CSS will never make tables go away. WYSIWYG development tools will not produce perfect code in the near future. Possibly never. Clients don’t give a crap about any of this, and only want to know that the site looks correct and works in their browser and the browser of anyone attempting to give them money. Period. End of story. If hacked code gives them what they want, they give us money. If pure, compliant code doesn’t act the same in all browsers (and it doesn’t) they will take their money and give it to someone else. Again, end of story.

Another thing - I’ve been noticing a trend in the CSS and webdesign discussion boards to bash the new breed of CSS only layouts as cookie cutter-ish and boring. And I have to admit, the *pure* CSS layouts aren’t moving too far from ALA, Blue Robot, and
Glish. However, when combined with tables and frames (horrors!) you end up with some very nice looking, pretty flexible sites. Evolt comes to mind. A lot of folks are jumping on the idea that suddenly, we have to make the decision to either use CSS for *everything* (formatting, effects, positioning) or chuck it out completely, ’cause the WYSIWYG editors won’t work well with it.

Just ’cause you discovered acrylics, does that mean you have to turn your back forever on oils and watercolors?

I like a mixed media approach, myself.

And on the subject of “boring, cookie cutter CSS sites” - I don’t think they’re boring at all. Text is important on these sites. I like that. Formatting and layout become secondary to the actual words on the page. Why should this be such a bad thing?

Neil Gaiman has a blog. Very cool.

Fighting the signal to noise ratio is netsurfer digest - and they seem to be doing a good job.

Handspring’s planning on moving away from the Springboard add in slot. That may spell death for Bill’s Pocket Brain/Batphone. (Visor Prisim with a cell phone attachment)

Industry says ho-hum to Netscape suit
“High-tech industry lobbyists issued a collective yawn after Netscape Communications filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Microsoft claiming the software giant’s business practices crushed the upstart’s browser.” Ho hum indeed. It’s dead, and the corpse is starting to smell.

Look at this - Bloggus Caesari. An educational weblog erm… written by Julius Ceasear. I am very impressed.

Neighbor A has a horse stable and spreads manure on their field. Neighbor B dislikes the scent and wants it to stop, regardless of how this would affect neighbor A’s life, buisness, and livelihood.

Why does this interest me? Well, the story is from my old hometown newspaper, which I check up on online now and then ’cause I miss living there. Why am I writing this? ‘Cause I lived for 13 years next to a field that had manure spread on it every spring and you know what? If you wanna live out in the country, there are some things you just gotta deal with. You can’t have all the happy, picturesque, lovin’ the nature vibes without dealing with the reality that you live near actual, functional, down and dirty *farms*.

Personally, I think farms are wonderfull and beautiful. They are also a lot of hard work and yup - they got odors. If neighbor B is unwilling to deal wih this, they should look around for a place which is more picturesque and less real. Why am I so upset? Because in the last 20 years real, functional farms in Sussex county have been going the way of the dodo. Farmers die and the kids don’t want to continue the buisness, bad economy forces some to fold, selling off acerage for subdivisions is more profitable… etc….

I have watched fields and pastures turned into surburban tracts and it shreds my heart every time I go home. And then the middle class twanks who move in want their nature *sanitized*?

Angry now.

Just in case you thought that religous tolerance and education was doing some good, here ya go. Damm. Damm and damm. Uneducated, backwater idiots.

It’s snowing again - which I find is damn hypnotic. Must not look at windows….. must work and look productive. Grrr….

The Fast and the Furious cost $38 million to make. It grossed $40.1 M on its opening weekend. A third sentence explaining why a sequel is coming is therefore unnecessary.
-from Coming Attractions.

Currently listening to White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane and King Henry by Steeleye Span. Yes, it is a very wierd combo. But it’s making my toes tap and keeping me from killing people. That’s a good thing, right?

One of the things that has been nagging me about this blog. It’s in a public forum. And I censor myself to an extent, because of this. To quote Di Tregarde (Mercerdes Lackey writing before she got a)well known, and b)boring.) “If I wrote about what I actually know, people could get hurt.” This might be a paraphrase. My (second) copy of Children of the Night dissapared with one of our longer term houseguests. Haven’t got around to picking up another copy. It seems to be the one book I can’t keep in my possession. The first copy dissapaeared september of my freshman year of college. Lent it to a guy who promptly got his butt expelled. Never saw him or the book again.

But back to the not writing everything that’s in my head deal. I have no idea who reads this (lack of feedback… hint hint) - and there are things that not everyone in the world needs to know. Or should know. About me. About others. So there’s generally more in my head than gets written here. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.

From the NY Times:
In other developments:
In Britain, The Times newspaper reported Monday that at least six British Muslims suspected of links with Al-Qaida or the Taliban will be sent to Cuba for interrogation at a U.S. camp for prisoners taken in Afghanistan.

Full story from the London Times.

Why does none of this make me feel better?

But I’d like to say that for the entire weekend, I didn’t worry about any of this. The insanity that is the rest of the world was happily ignored for one day of slacking off and one day of snuggling. Damn near one whole day of snuggling. Sigh. Of course, this means that I ignored all the housework. Gah. I woke up to a pile of dishes staring at me and even now they wait for my return home. I am haunted by chores. Yuck.

My cat has often has a need to wake me up at 5:30. Sometimes, this just doesn’t work for me, so I thought I had a good solution this morning. Tumble blearly out of bed. Grab cat. Lock cat in shower stall. No more noise, and I fall back asleep for about 45 miniutes. Then Bill’s alarm goes off. I ask him to close the bedroom door so when he lets the cat out of the bathroom, I don’t get another dose of psycho kitty. Well, I think I said something to that effect. It might have been a little garbled, me not being at my communicative best at 7-ish. So Bill closes the door, but doesn’t realize there’s a cat locked in the shower. He turns on the water. I hear several thumps, an angry yowl, and one suprised “yeahhhgrh” from Bill. Bill doesn’t like suprises in the morning. The cat doesn’t like being damp in the morning. This would all be so much easier if our cats weren’t morning people.