9.18.2001

If you are a site designer, work with CSS, and use a PC*, you should be using TopStyle. It's a terrific little program which makes creating and checking stylesheets brain-dead simple. I won't go into it's lengthy roster of virtues here, but I will mention that it allows you to choose your own compatibility levels - you've got a lot of folks using Netscape 4.x, it'll warn you about the things which will look weird, or will just flat out break. It's only $50 to register the program, but it is shareware, so you can try it first. I can't recommend it highly enough.

So why am I making a product endorsement all of a sudden? For one, because Nick Bradbury, creator of this little gem, just released a new version of the program, which is even better than the older versions, and Nick deserves wider exposure. More importantly, though, Nick and his wife have decided to donate all the money from September and October sales of TopStyle to the Red Cross. You know, it is one thing to do something like that in just an ordinary month, but to do it in a time period where you'll do a lot of your business for the year - a new release of the product - is pretty damned generous.

Incidentally, if you have been using TopStyle, but never bothered to register it, then this is a good chance to clear up your bad karma, and maybe score a little good karma at the same time. Just something to think about.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled angst-filled pissing and moaning.

*I have it on good authority from a Mac user that there isn't a stylesheet editor available for the Platform of the Gods anywhere near as good as TopStyle. Just thought I'd share that with you.

9.17.2001

And of course, now that I have a comment system which might encourage some of you to give me feedback on the site, the only things I have to say I can't really discuss. So it goes.

Incidentally, I should point out that the time I spent working on the comment system was spent modifying it to work more closely with the rest of Hidden City, not fixing it. Sneaker did a great job building it, and if you can use ASP on your site I highly recommend it, right out of the box (so to speak).

If you notice this site taking a little longer to load it is because of the comment counts. Every "count" on the page has to make a trip to the database to see how many comments are in there, before it can finish creating the page. This makes my poor little database unhappy, but it's just going to have to get over itself. If it gets too annoying let me know and I'll disable the counts, but I know that most people really like them.

9.16.2001

I've been wanting to find time to sort out my feelings on this week's tragedy, to write something on the subject. Unfortunately, time has been short; fortunately, Xkot said everything I would have said, and damned eloquently, too.

Well, that was a bigger project than I had anticipated. However, my perseverance has paid off, and there is now a "traditional" comment system on HC. I'm sure it'll need a little more tweaking, but it seems to be ready for action. It is based on the foundation of aspcomments, created by sneaker of sneaker.org. I've beaten it up pretty severely, though, to make it suit my needs, adding additional error checking, security, stylesheets, all that rot.

I'd also like to thank P! for being my tester for this. After ten hours staring at this thing, I didn't want to roll it out without someone else looking at it first; she gave it the green light. Go, girl!

So now, since I've spent an entire day off working on this thing, someone had better use it! Otherwise I'll cry, and trust me, you do not want to see that!

Oh, thank god it is a cool morning! It's a little overcast in Miami, but the temperature is actually bearable. I've been plugging away on a couple of Hidden City projects, finishing up three weeks of laundry, and humming Bjork's Hidden Place over and over. And yes, if I really loved you I would post the MP3 of the song, but I'll have to leave that to someone with more server space than I have right at the moment.

9.15.2001

Thank you, mecawilson, from the bottom of my heart.

An AIM exchange this morning:

xkot: Surfing the net and watching MST3K. The perfect life.
HddnCty: Yeah, pretty close to it.
xkot: Short of a beach in some tropical paradise.
HddnCty: Yeah... a cabana on a tropical beach with an endless supply of frosty beverages, lovely local maidens frolicking in the surf, and a gigabit wireless net connection.
xkot: Yes. That would be better.
HddnCty: Damn. Now today is looking pretty shabby in comparison. Damn you, Xkot!

Sometimes I am such a geek. At least I'm not alone in that.

So last night was spent cleaning up my e-mail a bit. As some of you may recall, I have had my share of e-mail problems this year, which has resulted in my precious e-mail being spread over a wide variety of mailboxes on various servers. Last night I decided it was time to consolidate it all.

And what a bear that was! I'm an infoholic, so I save damn near everything I get. Once I pulled everything in from the various servers I had over 8,000 saved messages, so it was time to begin the process of creating Eudora filters to put them in folders. Now that they are in folders I can safely ignore them for years to come! In this current system I have messages dating back to 1994 - why I would need to reference them I can't imagine, but one never knows. Better safe than sorry, and it isn't like bits take up a lot of space.

9.14.2001

Hey, I just noticed that I've got two more words in the Pseudodictionary: barney fifedom and dot-bum. But, to give credit where due, these words both originate with new friends met at the conference: barney fifedom comes from Allison, and dot-bum... well, I think it may have been Paul, but it may have been someone else. We were all pretty toasted by that time.

Wow, what an aggravating day. It's been an endless stream of petty grievances in the office. It's as if everyone is so overwhelmed by the stresses of the last few days that they are lashing out anywhere they can manage to grab a little power. All I have done today is smooth ruffled feathers, fix insignificant problems, and hide in my office. I'm sure things will get back to normal soon, as normal as they'll ever be, anyway.

In my office building they are finally instituting some rudimentary security procedures, like making everyone sign into the building in the morning. That's okay with me, because we've had problems before with homeless people getting in and wandering through the offices in the early morning hours. I hope this isn't going to be the start of something more draconian, but I'm not too worried. This company has a long history of doing things in half-measures, and never following through on ideas.

9.13.2001

I'm tired. I'm really, really tired. I really want a few days off, but now we have a tropical storm heading for Florida (which may end up becoming a hurricane), so I'll have to work in the company's emergency operations center this weekend. Damn, someone throw me a break, okay?

And as if that horseshit Nostradamus quote flying around wasn't bad enough, now we're getting the picture of Satan's face in the explosion. It's a good thing there are people with a sense of humor about it, or I'd be bugfuck crazy by now.

Greg Stolze: What is one to make of Microsoft? I'd known for a long time that software pirates could beat Microsoft's prices, but I'm now becoming convinced that the pirates can surpass them on reliability and service as well.

I agree with Mr Phancy - It's time for something light. So, in the interest of levity, I have posted about my "celebrity crushes" on Kyouki Weblog. Go and laugh, either with me or at me, I don't care which.