RKNet Blog... Thing

Day one was fraught with challenges, up to and including having trouble finding the venue. It took a lot of wandering around, a phone call, and I think two concierge desk stops to finally figure out that the Copley Plaza Marriott was in fact through the Copley Plaza Westin and the attached mall. That said, on with the notes.

Session 1: Understanding Web Design - Jeffrey Zeldman

• Missed this session entirely. :(

Session 2: Lessons of CSS Frameworks - Eric Meyer

• Missed over half of this session. :( I blame Mass traffic.
• Hits on server vs. File size. The more hits to the server, the slower the load times. File size isn’t nearly as much of an issue.
• IE(6) does not cache 2nd tier stylesheets. (stylesheets linked from within other stylesheets)
• IE6 wants nothing to do with your fancy link styling. Don’t rely on it to convey critical information if you think you’ll have a significant amount of IE6 visitors. (Know your audience!)
• Mobile phones probably can’t handle your stylesheet (iPhone notably excepted from this guideline).
• create a grid or layout background to use for debugging.
• Create a debugging stylesheet that replaces more subtle elements with large, bold colors to see exactly how your major elements line up.
• Set default colors in the body of the document to override any CSS weirdness or absence.
• Try to avoid measurements in pixels. Percentage or EM will provide better usability and cross-browser support.
• Create a framework file. This is a totally empty stylesheet, containing only elements, classes and ids, as well as comments explaining the general purpose of each. This provides the framework for others to understand your work, and gives you a blank to start from in future work.
• Maintain clean, logical naming conventions. Don’t use .RedBigText use .Header or .CallToAction. This way if you have to make this class perform a function other than red, big text you can make those changes while maintaining your markup.

Session 3: Good Design Ain’t Easy - Jason Santa Maria (turned 30! Happy Birthday!)

• Look to be different. Be familiar with popular box models & learn what you can do to separate yourself from them.
• Print != the web. (!= is does not equal for those who aren’t familiar) Therefore, instead of innovating based on standards of print, we must look to usability standards and concepts to build a better (mousetrap) website.
• Design reinforces your message.
• Design fills in where content leaves off to create impressions.
• Referenced the storytelling power of a mostly visual chart of Napoleon’s progress.
• Pacing must be capable of including all pertinent info. Editor’s Note: I don’t remember what I meant by this note.
• Design must account for flexibility, changes, functions
• Design must be able to demonstrate depth, or give the visitor confidence that they can navigate comfortably.
• Design for your audience, not just to fit your box model.
• Take advantage of the medium, learn to apply the tech to its fullest.
• Plan before you do, and make stylesheets accordingly flexible
• Level of design intricacy hinges largely on the type of content it is meant to showcase and support.
• “Design can’t not communicate.” - David Carson, Helvetica
• The Golden Rule or other ratio is a handy reference for balancing a box model.
• Links:
• A Brief Message
• Fray
• Principles of Beautiful Web Design
• No One Belongs Here More Than You
• We Tell Stories
• “You can have it in any color you want, as long as it’s black.” - Henry Ford regarding the Model T
• Art direction should apply to the web also.
• Evaluate the saclability of unique content art direction (i.e. serious differences between pages, breaking from one standard template between pages).
• Marry your design to your code.

Session 4: Web Application Hierarchy - Luke Wroblewski

• You have approximately 1.6 seconds to make an impression on a first time visitor.
• References Steve Krug’s excellent book Don’t Make Me Think in regards to illustrating how we use the web. We don’t read. We track around the web looking for the next thing to get us to our intended informational goal.
• Great presentation on the web is comprised of a balance between information and emotion, or Visual Organization and Personality.
• Organize things in ways people can relate to. For example, organizing information in a customer lookup system like a rolodex.
• What’s front and center is critical
• Presentation should follow desired function
• Downplay non-critical information
• Create context by applying contrast, placement and seperation
• Consider the color scheme. Contrasting colors attract attention.
• Make uniquely important items distinct from the remainder of the page.
• Focus on your use of labels, whitespace, and the scanability of your page.
• Proximity of items, similarity of items, and pattern of items dictate how noticable they are.
• The more differences between neighboring items, the higher the contrast and the more likely a visitor is to focus on it.
• Orchestrate the distribution of visual weight (what’s most noticable to what’s least noticable) to influence user experience.
• Avoid too many “look at me!” items as it creates confusion.
• Avoid too few “look at me!” items as it leads to disinterest
• Information should not be distributed via firehose
• Be aware of how people access and use your site. Or how it is intended to be used at least. These factors inform how the hierarchy of information should be structured.
• Consider how people find you and what you want them to do when they get there.
• People come to your site for some kind of content. Don’t let the overhead (structural elements of your website, other navigation, etc) overwhelm that content. Give the people what they want.
• Visually prioritize the actions you want or need people to take
• Strive for a clear, logical flow of information using visual cues and standardization of content. (Hint: Centering text is very unhelpful when trying to achieve this logical flow.
• Consider your overall signal to noise ratio when displaying lots of information. Too much contrast and the data gets overwhelmed. Too little and the data itself is overwhelming.
• Luke’s site: Lukew.com

And then it was lunchtime! Will talk more about that when I get around to my travel log post. I’ll have the rest of day one in a seperate post, so keep your eyes open, and if you aren’t already subscribed to the RSS feed, by all means hit the GIANT PURPLE BOX at the top of the site to do so. :)

I think I’ve been listening to too much Röyksopp lately. For context, I’ve found myself highly enamored of a certain track off their album The Understanding called “What Else Is There?“. It features vocals provided by Karin Dreijer Andersson from an electronica duo called The Knife (whose album Silent Shout has also been on repeat a lot for me) and I have fallen in love with her unique and expressive voice.

That being said, on the with the description. I was in this housing area, all cheap houses, run down and small. Looking on from a short distance, I saw a huge explosion rip through 3 or 4 of the buildings, seemingly at random. I looked to my companions (who defy description right now, just some people, I can’t remember) and ran towards the damage. I’ve dreamt almost this same thing before, I know it. Sudden fire in run down houses, or an explosion followed by fire. It was chewing up the old, dry buildings.

Then it all reset. Same place, no explosion, none of that. I rode in the mind of someone sneaking through these projects, tiptoeing by back doors and noticing as they all swung open by themselves. Screen doors, all, and cats of different kinds peering out from kitchens or living rooms. Sometimes there were people within, all walking away, not noticing that the door was open. The creeping person was a thief and although no entry was made into any of these houses, the big black bag s/he carried filled up. A small rip showed a blue and white striped piece of terry cloth sticking out. Perhaps the dishes wrapped in the towel to prevent noise? Who knows?

Finally coming to an unremarkable house near the end of the rows, the thief enters and discovers an old man and a fluffy white cat. There’s a moment of mutual surprise, then the cat makes a mad dash for the open door, and the thief follows, trying to track it down through these houses while still remaining silent and unseen, still carrying the full bag. The cat dashes under buildings built off the ground, and finally the thief is able to cut it off at an awkward turn near a wall and snatches the beast up, dragging it back to its master.

There’s a short conversation after that, and the old man says he’s not going to rat out the thief. The thief cautions that there may be some dangerous activity.

Cut to a group of about five or six people. Storm clouds are high, thready, and getting darker, turning the sky to a psilocybin vision of broadly patterned marble. The people are holding onto what appears to be the female end of extention cords, which are all tangled together and tied to a central location, looking to be pipes coming out of one of the houses. They stretch the cords into the road, fanning out in an uneven manner over about a 180° area. A stroke of lightning comes down slowly, almost like a weighted streamer: straight down, but wavering in the air. It is viewed from the eyes of one of the group before it hits them. The power goes through the cords and infuses the others. One by one they begin shouting, calling down the lightning on themselves, despite the presence of others on the scene insisting they stop (but too afraid to act).

There was only one left, hesitant, stupid, afraid of the lightning. The others had disappeared, disintegrated or wandered off or something. The one left walked away. It may have come back to the explosion at that point but I don’t recall.

Other points which are unclear to me now:

• Pulling a large revolver on someone who wanted to come into a house where I lived. It was large and dull and akward.
• Yelling and throwing things at a group of young, grinning hooligans who heaped things in the middle of the yard and doused it in gasoline, intending to set fire to the whole property
• Counciling a very angry young man, sharing tales with him. We were both in Civil War era dress. I slowly went from persuading him to stay, to comforting, to seducing. Anything to distract him from this blind fury.
• A master/husband type figure appearing during the “seduction” phase, unperturbed by the scenario.

Also, for your convenience here are the lyrics to “What Else Is There?”

It was me on that road
But you couldn’t see me
Too many lights out, but nowhere near here

It was me on that road
Still you couldn’t see me
And then flashlights and explosions

Roads end getting nearer
We cover distance but not together

I am the storm I an the wonder
And the flashlights nightmares
And sudden explosions

I don’t know what more to ask for
I was given just one wish

It’s about you and the sun
A morning run
The story of my maker
What I have and what I ache for

I’ve got a golden ear
I cut and I spear
And what else is there

Roads and getting nearer
We cover distance still not together

If I am the storm if I am the wonder
Will I have a flashlights nightmares
And sudden explosions

There’s no room where I can go and
You?ve got secrets too

I don’t know what more to ask for
I was given just one wish

Note: These are just what I found online, I know there is a verse or two missing and maybe a few lines wrong. Care to help me flesh that out?

One look at our vending machines will tell you that office-dwelling drones like Your Humble Narrator are always seeking out exotic drinkable liquids. Especially if said liquids are reputed to be imbued with energizing or stupefying properties. Maybe it’s the condition of our imprisonment, which in this office typically involves non-ergonomic, castoff cubicles, brutally punishing chairs, and cthonic food from the grim eateries which dot the surrounding wasteland (these bleak offerings might make Franz Kafka shrug resignedly and reach for a fork, but personally they make me bemoan the lack of a 24-hour Korean restaurant in the immediate vicinity). Maybe it’s the psychological/economic bondage of a modern business environment, wherein failure is not an option and the creature comforts are best described as “hit-or-miss”. Maybe it’s the high frustration level, combined with lack of sleep (due to work-related worries) which can make us rage like fearsome goetic demons forced to watch Legally Blonde 2.

In any case, even if one just examines the elaborate cultural rituals associated with (for instance) shotgunning sugar-free Red Bull (I’ll try to post about this in the future) or popping down to the local sports bar for a bottom-shelf Long Island iced tea (referred to by us cognoscenti as an “ether and sour mix” because of its unusual psychotogenic properties which cannot be individually ascribed to any of its constituent boozes)… it’s clear that there’s some kind of collective drinks-based coping behavior which spans the nerd-steppenwolf demographic and, unpredictably, inches insidiously into the repertoire of fairly respectable Liberal Arts majors. My personal theory is that these behaviors start out as pathological compulsions, until they are copied by at least one other person, whereby they attain official meme-hood, which in turn makes the progenitor feel justified, so he/she repeats the action, and then the cycle self-perpetuates until the meme gets old, the participants die/get fired, or until the required ingredients become exhausted.

Take for example, the practice of dropping a teabag into a hot cup of coffee.

This loathsome act is a true last-ditch effort. The participants are so jaded in their exhaustion, this is the final frontier, the nadir, the Last Judgment. Whether our nights are spent boozing it up or writing code until the wee hours, the effect is astonishingly similar. Once-human organisms are now reduced to soulless husks, caricatures of our former selves. In this degraded condition, we crave stimulus, which, at this advanced stage, can only be brought about by a handful of questionable exercise stimulants, washed down with an overpriced canister of phenylalanine-rich chemical ooze.

Such was our Monday mindset when, today, my staunch acolyte and I devised a new and gruesome sacrament. By steeping a teabag in a cup of infernally steaming coffee, our desire was to harness the clarity and energy of the strong black tea, tempered with the anxiety and panic of the coffee. The result was a murky liquid, which looked a lot like that black stuff which engulfed James Brolin toward the end of The Amityville Horror. Perhaps most singular was the aftertaste, a bitter, lingering tang of tannins. It is testament to my own slow, sad deterioration that I found the mixture to be not wholly unpleasant. Perhaps most disturbing is the understanding that I might voluntarily drink this again.

Below is a transcript of our findings:
(02:13:57 PM) me: dude this actually isn’t as awful as I thought it would be
(02:14:16 PM) XXXXX: its almost good
(02:14:25 PM) me: for real
(02:14:32 PM) me: I already feel more jacked up
(02:15:08 PM) XXXXX: then we should call it jack bauer’s tea bag
(02:15:28 PM) me: hahahahahah
(02:15:58 PM) me: I was going to suggest we could call it “Nightside of Eden” - I like yours better
(02:16:27 PM) XXXXX: well yours is for sure more poetic
(02:17:34 PM) me: “chai-flavored roundhouse kick to the taint”
(02:18:07 PM) XXXXX: thats it!
(02:18:16 PM) XXXXX: thats the taste in my mouth exactly!
(02:18:32 PM) me: “the sweat from Charles Bronson’s brow”
(02:18:57 PM) me: “Paul Schaeffer’s smarm in a cup”
(02:18:57 PM) XXXXX: strained through kurt russels pubes
(02:19:02 PM) me: hahahah

I really hope this is blown out of proportion, no pun intended, because otherwise it’s rather creepy.

Most especially the picture. That woman has less body fat on her now in total than I did at the ripe old age of 10, I’d wager. What’s she got to lose? Why take the desire to be in better overall shape in a direction like “I want to be skinny” when she clearly already is. That implies to me that she sees herself as somehow not good enough, and that seems really disheartening.

I’m all for people finding their own happiness. I’ll even let the pro-ana people be, but I won’t lie that I find it disgusting.

I suppose the underlying message here is to help people actually be healthier, which typically does involve loss of body fat, but this approach is seriously fubar.

Oh Wonder Woman, with your silly, patriotic outfit, and your invisible jet, and your cuffs and lasso, what an icon you are!

Jamar Nicholas, comic artist and traditionally-trained animator, has set about the task of collecting artists’ renditions of this comic book momma as big, bold, and beautiful as possible. So far I feel he’s done a great job. The art ranges from somewhat abstract to highly detailed. Each artist puts a new, amusing, adorable, or sensual spin to the concept of “fat Wonder Woman”.

Far from insulting, I find this to be encouraging and positive. Women who are overweight are often cast as matrons, villanesses, or as irritating. Depicting Wonder Woman as overweight - or at least at a weight other than svelte - departs from that stereotype. I would argue that it serves to remind artists and authors that body type does not dictate personality. It can set limits to physical ability at times, but I don’t believe body type to be a key factor in attitude.

Above and beyond any social debates on what weight means or does not mean when it comes to stereotyping women, this is a really neat blog full of great art and artists.

I was just sifting through some of my recently viewed Wikipedia links and thought I’d share a few.

Battle of Bywater - Tolkien related, spoilers if you haven’t already religiously read the trilogy nine million times. Watching the movies a bunch doesn’t count with this.

Ahmet Zappa - More interesting than I’d originally assumed.

The Polyphemus moth - I spent hours reading about how to raise these things. It’s really very interesting. I think I got to some really good photos of caterpillars through one one of the links provided as a source on that article.

Deming, NM - This is where I was born in 1982.

Idries Shah - Modern Sufist, prolific author, founder of Octagon Press, and open scholar of the more esoteric and/or occult studies.

Kinkajou - I think I love you.
That’s all there is, there ain’t no more.

I technically speaking didn't wear a bra today! *GASP* Given my overall build, it's typically fairly impractical for me to go without a bra and also without attracting unnecessary attention or getting annoyed.
However, the last few days have left me with aches and pains in my back and ribs, and I believe it has to do with weight gain coupled with a poorly fitted bra.
So today as an alternative I wore a tanktop with one of those “shelf bra” type things in it. I typically don't trust that type of garment any further than I can throw it (i.e. not far), but today has worked out fairly well. I threw a button down over the tank, and I've been comfortable and devoid of awkward attention all day. Although the “awkward attention” factor definitely hinges on how much I focus on whether or not I should feel awkward. Well, I haven't really thought about it all that much all day, and everything has gone swimmingly.
I don't have stomach pains, rib pains, back pains, general discomfort, and I haven't had to fuck with my bra straps all day.
They haven't made the shelf bra top yet that can truly, properly contain my extreme boobage, but this one I got from Express for Christmas comes pretty close to perfect.
Thank goodness, too, because with the rampant stresses and my general lack of personal care a break on some level was more than necessary.
With that, I say unto you Ladies of Larger Bust: Try out a shelf tank! Your body will thank you for it.

http://thesurrealist.co.uk/space?user=giania
My space adventure is pretty hilarious, as is my dungeon adventure!
http://thesurrealist.co.uk/dungeon?user=giania

I love stuff like this. Little snippets of art and generalized text. Sometimes luck of the draw comes up with the most interesting things. I gotta say I could definitely use some pampering and extravagance. Dying my hair wasn't really much of a life-changing experience. I need a freaking vacation, or a bucket of cold water to the face. Something to shake me up out of my recent icky patterns. Something to reduce the number of nightmares I've been having recently would be nice also.