The new year has started and, with it, my resolve to find time for this blog. Between keeping up with clients and trying to spend more time with the family, this site got put on the back burner. Also, I have to admit I was tired of writing it—a little bored with reading and writing, talking and thinking so much about CSS. I needed a break from it.
After several weeks of false starts and deadends, I've finally come up with what seems to be the best solution for displaying video on a web page. You can use a streaming server, but I had so many problems getting it to work that I finally gave up and decided to use http.
This blog has been quiet for a few weeks because I've just been too busy to write, and if I hadn't been, all I would have done is complain. Besides putting out fires and running around doing last minute changes to sites about to launch, I ran into the stickiest problem I've so far encountered in my short career as a web designer--and the problem had nothing to do with CSS.
It's hard to believe that a history of the early days of computing and (pre-Internet) networks could be exciting. You'd think a book about engineers would be about as thrilling as reading a calculus text. Yet in Where Wizards Stay Up Late, Hafner and Lyon have breathed life into a story about early computer geeks and their vision of a nationwide network. At times the book reads almost like a novel. Hafner is particularly good at characterization, and by the end you feel you almost know the major players, such as Paul Baran, Larry Roberts (the director and midwife of ARPANET), and the BBN engineers who created the first network.
One of the most difficult things I've encountered in CSS layouts is footers. They're hard to understand, and even when you do figure them out, that doesn't guarantee you're always going to know how to get them to behave.
No, really. It's true. You see, I've never mentioned this before because it's kind of embarrassing, but I'm a recovering DIYer. Yes, I know many experts say there's no cure—that, with only one whiff of varnish remover, some people are addicted for life. You get your hands on a stack of shiny new paint samples or a batch of fabric swatches, and the next thing you know you're glued to HGTV all day and clipping pictures out of House Beautiful.
The blog is back up after a few days of erratic behavior. I finally got MT v3.2 up and running, but I'm still working on the new templates and style sheets. Hopefully I've have them up in a few weeks when work calms down.
Every now and then, I get edged out of a computer and have to go looking for a new one. Last time, my kids got interested in computer games, and rather than fight them over Dora Explorer, I gave them my PC and bought this laptop. This time, I'm vying with football season. Apparently sports radio, 24/7 ESPN and the sports page don't cut it anymore. To be a true self-respecting fanatical sportsaholic you have to be able to sneak onto your wife's computer when she tucks the kids in bed and hang tough while she sighs, clicks her tongue, taps her fingers and repeats for the tenth time, "Are you done yet? I have to get back to work."