More Cox Controversy..."Trading Spaces" and website design...

In the most recent issue of the Gazette, I commented on the escalating battle between Cox Communications and the local ABC affiliate, which is demanding that Cox begin paying to carry its programming. Now, in Sunday's Midland Reporter-Telegram we read that a local ISP, Apex 2000, is crying foul over Cox's refusal to allow it to advertise its broadband service on Cox's cable lineup.

Without taking sides, I would like to pose a simple question. Would Apex 2000 be willing to put a Cox broadband banner ad on its home page? Hmmmm...?

I learned everything I know about website design by watching Trading Spaces.

OK, that's not accurate, but I couldn't resist the hook. I will admit to a minor addiction to the series (which, if you've just crawled out of the home furnishings department at Wally World, is a TV show aired more and more often by The Learning Channel). For one thing, it's a marketing phenomenon. I mean, who would sit still for show-upon-show about redecorating a couple of rooms? Yawnsville. But spice it up by letting neighbors redecorate each other's rooms, throw in a 48 hour deadline and a $1,000 budget and egomaniacal but totally winsome designers and suddenly you have...drama! comedy! pathos! website design tips!

In reality...well, in my reality, anyway...the TS process has a lot in common with the design and creation of a new website. To wit:

• You're often designing something for someone who isn't really sure what they want, but they definitely know what they don't want. Or at least they will after you've done it and showed it to them.
  
  
• You're working within the confines of a small space. I know...the Web is vast beyond all imagination, and there are no theoretical contraints on the size of a webpage. But, for practical purposes, that space must be carved into bite-sized pieces or the visitors will choke on it. Every website designer worth her pixels goes into a project with a mental cap on the size of the page, and the challenge is to capture the client's vision without busting that cap.
  
  
• Appearance often matters more than content. Just as in TS, where we know that the buttons on that beautiful padded fabric wall covering are just hot-glued on, the web designer sometimes has to resort to tricks or gimmicks to make the images appear in the right spots and the links do the right things when the cursor moves over them. If you look behind the curtain...view the source code...you'll never eat another hot dog (or, hopefully, mix another metaphor).
  
  
• Everything you do can be re-done, fixed (or ruined) or tweaked. A website design, like bedroom wall paint, is hardly permanent. This is both a blessing and a curse.

But the real reason I find Trading Spaces to be relevant to web design is that the creative process is so similar. The designer sees the room for the first time, and immediately forms mental images about what is possible. Then he meets with the home owner and some of those images fall away. Time and budget constraints further reduce the inventory of possibilities. Still, the room is an almost blank canvas onto which the designer will impose his constrained vision.

Watching the creative process unfold on the TV screen fascinates me. I'm also inspired by the way the designers combine colors, textures and unexpected elements to form what may (or may not) become a unified whole. For example, in a recent episode, a the upper half of a bedroom wall was painted burnt orange while the lower half was a sort of taupe. I didn't care for the combination at all. But the designer then added a chair-rail across the wall where the two colors met, and that little dash of texture made all the difference in the world. That technique will translate directly to a web page (although if I'm ever found to have used burnt orange in one of my designs, I hope someone will take me out and shoot me for the criminally insane person of Aggie persuasion that I am).

Anyway, in the website design business one is constantly seeking new sources of inspiration. For me, Trading Spaces provides a creative boost in an enjoyable format. Now, please excuse me while I try to remember where I left my hot glue gun.

KMID-TV vs. Cox Communications

I was going to write about the influence of Trading Spaces on website design, but after reading this morning about the "discussion" between a local broadcast TV station and local cable providers, I decided I couldn't let it pass as fodder for the Gazette.

I'll admit that I know nothing about the situation other than what I read in the newspaper, but based on that account, I believe that KMID-TV is committing a huge public relations faux pas. Trying to paint Cox Communications as the bad guy (generally an easy and fun thing to do), reaping huge benefits while charging the consumer for something that is otherwise provided free, just doesn't work.

First, receiving KMID's programming sans cable is not exactly free, given that an external antenna is required in most parts of the viewing area due to the station's seemingly weak and erratic signal. Second, it's hard to make a convincing argument that Cox derives more benefit from this relationship than KMID. How many people would cancel their cable subscription if "Big 2" was no longer carried by Cox? I suspect the number would be the statistical equivalent of zero. You might have a different dynamic at work if all three local stations took this tack (I don't include the Fox affiliate in this mix due to its lack of local news coverage...but some of its network programming would be missed), but a unilateral move by KMID won't generate much response from the viewing public, Oprah notwithstanding.

This also seems to be a very bad business move by KMID. The potential loss of cable viewership is bound to have major advertisers rethinking their ad budgets. How much would you pay to advertise on a TV station that didn't reach cable viewers? (The real impact on local viewers is that we'd get to see 33% more of Kelly Grimsley on KWES and KOSA!)

I understand the predicament of KMID and the other broadcast stations. Revenues are falling as eyeballs are being distracted by cable programming, video games and the internet. I don't know what the solution is, but I respectfully suggest that KMID would generate a lot more sympathy by just admitting up front that it's in a world of hurt and needs some additional revenue to stay afloat. The station should tell the viewing public that it is working toward an agreement whereby Cox would collect a paltry sum from each cable subscriber on behalf of KMID, and that the extra quarter a month on each cable bill will be instrumental in ensuring continued operation of the station.

As things stand, KMID comes across as a whiner, and Cox - amazingly enough...it takes a really incredible turn of events for this to happen - comes across as the protector of things good and right.

I'll be interested to see what the folks over at Jessica's Well have to say about this situation.

Santa Fe Snow (or lack of it)...

I see that Santa Fe once again managed to avoid the big "snow event." While the northeast managed to pile up snowfall records (pun intended), the Santa Fe ski area got less than six inches and now has a base of around 40". Bummer.

The reason I'm a little disappointed in this situation is that immediately after Christmas I start looking forward to the next Big Event on our annual calendar, and that's our February ski trip to Santa Fe with our good friends Tommy and Toni. We've made this trek enough times that it's an established and treasured tradition. And while we like to obsess over the snow reports, in point of fact...we don't go just for the snow.

Oh, we do like to spend time doing things that are greatly enhanced by snow. The guys downhill (will this be the year that we finally take snowboarding lessons?) and the girls either cross country (gasp) or snow shoe (double gasp) through the north 40. But it is all done as an excuse to eat great food, drink designer coffee and play endless games of chickenfoot in front of a crackling fireplace in the lobby of the Hotel St. Francis while laughing hysterically and scaring the citizens. So, we really just need enough snow to be able to get down the mountain a few times (or up it, depending on the sport), which is all our aging legs will accommodate anyway.

And to be honest, bad snow has been the rule rather than the exception at Santa Fe for many years now. I guess two or three years ago the snow was really good, but most of the time, a 40" base would be considered luxurious. I suspect that the only occupation worse than being a farmer in Midland County is being a ski resort owner in New Mexico.

If you've never skied (whoa...that looks funny; are you sure it's not "skiied"? well, not according to American Heritage) Santa Fe, don't bother; you wouldn't like it. Oh, OK...I'm lying; I just don't want it overrun with out-of-control Texans (like, umm...well, me). It's a very nice little area, especially for beginning to intermediate skiers. It's not a place I'd recommend for a solid week of downhill as it's too small and would get boring, especially for a really advanced skier. But for a long weekend and for once-a-year skiers like us, it's ideal. Especially when you have a city like Santa Fe waiting in the wings to soothe your aching muscles and fill your empty stomachs! What Tommy and I really like about the skiing is the ability to get into the trees and blaze our own trails (although "blaze" may evoke a misleading cavalier image; it's more proper to envision "rush" hour on Dallas' Central Expressway, with the stop-and-go action punctuated by loud and entirely sincere screams). This predilection to stray off the beaten path has been the source of many cackling sessions in the aforesaid hotel lobby, and has also caused us to at least consider the acquisition of helmets.

So, we'll manage to make-do with whatever the snow imps decide to grace us. But it would still be nice if, just once, our ski area would have the same base as, say, downtown Buffalo, NY!

Christmas Report

Christmas 2002 is history. Once again, I made a conscious effort to focus on the spiritual significance of the season and the day...and once again was something less than spectacularly successful. There's just so much stuff to get in the way.

Not that I'm the curmudgeonly type when it comes to Christmas gifts and such. Not at all. I love to get gifts and I love to give them, especially when you manage to find just the right one. We gave my 80-something mother-in-law a treadmill this year, and she was absolutely giddy about it. She's doing multiple 3-minute workouts throughout the day - hey, you gotta start somewhere - and in some small way, her life is now better than it was. As a recovering heart patient, getting some regular aerobic exercise just might give her more life.

Come to think of it, isn't that the spiritual significance of Christmas...a Gift that gives more and better life? Hmmmm...maybe I wasn't as distracted as I thought.

Well, enough of that...gotta play with my new wireless optical mouse!

Unto us a Savior is born...

New Project

December is supposed to be a slow month in my line of work. Websites are generally not high priority items for businesses in this area anyway, and people seem to be reluctant to embark on any new projects in December, what with the vacations and distractions of the season.

Recognizing this fact of life has freed me to focus some time on a personal pet project that I've been kicking around for a while...making the best of the downtime, as it were.

One of my favorite pastimes as an early teen was reading science fiction. This was, of course, back in the "old days" before Star Trek series clones and Dungeons-n-Dragons fantasy came to dominate the "science fiction" section of the book store. Back then, hard sci-fi was still in vogue...fiction that took real technology or real science and applied a subtle (or not-so-subtle) spin on it to amaze and amuse the reader. Plots were plausible and they assumed a modicum of intelligence on the part of the consumer. I miss those days...or at least those stories.

Not that fantasy as a genre was non-existent. Ursula K. Le Guin was writing beautifully about wizards and dragons even back then, for example, but perhaps my imagination wasn't properly attuned. I much preferred the space sagas and rampaging robots and telepathic tyrants and genetic grotesques as concocted by Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Poul Anderson and Robert Sheckley. Even the weirdness of Harlan Ellison didn't seem like fantasy in the strictest sense of the word.

One of the best sources for such hard SF reading material was a small magazine called "Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact." In fact, it's still in print - here's the website - but I haven't read it in years, for various reasons. But in the late 60s and early 70s, John W. Campbell's little monthly was the créme de la créme of the genre, easily eclipsing the more pulpish competitors like "If" and "Galaxy."

I'm not really sure it was the quality of writing that set Analog apart but it did have a clear edge in one very important department: the cover art. Which brings us to the real topic of this post (you were beginning to wonder, weren't you?). I'm not sure how the Internet has survived this long without a site devoted to memorializing the artwork that graced the Analog covers, but I aim to rectify that shortcoming, and soon. In fact, I've gotten something of a start, here. Of course, I don't expect this to appeal to a wide cross-section of the population...heck, I don't expect it to appeal to anyone else but me, and so I've done it for my own mindless purposes. Still, SF artwork done in a pre-Photoshop world should hold a certain nostalgic fascination, so perhaps from that perspective, it's not a totally wasted effort.

But...now that I've committed to this little project, clients are climbing out of the woodwork. So much for selfless contributions to the Internet community. Duty calls. (What I wouldn't give for a good time/space continuum disruption device right about now.)

Christmas Shopping Advice

I went Christmas shopping on Tuesday, in fulfillment of my annual obligation to take care of the menfolk on our list. It's not a long list: my dad, father-in-law, brother and nephew. However, the first two are getting to the age where it's increasingly hard to buy for them, at least without resorting to the "Dockers and flannel shirt" strategy.

Determined to avoid this badge of defeat, I headed for that mecca of Guy's Things: the Harbor Freight store in Odessa. And, as usual, I was not disappointed. Ladies, what follows is a brief primer for shopping for guys; please take notes.

If you really want to be safe with your gift buying, avoid:

• electronics (unless he's given you a very specific, exquisitely-detailed description of the exact item; otherwise, you stand no chance of getting the right thing. Trust me on this.)
  
  
• DVDs (unless they have really loud soundtracks or a lot of explosions, or, preferably, lots of explosions set to loud soundtracks)
  
  
• clothes (particularly those items which are designed to be worn on formal - aka "boring" - occasions; however, underwear is generally OK).

Instead, stick to the tried-and-true gift that has worked since the dawn of time: tools. Face it, most men view a rerun of Tim Allen's "Home Improvement" as a documentary, worthy of broadcast on PBS or The History Channel.

But I can hear you now. "I don't know what kind of tool he wants." Remember these three little words: It Doesn't Matter. Tools are to guys what those little china dessert plates are to chicks. You can never have too many, and duplicates are good, not bad. A guy's concept of heaven is having access to a pair of Channel-Locks in every room of his celestial mansion.

Still confused? OK, here's a short can't-fail checklist of criteria to use when shopping for tools for that special guy on your list. The more of these criteria the tool meets, the more likely you are of getting him to go see the next Brad Pitt movie with you as proof of his gratitude.

• Heavy is good. Unlike with electronics (see rule 1 above), bigger is better. An anvil makes a great gift; nobody's going to trump him when they compare gifts at the post-Christmas office coffee bar gathering. "You got a 30 pound bench grinder? Ha! My new rotating-jaw table vise weighs at least 50!"
  
  
• Odd-shaped is good. Rule of thumb: the harder it is to wrap, the better. The best gifts are those which require an 8'x12' tarp and 16 bungee cords to conceal.
  
  
• Mysterious is good. There's nothing a guy likes better than encountering a once-in-a-lifetime mechanical problem, for which the solution is an incredibly rare, one-of-a-kind tool...which he just happens to have. Don't worry if you don't have the faintest idea what the tool is for when you buy it; don't even worry if he doesn't. What's important is not that he knows how to use it, but that he owns it.

Last, but certainly not least, keep in mind that while the guy probably doesn't know Bill Blass from a large-mouth bass, he does understand the significance of labels as they apply to tools. If you buy it from Harbor Freight, give yourself extra points. If the manufacturer is Milwaukee Electric, Proto, Facom or even Craftsman...yep, you done good.

I hope this little chat has been helpful to you. As far as my own shopping trip, I won't ruin the surprises by telling you specifics...let me just say that it's going to take some pretty large gift sacks to accommodate the various loot I scored on Tuesday. There might have even been some anvil involvement.

Treadmill-Based Musical Observations

Here we are, five days from the official start of winter, and the outside temp is in the mid-70s. The wind is also blowing around 30 mph, making this seem like a typical spring day in west Texas. The St. Augustine side of my yard is still green. The weeping willows in Grafa Park still have their leaves, for pete's sake. Even the red oaks, having turned red, haven't turned loose. So much for relying on the weather to get us in the Christmas spirit.

Not that I'm complaining too much. With natural gas prices pushing $5.50, I'd much rather hear the warm wind howling through the leafy branches than the hot air blowing through the attic ductwork, if you know what I mean.

But, the windy conditions meant that I'd be putting in a session on the treadmill, rather than enjoying a warm day of cycling. The freaky December weather put me in a mood for contradistinction, for juxtapositionary sensory input, for...weird combinations. So, for auditory stimulation...ummm...plug in Jethro Tull's exquisite "Aqualung" on CD; for visual distraction...TV on mute...click, click, click...there it is: CMT, aka Country Music Television. Nothing makes a few minutes at your anaerobic threshold go by more quickly than hearing "Locomotive Breath" while watching a Dixie Chicks video.

It had been a while (a long while) since I had watched CMT, and I was disappointed to see that the music/commercial ratio was roughly half of what it used to be. And the choice in videos was aimed at a demographic that clearly excluded moi...say, women aged 25-40. There was Travis Tritt, but it was some smarmy ballad instead of the rockin' "T.R.O.U.B.L.E." Brooks & Dunn, normally a good choice, but another ballad (I could tell because it featured Reba gazing mournfully into the camera) instead of the classic "Rock My World (Little Country Girl)." And absolutely no sign of Chris LeDoux ("For Your Love" gave the Fabulous Thunderbirds' "Tuff Enuf" a run for its money). Well, I suppose that's what I get for tuning in at 10:00 a.m.

OTOH, hearing Ian Anderson's scathing lyrics and bad-boy flute (aha!...more juxtaposition) put me in a pleasing stream-of-consciousness groove that ultimately took me back to my DJ days in the greater metropolitan area of Fort Stockton, Texas, home to the 250-watt giant, KFST AM (860 on your radio dial). There's no possible cooler job for a high school kid than DJ, right? Well, yes...and no.

It was cool that the station owner let me host what I'm sure was the only AM album-rock show in the 20,000 square mile service area of the station (don't be too impressed...the population density averaged 1 per square mile). And even better, I got to play my own vinyl - the station being a little, um, underserviced in the rock album area. So there I was, spinning Cream ("Sunshine of Your Love), Iron Butterfly ("Inna-Gadda-Da-Vida") and Chicago ("25 or 6 to 4") to a listenership that undoubtedly numbered in the upper dozens. (I always fantasized that the occupants in the cars on nearby I-10 would stumble onto the station in the otherwise vast wasteland, and report back to their friends in L.A. that they'd found a little bit of rock-n-roll heaven in the desert.)

It wasn't so cool that the rest of the time I had to stick to the station's regular format, charitably described as "variety." That meant we'd intersperse country with western and vice versa, occasionally getting jiggy with Peggy Lee or the Percy Faith Orchestra. The station owner broke most of the R&R demo records that he deemed unacceptable ("Hey Jude" didn't pass the sniff test, as I recall); I can only assume that he never actually listened to my Saturday night show.

I also often drew the short straw to oversee the Sunday afternoon "Classical Hour," and to ensure the airing of the requisite quantity of public service programs; these generally consisted of some pretty good jazz played on behalf of various branches of the United States military. I was also often the "chaperone" for the non-licensed host of the following show which consisted of non-stop, paid-request Spanish music. I'm sure there was a proper name for the musical genre, but I didn't know what it was then, and I'm still not sure. It was a mixture of conjunto, mariachi and what eventually would become Tejano. I was continually amazed at the steady stream of people coming to the station to slip the DJ a couple of bucks in exchange for his playing this exotic music. It took me awhile to figure out that this Sunday afternoon ritual was a major part of the social culture of the day. In any event, I could only envy the DJ's superior listenership, and the fact that I had an FCC third-class operator's license carried precisely no weight with him. I was a regulatory requirement, nothing more.

Looking back, I guess the good outweighed the bad. I'm probably one of a shrinking minority who can remember the sound of a real teletype machine spitting out AP newsflashes, and I did get to hear some great music before anyone else (when I could get to it before the owner). And, frankly, I miss the hepcat Latin rhythms of the inestimable Rudy and the Reno Bops. You can't buy memories like these.

But feel free to make an offer!

Churches on the Web

We Southern Baptists don't, as a rule, subscribe to the concept of "Seven Deadly Sins" (which, if you've read your Chaucer lately, you know includes pride, lust, gluttony, sloth, anger, envy and...umm...intentionally watching more than one episode of "The Bachelor"), at least not as being a foundational doctrine. However, we do tend to hedge our bets by prefacing a reference to (some of) these traits with a positive spiritual adjective, like "righteous." Thus, while it's not OK to be angry at the jerk who just cut you off in traffic, it is perfectly acceptable to be "righteously angry" at his obvious contempt for the God-ordained Law of the Land. (Admittedly, this practice falls apart quickly when applied to some of the other "Sins." I'll leave you to your own devices to figure out how "righteously lustful" or "righteously gluttonous" might work.)

So, with that context, I admit to being righteously proud when my church's website was featured in last Saturday's Religion section of the Reporter-Telegram (the letters of which can be rearranged to spell "Ample Error Getter"). The short article, entitled "Churches on the Net," focused on three local churches which are using websites as part of their overall communications strategy.

More righteous pride ensued upon reading a quote that included this phrase: "We're not First Baptist, but..." My natural inclination is to interpret any comparison that begins with this phrase in a positive light. I use it a lot myself: "As far as my guitar-playing goes, I'm not Eric Clapton, but..." or "As far as my net worth is concerned, I'm not Bill Gates, but..." [Well, actually, with respect to the second example, I'm not even Bill's gardener's housekeeper's dogwalker, but that's not really relevant at this point. And I'm even less noteworthy as a guitar player.]

Anyhow, I am somewhat proud of the First Baptist website, since I designed it and maintain it. In fact, it was my search for a website for the church that led me into the design field. We actually went online in 1996, a year earlier than Dr. Dyer states in the article (but, hey...who's counting?), and at that time, web designers were about as rare in West Texas as bull riders wearing tutus. Being the forward-looking thinker I am (a trait also commonly described as "geekiness") I believed our church needed a website, and if nobody else could do it, then by golly (can I say "golly" in the same sentence as "our church"?) I'd figure it out myself. <cliche>The rest is history.</cliche>

FBC remains my largest pro bono client. According to the last crawl by the Atomz spider, the site contains 240 pages (and 397,996 words). It's been redesigned three times, the latest coming about a year ago when I introduced Cascading Style Sheets and dropped some of the less-visited features. The site gets 350-400 page requests each day, which isn't Amazon.com, but... (see how that works?!) probably isn't too bad for a local community site.

One of the features all three pastors are interested in having on their respective sites is the availability of sermon downloads, in audio and/or video format. We already provide a running last-four-sermon inventory in MP3 format, but it's a giant leap to video, and I'm not sure we're ready for the technical challenges (a.k.a. outrageously expensive and aesthetically disappointing solutions) that go along with it. As it stands, according to the FBC site's referer log, a large majority of people who begin listening to the online audio sermons (and they number in the hundreds each month) stop the download before getting all the way through it. This is consistent with the studies I've seen about Internet usage in general. Attention spans are just too short nowadays. (Gary, if you're reading this...it has nothing to do with your sermon length! The phenomenon appears to apply to anything over about five or ten minutes.) And audio quality is superb compared to what video is going to look like. But that's a technology issue that will eventually be overcome. I'm not so sure about the attention-span issue.

I suspect the solution - for us, anyway - will prove to be a third-party who converts the regular weekly videotapes of our Sunday morning services to a web-deliverable format AND who provides the on-demand delivery via its own server. But the cost will be high, and given the current budget for the site (that would be zero), I wouldn't hold my breath. Unless, of course, any of you dear readers might become righteously envious of other churches with that feature and wish to fund it for us!

"The Game"

The Game was the principle topic of conversation at church yesterday morning, as I knew it would be. Being the charitable lot we are - on Sunday mornings, anyway - there was no second-guessing, no fist-shaking. We all gamely expressed amazement at the twists and turns of the game and allowed as how the Midland High Bulldogs did themselves and our community proud. We sympathized mightily with the players and coaches for coming sooooo close.

On the other hand, nobody tried to conceal the fact that this one did, indeed, hurt. Fortunately, pain dims with time, especially in healthy bodies, and this ache will eventually fade.

In fact, I think it's already started to do so, as I am able to write something that was unimaginable just 24 hours ago: Congratulations, Judson!

It would be so unfair on the part of Midland fans to overlook the accomplishments of the kids on the Judson team by focusing only on our disappointment in the outcome of the game. Despite a 2-to-1 enrollment advantage over Midland High, the Judson team is not the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (did you ever think that would be the proper superlative comparison?). It's still composed of 17- and 18-year old guys who drive used cars, struggle in algebra class, battle acne and get tongue-tied in front of cheerleaders. The fact that they know how to play a pretty mean game of football in front of 25,000 screaming fans in a game that has been imbued by adults with life-or-death significance still doesn't make them anything more than teenagers, just like the guys on the other side of the line of scrimmage.

What we saw yesterday was the difference between a "veteran" playoff team and one which may well become one. You have to admire...however grudgingly...the composure of the Judson coaches and players, who as a team understood that the game isn't over until 0:00 is showing on the clock. At some point, you can even begin to feel good for the Judson coach, winning his first championship under the considerable shadow of his predecessor.

Midland didn't get beat by a trick play or a desperation "Hail Mary" pass. They got beat by a well designed, calmly and perfectly executed play - the hallmark of a well coached, mature and confident team.

The really great thing for Midland fans to realize is that the MHS team does not suffer by comparison. They, too, were composed; Judson was just a little more so...at that point. They, too, didn't give up; Judson just happened to find and exploit their only possible weakness...at that point. And no one can question the quiet, effective leadership provided by Coach Yenzer, keeping the team perfectly poised on the thin emotional tightrope of the playoffs. As far as I could tell, the only edge Judson had was in having been in the situation before.

And that's an edge they won't have next time.

So, congratulations on a great ending to a great season, Judson. But, hey...watch your back. And I mean that with all due respect!

High School Football Drama; Marine Yells

There's little I can write about the just-concluded Texas 5A Division 1 state championship football game that many other correspondents won't say more eloquently. I don't recall a more emotionally exhausting contest, as the Midland High Bulldogs pulled themselves out of a deep hole to take a five point lead with just 22 seconds remaining in the game...only to see it turn to dust as a Hail Mary pass by Converse Judson gave them the winning score with 7 seconds to go. I wasn't at the game in San Antonio, but the impact was perhaps magnified by the Fox Sports TV cameras showing tears of joy on the sideline turn to tears of anguish in a matter of seconds.

I just hope the players, coaches, support folks and fans will allow the reality of the wonder of this season eclipse the intense pain of the moment. They accomplished something no other MHS team in history had done, and they did it with class, determination and teamwork that no scoreboard can ever reflect. I'm proud of the Bulldogs...the city is proud of them...and after the way they landed a haymaker on the largest high school in Texas, I suspect the whole darn state is proud of them.

I'll end this post with a correction. In a recent edition, I put a parenthetical "hoo wah" immediately following a reference to the US Marine Corps. Yesterday morning I found that I have it all wrong. According to the online edition of the Wall Street Journal (sorry, no link...it's subscription-only), the proper Marine exclamation is "ooh-rah." This article summarizes the USAF's search for its own distinctive battle-cry; apparently the fly-guys have been making do with the Army's generic "hooah" (which phonetically sounds like what I tried to saddle the Marines with), and someone feels they need something to call their own. I wish them all the best, given that most of the best rallying vocalizations are already, um, spoken for. [For example, the Aggies already have "whoop," so don't even think about it.]

More 80s Music; Trudeau Does Good (?!)

Quick follow-up to yesterday's interminable post about music videos from the Eighties. I failed to tell you the identity of MTV's #1 music video in 1986, mainly because I didn't get that far into the tape. I watched the rest of it today - and just so you'll know the lengths [pun intended] to which I'll go for my readers, I had to run five miles on the treadmill to get to the end. Anyhow, Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" got the top pick. My take? It's an OK song and a pretty darn good video, especially considering the technology in 1986. According to Mr. Gabriel's website, "Sledgehammer" is actually the #1 video of ALL-TIME...or so says Rolling Stone Magazine, and who are we to argue with that august publication? (This honor does, of course, beg the question: how do you designate anything the best of all-time, if the product/service/whatever is still being made/done/whatever? Shouldn't the award more properly be called "The Best Up To Now"?)

Generally speaking, Gary Trudeau frosts my fritters with his waaaay-left leaning cartoons, but I have to admit that he provided a laugh-out-loud moment in this morning's Doonesbury. I won't try to re-create anything but the straight line and the punch line:

Iraqi obfuscator: "Is it true that only 13% of Americans can find Iraq on a map?"
American deflator: "Yeah...but they're all Marines." (Hoo-wah!)

Of course, if push comes to shove, there's a really good chance that less than 13% of anybody will be able to find Iraq on a map...or anywhere else, for that matter. Personally, I hope and pray it never comes to that. I won't blindly support an American declaration of war on any pretext, but I also fail to see the wisdom of a unilateral "live and let live" philosophy, especially when The Other Guy counters with a "live and let kill" philosophy.

Consuming Treeware

In a disgusting display of gushing sentimentality, I must thank the Site Admin over at Jessica's Well for the unnecessary but appreciated apology for misspelling my name. [I've proffered those thanks already, privately, but I want you to know how utterly civilized I am.]

Now, where were we?

Do you find that you're reading less nowadays? I know I don't read like I once did; I do less serious reading than I used to. I read constantly but it's bits and pieces: technical documentation; web-based articles and news items, mostly related to my work; headlines on WSJ.com and CNNSI.com; and, more often, blogs like Lileks.com and Meryl.net. I tend to make a distinction between these sorts of short-attention items vs. books (aka treeware) that are made to be read from cover-to-cover.

Don't misunderstand. My reading habits are no less rewarding now, but I must confess to a sense of inadequacy when someone asks about the last book I read. (OK, it was "Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide," by Eric Meyer...great plot but not much character development.) I can't name any of the books on the NYT Bestseller lists although now that I've followed my own link I can't say that I feel like I'm missing much: "Who Moved My Cheese" is still on the non-fiction list (how many years has it been?), and I see that John Grisham's "Skipping Christmas" is back on the fiction list (perhaps it's the Director's Cut).

So, in order to salvage a bit of my reading reputation I offer for your consideration brief looks at a few "real books" that I've read and which might have escaped your attention. I was going to write some witty and insightful mini-reviews, until I realized that I have absolutely no credentials for doing so, other than having read the books. So, let's just make a list, shall we, and let you decide how to proceed.

1. "Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life" - Anne Lamott - Recommended for writers, both aspiring and accomplished...as well as for readers, both aspiring and accomplished. In short, everyone needs this book.
   
   
2. "Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith" - also by Anne Lamott - Read it, if only to find out which three words comprise the totality of the two most sincerely faith-affirming prayers I've ever read.
   
   [If you're too cheap to buy one of her books, read some of her "Word By Word" columns in the Salon.com archive. Then, go buy her books.]
   
   
3. "Doomsday Book" - Connie Willis - Almost exactly like "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," only without the humor and zany antics. You know you're reading good SF when you no longer recognize the world you inhabit while reading it.
   
   
4. "Cryptonomicon" - Neal Stephenson - OK...maybe a micro-mini review of this one: take the movie "A Beautiful Mind," alter it [significantly] so that it's actually interesting AND intellectually stimulating (and get rid of R. Crowe while you're at it) and you just begin to scratch the surface of this amazing book. If you are fascinated by cryptology (and who isn't?), this is a must-read. If you couldn't care less about cryptology (you know who you are...but more importantly, so do we), read it for Stephenson's description of a man eating corn flakes.

I'll close today with the headline from Mr. Stephenson's elegantly designed website, which pretty much sums up my life...and perhaps yours, as well:

The Crutchfield Toy Store, and more

First, let me apologize if you recently tried and failed to access the Gazette. My webhost lost a hard drive, followed by the entire server. I've been told that a new server is now up and running and I trust we'll be more reliable from here on out. But I'm not holding my breath.

The Crutchfield Christmas catalog arrived yesterday. Is there anything better, guys, than a new Crutchfield catalog? OK, so maybe a Harbor Freight catalog comes close. Of course, the cool thing about Harbor Freight is that I can actually make that short drive to Odessa, walk into the Harbor Freight store, and touch the same amazing array of geegaws and gimcracks that overflow the pages of the catalog. I once bought an anvil at Harbor Freight, much to the amusement of most of my friends, although the report of the purchase elicited knowing nods from those few who understand that when you need an anvil, nothing else will do.

Anyway, back to Crutchfield. I think that the "home theater system" has filled the void in guys' lives created when the 60s Muscle Car era was supplanted by the Arab oil embargo and mile-long lines at the gas pumps. Sure, we've got SUVs and Hummer H2s, but that's different... everyone has them, even, well, girls! (Bear with me; this is not an "us vs them" thing.) Back in the GODs, girls drove cute little VW bugs; guys had (or lusted after) Barracudas with hemis and 6-packs (as in carbs...as in engine thingamajigs, not beer). And, as much as I applaud overachieving efforts to make a Toyota Celica into a "street rod," nitrous oxide and a 12K redline will never be an adequate replacement for raw torque from a 455-hp V-8.

Enter the home theater system. Guys, we can reclaim the glory days of raw, visceral power. So what if they're expressed in terms of wattage and lines of resolution, instead of horsepower and foot-pounds of torque and quarter mile times? We're still talking about the ability to shake our environments. But, best of all, we get to use a new language, one that's incomprehensible to the Average Citizen.

Take the Denon DVD-9000 receiver/DVD-CD player described on page 102 of Crutchfield's Fall/Winter catalog. This bad boy has a Silicon Image Sil 504 de-interlacer with PureProgressive circuitry and 3-2 pulldown processing. Ahhh. Add to that the eight (8!) 192kHz/24-bit Burr-Brown audio DACs, and the six (6!) 108MHz/14-bit video D/A converters, and you've got one heckuva...something.

Never mind that neither you nor I have even the remotest idea of what these things do (let alone why they justify the $3,499.99 price tag). We've got the terminology on our side, and if it's incomprehensible to us, just imagine how it sounds to the Average Citizen. In the end, the subwoofer-induced vibration of our Lazy Boys is indeed a fair replacement for the jarring of the Recaro bucket seats bolted on top of the angry driveline of a 1969 Shelby Mustang.

Well, enough of that. Real work beckons.

I love my work. It doesn't pay diddly, but I can't place a value on the fact that I get to work with such a wide variety of clients, something that appeals to my short attention span and general amazement about the world. In the space of a single day I might interact with a homebuilder, a plein air artist, a restauranteur, a community foundation and a professional storyteller. Each has unique business objectives and each requires a special creative touch to capture those objectives in their websites. Place on top of that the challenges presented by the constantly evolving technology and you have a recipe for joyful frustration on a daily basis. I want to write more about this down the road.

For now, however, I leave you with this suggestion: read (or re-read) the 95 theses of the Cluetrain Manifesto, and see how they apply to the work you do, or the businesses you deal with, or just life in general. Then, if you find yourself in a creative mood, hop over to the Minimalist Web Design site and take a break from overblown designs that violate most of those 95 theses.

Getting noticed

Oh great. I just noticed that the good folks over at Jessica's Well ("The Community Web Log on Media and Government in Midland, Texas") have drawn attention to the Gazette, complete with link and a misspelled version of my name (but I'm not sensitive about that). So I'm outed. Rats. I'm not sure what I expected would happen with the Gazette, but I don't think I ever envisioned that anyone would actually, you know, read it.

But OK...let's go with it.

I still have every intention of converting this site into a table-free layout, but I've been pretty busy with real work. I just learned this week how to make "favicons" (heck, I didn't even know what they were until this week), and so I've been going back to some of my client sites and adding those cute little icons that show up next to the URI in the browser's address bar. If you have the right browser, that is. In my defense, that's why I didn't know anything about favicons, because Netscape didn't support them until the latest version (7.0), which I just installed a couple of weeks ago. You can make favicons yourself using Photoshop and any program that will convert the image into the Windows Icon (.ico) format. You can also avail yourself of this free resource if you don't need to get too fancy.

Anyway...learning about favicons also explained something else that had bugged me for quite some time, and that was all the 404 entries that were appearing in various referer logs. Now I understand that some versions of Internet Explorer look for favicon.ico on every site they visit. I tell you, this Internet thing gets more complicated by the minute; I'm still not sure it'll ever catch on.

I'm sure I've filled my byte quota for the day, so I'll leave you with a link worth checking out if you're looking for a quick primer regarding color theory for website design. Start with this page for some basic definitions, then move through the next four pages to learn about color schemes and suggested applications for them.

And, by the way, it's always "i before e except after c..."! ;-)