Status-Q

testing 3

and four

and five

testing2

OK, in the great CSS debate that's going on in the blogging world at the moment, I'm definitely on the pro-CSS side. I've used it in a half-hearted way for some time, but as Mark Pilgrim says,

I agree. After all, it's nearly 4 years now since CSS2 became a W3 recommendation. 4 years! And that's the second version. When CSS1 was approved the web was only half its current age.

I converted this site to be largely CSS-based a few days back, but it's still heavily reliant on tables. The finer points of CSS layout are something I haven't played with much yet, but I'm about to try, so if the site looks a little weird for the next couple of days, please be patient. I'm just drawing a line in the sand (from 0,0 to 10px, 100px), pushing the envelope (to the right margin) and moving the web forward by a pixel or two..

Henry Jenkins: Blog This. Just in case you thought this site was mere trivia.

A concise summary of the foolishness of the BT Patent claim in John's Observer column.

On BBC Radio 4's comedy programme 'The Now Show', the Winter Olympics was described as "38 different kinds of sliding".

I've just been to an interesting talk about Dr Osamu Morikawa's HyperMirror system. How do you allow for richer interaction over video conferences? Make the participants believe they are all in one room, but looking in a mirror. Wonderfully simple idea, which seems to work very well. There are short video clips on the web site.

It reminds me of the MIT ALIVE project, where you saw yourself in a mirror view of an artificial world, with which you could interact. HyperMirror is much simpler and more useful for most people, because it's about communicating with other people rather than machines. (It doesn't even need a computer for a simple implementation.)

This is a noticable trend in the progress towards 'ubiquitous computing'. Technologies which simplify communication between people thrive. Those which simplify communication with machines are mostly just a stepping stone.

Now, I can think of dozens of fun uses for a CerfCube! Weblogs are great. I glanced at weblogs.com and picked a blog almost at random (Frank McPherson's PocketPCHow2 log, in this case) and it led me to something largely unconnected with PocketPCs but which might be very useful in my work. Fun, eh!

I've just come back from a fascinating talk by the illustrator Quentin Blake. It is a truth universally acknowledged that Quentins (a rare plural, there) are always worth listening to, but this talk was a particular gem. His book Words and Pictures is definitely going on my shopping list. There's a lot more to illustration than simply drawing pictures.

I love the insight that you get from this sort of talk, for the same reason that I love watching DVDs that have a director's commentary as one of the soundtracks. Some people tell me that films aren't meant to be watched that way; that you spoil them by over-analysing them. It's like saying that scientists who understand botany can't appreciate flowers.

I disagree. Knowing a bit more about what goes on behind the scenes makes me realise how much I take for granted, how much more there is to the creative process than I would pick up as a casual observer. The more levels there are to life, the more interesting it is. I can still enjoy a Hitchcock film while knowing about some of the camera tricks he had to use to achieve the result. I can choose to forget the lower levels. The whole point of art is that you know it's an illusion, but you are willing to be taken in by it. Perhaps, the more aware you are of the mechanics, the more satisfying is the willing suspense of disbelief?