The Perfect Blog or The Randy Awards

I’m not a blog critic because a blog is a personal publication, it belongs to the author and if they desire to shoot their mouth (fingers?) off, spill the beans, write about how they got up at 6:30(, brushed their teeth, ate toast and drove to work in the usual traffic etc.), or pontificate they can. This blog is pretty diverse, you never know if you’re going to get "There’s Something About Abby," "Thou Shalt Laugh," or "StatTraq statistics." However, this blog does not have a blogroll (a list of blogs I read) simply because I have too many blogs that I read with a very wide range of social, political and religious views. Some of them push the limits for me with foul language periodically, some of them crack me up and I interupt Jessica in whatever she’s doing to read the post(s). With that in mind, I’d like to list off a few blogs I really think you should read [in alphabetical order], followed by a reason why (and in a few cases, some warnings).

Apropos of Something
This blog has to be the most consistenly funny, well written, creative blogs in my blogroll. Jess, the author/blog owner, never seems to run out of material for publishing from past goof-ups, self flagellation, and humorous quips about current events.

Dave Barry’s Blog
If you read anything I write and think it’s funny, chances are Dave Barry somehow influenced it. Dave is funny. His blog has funny links. Watch out for some dangerous links to content one should avoid, but usually the title or description of the link gives away that the content is NSFW.

meyerweb.com
Eric Meyer was one of my first ‘web heros,’ he is a well studied CSS and web development author as well as a sharp thinker. He and I often disagree on our politics and philosophy in the non-tech arena but that disagreement is never without me thinking further about whatever the topic may be (he surely doesn’t limit himself to posts about web development). Eric is a sharp guy whom I had the fortune to meet at SXSW and listen to his brief contribution to the panels there.

Nick Bradbury
Nick is the creator and (only) programmer of both TopStyle and FeedDemon. I had the honor of meeting Nick at SXSW as well. Nick and I have had a few very serious philosophical discussions by email and I’m impressed by his honesty and character. Nick’s blog is also full of interesting links and snakes. I should also note that Nick is the source of much of my traffic due to Banana Phone.

Photomatt.net
Matt is the lead developer on WordPress and so I hold a special place in my heart for him 🙂 Matt also seems to have the knack for finding great little secrets on the web. Links to new technologies, better ways to approach coding and the like. Matt and Eric were both involved in the creation of XFN. I met Matt at SXSW as well.

Surely You’re Not Serious
Trint is a funny guy. Trint is also a staunch Republican, so sometimes we get a little view into his mind from the not-so-funny side. However, even the not-so-funny side is pretty funny. Trint is also a great web developer, unfortunately you’ll just have to take my word for some of it because the source code is top secret.

And also, I’ve got a list of blogs that I’d like to see more from. Blogs that are good, but short on content due to family, work, family work or previous engagements.

Back To the User

User Interaction on the web is a critical area of study. Sometimes called UI, Usability and a number of other things this book is probably a good read for those working on web sites (not so focused on web applications). Back to the User (Buy it at Amazon.com) discusses the effects certain design patterns have on web surfers, how to conduct test, how not to conduct test and a slew of other useful things to help you design, layout and publish great web pages.

This book talks about things that would be difficult for me to implement as a one-man-show, but if I get a chance to work with a larger client this may be a possibility. If you’re in charge of a larger web site with a budget that allows it, do some user testing… but not until you’ve read this book.

Big Small Cup

The larger cups that we give Abby her milk in in the morning were dirty so I told Abby I’d have to give her a smaller cup. Jessica suggested I wash a larger cup (which had milk from the night before in it, so I declined for reasons of bacteria and not laziness). Abby’s response to Jessica was priceless, "It’s a small bigger cup, Mom."

Happy 25th Birthday Ed!

My brother Ed, a really great brother, is 25 today. Ed has achieved a lot more in life than I have in some respects. He’s just shy of two years younger than I and is already on his second home, he’s got a second child on the way… basically being second is a good thing in his life right now 😉 Ed’s a really tough, tender guy. He’s a security guard correctional officer at a prison and a fun husband and dad at home. More importantly than being my biological brother, he’s my spiritual brother as well, which is a very cool thing indeed.

I would share some really embarassing stories about him, but he’s bigger than me and would probably kick my butt 😉

Linux Lunacy

I’m trying to install Linux on several machines here at home. If it weren’t for Craig Kaes, I’d be at the funny farm pulling hair out of my already balding head. The upside is that as with all things, I can always re-install the OS as many times as I need. Linux, configuration issues aside, is really rather swift, I think that Microsoft best keep their eyes on the goal and not let up one bit or they might find themselves in a place of distress.

Chickens in Snow Bunny Suites

This morning we woke up to really strong winds, snow and the desire to go home.

So we did.

We’re home now, and this is good because it gives me the opportunity to bathe, sleep in my own bed, have Craig help me install Debian Linux on one of my machines. More later after I’ve had a chance to recouperate.

Gone for the Weekend

It’s a long weekend and we’re heading out of town for it. We’re going camping and that (most likely) means no bathing for two days and it also means sleeping with my daughter in the same tent. Yeah, that’s gonna work. I wasn’t going to bring coffee but as I type this I’m starting to get scared, I may need some after a night or three of being attacked by wild Abby’s and mosquitoes. Leave a comment as to what you’ll be doing so I can read it when I get home 🙂

Please approve: “God”

In what was a funny subject for an email message WordPress sent me an email asking me to approve God. No, not literally. An comment with key words in it triggered WordPress’ filter to ask me to approve the message rather than just publishing the garbage online. In this case it was good because someone had tried to leave a nasty comment on my post about God.

I am glad I don’t have the authority to approve God 🙂

Always Use

This years political elections have brought acronyms to the forefront for me. I’m used to technology acronyms (XML, CSS), I’m used to IM acronyms (LOL, BRB), and I’m used to government acronyms (FBI, CIA, SBC). I am not used to government rating acronyms, various lobbying group acronyms and frankly I’ve been known to mix up the ACLU with UCLA.

If web developers and designers would simply use <acronym title="Some Acronym">SA</acronym> tags then they might find it a lot easier for people to understand their online content as well as avoid complicated chartes with heavy footnoting. The example that drove me over the edge and caused me to write this article can be found at the National Journal web site which has an Almanac of American Politics. There I was reading up on John Kerry. Not because I wanted to vote for him, or didn’t but because I was checking out the facts reported on a piece of Pro-Bush propoganda. The propoganda said that he was the most liberal member of the Senate.

At the page about Kerry there is a chart that has more acronyms than I know what to do with. Worse than the acronyms is that they’re in HTML tables without using the <acronym> tags! for the lengthy list of politcal groups. You have to click on a link (above the table) to see an explanation of the table as well as a description of the groups. By using valid HTML markup they could have added a caption that described the table and then used the acronym tag to tell me what each acronym was for. To futher learn about the group they could have made the acronym a link that pointed to the group’s description data.

I recognize this could take a little more time in development, but the outcome would have been a potentially valid HTML table, an easier to understand chart and some data that would allow me to find out that John Kerry is indeed liberal. However, that particular chart did not have the data I was after, data that ranked Kerry in his liberal field of politicians. That sort of data would be really handy to have linked to near that chart. It was linked to, further down the page and so here I found that Kerry was the most liberal in his voting when compared last year.

Anyway, you got a little mix of politics with web standards, but that’s OK, last time you got religion and web standards 🙂 If you’re using PHP check out Matt‘s excellent acronym definer. In WordPress you can find the Acronym Plugin on the wiki.