The amazingly lucid Mark Boulton and his colleague Richard Rutter presented this excellent ( and beautiful ) presentation on “Why Typography on the Web Sucks” ( it seems that most winning presentations have quasi-inflammatory titles ).
These fine men from across the Atlantic are generous enough to share their content.
I once read an interview with Bill Joy where he was talking about his creation of the vi editor. He said that it was really necessary because, at Berkeley, he was on a very slow connection and the rather heavy emacs load / execute time was just a killer.
So yesterday while I was sitting in ballroom 19AB and each additional laptop brought the available bandwidth from a garden hose to a swizzle-stick, I was able to understand the wisdom.
34G 3w 5cw ESC ^ 5j DD :wq!
Beautiful.
Man, attending SXSW was really brutal this morning thanks to the enforced and early daylight savings time change. We woke up pretty foul and pretty tired. Last night we had attended one happy hour and had then headed down South Congress to Southside Pizza.
It was a wonderful meal and there was this nice quartet of senior citizens. One of the ladies of the group touched my arm as we crossed paths and she said:
You know how beautiful she is, don’t you?
Of course she was referring to my beautiful, classy, elegant, and wonderful girlfriend, Miss Lauren. I answered in the affirmative to the lady and they ambled out.
After that we bought some supplies at the Oltorf and Congress HEB before heading back north. It was our intention to take a lunch with us ( the convention food sucks and there not so many options near the center ). Regrettably, the DST change had us not in the mood to do so this morning.
After heading in we attended tho 10am session on managing user identities. The presentation centered around the OpenId specification and how reputation is managed. It’s interesting because ID is who you say you are ( passport ) and reputation is what others say you are ( bad at knitting ). It was an interesting discussion that bridged both the psychological and the technological.
The next panel was one of the biggest disappointments, it was “Design Workflows at Work: How Top Designers Work Their Magic”. Now, from the title I was thinking that eminent designers such as Veerle Pieters would tell me how they conquer space, how they choose colors, how they choose palettes, etc. In short, something more like the amazing, but all too short presentation given by Khoi Vinh and Mark Boulton yesterday.
Instead it was “do you listen to music while you work” or “I think better in the shower”.
Total let-down.
In contrast to this disappointment, Khoi and Mark’s presentation had me, a no-art-talent having code-monkey dividing up a page into a grid, using 3:2 ratios to define base em elements and thinking up a new design for this blog.
Expert, focused, delivered, and absolutely worthwhile. Thank you Khoi and Mark!
The sky matched my overall mood and it was a raining gently as we hopped across the street for a quick bite at the Hilton.
None of the afternoon sessions were particularly to our liking so using our platinum badge power, we headed to the downstairs theater and caught “The Prisoner or: How I planned to kill Tony Blair”, which describes the horror story of a freedom-loving Iraqi journalist who, via mistaken identity, is taken by the US military, beaten, disappeared, sent to Abu Ghraib, survives insurgent mortar attack on the camp ( to say nothing of bug infested food and illness ). It was as heartbreaking as Terry Gilliam’s Brazil), but in such a horrible situation, the absurdity turns hilarious and all you can do is laugh, and be ashamed of the absolute mess that has been made of Iraq for our lofty dream of “making their lives better”.
We then caught an excellent discussion on “AJAX or Flash: What’s Right for You?”. It was delivered very well by Jonathan Boutelle of SlideShare.
The last presentation was on the future of Javascript. Summation? Looking more like Ruby and making DOM manipulation easier.
Bonus interaction from yesterday was Mark Boulton taking time to talk to Lauren and I about carving up space. He was a real gentleman and very friendly. Another bonus was getting to meet up with Khoi, I love his blog and his commentary so it was a real pleasure to shake hands and get an impeccably designed business card.
This morning Lauren and I got up and headed down to the convention center area and parked at the convention-side storage. We were able to park really close and then we headed in.
After checking in, we needed to grab breakfast so we went to the cart onsite. 1 diet coke, 1 medium coffee, and 2 danishes cost as much as dirnner at Kerby Lane has cost the night before. I was somewhere between appalled and disgusted, it may have been the icing on the Danish. In any case, if you’re headed down here DO NOT forget to eat breakfast before you come.
The opening chat was with Joe Orr of the NYTimes and Lindsey Simon of Google. They both were really smart, gave great presentations using the technology they weer advertising and were total pros. I’m now very interested in XSLT and impressed with the amount of tools out there to make this technology a bit easier to put together. If I have one take-away that I could share with you here it is: Use XSLT lite functional programming do not use it like procedural programming or else you will make it an unusable disaster. If your XSLT looks like a mess, it is.
The great problem with the Austin convention center is that there is NO EASY WAY TO ACCESS THE THIRD EFFING FLOOR. Can you take the stairs up from 1 ( no! ). As such there was a huge backlog of undercaffinated nerds queueing up for the elevator. It was a pretty poor solution, I think the audience would be well-served were someone to put up a series of signs that say “Want to burn fat, dough-boy, start climbing this-a-way”.
After that we headed to some bullshit panel about Consistency in Design. It was crowded, cramped, there was a gospel choir out in the foyer, and the panelists’ discussion was absolutely inane. Had my first experience not been so positive I might be having some misgivings right about now.
It was really disappointing, talking about consistency (“Getting To Consistency: Don’t make your users think”). You would think there would be examples, or a horror story, or something that would somehow teach us something about basic principles. Nothing. No take-aways. It sucked. So we bailed out for an early lunch at Iron Cactus before we went to see the keynote speech from Kathy Sierra. Kathy’s one of the proprieters of the Head First press which provides some excellent technical manuals, their Head Rush Design Patterns being a bit of a holy book in the web programming field.
So here we are, SXSW-ing it and loving it.
The afternoon holds two sessions in which Khoi Vinh, one of my favorite design bloggers, will be teaching some basic layout and design techniques during.
Wow!
“The Lookout” is one of the first movies all year that made me lean over to Lauren at the end and say “That was awesome”. I’m sorry “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “Children of Men”, you both were important and worthy, but this was out and out fun and suspenseful.
The main thing that I thought was great is that this may be one of the most tight scripts I’ve ever seen put to screen and that’s probably no accident as the director and writer were Scott Frank (Out of Sight, say no more). I never once had that feeling of “oh yeah, but where did he conveniently get implement X” or, “Oh yeah, the granny can handle the shotgun, sure” or “where did he conveniently become a master of kung-fu?”. No plot point was thrown in as part of a solution as a screenwriting conundrum, all the tools needed were part of the character’s natural evolution or back-story.
And what is the tight plot that was presented in the film? Essentially future hockey great and alpha male Chris ( Joseph Gordon-Levitt ) and his friends are pursuing a scene of pure rural beauty and enchantment when disaster strikes, leaving him with a memory condition that requires him to write things down.
“Uh, we saw that in Memento”.
Well, you did and you didn’t, my interlocutors. Memento hinged on a character having to write things down because he would forget them, this character writes them down because he has trouble with sequence, he has trouble with remembering the rules of what he has to do. So the pitch of his mental instability is not “Oh hell, he’ll forget”, but is something much more relatable, the feeling of having the word stuck on the tip of your tongue … but for every task that is required for day to day living.
The opening act of the film shows us his regular life within this maddening world of not quite able to be completely independent. He learns to live by repetition, pattern, and writing it down. He visits an independent living skills school. He works as a janitor in a small bank after hours. He shares his life, and his small, dingy apartment with Lewis, played wonderfully by a bearded Jeff Daniels ( this guy was in Dumb and Dumber, who knew!? ). Lewis is blind and, effectively serves as the “seer” and Greek chorus, uniting the acts where Chris’ difficulties can’t quite link up the narrative that we see, but that he cannot.
Chris lives his simple version of a life, occasionally taking time to watch skaters on the ice and have flashbacks to the accident. It’s a world where he can get by, thanks to his School for Living Skills, Lewis, his job, and his wealthy family’s funding of his car and rent. He dreams of a better job, perhaps working as a teller at the bank whose floor he buffs.
His life is our life.
Enter the devil.
Michael Goode’s character Gary comes to Chris, reminding him of entitlement, power, beauty, and strength: “your old life”. Through a series of orchestrations, Chris comes to trust Gary, believe in Gary, and believe that Gary can actually provide that most seductive of elixirs: your old life.
His life is our life.
And the temptations are potent. True (faked) respect, true non-discussion of his inabilities, and that most potent drug, the sweet perfume of the beautiful girl in the bar on your pillow ( played well by Isla Fisher ).
And once you’ve begun your habit, the rates get raised.
Gary pushes, cajoles, and coerces Chris into a part in the heist of his bank. The friends of Gary now turn into the list of the usual suspects: a safecracker, a driver, a leader ( Gary ), and the incomparable James Woods as “Bone”, the guy for “wet work”.
At this point you should see that Chris’ life is certainly in jeopardy and that it’s only a matter of success of the heist until he is at the business end of Bone’s shotgun.
So our protagonist, with certain mental limitations must figure out how to save his skin, maybe do the right thing, and maybe forge his own independent existence with his handicap.
The venue for the premiere was Austin’s beautiful and historic Paramount theater. Arriving about an hour early, bade holders wrapped around congress and onto the back side. Around 8:30 they started letting us file into the fine venue. Around 9:00 pm, the director and the cast entered. Present were Mr. Gordon-Levitt, Mr. Goode, the director, and Laura Vandervoort.
Afterwards there was an after-party at the Fox and Hound on 4th and Colorado. While we walked to the destination I asked Lauren if she was interested in attending and she was not. As such, we kept walking to the car, which was parked nearby.
We went back north, stopped at Kerby Lane north and then returned home because we knew that this morning would be busy with the first full day of SXSW Interactive.
More later, but catch “The Lookout” when it comes to your town!
Apologies to Tennyson.
I decided I hate my sidebars. In a white-paper, my colleague Robbie Allen wrote that the present age of web design has a lot less visual busy-ness. I then visited Daring Fireball and read about Gruber taking weeks to pick his background color. A few moments later I was really sick when I headed back to my site.
Issue was confirmed by dear girlfriend: Your books section looks like ad-space.
wince
So, like The King and I, I proclaim, no more busy sidebars, forever! A clap of the hands and a :wq! later and you have what you see.
I’ll put some level of the functionality back…eventually. But for now, enjoy a slightly less busy site.
( besides, if you really want to find something you’re better off going to google, typing in what you want and adding site:stevengharms.com anyway )
Oh The Loneliness.
The loneliness is what my math teacher says comes when you don’t practice doing problems on your own. You’re in class, you follow the examples and everything is fine. But then comes the test, and you’re looking at the problem and The Loneliness hits you. You no longer have your guru and classmates there to help you along. Because of The Loneliness you fail.
Programming, and particularly training classes, are the same way. After my intensive study in Atlanta, with a forced 2 weeks off owing to travel and moving The Loneliness has haunted me as I’ve attempted to get back into Rails. I have a project in mind that will help a friend tremendously, but the how-to is not there.
I know that what I want to do can be done, but instead of expression just pouring out of me like it would be if I were writing in Perl or C++, it’s just not there yet. Instead I look at examples and paste together snippets. This is like writing a ransom note,, clipping letters from disparate sources, instead of typing your demands.
So I have the frustrating feeling of wanting to break into a sprint ( or a nice leisurely jog ), but not being able to because each time I break into a rhythm I go all full stop and have to bust out books, ask questions, make tests, think some more, and then add 2 more lines, and keep running. Experience is a cruel teacher that way.
I poured the better part of the weekend into the basics and got NOWHERE. Come Monday, it dawned on my what to do, and 3 hours later I had done what I needed. The ways of the Tao are mysterious.
Anyway, Lauren and I are pretty much all moved in. I’m working on cleaning out our garage so that I’ll have room for my car. But that’s pretty much it.
Hey I’m back in action after taking some time out for travel and moving.
I went to San Jose last Wednesday and in the process of flying got sicker that I remember being in a great long while. The trip to ATL had just worn me out, cramming for my C++ exam during the weekend and then flying back out was a bit more than my immune system could take.
I arrived in SJ sick and, thanks to the congestion in my head, I was unable to hear out of my right ear for a couple of days. If the trip-factor of Robitussin hadn’t sent my world loopy, the imbalance factor of having my cochlear fluid altered would have been sufficient. Upon arrival I proceeded to attend my planning meeting and even managed to spit out a presentation.
After the presentation I was bundled up in my coat, with fleece on, shivering. Any sane person would have been at home.
I, clearly, am not sane.
I bolted to the gorgeous Hotel Valencia, valet’d the car, took a double dose of NyQuil and got some much needed rest. Throughout the rest of the trip it was minimal effort and maximal sleep being the goal. When I left back for ATX on Saturday I was just beginning to recover.
….but we had to move! I arrived, Lauren picked me up and we headed straight from the airport to try to pack up our old apartment. Much to my chagrin she had caught my cold and was just about to hit the nadir of that nastiness. I can’t believe she trooped on, but we managed to move a great deal of stuff in the XTerra to the new place. Actually, it’s worth noting that my she-Valkeryie had, on her little lonesome, packed up clothes, pots, pans, bed (!!??!!) and a great many other basic necessities and moved them while I was away.
She’s a winner in oh-so-many ways, this is just another bit of icing on the cake.
Sunday Lauren and I woke up and emptied our storage unit ( a truck from U-Haul gained before ) and emptied it into the apartment, caughs, sniffles, and Kleenexes during the activity. The Mover of Melbotis and Mrs. The League met us at the old place and the Mighty League helped me move our biggest items with the aid of the Forearm Forklift (tm).
We unloaded into the new place, grabbed a bit at the Waterloo Ice House, and then Lauren and I turned our attentions to unpacking.
Since Monday it’s been pretty much unpacking, assembling a new IKEA haul, and attempting to recover from our colds. The place is pretty much put together and is very livable. We really like the space and I love having my work and home so close by.
Another upside of the move is that i bought the mas macho cable modem service, 10 down and 1 up. That should make transfers of naughty pictures Rails Code much zippier.
I’ll post some pictures of recent adventures shortly, but I’m back in town, mostly healthy, and enjoying the breezy Austin springtime.