"Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event" ... Oscar Wilde
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27 July 2008, 12:28
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OH Canada Day ... Eh!!!
1 July 2008, 20:41
1st July 2008 and Canada is 141 years old and our $ is better than the Greenback. So here is to the best place in the world to live, even if we have to deal with provincial bickering. The sun is setting and soon the fireworks begin.
Emily & me … showing our patriotism
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Word of the Day
29 June 2008, 06:37
Nescient (adjective)
Pronunciation: [‘ne-shent, ‘ne-si-yênt]
Definition: (1) Ignorant, lacking knowledge; (2) agnostic, believing that man is incapable of understanding the nature of the universe.
Usage: “Nescient” has few relatives. The noun from it is “nescience” while “nesciently” is the adverb. It has a cousin, “nescious,” with the same meaning, which is related to “nice” (see Etymology). It is distantly related to nescio “a claim of ignorance, of not knowning,” from the Latin word nescio “I don’t know.” This word is a useful noun for our times: “US courtrooms today resound with the nescios of corporate executives squirming on the witness stand.”
Suggested Usage: Occasionally you may wish to speak your mind without wanting it to be understood. “I think your comment reflects a profound nescience of the problem, Slobodan,” might even get you a nod of gratitude from the target of your insult. Places do exist, by the way, where nescience is not at all out of place, “Mr. Chips’s heart tightened ever so slightly before yet another sea of nescient freshman faces in the auditorium.”
Etymology: Today’s word is a borrowing from Latin “nesciens,” the present participle of nescire “to be ignorant,” derived from ne- “not” + scire “to know.” The Latin word belonged to a family that included “nescius,” borrowed into English as nescious (see Usage). In Old French, the same word was reduced to “nise” and was borrowed into Old English as “nice,” meaning “foolish, silly,” a meaning that inexplicably migrated to what it is today.
–Dr. Language, YourDictionary.com
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IE8 & Version Targeting
31 January 2008, 21:06
It all began, well I read it there first, on A List Apart – No.#251 …
The following is from the Zeldman himself … Jeffrey Zeldman said on January 23rd, 2008 at 7:02 am:
No less an authority than PPK will be writing about the consequences for DOM scripting in an upcoming issue of A List Apart.
The onus should be on the people who are doing things the ‘wrong’ way to take that extra step
But many won’t; for them, IE7 behavior makes sense as a default (since they did at least test in IE7).
I co-founded and for several key years led the group that got standards in our browsers and persuaded designers to learn to use them.
I publish the magazine that has long championed standards-based development.
I wrote the book that created standards-based design as a category, shaking up publishing as well as web development.
I’m well aware that it will be a better world when every developer creates semantic, accessible websites. I’ve written and published and lectured all over to try to bring about that outcome.
I also know that we’re not there yet.
And sites “breaking” (suddenly no longer displaying or behaving correctly with the introduction of a new browser) won’t magically get us there. Whether Microsoft follows through on version targeting or not is irrelevant to the goal of educating web developers about standards. A “broken” site won’t lead masses of developers to become educated about standards. That argument – that the default should be to break the site – doesn’t hold up, because it assumes that developers will do the right thing.
Many just won’t.
This doesn’t mean we stop putting educational materials out there. It doesn’t mean we stop trying to persuade our colleagues that standards and accessibility are in their interest.
It means we don’t ignore the fact of widespread developer ignorance of standards-based design.
It means, if the default Microsoft proposes helps mitigate the negative effects of widespread developer ignorance of standards-based design, we at least consider the possibility that Microsoft may know more about standards-unaware developers than we do, and they may have a point.
Developers who want the default behavior to be latest can opt in via “edge.”
The scenario Microsoft seems to have had in mind is more probable than the one Jeremy Keith raises. That a developer will want IE8 to behave like Firefox, Opera, and Safari where generated content is concerned, but won’t know to write the meta element that IE8 requires to behave like IE8, is far less likely than the scenario of the standards-ignorant developer not knowing or caring about any of this, and being shocked when his site goes blooey in IE8.
Statistically alone, it makes more sense to protect the ignorant (and their clients) from themselves and to ask the educated to do a little extra than to expect the ignorant, who already don’t do enough, to magically gain knowledge and skill and do more.
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Bye Bye Minou
24 January 2008, 17:44
Do I say happy birthday … she would have been 44 today … you are a great spirit guide … let the journey continue … bye Judith
Tag I am it … for now …
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Chicken Supper
19 January 2008, 11:47
Just put a chicken in the oven, it was supposed to be our Sunday supper, but since I decided to fix that very small leak I found in the shut-off under the kitchen sink and then decided to just see if I could get the valve-stem at Crappy Tire, and after ½ hour picking one that sort of resembled the one in my hand and getting it home and taking out the old one … putting in the new one and finding out the leak was also in the new one, so it must be something in the actual housing itself, I decided to do it right and get those twist on-off valves for both the cold and hot, so off to Crappy (Mexican, she calls it) Tire, since it is only a 10 minute drive away, to get all the supplies … low and behold everything except the solder & flux, I was sure getting fluxxed, so the decision to get on the highway out to the blip, i.e. Home Depot and all the other 10,000 MEGA Stores led me back to my new home with gifts in hand to fix this small minor problem that just wringing out a rag once a day could of done it, but NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO … torch in hand and the fire/heat shield in place, he wielded the torch & flux and jeez he almost forgot to go down and find the 4 or 7 or well now why not shut off the main valve where the water comes into the house and then back up to the job at hand, you know, that 15 minute job that got started 3 hours ago and finally gets done around 3 hours later as he finally gets that last pin-hole leak fixed, so the chicken rested restfully for another night in the fridge … UNTIL NOW …
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Happy Merry 2008
18 January 2008, 10:55
So where oh where have I been … I have been to Halifax to visit the Queen, well sort of. It is a very English feeling city for the capital of Nuevo Scotland. I think Dougan would agree. Anyway, I have made the decision to move here and create a new life.
My new house and it is not yellow, but I have a window upstairs to look outside from …
Yes I have invested in a cute, no let me say ‘quaint’ little house that I am finally getting the boxes out of. You know the stuff that was moved here by professionals from NB. If you really think you need something … take everything you have, put it in boxes, move the boxes around then as you need something (lets say towels, as an example), then open that box and take out what you need. After a month see how much stuff you thought you needed is still in a box.
The view from up here to down there and out there … a ways away …
Yes, we have snow in Halifax Bill, well not really … by Moncton standards, thanks for asking. And speaking of Global Warming, it was raining for Christmas – past. Not much time for getting a tree & stuff, but children like that and since they were here, I needed to accomodate. Like my tree, I really did spray-paint it silver & white … it was so much fun I may do it again next year, even though flourescent orange would look nice with the BLUE lights … it is such a nice blue, eh?
Happy Merry X-Mas … Nice BLUE … Yes it really is a birch
Tag you’re it !!!
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