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Thursday, January 23rd, 2003
Webmonkeying
Thursday, January 23rd, 2003 03:57 amRecent events prompted me to take a look at my philosophy and linguistics site, and it was pretty embarrassing. Intrusive backgrounds, conflicting paragraph styles and half a dozen different navigation bars. This in turn prompted me to spend the last few hours doing spring cleaning. I toned done the backgrounds, cleaned up bad HTML and CSS, and generally tidied things up. The only things I couldn't do anything about were the annoying banner ads and the fact that Spaceports make things like the back and reload buttons behave weirdly.
The only thing I didn't do was write some content (except for a few amendments and addenda here and there), but I really don't have the time or inspiration for that at the moment. I'd like to write an introduction to theories of categorisation (tentatively called "Jeans of any colour, style or material") but I really ought to get some of my offline papers finished and sent off first.
Still, I'm glad I got all that done, because if I hadn't done it tonight, I probably wouldn't have got round to it for months. It looks like I'll be asked to webmaster the site for our new combined department (all in-faculty English units are merging) which will be a lot of work. I've been doodling designs for the front page (as a friend of mine in the Graphics department said, the best web design tool is a pencil and paper). I want it to look different from our old website, partly because I feel like a change, and partly because I don't want it to look like I'm taking over the show. I do want to take over the show (webwise) but I don't want it to look like that! I might use an image map, possibly done like a pen-an-paper brainstorm ("spider diagram"), since we are in the business of getting students to plan their essays. When I can get to a scanner, I'll post some designs here.
The only thing I didn't do was write some content (except for a few amendments and addenda here and there), but I really don't have the time or inspiration for that at the moment. I'd like to write an introduction to theories of categorisation (tentatively called "Jeans of any colour, style or material") but I really ought to get some of my offline papers finished and sent off first.
Still, I'm glad I got all that done, because if I hadn't done it tonight, I probably wouldn't have got round to it for months. It looks like I'll be asked to webmaster the site for our new combined department (all in-faculty English units are merging) which will be a lot of work. I've been doodling designs for the front page (as a friend of mine in the Graphics department said, the best web design tool is a pencil and paper). I want it to look different from our old website, partly because I feel like a change, and partly because I don't want it to look like I'm taking over the show. I do want to take over the show (webwise) but I don't want it to look like that! I might use an image map, possibly done like a pen-an-paper brainstorm ("spider diagram"), since we are in the business of getting students to plan their essays. When I can get to a scanner, I'll post some designs here.
Ahead of their times
Thursday, January 23rd, 2003 05:47 amIn 1962, Douglas Engelbart invented the mouse. No one was interested, since few computers had the processing power to make use of it.
Ten years later, at Xerox PARC, Alan Kay had the idea of building a portable personal computer which would be the size of an ordinary notebook. Management rejected the idea.
In 1991, Linus Torvalds wrote described Linux as "just a hobby, won't be big and professional."
Ten years later, at Xerox PARC, Alan Kay had the idea of building a portable personal computer which would be the size of an ordinary notebook. Management rejected the idea.
In 1991, Linus Torvalds wrote described Linux as "just a hobby, won't be big and professional."