The dog who would be queen

It occurs to me that I've never told you much about the third member of our little family, the one around whom all the universe revolves, or would, if she had her way about it. I'm speaking, of course, about The Dog, aka Abbye Fabulous (or Ab Fab, for short).

I've decided I need to make her a recurring character here on the Gazette. After all, Rachel puts dog pics on her site, and look at the traffic that generates. Lileks, likewise, obviously relies on Jasper for his hordes of daily readers. So it stands to reason that we need a dog. We need one that doesn't slobber as much as some, or engage in endless stick-chasing like others. We need Abbye.

By the way, this is probably a good time to point out that she's never been overly fond of that "e" dangling from the end of her name. She considers it pretentious. She can blame me for it. I got in way over my head and just panicked.

Here are five things you need to know about Abbye, if you're truly going to embrace her as she deserves:

• She's more like a cat than a dog, in many ways. She doesn't follow people around through the day, craving their attention. She gets up on her schedule, goes to bed on her schedule, and doesn't really care what we think about that.
• She's not fat, but she is really hairy. She has multiple layers of hair and fur, like a duck, I suppose. She'll lay in full sun on the concrete in 95 degree heat without being fazed, and she's never known the sensation of being too cold, even in the dead of winter. She also has webbed toes.
• She's absolutely afraid of everything. Blowing leaves, moths, pecans falling out of trees, blades of grass that behave in unexpectedly aggressive fashion... all of these things and many more are cause for great consternation in her life.
• Unless, of course, she spots a squirrel. Then she'll run through razor wire and broken glass to give chase. The hunting instinct is strong.
• She was a malnourished, beaten-down, broken-tailed shadow of a dog when we rescued her; she didn't walk to people, she crawled on her belly. I'd love to introduce my Colt Python to the guy (I'm sure it was a man, although that word really wouldn't apply, now, would it?) who put her in that state. So none of the preceding "eccentricities" are really her fault.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Abbye, in all her, um...glory. As you can see, she's a little shameless, too.

I know you're just dying to learn more about Abbye, so stay tuned. I expect her to turn up occasionally here in the Gazette. Rachel and James should stand forewarned.

Posted by Eric at 07:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Blogger Spam (Or is it?)

If you're a blogger, it's possible that you received an email over the weekend from Kevin Aylward, proprietor of the blog called Wizbang. He was notifying folks of his new Movable Type site and new URL. He also asked email recipients to consider linking to his site.

I'm not sure how he got my address. It's especially odd that his message came to me at an email address not associated with my blog. I don't recall ever having visited Wizbang; he doesn't have the Gazette on his link list, nor do I have him on mine.

Note: I popped over to check out the site, and it is a nice new design. (Another blog topic possibility: the phenomenon of having professionally designed blog sites. Kevin's quick to point out that Joni Mueller at WebJones did the job, and her price list shows some very reasonable rates if you want a design to set your blog apart.) It's a table-free CSS design, so it takes some risks with older browsers, but it degrades well in them. I'm not wild about the link action (changing from plain to bold in the hover state; this is generally not recommended as it essentially requires a re-draw of the entire page) but that's a subjective call.

But that's not really the point of this post. I'm more concerned about a scenario in which this sort of activity becomes the norm for "administrative" announcements by blogs. With the number of blogs moving into the "millions" range, such activity has the potential to become a real burden. Imagine getting even scores (let alone hundreds) of emails each week announcing address or hosting or format changes... or requesting reciprocal links. [Well, I suppose some of you already experience this, due to the popularity of your offering... but it's a problem I certainly don't face!]

I don't and will never have a problem with people who read my blog and contact me directly to request a link. I do have a problem being part of a mass distribution list where such a request is made, and I'm not sure about the value to the blogosphere; that is, the value of blogrolls that are built upon blind reciprocity.

Boy, I just think it would be great if we let blogs do what they do best: alert us in an organic fashion of changes that merit our consideration or investigation. How does this work? When you make a change like Wizbang made, notify the folks who have you blogrolled. Those folks are already advocates of your site, or they wouldn't have br'd you. Many, if not most, will then actually post about that change (I've seen it happen already for the Wizbang announcement). Then let the viral marketing thing take over.

Whaddya think? Am I just overly sensitive? I'd really like to hear some additional opinions about this.

Posted by Eric at 01:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

BUToW: Mysterious Links

I don't have to tell you how important links are in the blogosphere, but I will, anyway. Links are very important. So it's worth spending a little time making sure that your links are optimized for your visitors' use and enjoyment.

Here's a little test. Which of the following links are you more likely to follow, being the busy little blog-reader I know you to be:

• Heh.
  
  
• Heh.
  
  
• Life sometimes imitates art, and other times it just takes it to the dumpster.

If you let your cursor linger momentarily over each link, you should have noticed that the second two had little popup descriptions of what you will find at the other end. I'm sure you know that these descriptions come from the title attribute of the anchor (link) HTML tag. The question is, are you using the title attribute on your links?

I suggest that you consider doing so, even though it is more work. (It's not all about you...you do know that, right?) It gives your visitor an extra clue about where you're about to send her. That clue might be the reason someone decides not to follow it, and you've just saved him a few seconds, thereby earning his eternal gratitude and possible a place in his will.

The title attribute is also useful for expressing an editorial opinion about the link, or in adding humor (see Anil's Daily Links for multiple examples of both).

As icing on the cake, the link title attribute is also included by some search engines in computing keyword relevancy scores. Anyone not interested in improving their SE rankings?

Is there a situation where the title attribute is not necessary? A purist would say "no," but I'm no purist, so I'll say "maybe." If you are quite diligent in providing a strong descriptive context for your link, you can probably get away with not using a title. In the example above, such a context might be this: "Here's a story about a janitor who mistakes an art exhibit for trash, and trashes it." But most of us want to provide a little more mystery to our posts. My advice is to keep the mystery to a moderate level, for your reader's sake.

Posted by Eric at 08:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

TdF Countdown

July is generally the true dog days of summer for sports in Texas. This year is no exception. The Rangers managed to extricate themselves from the baseball race fairly quickly (can you say "opening day"?). The Mavs are in draft and/or sign mode, hardly compelling spectator sport, despite what ESPN would have you believe. The Cowboys' upcoming season is a mirage quavering up from the distant baking asphalt, and will ultimately be just as unsubstantial. I can't remember the name of the Houston football team.

So, what's a Texan to do in early July? I know...let's go across the Big Pond and kick some Eurotail, in their own backyards, at their own sport! Yeah, that's the ticket. Enter Lance Armstrong and the plucky lads of the USPS Cycling Team, poised for Lance's fifth consecutive win at the Tour de France.

Or so sayeth (most of) the cycling press. I think Lance is vulnerable this year, and if he does win, it may be more remarkable than any of the previous four. History is on his side...no one has ever won four TdFs without winning a fifth (not that that many have done it).

I also predict there will be at least one significant and unfortunate incident of spectator/rider "interaction" ostensibly arising from certain recent politicial disagreements between certain countries. The TdF has always been known for spectator "enthusiasm" (aka, interference); why should this year be any different? If an American rider happens to be the unfortunate victim, the French will murmur "c'est la vie," while barely suppressing a smirk. If a French competitor gets hosed, look for a continental upcry, with eyes turned imploring toward, say, Brussels, followed by a task force, a study, and the issuance years later of a sternly-worded europrimand (eternally defined by its annoying stridancy and inherent irrelevancy). But I digress.

For a sports fan and a cyclist, the TdF is puke-inducing exertion, high drama, fine art, obscure tradition and a rolling 3,400km party rolled into one huge spectacle. Myself, I like the obscure traditions, which run the gamut from inane to sublime. For example, if the race leader becomes subject to a call of nature that can't be satisfied by an on-bike maneuver (don't ask), the peloton will obligingly stand by for a reasonable relief stop, similar, I suppose, to a NASCAR yellow flag. They've all gone there (no pun intended). Likewise, if the race route happens to run through the hometown of one of the competitors, he is always allowed to lead the pack through that town, regardless of his race standing prior to that time. The peloton bestows upon that rider a badge of honor that he will likely never forget. (Nor will he ever forget the way he is ferociously swallowed up and sent to the back immediately after departing the town limits, if he happens to be one of the second-tier riders. Fame is fleeting.)

I recommend following along via the official Tour website. You'll get almost real-time updates as each stage unfolds. Don't miss the daily columns by cycling luminaries who focus on their areas of specialty: Phil Liggett (history and tradition), Chris Carmichael (physiology and physics), Bob Roll (rider perspective), and so on.

Of course, the Outdoor Life Network provides unmatched TV coverage, if your time zone permits. If you're a cyclist, you'll also appreciate the equivalent of Super Bowl commercials (and, yes, they'll eventually become just as annoying before the three weeks are up).

Anyway, I recommend tuning in to see if yet another Texan manages to kick the French right where it hurts the most. Besides, how can you not pull for a team with possibly the only Mennonite (Floyd Landis) in the history of professional cycling?

Oh yeah...the race begins on Saturday, July 5.

Posted by Eric at 06:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Birthday Surprise

Today's my birthday, and my lovely bride surprised me with an upgrade to OS X for my Mac.

It was a surprise, because I had not dropped any hints, much less asked for it. In fact, I had been quite vocal about not wanting to upgrade my OS until I was also able to get a new computer with OS X already installed. I just didn't want to deal with the hassle (and possible complications) of disrupting my current setup... said setup being what I depend on daily for my work.

But, like the faithful and loving geek-wife she is (that's "wife of a geek," not "geek of a wife," by the way...) she went and did it anyway.

Oh...and you should see how she wrapped it...

...in a 17", aluminum alloy Apple G4 PowerBook!!!!

She even threw in a copy of MS Office X and an extra 512K of RAM for good measure.

I'm not worthy... I'm not worthy... I'm not worthy...

...but I sure am grinning!

Posted by Eric at 02:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Ann Coulter: Buh-bye

I never heard of Ann Coulter until I started blogging, probably because my usual TV viewing and newspaper reading habits (reruns of "Everybody Loves Raymond" and "King of the Hill," and an odd combination of the local paper and the Wall Street Journal, respectively) didn't overlap with her territory. But I somehow stumbled across her website columns, read a couple and generally liked what I saw. I blogrolled the site.

Then, recently, I discovered that she was going to start blogging and I thought, what the hey...this should be good, so I br'd that, too.

But, I started reading various interviews with her, as her profile was raised (in my field of vision) by the anticipation of the new blog. Guess what? I changed my mind; I'm not interested in what she has to say, after all.

It's not that I disagree with her positions on most things, because I don't. Frankly, I just don't need another strident voice arising from a mindset that can't comprehend the slightest possibility of being wrong about anything. She exudes contempt for those who oppose her views; granted, some of them are, indeed, contemptible, but it's so much more enjoyable to see them filleted with a feather, and feathers just don't seem to be in Ms. Coulter's arsenal.

Don't get me wrong. I think we need a few of those types, on all sides of the discussion. I've already got a couple in my blogroll (you know who you are -- not that you're actually reading this, but that's a whole 'other angst). I don't need any more. So, Ann...no hard feelings, OK? Just...buh-bye.

Posted by Eric at 03:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Who says Macs don't crash?

I just learned that NASA's solar-powered prototype aircraft, named Helios, crashed on Kaui today. This was one cool-looking aircraft, as the photo at right shows. It had a wingspan of 247 feet, wider than a Boeing 747, and, powered by 62,000 solar cells and 14 electric motors, it could soar to an altitude of almost 100,000 feet.

What many people don't know or perhaps have forgotten is that the Helios was controlled from the ground by an arsenal of Apple's PowerMacs...desktop and notebook. The Macs are used thusly:

NASA reports that the cause of today's crash has yet to be determined. If I were in their shoes, I'd look carefully to see if someone was trying to run Microsoft Word 6 during the test flight.

Posted by Eric at 12:27 PM | Permalink

Another Midland Blog

Wallace blogs at Streams (aka Big Gold Dog), from an undisclosed location in Midland. I would have blogrolled him a long time ago, but his site became inexplicably unviewable -- literally -- on my browser. He's got those problems fixed now, and is contemplating a jump from Blogger to MT (although he, like several others I've noticed, is taking a quick second look at Blogger's new offering; never underestimate Google's ability to read and respond to the marketplace... not that they have to be rocket scientists to figure out what is going on. But, I digress.) Anyway, Streams is now on the Gazette's blogroll, and I recommend a visit.

UPDATE (2003-06-28): The Gazette has been br'd by Streams; muchas gracias, amigo!

Posted by Eric at 09:22 AM | Permalink

Texas Financial Disclosure: It gets worse

As reported in an earlier post, new Texas legislation requires detailed personal financial statements from local school trustees in larger school districts, beginning in 2005. The folks over at Jessica's Well point to the dauntingly detailed form that must be completed... and it's a doozy. If you care to see the form plus and the instructions in all their bureaucratic glory, visit this page on the Texas Ethics Commission's website.

What I didn't realize — haven't seen it reported elsewhere, but the new legislature is summarized here — is that these disclosure requirements will also apply to the following city officials, again, starting in 2005:

• Mayor
• "Governing Body" members (presumably, the City Council)
• City Manager
• Municipal Attorney

If nothing else, we should have some interesting reading in a few years! (And, possibly, a literal leadership vacuum. In a community with the political and philosophical mindset of Midland, I worry about the possibility of a shift of power and authority to those least able to wield it, simply because they don't view these kinds of regulations as unreasonable.)

Posted by Eric at 08:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

No shoes? Beats no feet

Woke up this morning, booted up, click the "Daily Links" tab grouping in my toolbar, and felt that old familiar sinking feeling when this message appeared: OK, perhaps I exaggerate ever-so-slightly, but you know the feeling, I'm sure, as does every web-based business and every blogger. Could things get any worse?

Well, yes. James Lileks elaborates this morning on the unfortunate situation to which he alluded yesterday: his wife has been laid off. He describes the ripple effects in detail, and you can't help but sympathize. Down here in oil country, such occurrences are an integral part of the warp and weave of life. I know hardly anyone in Midland who hasn't lost at least one job, or had a spouse who lost a job... including yours truly.

Mr. Lileks seems to have the right perspective: life goes on, and these challenges usually turn into opportunities if approached with the proper attitude of humble determination to make it so.

And, of course, since you're reading this — for which I am sincerely appreciative, by the way — the DNS problems at my hosting company have obviously been resolved. To quote a more-famous blogger, life is good.

Posted by Eric at 08:19 AM | Permalink

The Fed & Mortgage Rates

The local NBC affiliate had a story on its late night news broadcast on how the impact of today's interest rate cut by the Fed will affect home mortgages. Here's how the reporter couched the situation:

That's a very logical-sounding statement. Too bad it's incorrect.

Fixed-rate mortgages are tied to 10-year Treasury notes (bonds), not to the Federal Funds rate controlled by the Federal Reserve Board. That's not to say that cuts by the Fed can't set in motion the factors that eventually result in a drop in mortgage rates, but that's not always the case.

For example, 30 year fixed mortgage rates actually increased 0.1% (national average) between June 16 and June 19. They've fallen back slightly since then, but not to their previous low.

I wish reporters would do just a little more research before going on-camera. Ten minutes online could make a lot of difference in their credibility.

[Most of the research for this post came from various articles in the online edition of the Wall Street Journal -- subscription required]

Posted by Eric at 10:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Zoom to the MoOM

Jeffrey Zeldman linked to the recommended summer reading section of this site, but I was more interested in the Coudal Partners' Museum of Online Museums (MoOM). For it is here that a link to the Bauhaus-Archiv Museum of Design resides alongside the Museum of Soviet Calculators and the Moist Towelette Online Museum.

If you tire of the sophistication, jump over to the MoOM Annex to view an assortment of "recently acquired but not-yet-collected exhibits," including The Gallery of Famous and Not-So-Famous Women With their Hands On Their Hips. The point of such collections is...well, let's hear it from the caretakers themselves:

Whatever did we do before we had the web?

Posted by Eric at 09:18 PM | Permalink

Haganah Renamed

I just learned that the blog formerly known as Haganah is now named Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness, and it has a new URL: www.tzaddik.us/lilpoh. Update your link accordingly.

If you don't have Jack Rich on your blogroll, you're missing a great read. Today, for example, he has a thoughtful essay entitled "Abortion: The new slavery?"

Posted by Eric at 04:20 PM | Permalink

Newsflash: Sox Sells!

Have you seen (or heard) the new ads featuring the voice of James Carville? He's representing a new phone-in information service, the name of which escapes me (hope they didn't pay James too much). Anyway, in one of the TV ads, Carville — who, by the way, could give annoyance lessons to a mosquito — appears on-camera only from about knee-to-toe (fill in your own cheap shot here:        ).

I noticed today that he and I have something in common: socks. The particular pair he's modeling in the commercial is an Aireator model manufactured by DeFeet International, and they happen to make the best cycling socks in the world, along with other miscellaneous types of athletic clothing. I actually have two pairs of that particular sock, although I'm not sure why. Not only are these great socks, performance-wise (never underestimate the potential damage from bad socks), they also sport some wonderful graphic designs.

If you take the time to visit the DeFeet website, you'll note that the style has apparently been discontinued. While I'm sure it has nothing to do with Carville's appearance in this ad campaign, I'm also sure there's a Democratic Party-related metaphor just waiting to be birthed by someone more creative than me. Posted by Eric at 04:03 PM | Permalink

New Blogrolls (Again!)

I guess it's genetic. My mom is constantly rearranging the furniture in her house (my dad doesn't dare get up in the middle of the night without a flashlight to find the new location of the nightstand). Anyway, having lived almost two months with my Linkers/Writers/Techies taxonomy (the philosophy behind which may be found here and here), I decided that I wanted a different way of displaying my links to other blogs.

Since -- as I explained previously -- my blogrolls are essentially for my own benefit -- I decided to rearrange them according to the way I use them. Visitors to the site might be tempted to assign more meaning than intended to which blogs end up where; I'm not responsible for the drawing of those conclusions, however. This is not a rating system. For the most part.

The blogs in the Daily category are those which I visit every day, and often multiple times during the day, if they are frequently updated. Those in the Regularly [Visited] category are those which I'll try to drop by when I can make the time. For some, like Bill Whittle's excellent blog, I'll visit immediately upon learning of an update; he just doesn't post all that frequently. The third category is for reciprocal links, miscellaneous sites and those which I just haven't yet made up my mind about.

I tried not to drop anyone from my previous set of links; I'm pretty content with the group. If I somehow messed up and you find that you're no longer linked, drop me a note and I'll fix it, toot sweet.

Posted by Eric at 03:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Trackback: Angel breath or demon spawn?

OK, forgive the lame-o title. I went to the grocery store this morning, and some of the tabloid headlines are still racing around my few still-functioning neurons.

But as long as you're here...did you notice that I've activated TrackBack on the Gazette? Of course you did, for you are an astute observer and wise in the ways of the blogosphere. Unlike me, until the long-suffering Bryan at AWS took me aside and gently whacked me upside the head, advising me to get my act together before the blogging demi-quasi-deities consigned me to eternal blogging irrelevance. (Oops; too late.)

Seriously, though, I appreciate Bryan's patience in explaining to me just exactly what TrackBack is intended to do. I had read the MT documentation, and didn't feel blissfully enlightened. Then, I ran across this extended article on Daring Fireball, and experienced disconcerting confusion. But, at Bryan's urging, I turned on TrackBack and...it's cool! Maybe not "change your life" cool, but certainly up there with "rent an unfamiliar DVD and discover a hitherto unknown great little movie worth re-watching" cool.

If you're a blogging n00b, as was I lo these short few hours ago, TrackBack provides automatic notification (via email if you like) whenever someone links to one of your posts. MT also will ping someone else whose post you've linked to in your post, notifying them that they've been linked to. Then they can link back to the linked post and you'll get a notice, that you'll then link to [I think I'm in a loop here folks]...

In fairness to John Gruber at Daring Fireball, I will point to his more recent addenda about TrackBack, where he clarifies some points in his previous essay. He also provides a link to this post in A Whole Lotta Nothing which details a simple hack for using TrackBack in conjunction with WinAmp to keep an updated "What's Playing Now" list on your blog sidebar. There's also a similar AppleScript/iTunes combo for Mac users.

So, there you have it. Whereas I once thought TrackBack is what you did while hiking with a GPS, I now know that it's something more... something different... and yet, something similar. And that, my friends, you can take to the bank.

Posted by Eric at 01:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Man only sows

Josh Claybourn points to an article in Time Magazine... the cover story, in fact... entitled "Should Christians Convert Muslims?"

It's an interesting article, but the very title indicates a basic lack of understanding of Christian doctrine. Christians can't convert anyone. Only God can do that. The fact that He often chooses to use such imperfect vessels to convey His truth and grace is a matter of ongoing amazement and encouragement to me.

Posted by Eric at 09:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Disturbing Bleat

I don't know about you, but I get nervous when Lileks gets oblique. Reports by credible sources of impending doom tend to have that effect on me.

Posted by Eric at 06:48 AM | Permalink

Take my CWS ring...Please!

This is a tad late in coming, considering that Rice defeated Stanford last night to win the College World Series (in the most lopsided game in CWS history). But while I was mowing the lawn this afternoon, I couldn’t help thinking about the implications of having two “brain trusts” meet in a national collegiate championship showdown.

I mean, for possibly the first time in history, you have two teams who not only compute slugging percentages to the 12th decimal point…they do it in their heads. <rimshot />

And, speaking of statistics, this may be the first time that all the players have SAT scores higher that their batting averages. <rimshot />

I can just imaging the on-field chatter:

• “Hey, this guy can’t hit, this guy can’t hit…his lips move when he does differential geometry!” </rimshot>
• First baseman to baserunner: “I wouldn’t advise trying to steal second. Our catcher achieves an exemplary terminal velocity via an arc-optimized throwing motion, and you’ll be out like an orphan muon.” </rimshot>

Everyone knows that they use aluminum bats in college baseball. These guys are no different, except that they can build their own. </rimshot>

And, finally, I heard that one unnamed player was recently ejected from a game. He was caught with a quarked bat! </rimshot>

[Thanks to the Fat Guy for getting me started down this ridiculous path!]

Posted by Eric at 04:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lust!

Eat your heart out, Michael Dell...

Posted by Eric at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Food for Iraq

Back in May, I posted about a grass-roots effort by Southern Baptist churches to supply food and other essentials to Iraqis. I thought you might be interested in hearing the outcome of this project.

According to this article from the Southern Baptist International Mission Board, 2.8 million pounds of food is being shipped to Iraq. Over 35,000 boxes of food and supplies were provisioned by local churches across the country. The cost of shipping is estimated to exceed $325,000, and this cost will be paid out of IMB funds (donated by local congregations). And, finally, the total cost of the food provided by donors is estimated to be around $2 million.

The food is expected to begin arriving in Iraq in mid-to-late July.

Posted by Eric at 09:43 AM | Permalink

A thankless job gets tougher

According to this story in the MRT, school board trustees will have to start providing detailed financial disclosures, thanks to a bill passed in the late stages of the recently (and thankfully) ended state legislative session.

I can't think of a local position of service that appears to be less rewarding than the unpaid office of MISD Trustee. Much of the grief suffered by the school district and the trustees is directly related to state legislators' inability or unwillingness to make education a top priority. (But, I'm sure once the nasty redistricting mess is fixed, our lawmakers will be able to properly focus on these issues. After all, first things first.) Now they add insult to injury by mandating financial disclosures that appear to be equal to those required for state officials. The requirements apply to trustees living in a city with a population greater than 100,000 or serving school districts with more than 5,000 students. (There's no need to delve into the issue about unethical behavior in small towns where it's much more likely that a concentration of influence can lead to less-than-optimum decisons.)

If this bill stands up, look for a mass exodus of volunteers from school boards across the state, and a lack of qualified candidates willing to take their places. There are better ways of ensuring that trustees aren't unduly influenced by conflicts of interest than disclosing personal financial details for themselves, their spouses and their dependents.

Posted by Eric at 08:37 AM | Permalink

"Weblog Fury"

I direct your attention to today's column by William Safire, in which he dissects the movement toward a recall election for California governor Gray Davis. Safire makes a good point about the dangerous precedent a successful recall effort would set. Absent any "impeachable offense," (and my perception is that Davis is basically inept and unpopular, but not criminal), the voters should have to live with their decision until the next scheduled election.

But, frankly, I'm not all that intrigued with California politics...we have more than enough to keep us entertained and annoyed in Texas. What really caught my eye about Safire's column is this quote (bold type my emphasis):

Safire apparently "gets" blogging, and also doesn't feel a need to define it for his readership.

My observations tend to make me think that fewer people know what a Weblog is than Safire assumes, but the more often such usage appears, the more quickly that situation will vanish.

Posted by Eric at 07:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

MT Migration - The Final Chapter

This has been one of the longer days of my relatively brief blogging career, as I've worked literally all day to get the Gazette into some sort of presentable form. I've made some really dumb mistakes along the way — thereby increasing my workload significantly — but I've also delved into some cool things that I wouldn't otherwise have explored. I think that the good has outweighed the bad, so I consider the overall process to be a success.

My biggest headache was in getting my Blogger archives (what there was of them) imported into Movable Type. The process itself was really very straightforward; MT's documentation is clear and easy to follow. My downfall was my lack of understanding about how MT formats and integrates those archives into its system.

For example, I never paid much attention to providing a title for my Blogger posts. Blogger doesn't place much value on a post title. In the MT scheme, however, a title is very useful and widely used (for example, the links between individual archived posts are the posts' titles). So when I imported the Blogger archives, they came across without titles, and MT's default handling is to take the first 15 characters of the post as a title. That led to some pretty weird — even useless — titles.

Also, because I didn't plan sufficiently well, some of my MT directories ended up being in different places than their Blogger counterparts, meaning that most of my image links were hosed.

Had I just stopped and dealt with those two issues in a rational manner, I would have escaped somewhat unscathed from the Great Archive Import Fiasco. However, using as my motto the old oilfield advice — get a bigger hammer — I decided that I would just delete all the archive-related files from the directory in which they resided...easy enough to do via FTP. Then I edited the export file containing my Blogger archives in an attempt to correct the image links (at that point, I didn't realize the problems caused by the bad titles, so I didn't do much with them), and re-ran MT's Import function.

Oh. My. Gosh.

I now had duplicates of every archive!

Some of you are no doubt either laughing or just shaking your heads in that condescending way we all do around those who are just a little slower than average. For you know what I didn't...but I do now. Those archives are not simply files in a directory on a web server. They are actually housed in that MySQL database that was so frustrating to create. So when I thought I was deleting the offending archives and uploading replacements, all I was really doing is asking MT to build duplicate archives.

In hindsight, it would have been faster just to delete the whole database and start over. But then I wouldn't have learned to use the great phpMyAdmin interface that's built into my webhosting account's CPanel. What a great tool! It was tedious work, but I was able to delete the duplicate entries (one at a time; is there a batch delete? Anyone?), edit the titles and fix a few image links that I had missed the first time around.

Fortunately, I've never been a really voluminous blogger. Plus, Blogger had hosed a couple of months of archives so they are lost forever. Bottom line is that I had only about 150 or so posts to wade through (well, 300, if you count the duplicates). It more than filled a couple of hours this afternoon.

Anyway, I think I've got the site about 80% to where I want it. I still have some tweaking to do on the more esoteric templates (like Comments), and there are a number of settings that I either don't understand or just haven't yet located. Bottom line, though, is that I'm glad I made the switch, and I'll probably pop over to the MT website in just a minute and make a donation.

Oh, and there's one other site I need to visit...blogger.com. There's one last item of business to take care of over there — I need to click on the "delete this blog" button!

P.S. I'll be happy to correspond with anyone making a similar switch, if my experiences will be helpful. I'm always good at being the cautionary example.

P.P.S. I promise...no more MT-migration posts. Let's find something else to talk about, shall we?

Posted by Eric at 09:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Rebuilding Progress

Okey-dokey, we're getting somewhere. It appears the blogroll is back, the Archives are working (!!) and I'm getting a handle on the Movable Type CSS. Thus, the original look of the Gazette is almost back to where I want it. Still much work to be done - Archive template, loading a few archives from the prior setup, etc. - but at least I can move on to other projects without feeling like I've left this one in the lurch.

Thanks so much to all of you who have provided continuing encouragement and feedback through this process!

Posted by Eric at 07:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

MT is in the house

Surprise! (You're not alone.) In my usual "damn the torpedos, full speed ahead" way of doing things, I've switched on MT without really being ready. That's OK; we'll whup it into shape...soon, I hope. Please bear with me...but this is pretty cool, I must admit.

Posted by Eric at 10:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Blog Usability - Pt 2

I want to follow-up on my earlier post about improving the "visitor-friendliness" of blogs. In hindsight, I don't think I made a very good case as to why, philosophically, usability issues should matter to the average Jo/e Blogger.

In a way, it's an issue of responsibility. This "personal publishing revolution" that many of us are participating in has created new opportunities for expression, but it's also created new problems that authors and journalists never before had to deal with.

How many mainstream journalists, for example, ever question what typeface and size will be used when the newspaper publishes their reports? How many novelists get to weigh in on details such as page color and width, or line-height? These things are generally beyond their control, and thus beyond their caring. And, in any event, every copy of the newspaper or book is going to look like every other copy, so why sweat it?

That's no longer the case with blogging. Bloggers are writers and technicians, whether they like it or not. They are responsible for both the creation and the delivery of content. Trouble is, every visitor sees a potentially different version of that content, depending on their choices of operating system, platform, browser, monitor settings, etc.

Oh, sure, it's possible to blog without knowing a whit about web design principles; that's the beauty of the beast. But it's irresponsible to be unaware of the consequences of bad design...if you care about your readers, anyway.

Interestingly, web design standards and web browser technology have progressed to the point where you can shift much of the burden of meeting reader expectations back to the reader. You no longer have to tell her what font to use, at what size, for example. You can leave those choices up to her. But this means that you relinquish control. It might mean that you provide suggestions for how your blog will be presented, instead of requirements. And that implies that you're comfortable letting other people see your blog in a different light than the one you see when you browse it.

People visit and read blogs for their content, not their cosmetics. A poorly-designed blog with good content will still attract readers...but perhaps not as many and not as often as it otherwise might. And, as high quality blogs — in terms of both content and layout — continue to proliferate, bloggers ignore usability issues at their own peril.

Posted by Eric at 05:13 PM | Permalink

Blog Usability: We can do better, folks...

I've been kicking this topic around in my mind for several weeks. It first struck me after Bryan's ill-fated redesign of Arguing With Signposts (complete with proclamation that he knew it didn't work with Netscape/Mozilla, but, frankly, he didn't care — although I might be projecting just a tad; that's how it came across to this Netscape 7.0 user, anyway). But, to Bryan's credit, his motives were pure (an attempt to move to a standards-compliant, CSS/XHTML-valid layout that would make Zeldman proud), and he did finally relent and move back to a layout that was cross-browser viewable.

Then last night, just before shutting down, I dropped by Rachel Lucas' blog and found her post about "10 curseworthy things." Part of #7 struck a nerve, when she writes this about Andrew Sullivan's blog: "I wouldn't know [if it's any good] because I don't read blogs with white type on dark backgrounds." Exactly!

These two examples touch on an issue that hasn't really been kicked around in the blogosphere, at least not that I can find. It's the issue of making a blog visitor-friendly.

I realize that there's a huge difference between commercial websites designed to attract and serve paying customers, and individual blogs that rightly are extensions of the authors' personalities. But — and here comes some navel-gazing, Bryan — I suspect that the majority of bloggers really want people to visit their sites and read what they've written. I suspect that the majority of bloggers don't really want to make it hard for people to read what they've written. And, further, I suspect that many bloggers have never given a second thought as to whether their sites are hard to read or not. That's a shame; it's bad for the readers and it's bad for the bloggers.

[Now, if you view your blog as an avant-garde experiment in radical web design, and you have the 'tude to reject the notion that readers are important, you can skip the rest of this post...assuming that you even made it this far. Go forth and be rad; you are blessed in your own special way, and I care not to encroach on your territory. This blogosphere is big enough for the both of us.]

As a public service, I hereby present some usability problems that are common amongst blogs, and I further will present examples of good and, um, not-so-good so you'll know what I'm talking about. Keep in mind that I'm using as examples blogs whose content and authors I have great respect for, even if I have some quibbles with some of their layout decisions.

• Font size that's too small - This is soooo easy to fix. If you're using Cascading Style Sheets (and why wouldn't you?), don't specify a font-size for your body text. Let the visitor's browser preferences rule; your visitor, after all, knows better than you what size font best fits his or her monitor resolution and corrective lens prescription. But if you just have to specify a font-size — if you just can't allow your visitor that kind of unfettered license — pick a big size. Instapundit uses 12 pixel Verdana; Roger Simon goes even bigger, with 14px Verdana. The text on these blogs is quite legible, regardless of your monitor's resolution (mine is a hefty 1280x1024). On the flip side are sites like Outside the Beltway, which specifies a body text of small and a blockquote text (generally, the quote in a box within a given post) of extra-small. When you couple that specification with a serif font (he uses Palatino/Georgia) which is less legible on a computer screen than a sans-serif, it makes for tough reading. Depending on the time of day, I simply can't read OTB without bumping my browser text-size setting a couple of notches. Even Lileks — whom I never fail to read, however squint-eyedly — needs to get with the program. Mr. Lileks gets points for using Adobe GoLive as his layout program, but loses them and more for continuing to use the font-size tag (oh, the shame of it all!) instead of using CSS to handle that chore. And Trebuchet MS, his font of choice (and mine), is smallish to begin with.
  
  
• Page width that's too wide - There's a really good reason newspapers have, since the dawn of time, printed their stories in narrow columns: they're very easy to read. The eye doesn't struggle to find the beginning of the next line. Website text should follow suit. The aforementioned blog of Jeffrey Zeldman is a fine example of doing this right, as is fellow Texan Meryl Evans' blog.(I'll also give props to Arguing with Signposts at this point. But I can let his recent redesign disaster pass without this observation: that short-lived layout provided posts that were approximately 200 pixels wide in my screen. Narrow is good...but this was a little too much of a good thing!) Less good on this point is USS Clueless; I have a hard enough time keeping up with Den Beste intellectually without also getting lost in the text. I'd also find Meryl Yourish's posts easier to read if they were in a narrower column.
  
  
• Weird-colored or distractingly-patterned backgrounds - This isn't really much of a problem nowadays. We've made enough fun of those awful 90s sites that this isn't a common design flaw any longer. Nevertheless... Most (but not everyone) people find dark text on light backgrounds to be the most legible and readable combination, and that doesn't necessarily mean black-on-white. The Gazette uses a dark gray text on a white background. Daring Fireball uses an interesting white-text-on-dark-gray background layout that is pretty effective, so I'm not dogmatic on this point. But I really have a hard time reading Signposts, with its white-on-black approach (and the irony of the goth image of an unabashedly Christian website is not lost on me). And, of course, there's Rachel's fave-not, Andrew Sullivan.
  
  
• Posts that load after images and ads - This nit borders on anal, but I've noticed a few blogs that load very slowly, and what I see first — and sometimes for a long time — is just the ads, graphic links, blogroll and other non-post items. This is primarily because the blog layout has all of those items in the left column, where they load first. A good design rule-of-thumb is to give your reader something to read while the rest of your page loads. Junk Yard Blog is a noticeable example of this phenomenon, but I chalk that up to the slow delivery of BlogSplat. I'm not suggesting that you re-work your layout to put all your miscellany on the right column, like Howard Owens has done — but it's not a bad idea. It will also make your blog more accessible to disabled visitors who are using assistive technology to view your site. (If this aspect of the issue bothers you, but you want to keep the left column stuff, think about providing a hidden "jump to main text" link at the very top of your page. Your disabled visitors will thank you.)

Gosh, I don't know about you, but I feel better! I realize that reasonable people may differ on some of these admittedly subjective issues, and that's fine. I even realize that the Gazette isn't squeaky-clean in all these areas. I really just wanted to bring them up for the benefit of those who have never even thought about the subject of a user-friendly blog.

And, I'm going to leave the subject of post quality to folks like Den Beste. There are some windmills at which I don't care to tilt!

Posted by Eric at 03:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Oberonian is as Oberonian does

I'm King of the, um...Fairies? - Well, I really do have more important things to blog about, especially in light of my extended absence from this space due to the encroachment of clients, family and other distractions that make life worth living. But I happened to notice that Jay Solo has reorganized his blogroll, and the Gazette is now officially classified as an "Oberonian."

OK, I admit that I didn't have clue as to what an Oberonian is, or what the appellation signifies. Did a little googling and discovered that Oberon is the King of the Fairies and husband of Titania in Shakespeare's Midsummer-Night's Dream. But, is Jay really that well-read? Perhaps; perhaps not. Then I found that Oberon is also the outermost moon of Uranus, the planet most likely to appear in an Adam Sandler movie.

Given his other blogroll categories, I'm guessing that we're more the astronomic type than the histrionic. But I'm in good company; other Oberonians include Little Green Footballs and The Fat Guy.

Posted by Eric at 02:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Another reunion survived

The family reunion was enjoyable — we had four generations present — and the weather was very cooperative, especially for central Texas in June: not too hot or humid. The deviled eggs were, um, devilish and the catered barbeque was adequate.

We did have to deal with one minor emergency. The host's cat tangled with either a copperhead or a water moc and came out on the short end of the stick with a nasty bite to the paw. She was still at the animal clinic when we left this morning, but the prognosis sounded promising. It's sort of ironic in that cats are valuable in keeping the snake population at bay, because they diminish the snakes' food supply (mostly field mice, lizards, frogs, etc.). You don't expect the cat to actually do battle with the serpent. But in this case, curiosity apparently got the better...well, you know where this goes.

For you Texans who haven't made a cross-state trek lately, you'll be pleased to hear that from Sterling City to Lampasas, every ditch, gulley, arroyo, creekbed and wash has water standing or running in it, and the Johnson grass is eye high to a mare in the bar ditches. I realize that the rolling scrub brush plains aren't to many folks' liking, but you'd have to be completely citified to miss the beauty of this countryside when it's had a little rain on it. And, lately, a "little rain" has come by the bucketfull!

And, speaking of weather, by way of mildewy Lafayette, LA comes a link to more photos from our recent Midland dust storm. These are even more dramatic than the ones I posted on June 4 (yep...the archives are hosed; just scroll down a tad). [Many thanks to our pal John Comeaux...he got a Cajun name and a west Texas soul!]

Next family reunion is in two weeks; location - Cloudcroft, NM. Sort of the other end of the spectrum from Belton, Texas, in more ways than one!

Posted by Eric at 08:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Gone fishing (sort of)

No posts until Monday...it's family reunion time in beautiful Belton, Texas, home of...well, I'm not sure what's there, because I don't recall ever doing anything except driving through the town on the way to somewhere else. But it will be a good opportunity to dust off the old Relationship Chart. And, of course, eat some deviled eggs.

Later...

Posted by Eric at 06:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Smart posts writ well

It's been a while since I shifted into Linker Mode, so in honor of the upcoming weekend, here are some posts that struck me as particularly intelligent and worthy of your time:

• Dr. Steve over at Five Points addresses a situation in Denmark where a Lutheran pastor denies the existence of God. In Denmark, Lutheran pastors are government employees. Cash quote: "When the government begins to actually pay the salaries of church pastors, bad things can happen."
  
  
• Todd Dominey, blogging at "What Do I Know," has some insights about what AOL's settlement with Microsoft and agreement to use Internet Explorer (link n/a) as its default browser will mean to Netscape. Hint: it's not good news. Cash quote: "The bizarre thing about the settlement is that Microsoft - yet again - is guilty, must shell out millions of dollars, but walks away with a deal that actually makes them the winner."
  
  
• Jeffrey Zeldman weighs in on the same topic. Cash quote: "If you can’t see the good, here it is: “what IE6 is capable of” makes a far better platform for standards-based design than “what Netscape 4 can do,” which was where many of us were trapped the last time the browser space froze."
  
  
• Jack Rich blogs in Haganah about the "Road Map to Hell," although his take isn't one of absolute dismay and despair. Cash quote (from many): "Arafat has famously declared coexistence in English while screaming jihad in Arabic."
  
  
• Lawrence Braden's posts are normally too, um, smart for me, but this one I could understand. Cash quote (from I.J. Good): "The older we become, the more important it is to use what we know rather than learn more."
  
  
• Donald Sensing, over at One Hand Clapping, links to Phillip Carter's Washington Monthly article entitled "Faux Pax Americana." The sub-title is the cash quote: "The lesson from Iraq is that using fewer troops can win a war, but can't keep the peace."
  
  
• Maripat's Right We Are "Thursday Caption Contest" picture will probably give me bad dreams, especially as I contemplate the release of a certain Senator's novel autobiography.
  
  
• And, last but not least, I urge you to contact Silent Running and demand to hear Wind Rider's "Road Trip to Big Lake" story.

Posted by Eric at 08:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Redefining Age

Let's see...hobbies and pastimes...OK. I snow ski, windsurf, scuba, cycle (both single and tandem) and run. My usual cycling workout is 20 miles, 3-4 times a week, alternated with a four mile run on the "off" days. I'm a volunteer camera operator for our televised church services, and I build websites for money. Anything else? Hmm...I do digital photography and a little MIG welding, I'm learning to play the guitar, and I just completed courses in CSS and search engine optimization. I thought MatrixRel was inferior to the first one, and I can't wait for T3 in July. I'd rather watch any of the "Alien" movies than anything with Orson Welles. I think that about covers it.

Oh, yeah...I almost forgot. I'm over 50. Not much, mind you, but still...

What's up with the self-disclosure? Well, it seems that Joe Territo of the National Interest weblog is aghast because AARP tried to recruit him for membership. Joe's only 34, you see, and as far as he knows, he doesn't have any "pastimes or hobbies" (AARP's words) that would put him on their radar screen. His post started me thinking: what does the typical "senior adult" look like today? Is there such a thing?

I guess I'm too busy to do any serious investigation in this area, but I can tell you that my "fifty-plus" is vastly different than my dad's "fifty-plus." I also can't imagine anything more boring than the kind of retirement that his generation — for the most part — looked forward to. Is my definition of life after 50 better than theirs? No, I don't think so...it's just different.

My advice to Joe is to just chill a bit. So far, life on the far side isn't a heck of lot different than on the near side, and I suspect that the demarcation between young and not-young will be increasingly blurry.

To paraphrase a previous cliché: in the blogosphere, nobody knows you're an old coot.

Posted by Eric at 07:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

West Texas Dust Storm

We laugh in the face of Iraq's sandstorms...! OK, so maybe our flying dirt events don't last as long, but they can be pretty dramatic in their own way. Take last evening for example. Odessa, our neighbor a mere 20 miles to the west, had 80 mph winds and torrential downpours. Big Spring, our neighbor 40 miles to the east had some heavy winds and torrential downpours. Here in Midland, however, we had...well, let's save a couple thousand words, shall we?

The top photo was taken by an unidentified person from an upper-floor office (you can make out the reflection of the window if you look closely). I took the bottom photo from my driveway in what should have been bright daylight; it's not a sepia photo...this is unretouched Midland environment at its worst. The really awful thing about this particular storm was that the wind died quickly, and the dust just hung in the air for hours. This may be even worse that those times when the dust is mingled with just a touch of precip, giving everything a wonderfully yucky coating of mud. (Watch "Dante's Peak" for a similar, if a tad more dramatic, effect.)

Oh, by the way...let's just keep this our little secret, OK? I'd hate for our Chamber of Commerce to find out these kinds of photos are making it onto the Internet!

Posted by Eric at 07:43 PM | Permalink

Congressional Election Rehashed

[If you're not living in West Texas, you might want to just wait in the lobby until we're finished here. It won't take long.] Thanks to an unsurprisingly underwhelming voter turnout, Lubbockian Randy Neugebauer beat Midlandier Mike Conaway to claim the District 19 House seat recently vacated by Larry Combest. The margin was closer than I expected: Neugebauer garnered 587 votes more than Conaway, a difference of just more than 1% of the 56,505 total votes cast. Conaway actually won the early voting — 50.9% to 49.1% — a bit of trivia that is surely of little comfort to him.

Total voter turnout was 14.3%. Put another way, 339,361 eligible voters couldn't figure out a way or a reason to get off their [presumably] lazy butts to participate in the democratic process.

On the other hand, if ever a race lent itself to voter apathy, this was it. I voted for Conaway, but I'm hardly losing any sleep over the election results. The biggest difference I can see between the two candidates is their choice of residential location, and I suspect most of the rest of the electorate was no more discerning.

After all the media-induced hoopla over a North/South battle (and, indeed, it turned out that way...see the map below; only Howard County broke geographic lines, and we all know what they say about Howard County, don't we?), I don't believe most people see this as a big deal. The issues that affect residents of Crane County in the south are different from those affecting Parmer County only in terms of trends.

Besides, it's not as though Neugebauer can view the election results as an overwhelming mandate for his platform (whatever it is...we know he's agin terrorists in West Texas, and for GWB, but that's mostly it). After all, Conaway pulled a higher percentage of the Lubbock vote than Neugebauer did in Midland/Odessa. If the new congressman figures out a way to play partisan politics to the detriment of his southern constituency, there's a really good chance he'll be a one-term representative. Aggrieved voters tend to turn out in higher numbers at the next election than those who have sailed along, reaping the benefits of official benevolence. In any event, whatever Mr. Neugebauer's agenda, he doesn't strike me as a guy who will shaft half of his constituency just because they don't share his area code. [But, then, I never figured on Tom Craddick being able to run the whole lot of state Dems to Oklahoma, either.]

You just have to feel a little badly for Mike, though. If he had taken Howard County — by only 30 votes, even — he would be packing for Washington, D.C. and Randy would be bracing for more blowing dust.

[Information for this post came from here, here and here.]

Posted by Eric at 03:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Moore & Albright

This is MUCH too easy! You'd think that after almost a week of non-posting, I'd have something more pithy and insightful for my (up to) 20 faithful readers. You'd be wrong. When I read this report this morning, I just couldn't get the following image out of my mind...

Like most bloggers I know, I've pledged to use my Photoshop Powers© for good and not for evil; therefore, I strongly advise parents to exercise discretion in allowing small children and pets near the family monitor. This goes double for book signings.

Posted by Eric at 08:31 AM | Permalink