang out with other people whose politics, worldview, and lifestyle match theirs. As he hung on the cross Jesus probably never thought the impact of his sacrifice be reduced to an invitation for people to join and to support an institution.

Powerful, challenging but also exciting stuff. As fearful as I was about the Luke 12 passage a couple of days ago, I’m now going to look forward to putting this sermon together in the next couple of days.

You can read a little more on the Amazon UK website; you can currently buy the book on Amazon for as little as £6.15.

Posted in Books, General, God Project, Reviews, Sermon | 2 Comments »

I think I’m in a Douglas Coupland novel …

Thursday, August 9th, 2007

JPod - Meet Generation XBox

Last night I began to wonder if I really am an autonomous, free-thinking human-being and not just the creation of a 20th/21st-century literary genius.

Yesterday, late-afternoon, a few minutes before five, I checked my email. There was one from our Acting Director informing us that today (Thursday) Registry would be running progression. This basically means that all our students will be moving on a year in our databases, awaiting matriculation (that’s ‘enrolment’ if you’re a North American reading this).

To celebrate that fact I decided that today I’d listen to only progressive rock. So I cleared my MP3 playlist and started compiling a playlist of only prog artists (both prog rock and prog metal), amongst whom were:

  • A Perfect Circle
  • Amplifier
  • Faith No More
  • Fish
  • Frost
  • Genesis
  • Iron Maiden – A Matter of Life and Death
  • Marillion
  • Meshuggah
  • Opeth
  • Pink Floyd
  • Rush
  • Tool

I saved the list, shut down my computer, switched out the lights and left the office. Which is when I then began to question my ontological status.

It came as violently and unexpectedly as a Blue Screen of Death. I stopped walking and stared vacantly in front of me, deep in thought. Tourists bustled past me.

“I must be a character in a Douglas Coupland novel!” I muttered disappointedly to myself. “Like someone in Microserfs or JPod. That’s exactly the sort of thing they’d do.”

I don’t remember reading about myself in Microserfs, but as I’ve not finished JPod yet there is still time to read about myself there. Maybe I’m part of a new novel. Maybe I’m just part of some back story, or from a discarded JPod chapter.

Maybe it’s not a Douglas Coupland story I’m in. Maybe this story is much, much bigger. Maybe I’m the creation of an evening bigger genius, whose story started way before the 20th century was even thought of.

On that philosophical note, I’m off to work now to be progressive.

Posted in Books, Computer, General, Humour, Music, Reviews | No Comments »

Books of choice

Friday, April 27th, 2007

Books on my desk at work.

One of my friends, Kenny, always teases me that no matter where I go my desk always looks the same; in other words, it is always laid out the same way. And he’s right, but there’s a good reason for that: it works for me.

One of the parts of that system-that-works-for-me is a small collection of reference books that I always have to hand. At home they are on a shelf next to me, at work they are on my enormous desk.

At the moment these are my reference books of choice:

At the moment the least used of these are the SQL and PHP Pocket Reference guides, and the most used are the Definitive Guides for XHTML and CSS, and since I’m debugging code for a website launch Celebrating Common Prayer is also getting a look in once or twice!

My close-at-hand collection of books at home is completely different:

A shelf of books at home.

Mostly Scottish Episcopal Church books — Code of Canons, liturgy, and the Red Book (contacts) — a bible (NRSV) and Revised Common Lectionary, an English dictionary and thesaurus, a copy of Getting Things Done and two copies of the Visual Quickstart Guide for WordPress 2.

So now you know! What are your close-at-hand books of choice?

Posted in Books, Computer, General, God Project, Web | 12 Comments »

Roy Orbison in cling-film

Saturday, March 10th, 2007

A roll of cling film.

The telephone conversation began with an apology and ended with news of a new novel, about wrapping Roy Orbison in cling-film.

It was my cousin Alan and he’d called during the Powerpoint Edinburgh band rehearsal yesterday. He was meant to be visiting us in Anstruther today, but he’s has a bad cold for the last two weeks and needed instead to curl up in bed with a good book.

I understood, promised that we’d reschedule and left him to his good book.

That good book, it turned out, was Ulrich Haarburste’s Novel of Roy Orbison in Clingfilm by Ulrich Haarburste (Serapion Books, 2007) ISBN: 978-0-9554602-0-3.

If that sounds like just your cup-of-tea then you’ll be delighted to learn that there’s a website (called, predictably, Ulli’s Roy Orbison in Cling-film site) that contains a few of his early short stories, and that they made me cry with laughter. So much so that Jane had to come through to the study to make sure I was laughing and not weeping my poor heart out.

Here is an excerpt from story #1:

Roy Orbison walks inside my house and sits down on my couch. We talk urbanely of various issues of the day. Presently I say, ‘Perhaps you would like to see my cling-film?’

‘By all means.’ I cannot see his eyes through his trademark dark glasses and I have no idea if he is merely being polite or if he genuinely has an interest in cling-film.

I bring it from the kitchen, all the rolls of it. ‘I have a surprising amount of clingfilm,’ I say with a nervous laugh. Roy merely nods.

‘I estimate I must have nearly a kilometre in the kitchen alone.’

‘As much as that?’ He says in surprise. ‘So.’

‘Mind you, people do not realize how much is on each roll. I bet that with a single roll alone I could wrap you up entirely.’

Roy Orbison sits impassively like a monochrome Buddha. My palms are sweaty.

‘I will take that bet,’ says Roy. ‘If you succeed I will give you tickets to my new concert. If you fail I will take Jetta [Ulli's terrapin], as a lesson to you not to speak boastfully.’

I nod. ‘So then. If you will please to stand.’

Roy stands. ‘Commence.’

I start at the ankles and work up. I am like a spider binding him in my gossamer web. I do it tight with several layers. Soon Roy Orbison stands before me, completely wrapped in cling-film. The pleasure is unexampled.

‘You are completely wrapped in cling-film,’ I say.

‘You win the bet,’ says Roy, muffled. ‘Now unwrap me.’

‘Not for several hours.’

‘Ah.’

I cannot wait until I get my hands on this book, and allow my eyes to wander freely between the words. You can read the author’s description of the book on his Now you may read a novel of Roy Orbison in Cling-film page. It ends with

PS. Film and video game rights are still available

And as if by good fortune PC Plus magazine this month comes with a full copy of The Games Factory on DVD. Budding game writers commence!

Posted in Books, Family, General | 1 Comment »

The End of the Question Mark

Monday, December 11th, 2006

Cover for The End of the Question Mark

Still looking for that last minute Christmas present? Why not ask Any Question Answered (63336) if they know what you should get!

They might well recommend that you buy their new book called The End of the Question Mark by AQA 63336. Seemingly 3,501,423 question marks died in the making of this book.

The book is a collection of the best of the 3.5 million questions posed to AQA since it started in 2004. Questions such as:

  • would you rather be a sausage or an egg?
  • what’s the longest word in the world?
  • which language is older, english or dutch?
  • how many goals have been scored in every world cup?
  • when will i next have sex?
  • what colour is a turkey egg?
  • what is the worst smell in the world?
  • what year followed 1bc?
  • are there any weasels in ireland?
  • how many dots are in the opening screen of pacman (not including power pills)?

The book is fantastic because it answers the questions that you (the Great British — and abroadian — public) think are important. I love trivia, and I love this book.

Get it for a friend, get it for a family member, get it for yourself! I got it. Actually, I got a complementary copy from AQA — thanks Paul and Shannon! — but I’m definitely going to buy more copies to give away. This is the best book on trivia since … since … oh, I think I’m going to have to call AQA on 63336 to find out.

Posted in Books, General, Reviews | No Comments »

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