Beyond Caffeine

I’ve been asked a few times over the years since I started writing this blog, why I decided to call it ‘Beyond Caffeine’ instead of … ‘The Website Style Blog’ or some other close connection to the main site.

The short answer is simple: I didn’t feel like calling it that.

The long version is a bit more intricate, and includes a somewhat eccentric fixation on coffee.

NOTE: If you’re not in the mood for a slightly musing and off-topic post, I suggest you stop now and read another article on the blog.

I had my first cup of coffee when I was about 6 years old - it was a latte, with more milk than anything else and plenty of sugar - pretty much the same as drinking a coffee flavored milk instead of chocolate milk. But in spite of the fact that there was very little coffee in it, I loved the unique taste instantly, and began asking for that more regularly. Of course, as time went on I started to make my own with a decreasing amount of milk as the years past.

Counting back years based on how I made my coffee is starting to sound a bit like T.S. Eliot when he said:

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

But that’s only the background on my initial love for coffee, because years later it would mesh in perfect harmony with my love for technology. When I got into technology as a hobby and then a career, it was most certainly acceptable (perhaps even expected) for me to be a caffeine junkie (whether coffee or soda).

Back somewhere around late high school and early college… with late nights, lots of studying and hanging out with friends, drinking coffee became (for my so-called ‘yuppie-tech generation’) a combination of personal like, a need to stay awake until I chose to go to sleep, and also a social activity. My friends and I didn’t go to bars or clubs - we went to coffee houses. We spent hours pouring over ideas, thoughts, and random other things while enjoying an endless cup of coffee.

After years of that practice, I started to relish the habit of sitting down with a cup of coffee and thinking. It’s almost a meditiative thing in many ways. When you have developed a extremely strong tolerance to coffee, it’s not necessarily just about drinking coffee because your body won’t function without it (although that’s part of it). There is another aspect, for someone who truly enjoys something, to turn it into a very contemplative act. Whether it’s the ritual of drinking coffee at a quiet table in the morning, or something else, it can be a time to think while you engage in something you enjoy.

That is what comes when you move beyond the caffeine, when you aren’t drinking something, but are actually taking part in a ritualistic behavior that allows you to relax and let your mind work.

One of the founding fathers of realism, Honore de Balzac, once said:

When we drink coffee, ideas march in like the army.

I cannot agree more. I’ve had some of my most interesting and inspiring technology business ideas while sitting on my back porch, relaxed and sipping on a cup of coffee.

It doesn’t have to be coffee for all people, and I’m not suggesting to others that they develop an addiction to coffee so that they can ‘gain clarity of thought’ or whatnot. I’m simply saying that the idea of creating some simple, monotonous ritual, something that takes no actual thought but that you enjoy, can provide a period of ‘clear’ time for you. When your mind can wander while you do something pleasant, and perhaps… you’ll have some inspiration.

I think that balanced, relaxed, and contemplative few minutes is essential to staying sane in the midst of a world that is focused on time and how quickly something can be done. I believe that it’s a good practice and a pleasant task to set for yourself. You know, Bertrand Russell said once…

To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.

Perhaps I named it Beyond Caffeine because maintaining that ‘level’ is what I’m aiming for.

If you’d like to see some of the beautiful meditative coffee photos that I’ve added to my SXU lightbox, feel free to take a look - you’ll be seeing them on here soon anyway

~Nicole

My birthday is coming up so I am thinking about the past a bit lately, and TechCrunch reminded me yesterday of this great video that came out a while back.

(Apparently it was removed for a period of time pending photo permission from some people in the video. You can find the links on the TechCrunch site if you want to know more.)

I love this video.

I was in tech through the first bubble, through the massive market down-swing (pseudo crash) after 911, and I think I have a pretty good grasp as to what being in tech really means. It really takes a certain kind of person to persist in the tech industry.

Tech is like living on the edge of a cliff. You get to experience all sorts of really cool things, you get to create those cool things!, but when the ground rumbles, you have a good chance of toppling right off the edge of that cliff. People who belong in tech are okay with that. Maybe not ‘happy’ about it, but it’s a reasonable risk for the return you get.

To wax metaphoric for a bit…

Being in tech is like driving a super hot, fully loaded, sports car to the red line. It’s a great ride, it’s fun, exciting, nerve-wracking, downright annoying, sometimes vicious, and generally entertaining… but at the end of the day, the car will eventually run out of gas. And then, there you are… toting your empty gas can, looking pitiful, being angry at yourself, as you stomp backwards a few miles to the last gas station that you saw. (Of course the catch is that usually it also happens that you have no cash in your pocket and have to work at the gas station to refill your tank, but that’s just part of the game.)

Eventually, if you’re persistent, you will get back to the car and be able to keep driving.

It makes me crazy when I hear from some of these kids (sorry guys, but you’re young) who are so utterly convinced that they are going to have a life-long stable career in the tech industry. That its going to provide them benefits for life. It makes me shudder to hear the words ’stable field’ and ‘tech’ in the same sentence. The only thing stable about the tech field is that it’s unstable.

I blame the colleges honestly. I’ve been to them. I know professors, have listened to their lectures, and I think that they are part of the reason these kids are leaving college thinking that tech is stable. Most of those professors worked in tech when working in tech meant maintaining mainframes, doing hardware support, and building huge applications that were for their business. The meaning of ‘tech’ has evolved away from that. I can’t honestly think of a single person I know who has graduated in the last few years and writes down ‘maintain mainframes and provide great tech support’ as their life career goal.

Not to say that there is anything wrong with that sort of work. But it falls more in the realm of ‘general hardware and technical support’ than ‘tech’ nowadays. Unfortunately, there is a huge difference between the kind of stability found in jobs like that 20 years ago, and the inherent lack of stability found in modern tech. I don’t think alot of people coming out of school are aware of it. There will be many more bubbles. They happen periodically… its sort of the market way of hitting the reset button. It’s normal. Alot of these new people won’t make it through the first bubble they hit.

But how you cope with a bubble in tech, and whether or not you go back into tech, really defines whether or not it is for you. I don’t believe anyone can say with certainty that they love this field until they have gone through one. It’s one of those rare fields where you can go from making hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, to making zero - overnight. Of course that zero rapidly falls into the negative if you have bills (which you certainly do), and when the tech bust is happening and you go into the negative… what do you do? Probably what most of everyone who lived through the first tech burst did - go out and get a ‘real job’ that you despise, groaning about getting paid $8.00/hr, and keep it for a while. And wait.

Patience is important in tech. You can ‘feel’ when the anger and frustration starts to fade. You can ’sense’ when the time is right again. You’ll get ‘a hunch’ that people are ready. Then it’s time to jump back in the seat, and start accelerating back up to that red line.

There will surely be another bubble. There will certainly be many people who leave tech because of it. But as long as you look at that bubble as a certainty, rather than an off chance - you won’t be as shocked that it happens… because you’re only waiting to see what day it will happen on.

In the end of it, it’s worth it all. Being in tech is one hell of a fun ride.

~Nicole

Bleh. Apparently (at least as determined by a ridiculously ad-filled IQ test late yesterday) I’ve lost brain cells over the years. I could probably just say it was a bad day, a bad test, but I don’t doubt that I had gotten less intelligent over the years. I’m old.

Of course, instead of blaming it on getting old, I could blame it on having kids and being the only brain cell donor in the relationship. Who knows.

Either way, its dropped quite a bit over the years. Depressing. I feel like I need to start taking Ginko and picking up some of those brain exercise toys.

Sheesh. And I’m about to have another birthday on the 24th. In the tech world, I’m starting to become ancient.

~Nicole

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how I have no problem conceptualizing site designs for my clients, but when it comes to my own sites, I tend to let design take a backseat and just leave them functional. It’s kind of like the cook who cooks all day at work and when they come home want to order takeout because they are sick of cooking. That’s pretty much the way it’s been with my personal websites for a while - ‘takeout’ design.

Of course, the problem with that is that I do great designs for my clients and I realize that I’m not showcasing my abilities on my own business site. My current site doesn’t exactly tell a potential client that I am quite skilled with graphics, nor does it scream that I am decent with creating enhancements on a site with Javascript and DOM in a nice accessible way. It doesn’t even yell out loud that I’m strong with CMS and blogging software, nor does it give a great indication of my ability to use PHP since I never bothered to take my main site code out of SSI. This is what procrastination causes. Anyway, point being - I am trying to put together a nice ‘portfolio’ site. Something that I actually really put some effort in and use all of my skills in some way.

So I had been talking to a artist who was going to take an outside point of view on my site and try to help me conceive an idea for it and design it for me. Well, a few weeks later and that plan has changed. Unfortunately, my artist and myself haven’t been able to find a ‘meet in the middle’ point. My design preference is very minimal, where she is the kind of artist who wants to cover any white space because its ‘being wasted.’ So… it just wasn’t going to work to have her conceive of a design that I could use.

We did, however, realize quickly that she’s great at coming up with unique ideas for -other- designs, just not for my site. So we’ll implement some of those in the future. However, in all that creativity she had, I still was lacking a good design. So, I did the only thing I could do - I cracked open my Adobe Photoshop CS3 and started tinkering with ideas. And tinkering. And scrapping. And tinkering, and tossing. But then! Suddenly, I had the beginnings of an idea.

I knew already that I wanted my colors to stay at least similar to what they were already. In an ideal world, I would keep the exact colors and just use them in different ratios. When you change a site design entirely, it’s rather important for the site to still have some elements that are recognizable so your viewers don’t think they mistyped the url. With that said, I just also didn’t want to suddenly take my rich earthy toned website and make it look like a cotton-candy explosion.

My current color scheme involves the use of a deep burgundy, a rich chocolate color, some soft beige, a little white, and hints of gray. My design now uses the white the most, but right after that is burgundy, beige, then the chocolate and gray. I wasn’t terribly happy with that proportion, because I like the richness of the browns and really wanted to work with them more. I used one particular brown color for my skiplink menu at the top and really love it - so I decided I wanted to try with that color as a background.

Another thing I have been thinking about is my title font and little flower image in my current design.

To put it simply - I hate them. I have for a while, but I’ve just been too busy (or maybe too uninspired?) to change it.

I decided that since I hate them so much, I would focus on creating a title and flower design that I really loved. It took me a while to work that out, but I finally nailed the font I loved in Trajan Pro. It’s exactly what I was looking for in a traditional style print. So I’m going along, tinkering with brushes, and I used this great flower brush that really fit what I was going for and took the scale completely to another level from the old little ugly flower.

So I played with the title and flower, and played some more. Suddenly I realized what I was doing. I was having a design ‘moment’ and really creating what I like personally. I decorate at home in heavy traditional styles. Not modern traditional, but traditional as in antique, heavy, inlaid, carved (preferably all of the above) sort of furniture. I like dark, rich colors, with a heavy impact. This new design is definitely heavy. But you know what? It’s perfect for me for it to look like that. It is a personal site and if it’s going to reflect who I am, then it needs to be a heavy design because I’m just not a light and airy person. So… I decided to step out of my minimalism hat for a bit and went for the rich and dark sort of look.

If you want a sneak peek, here’s a look at that header, flower, and rectangle loving design remixed:

Before anyone starts thinking.. ew.. ‘I hate dark designs!’ let me say first that I don’t. I love dark designs. It’s also my website, and I want it to reflect what I like. However! Since I am going to use this as a showcase of what I can do, I will be adding in an alternate (at least one) switchable style that is completely and totally different - when I figure it out, that is. I am thinking, currently, of a chocolate, white, and pink deconstructed sort of look, but I’m not entirely certain what the alternative style will end up being. The only thing I do know is that the alternative style will be as light as this design is dark.

I had some great success working on this design today. I’m not going to be implementing it tomorrow. I probably won’t even implement it this next month. The design needs finishing, a few details, and then… I’m going to re-write some content, re-organize some of the pages and how they are laid out, and then I have to take it from being a rather complex Photoshop design to a completely flexible website design. Once it’s actually coded - then I can start creating some enhancement effects with Javascript and toying around with adding nifty features.

So.. it’s been productive. I am glad I decided to attempt getting outside input on it, but in the end, I finally ended up figuring out what I wanted and deciding to simply design for me.

~Nicole

Well, as I mentioned in a recent post, I went and bought a new computer. I didn’t feel like getting another custom job, and there was a good sale on a really nice system at the store. Of course, the downside to that was that I would have to deal with Vista. Now that I have it, I should have looked for something custom.

I didn’t like Vista, on so many levels, before I started using it. Now I just plain hate it. I disliked it for the DRM junk loaded inside it. I really didn’t care for the visual changes made to every menu system and folder in the operating system because nothing seems to be done with any sort of user logic in mind and I can’t find anything (took me about 15 minutes before I was fed up with the UI and started turning on the options to revert to the old layout).

But… all those things aside, I hadn’t quite ‘hated’ Vista yet. That changed today.

Vista apparently doesn’t like my MultipleIE’s testing environment. So I can’t immediately start testing in IE6 and lower until I do a workaround for this. Apparently, it is a known issue, but new to me. I also tried downloading the standalone from Evolt. No luck there either.

Of course, I start thinking about what I can do to make it work. My best solution so far seems to be to install XP as a virtual operating system via VMWare and then install MultipleIE’s there. That is a MAJOR irritation. I’m not going to dual boot XP with Vista - that’s just plain inefficient for testing situations because I’m not going to log out of Vista and log into XP and then log out and log into Linux, etc.. that’s irritating. So… for now it seems that virtualizing XP is the best option I have at the moment. Of course, I’m very very strongly considering just picking up another copy of XP for this box and dumping Vista altogether.

Now, supposedly, there is a way to make it work, but it involves using another MS product when I’d rather just use VMWare (since I use it anyway). But… I might do this just to see if it works. Some instructions were posted on the MultipleIE’s site about how to virtualize XP and install MultipleIE’s on it via the Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 software. Still, its highly irritating that I have to jump through so many hoops to use IE for testing when it is already the bane of every web developers existence.

In my personal opinion, I think Microsoft should be providing ways to run their various versions of IE simultaneously on their operating system, instead of other people around the community having to figure out ways to hack and piece together those browsers so they work.

I’m ranting, I know. But at least every quarter there is -something- that goes on with Microsoft or IE, that makes me just want to throw out all support for IE and just provide a page to all IE users that says something like:

Dear John/Jane,

I’m sorry you use IE. Truly I am. I am also very sorry that we can’t see each other anymore because you use IE. It’s not you, it’s me.

I can’t stand the fact that you use IE. It drove me to the brink of insanity and I need to drop all contact with it. You could save yourself before it is too late. Firefox, Safari, Opera… they are all trying to help you. Please, don’t be another statistic.

You can recover, but I can’t talk to you until you stop using IE. It’s not healthy for you, for me, and we just can’t have a relationship while you are still using IE. I hope you can understand, and that you’ll consider the alternatives. I’ll be around if you decide to stop using IE - you know where to find me.

With all my love,

~ This website.

I’m tempted to, I really am. So, thanks again Microsoft, for reminding me exactly why I started using Linux as my primary OS in the first place.

~Nicole

There is something I’d really like to do and I’m not sure if there is some way to do this or not so… I’m appealing to you all.

Now, here is my question to all you Google-loving lurkers on my blog:

Is there any way (plugin / method / tool / etc…) to open a document on my computer (operating system independent) by automatically uploading to my Google docs account and opening it there?

Short of that method, is there any way to sync my desktop docs with my Google docs easily?

I really prefer to keep all my docs in one place, so having some functionality to always have my docs in my Google Documents would be nice.

Please chime in if you have ideas!

~Nicole

I have no problem doing design for clients - because I always have an outside perspective. Designing for your own site is kind of like… giving advice. You can give advice to other people but often not to yourself. It’s all about perspective.

For a while now I’ve been looking at my personal sites and thinking.. bleh. My reaction is something like ‘I’m bored with this’ or ‘There is something off in this design but I can’t tell what it is.’ So, I’m doing what any halfway sane web designer does when they can no longer get perspective on their personal sites — I’m getting another designer to do it.

I’m lucky enough to have an artist relative who can be on hand to deal with my predicament. Of course, I have to say that she is a saint, because there is nothing more difficult than designing a site for a web designer. I’m one of the most difficult to please ‘clients’ in the world, and that goes double when it’s my personal site.

One of the first discussions we had was about ’style.’ I told her I was open to design creativity, but wanted to keep my existing site colors. In preparation for this discussion, I had spent a few hours browsing and pulled up about 10 websites for her to look at, each having a layout that I found appealing or interesting and would be open to having a variation of. She sat there, browsed through each of them, and said to me ‘These are pretty much all variations on what you already have. Are these what -not- to do?’ I nearly cried.

After much discussion (read: bickering) we decided that it would have to be a middle ground, between my love of minimalism, and her desire to cover every inch of white space with some pattern or color. I started to have the feeling it’s still going to end up being more ‘graphical’ than I would prefer.

She has been throwing me sketches over the past week. Designs she came up with that won’t work for my site but would be good for someone elses. I’ll probably turn them into working designs just for fun, but they aren’t what I’m looking for. The range has been anywhere from a Texas themed site (which I’ve wanted to do for a long while) to a site that was somehow or other themed with toilet paper and trash cans. Odd…

Anyway, I think my designer is suffering from easy distraction into her art. It happens often enough, but since she’s just giving me all the designs she does and letting me do what I want with them, I can turn her sketches into something workable for web - someone else’s web, that is.

We’ll see what happens! She’s a picky artist. I’m a picky web designer. For all I know this process of finding something I want could be a decade long.

~Nicole

I’m getting caught up on a few things, having been kept busy with life lately and neglecting the blog a bit.

I’ve been doing all sorts of lovely things this summer, but they are all keeping me quite busy.

A few things I’ve been up to…

Went to the coast and took this (as well as many other) photos:

Finished taking a class on Film and Literature. It was allright. It forced me to watch a few movies I had never seen before and consider them from the point of adapted works.

I’ve also just gotten in playing WoW (yes, I fought against it for years), and now both my daughter and I are hooked on the game.

The game seriously has a dangerous addictive quality.

They need to create support groups or something. But I’m loving it.

And finally, I’ve been working on my CSS layout book.

This is, of course, all the non-client work things that have been keeping me entertained. I also judged a CSS/WordPress contest and got to see some great new designs come about.

Today seems like it will be one of those ‘productive’ days because I’m going to go pick up my glasses (been waiting a MONTH for them to be fixed) and buy a new computer (unfortunately I can’t find what I want without Vista installed, but ah well, I’ll deal with it.) Annnnddd.. it’s around that time to take my daughter for ‘back to school’ shopping. I’m putting it off and seriously considering ordering online to avoid the crowds.

So, there you go. A relatively busy summer has kept me from writing on the blog as much as I should. It will start to pick up again soon

~Nicole

This question comes to the fore of my mind in light of a recent ‘glitch’ involving my website. The glitch was entirely my own fault. A few days ago I noticed that my sub-domains weren’t showing up. This was obviously of some concern to me because I use my primary domain and sub-domains daily or more.

I emailed my server host, explained what was going on, and asked if there had been a configuration change that had gone through recently. Support emailed me back with a quick and to the point answer - I had forgotten to renew my hosting plan and it expired.

Whoops.

It was handled easily, and took a couple of days for the domain configuration to repopulate through the lists, but it brought me to this article. So often web developers get wrapped up in handling many sites for clients, that neglecting their own websites is quite a common result.

I have, for personal and business use, about seven sites that are simply for ‘me.’ The only ones that are updated with some regularity are the ones related to my web business, and the one that is updated the most (often daily - weekly at a minimum) is my blog here. I have a site that I haven’t touched in about 8 years. (Nowadays, I’m tempted to keep that one as it is for a bit of nostalgia.)

In any event, it got me thinking about the web developers I know, and how often we get wrapped up in doing work on client sites that we just keep putting off work on our own site. Instead of redesigning my own site, I find myself tending to use and promote a design made by someone else, and use my new designs as free download templates. I know that if the choice was to redesign my own site, I would put it off for years (I have in the past). To that end, if I really needed a redesign and didn’t want it put off, I would simply hire another web developer to do it so that it would actually get done. Of course, I probably won’t do that because I have the need to constantly change the design I have for my blog and main site, and I’d need it changed several times a year at least. Due to that, it’s simply easier for me to use templates and just rotate designs. I could work part time just redesigning my own site every two months with a few templates, and I’m not willing to spend that much time on it.

It’s terribly ironic in some ways, because web developers who create some amazing designs, often have rather neglected personal websites. You might not ever know what they were capable of doing, but for examples of their work. I suppose for those of us that are afflicted by this issue of ‘personal site neglect’ - it’s probably not a good thing. We should highlight what we can do more, but after a long day of designing… it’s often easy to just keep putting it off tile next time.

~Nicole

Took this quiz today. I have to say, the results nailed it.

You Have a Melancholic Temperament

Introspective and reflective, you think about everything and anything.
You are a soft-hearted daydreamer. You long for your ideal life.
You love silence and solitude. Everyday life is usually too chaotic for you.

Given enough time alone, it’s easy for you to find inner peace.
You tend to be spiritual, having found your own meaning of life.
Wise and patient, you can help people through difficult times.

At your worst, you brood and sulk. Your negative thoughts can trap you.
You are reserved and withdrawn. This makes it hard to connect to others.
You tend to over think small things, making decisions difficult.

Take the Quiz Yourself: What Temperment Are You?

I think I’m a pretty big movie buff in general, but since having kids cartoons seem to be mostly what is on TV, so since then, I’m not exactly as up to date on movies.

Your Movie Buff Quotient: 72%

You are a total movie buff. Classics, blockbusters, indie favorites… you’ve seen most of them. Your friends know to come to you whenever they need a few good DVD rental suggestions.

Take the Quiz: Are You a Movie Buff?

I’m honestly surprised the score on this wasn’t higher. I think the only thing that detracts from it is that I’m not a neat freak in the traditional way. I’m one of those people who can be surrounded by clutter, and yet I can go directly to a pile of things, reach in, and get exactly what I was looking for because I know where everything is.

You Are 86% Perfectionist

You’re a total perfectionist. So go ahead and congratulate yourself on a “perfect” score. The truth is, everyone is sick of living up to your standards. And you’re probably even sick them yourself.

Take the quiz: Are You a Perfectionist?

You are a pretty big nerd, and you’re getting nerdier every day. Don’t worry if you don’t have friends… there’s always robots.

Take the quiz: How Nerdy Are You?

Well, to begin with, I’m an action movie junkie so this quiz was rather appealing to me. Of all those movies and action heroes I loved, which suited me most?

The quiz asked quite a lot of questions, which is good because quizzes with just a couple of questions often strike me as more luck and random results. I finished the questions, and was presented with a ‘tie breaker’ question because I had two possible ones that were that close. So I answered my tie breaker question, and got the following result:

You scored as Indiana Jones.

Indiana Jones is an archaeologist/adventurer with an unquenchable love for danger and excitement. He travels the globe in search of historical relics. He loves travel, excitement, and a good archaeological discovery. He hates Nazis and snakes, perhaps to the same degree. He always brings along his trusty whip and fedora. He’s tough, cool, and dedicated. He relies on both brains and brawn to get him out of trouble and into it.

Indiana Jones - 75%
Lara Croft - 75%
Neo, the “One” - 71%
Batman, the Dark Knight - 58%
William Wallace - 58%
Captain Jack Sparrow - 58%
Maximus - 54%
The Terminator - 54%
The Amazing Spider-Man - 50%
James Bond, Agent 007 - 46%
El Zorro - 42%

If you want to try the quiz, you can head over to QuizFarm and take it there.

~Nicole

A flickr image from I_M_BonBon.

We are still celebrating Dia De Los Muertos (The Day of the Dead) here in San Antonio. It is the last day for it, but there’s still quite a bit going on. For those of you who have never seen a party of this sort… you really should put it on your ‘life to-do list’.

For those of you who want to know what it’s all about… let me direct you to this page on Wikipedia.

~Nicole

I know that I recently took a detour from my writing on here, and didn’t mention that I was going to be taking such a long break. The reason is pretty straight-forward: I didn’t realize I was going to. A day or two turned into a few weeks rather quickly, as work and family and holidays caught up with me.

Ah, but my blog isn’t the only thing that’s been neglected in the last few weeks. My feedreader is currently grumbling about the over 2000 unread news pieces I’ve not gotten to read recently. The sad part is, I actually have had a moment or two to read a few things in my feedreader over the last few weeks, and it STILL manages to fill up that quickly.

But, soon enough I’m going to fill up with all the posts that have been in my head while I’ve been too swamped with work to write them down. I’ve been bookmarking things to blog later like mad, so I have a lot of things planned to talk about.

And… anyone remember that post I made about changing the look of the site regularly and showcasing some great designers at the same time? Well, I found a new one I’m in love with from Bartelme Design, and I plan to roll out a new primary layout look for November as soon as I tweak it with all my little WordPress customizations I’ve done.

So… stay tuned. The detour has ended and the road has merged back again.

~Nicole

Update: I found a major problem (for me at least) with the new layout I had planned to implement. Usability and accessibility are too important, and the design has very poor ability to handle increase in text sizing. So… I’m putting off the change over to the new design until either a) I decide to rework the text sizing so that it smoothly changes text size when someone increases it, or b) I pick a new design.

A flickr image from sesabebe.

I’m always impressed by the sheer talent some of these pumpkin artists have, and here’s just another example!

I hope everyone has a fun and safe Halloween this year.

~Nicole

They say that websites should retain a constant look and feel, that they should have a flow that users recognize, that they should never change drastically so that the user does not know how to use the site. I realize this. I recognize it. I revere it as true insight. Yet I just can’t seem to follow it, in fact, I’m not so sure that I actually want to.

I’m a web developer, and I like new design. I like new technology. It’s my curse as a technophile. I can’t stand seeing the same design on my site for any long period of time. I’ve noticed it lasts about 3 months before it starts to wear on me and I want a big change. I spend another month or two berating myself about changing it, reminding myself about all the reasons I shouldn’t… then I give in and spend another month or so designing something new. Essentially, my design changes at least twice a year. I don’t think that’s terrible, considering that half the year I spend bored by the look and wanting something different.

Well, that time has been approaching steadily again, and I’m definitely in need of another change. I tried, I really did try, to make my main site have a consistent look to this one… but I just stopped partway through tweaking it because I realized that it wasn’t what I wanted at all. On my main site I want something clean and open with lots of white space. On this blog I prefer… well, yes I suppose blunt is the best way, I tend to lean toward a rather cluttered look.

So I think I’m going to stop trying to make them the same. I’m tired of doing that, I’m just going to make them more distinctly different as they used to be. My main site is for my actual things that are working… my blog is for all those random thoughts and ideas that strike me in the late nights. They are different, they are distinct. Yet… even if I give them distinctly different looks, I am still going to grow bored with that look after a short period of time.

Therefore, I’ve decided to cultivate some of the essence of Website Style and do something different. Instead of trying to keep a consistent look, I’m going to work on keeping the design inconsistent so that people will always be surprised. Now, here’s the other thing… I spend a lot of time writing and designing things for other people, and I tend to always run out of time to design for myself. I have a solution that will work all around. I see lots of designs all the time in my work, and this gives me the chance to do something fun with it. I’m going to pick a different designer every time I redesign, I’ll use their design, maybe tweak it out a bit, and highlight their work and their site each time. Maybe, in that way, highlighting a new ’style’ a few times a year will bring me closer to feeling like I’m living up to the concept of ‘Website Style’ rather than speaking only about CSS. We’ll see - for now I’m working on picking new designs.

~Nicole

I recently reviewed the ’score card’ for my daughters elementary school. Surprisingly enough it was not given to me, I had to find a copy from the school. I later realized why they didn’t broadcast their scores to all parents - the scores were a massive disappointment.

My daughter attends a public elementary school in Texas, and unfortunately Texas is not known for having a good public school system. In fact, the state is one of the lowest in the country for education. Knowing that my daughter is already at a disadvantage due to that, I certainly am less than thrilled to see her particular school scoring lower than the district average in every single subject. (Note: District only refers to a certain portion of the city) The most horrifying was seeing her school score 20% lower than the district average in science. I’m very bothered by all of this.

My first instinct was to call up the principal and ask what is being done to improve scores in science. Shortly after I asked myself… why should I make my daughter remain in a school while they ‘fix’ their scores and meanwhile have a substandard education. Perhaps choosing a different school would be better. Education is one of the most important things to me, and I will not compromise on the education my children get. So, since the laws here require her to go to a certain school based on residence (if she goes to public school) I started looking around at private schools.

Some of them have curriculums that are much more like what I want for her. Required languages starting in the early years, learning musical instruments early on (in public school she wouldn’t be able to do that until middle school, around the 6th grade), science courses and experiments, history lessons, etc.. At this point, most of what she knows of science and history have come from what I’ve taught her, not from the school. Similarly with mathematics, of which they don’t seem to teach hardly anything of.

I’m very likely going to place her in a private school next year (I don’t want to make her move schools in the middle of a year), and if that does not accomplish what I’m after, I may simply homeschool her and provide the education I expected. Starting in the coming weeks, I’ve decided to supplement her studies from school at home more. A different subject each day.

The problem is that she will be -very- bored at school this year because she went to kindergarten last year, and this year in 1st grade is nearly a complete repeat of last year. She’s also -extremely- smart and aced through everything she needed to learn last year, and is bored to death with her studies so far this year. So, if I don’t want her to have completely wasted a year with remaining in this pitiful excuse for a school, I have to teach her myself more. I plan to begin tutoring her in Latin, mathematics, science, and history on a regular scheduled basis, not just periodically. I intend to start her in music lessons and have her choose which instrument she’d like to learn, and I’ve asked my mother (quite the artsy woman) to give her actual lessons in real art and crafts.

Yet, while I’m planning all of this, it comes across to me exactly how much I’ll be doing in comparison to what the school provides, and is beginning to feel like I’m preparing to homeschool her and just letting her attend school for the socialization training. I’m not entirely sure what to do, whether to homeschool her or place her in private school. I suppose I’ll see what happens, but this whole matter has me quite distressed over the state of our education here. The school she attends now used to be a National Blue Ribbon school (meaning it was one of the highest scoring) and now… well, apparently times have changed.

~Nicole

Well, this is definitely a quiz to make you feel old (or at least in my case). It asks a series of questions about different things like, have you been married, been to college, etc…

Here are my results:

You’ve Experienced 68% of Life

You have all of the life experience that most adults will ever get. And unless you’re already in your 40s, you’re probably wise beyond your years.

If you’d like to take this quiz and feel old also, the link is here: How Much Life Experience Do You Have?

So yes, well, not exactly something new but it still makes me feel old at 26. It’s the reason I tend to associate with people in their late 30’s and older instead of anyone around my age - more things in common.

~Nicole

Well, it doesn’t take much to figure out from this blog that I’m an absolute caffeine addict - coffee particularly. So when I ran across this quiz I just -had- to try it out.

The quiz claims to tell you what kind of coffee you are, and well, it nailed my favorite kind of coffee so perhaps that says something. My results:

You Are an Espresso

At your best, you are: straight shooting, ambitious, and energetic.
At your worst, you are: anxious and high strung.
You drink coffee when: anytime you’re not sleeping.
Your caffeine addiction level: high

If you are interested, you can take the What Kind of Coffee Are You? quiz online at Blogthings.

Well, pitiful as it may be that he had to let me know himself that today was National SysAdmin Day, it is nonetheless. So… Kalle, my most fabulous sysadmin, here’s a post just for you to let you know that you are truly loved as a sysadmin (even if I was away on messenger when you mentioned the sysadmin day *cough*).

Aside from all the reasons that he’s a great friend, here are just a few of the reasons that he’s an uber-adored sysadmin.

Kalle, thank you for…

• Originally forcing me to leave Blogger for Wordpress by setting up a blog for me.
• Handling all the system files so that I don’t have to be paranoid about them.
• Dealing patiently with my random requests to chmod folders.
• Cnaming the blog server files so that it can still be on my domain name.
• Quietly keeping the running software upgraded, so much so that I don’t even know when it’s happened until I see an email update saying MySQL has just been upgraded.
• Keeping the server running near constant and so much more dependably than anyone I’ve had my sites hosted with.

Overall, thank you for being a great guy who can manage to be a sysadmin and a friend without losing patience with me
~Nicole

This was a rather surprising quiz. Only three things were involved (well, two really I suppose). First, you have to click on some color boxes in the order that they appeal to you. Then you wait for a minute or two while the timer ticks down. Then you do it again. That was it.

Scary enough, the results I got were rather on the mark, and displayed plenty of ‘bad stuff’ as well. So many ‘personality quizes’ that are super short just give you about as much depth as a one line fortune cookie. This was pretty good.

My results:

Your Existing Situation

Sensuous. Inclined to luxuriate in things which give gratification to the senses, but rejects anything tasteless, vulgar, or coarse.

Your Stress Sources

Eager to make a good impression, but worried and doubtful about the likelihood of succeeding. Feels that she has a right to anything she might hope for, and becomes helpless and distressed when circumstances go against her. Finds the mere possibility of failure most upsetting and this can even lead to nervous prostration. Sees herself as a ‘victim’ who has been misled and abused, mistakes this dramatization for reality and tries to convince herself that her failure to achieve standing and recognition is the fault of others.

Your Restrained Characteristics

Demanding and particular in her relations with her partner or those close to her. but careful to avoid open conflict since this might reduce her prospects of realizing her hopes and ideas.

Conditions are such that she will not let herself become intimately involved without making mental reservations.

Circumstances are such that she feels forced to compromise for the time being if she is to avoid being cut off from affection or from full participation.

Your Desired Objective

Needs a peaceful environment. Wants release from stress, and freedom from conflicts or disagreement. Takes pains to control the situation and its problems by proceeding cautiously. Has sensitivity of feeling and a fine eye for detail.

Your Actual Problem

Depleted vitality has created an intolerance for any further stimulation, or demands on her resources. A feeling of powerlessness subjects her to agitation and acute distress. Tries to escape from this by relinquishing the struggle, and by finding peaceful and restful conditions in which to recuperate in an atmosphere of affection and security.

Your Actual Problem #2

Disappointment at the non-fulfillment of her hopes and the fear that to formulate fresh goals will only lead to further setbacks have resulted in considerable anxiety. She is trying to escape from this into a peaceful and harmonious relationship, protecting her from dissatisfaction and lack of appreciation.

Kind of depressing when it’s all laid out like that, but overall it’s fairly accurate and nothing that is shocking ‘news’ to me.

If you’d like to take the ColorQuiz, just go to ColorQuiz.com and try it out.

~Nicole

A highly fascinating topic of linguistic discussion is in lipograms. For anybody not famliar with what a lipogram is, I shall simplify it.

A lipogram is: Anything that you draft (usually a paragraph at minimum) which wholly skips a symbol of all writing symbols.

A way you might do this is by abstaining from using any words with ‘A’, ‘D’, ‘G’ and so on. You simply pick a singular symbol, and aviod using it.

If you want to skim additional lipogram writings, you might try this link to ‘A Loquacious Location of Lipograms.‘ Simply amazing.

I am not without skill in writing lipograms, but Mr. Chrisomalis has an uncanny ability with it. You’ll find an ton of linquistic information if you surf a bit past that link.

Anyway, I think that linquistic ‘toys’ (such as lipograms) continually last throughout our history as fun ways to pass boring hours.

Hint: It is not as difficult to do if you abstain from using a symbol that is a consonant.

Did you pick up on which symbol was missing throughout this post?

It’s a fun symbol to try to work around - though also frustrating on occasion, as 2/3 of all words in most works contain it.

Still can’t find which symbol I am hinting at? Allright… I’ll show you by using it just this oncE.

~Nicole

I ran across an interesting site for anyone who is interested in seeing a charted frequency of their name (or comparison of other names with similar spelling) over a long time period.

It’s interesting as a mild reference for quick searches regarding possible etymology study later, but is definitely more useful as just a fun little online tool.

It’s called the Name Voyager and requires Java to run in your browser. Worth a look.

~Nicole

I found this list of things that ‘Only a Southerner’ knows. It’s a lot like those lists of ‘You know you’re a Southerner if…’ so enjoy. I’m a Texan, and so very much of this is accurate that I find it very entertaining. I love studying variations in dialect and culture as they apply to linguistics, and these lists are a very fun way to ’study.’

Here’s the list…

Only a Southerner knows the difference between a hissie fit and a conniption fit, and that you don’t “HAVE” them, you “PITCH” them

Only a Southerner knows how many fish, collard greens, turnip greens, peas, beans, etc., make up “a mess.”

Only a Southerner can show or point out to you the general direction of “yonder.”

Only a Southerner knows exactly how long “directly” is, … as in: “Going to town, be back directly”

Even Southern babies know that “Gimme some sugar” is not a request for the white, granular sweet substance that sits in a pretty little bowl in the middle of the table.

All Southerners know exactly when “by and by” is. They might not use the term, but they know the concept well.

Only a Southerner knows instinctively that the best gesture of solace for a neighbor who’s got trouble is a plate of hot fried chicken and a big bowl of cold potato salad. If the neighbor’s trouble is a real crisis, they also know to add a large banana puddin!

Only Southerners grow up knowing the difference between “right near” and “a right far piece.” They also know that “just down the road” can be 1 mile or 20.

Only a Southerner, both knows and understands, the difference between a redneck, a good ol’ boy, and po’ white trash.

No true Southerner would ever assume that the car with the flashing turn signal is actually going to make a turn.

A Southerner knows that “fixin” can be used as a noun, a verb, or an adverb.

Only Southerners make friends while standing in lines, … and when we’re “in line,” … we talk to everybody!

Put 100 Southerners in a room and half of them will discover they’re related, even if only by marriage.

In the South, y’all is singular, … all y’all is plural.

Southerners know grits come from corn and how to eat them.

Every Southerner knows tomatoes with eggs, bacon, grits, and coffee are perfectly wonderful; that red eye gravy is also a breakfast food; and that fried green tomatoes are not a breakfast food.

When you hear someone say, “Well, I caught myself lookin’,” you know you are in the presence of a genuine Southerner!

Only true Southerners say “sweet tea” and “sweet milk.” Sweet tea indicates the need for sugar and lots of it — we do not like our tea unsweetened. “Sweet milk” means you don’t want buttermilk.

And a true Southerner knows you don’t scream obscenities at little old ladies who drive 30 MPH on the freeway. You just say,”Bless her heart” … and go your own way.

To those of you who are still a little embarrassed by your Southerness: Take two tent revivals and a dose of sausage gravy and call me in the morning. Bless your heart!

And to those of you who are still having a hard time understanding all this Southern stuff, … bless your hearts, I hear they are fixin’ to have classes on Southernness as a second language!

And for those that are not from the South but have lived here for a long time, all y’all need a sign to hang on y’alls front porch that reads “I ain’t from the South, but I got here as fast as I could.”

(List discovered originally here.)

~Nicole

As recently posted, I broke my last blog layout. It no longer was working for IE, but instead of fixing it right away, I decided to just change things up and finally implement a new theme. I had wanted to change the layout for a while, but it never seemed to happen, so I suppose I can thank whatever I did to break the other design. In all honesty, it would probably not take much effort to look at the CSS and see what typo/foolish change I made that broke it… but I just don’t really -want- to keep that layout. I like this one. At some point in the near future, I will implement this layout on my main site as well.

Another thing you might notice is that I’ve got the theme switcher plugin active on the blog. I found a really nice theme (called plaintext) which I think will make a great alternative style. There are a couple of themes in the list that are old ones (Black and Red is one that was pretty much the first theme on the blog, and then Old Coffee was the one that I broke). Those will likely be removed soon.

Anyway, I’m not done making it all accessible, but I am done making it play nice for Firefox, IE 6, Opera, and Konqueror. At some point soon I’m going to test it in Safari and keep my fingers crossed. Having one nice column float issue in IE 5.5 but it’s on the to-do list of things to fix.

If ya’ll notice anything else twitchy, let me know. Obviously, this was rather rushed to implement, so I’m not surprised if there turn out to be a lot of little quirks here and there.

~Nicole

Managed to break the blog for IE. Well, it’s not entirely broken, just looks askew. Not sure how long its been like this since I never use IE except to test. I’ll fix it soon, an evil headache has my attention at the moment.

~Nicole

It’s been a while since I’ve fed my online quiz habit and… apparently I’m quite rusty.

I ran across an absolute gem of a site call 123facts.com. It’s a trivia style quiz site, and as soon as I’m done typing this up I’m going to sign up on the site (free). I took a quiz called Famous Couples in History, and did absolutely wretched - 6 out of 10 correct. Pitiful. Ah well, perhaps it being 4 in the morning has something to do with it, but I could just be searching out excuses.

Regardless, the quiz was interesting, and they have tons of them in different categories, so I suggest giving it a shot.

You can try the quiz I took by going here: Famous Couples in History Quiz.

~Nicole

Now is the time of year for the Summer Solstice - commonly referred to as the “Longest Day of the Year” (in the Northern Hemisphere) and the “Shortest Day of the Year” (in the Southern Hemisphere). The former is the more common reference, while the second is more of the inferred.

For those Latin buffs out there (like myself), you’ll note that the word Solstice comes from the Latin Solstitium (standing sun). If you are on Central Standard Time in North America, the Summer Solstice will starts at 6:26 AM (sunrise) on June 21st. For the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, the general time is 12:26 Universal Time (so you can figure out your time zone from that time by subtracting the appropriate number of hours).

The Summer Solstice is very commonly referred to as Midsummer (coming from the Germanic word for Summer and most similar to the “Midsommar” of Swedish). While many people may think of a particular play when they hear the word (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”), there is far more history and culture involved. Midsummer is also sometimes referred to as Litha. Since the celebration of the Summer Solstice predates Christianity, it should be no surprise that it is often considered a ‘Pagan’ celebration. At present, Midsummer is considered a Sabbat day for the followers of modern day Wicca (a Sabbat day being one of the 8 major seasonal celebration days for the Wiccans).

[Wikipedia] The celebration of Midsummer’s Eve was from ancient times linked to the summer solstice. People believed that at midsummer plants had miraculous and healing powers and they therefore picked them on this night. Bonfires were lit to protect against evil spirits which were believed to roam freely when the sun was turning southwards again. In later years, witches were also thought to be on their way to meetings with other evil powers.

In Sweden Midsummer celebration originates from the time before Christianity, it was celebrated as a sacrifice time in the sign of the fertility.

Unsurprisingly, as times changed and Christianity came to power, the Church did morph the celebration by renaming it and using a Christian day of celebration on the same day - the birthday feast of St. John the Baptist. Midsummer’s Eve celebrations go by a slew of different names, but are often just as celebrated as the Solstice itself. Many countries celebrate Midsummer in different ways, and have for ages before the onset of Christianity. A list of how different countries celebrate.

So…

Happy Midsummer / Litha / Sankt Hans aften / Feast of St. John / Jaaniõhtu / Ukon juhla / Juhannus / Midsommar / Noc ÅšwiÄ™tojaÅ„ska / Les cônes d’la Saint Jean / Jāņi / Sankthansaften / Jonsok / Ivan’s Day / etc…

~Nicole