Burningbird

Thanks to the kindness of my roommate, I was able to take my car in. We decided not to wait when further investigation showed that I had a busted front strut and that the strut was rubbing against the tire. If we waited, we risked losing the tire—though with the way my luck has been lately, I'll probably lose the tire, anyway.

Busted strut and taxes. Taxes and busted strut. Tire, busted strut, and taxes. Between my car, Golden Girl, and Uncle Sam, I'm a quivering mass of broke.

My plan is to put my first self-published book on the digital streets in May, the same time the HTML5 spec goes to Last Call. The book is about HTML5, of course. I'm sure you'll all want a copy—and a copy for your friends and family, too.

I promise the book will be more entertaining than a Justin Bieber conference, and less bizarre than a Lady Gaga dress.

Yesterday, I headed out to take some recycling to the recycling center and to get some groceries. As I pulled out of my parking space, I could hear a loud grinding noise in the right front wheel well. I put the car in reverse and the noise was much softer. Driving forward, though, the noise was definitely loud enough not to ignore.

Pulling back into my spot, I got out to look at the wheel wells. I was so distracted that I forgot to check for ice, which I'm normally paranoid about. Sure enough, as I stepped up over the little mound of icy sleet by the curb, my right foot slipped on ice underneath the snow melt. I've had a lot of bad falls in the past, with the end result of having two bad knees that can't handle a cat sitting on them, much less another fall. I twisted about to try and land on my butt but ended up hitting my hip and side against the ice and the curb.

One of the still open issues with HTML5 is the lack of a verbose descriptor for an image, since the longdesc attribute was made obsolete.

The longdesc attribute used to take a URL to a separate page or page fragment that contained a long text description for a complex or highly nuanced image. Typically, the only ones made aware of the attribute were screen reader users, though some browsers, such as Opera, provided access to the long description via the the right mouse button menu.

However, longdesc was made obsolete because, supposedly, there was no justification for its continued existence.

There is no better justification for a verbose descriptor/longdesc, though, than political cartoons, as I demonstrate over at Puppies @ Burningbird.

Puppies

I've been busy over at Puppies @ Burningbird. The Missouri Senate Agricultural committee did vote on a bill about Proposition B to send to the general Senate, but they did so in such an underhanded and deceitful way that I find myself equally dismayed at both their actions, and the result.

Rather than say they are repealing Proposition B, they told news organizations they are only "strengthening" it. We're removing the 50 dog limit, they said, and adding new enforcement criteria.

I have an HTML5 change proposal I need to finish in the next couple of weeks, but there's dozens more I'd like to write. However, if I'm going to pay my taxes come this April, then I must put my focus into paid writing.

Perhaps what I need to do is get sponsorship for each change proposal. Yeah, that's what I can do—list out each change proposal and ask for sponsors for each.

Does this sound oddly wrong? Well, I figure if the W3C can come out with an all powerful HTML5 logo that looks like it would be worn by a guy in tights with a cape, followed the next day with the WhatWG announcing that the "5" in HTML5 is dead (all the while, both organizations state their undying love for each other), I can ask for change proposal sponsors. It's a brave new world, kiddies.

Over at RealTech, I take a closer look at the new site, W3Fools, and what the site misses about W3Schools in Why read about it when you can play?.

It may be true that W3Schools makes excellent use of SEO, and it may be equally true that W3Schools commits egregious and painful errors. However, neither of these account for what W3Schools is doing right. If you don't acknowledge what the site does well, you're not going to make much headway into turning people off the site—no matter how many cleverly named sites you create.

update My mistake, there's six bills to modify or repeal Proposition B. There's so many now, I'm losing track.

Evidently, the state of Missouri has so few problems that the state representatives have enough time to introduce not one, not two, but five bills to repeal or modify Proposition B. I discuss all fivesix at Puppies @ Burningbird (Article 1, covering SP 4, HB 94, and HB 99, Article 2, covering SP 95, HB 113, and HB 131).

That I'm unhappy about the bills is a given. The latest bills, though, make me the angriest.

The shooting this weekend left many of us shaken. People should be able to go to a Congressional meet and greet without having to wear bullet proof armor. I hope for a complete recovery of those injured, including Congresswoman Giffords, and I'm sad for those killed.

I'm horrified at the events, and and sad at the losses, but I will not indulge in this national flagellation, as we once again overreact to a tragic event.

A sheriff remarks about the violence, hate, and bigotry in our speech; others point out a targeted list by Sarah Palin that had a bullseye aimed at Congresswoman Giffords. The belief seems to be that it was the national dialog that somehow drove this one man to kill. If only we weren't so violent in our speech with one another; if only we were better.

I'm still delighted with my new Linode VPS. I added one button backup to my plan, and that's made all the difference in the world. Now, when I'm about to try something tricky, such as setting up a site firewall, I can make a snapshot backup first. Then, if my site gets toasted, I can restore a good copy with a click of a button. Lovely.

After five years I finally broke down a bought a new laptop, a Toshiba. Not only am I trying to find my way around a new machine, but also a new operating system. My current older computers are a PowerPC Mac, and an old Dell running Windows XP.

As you can see if you're reading this, the move to a new hosting company went very well. I'm already exceptionally pleased with Linode, not the least of which the dashboard the company provides makes maintaining the site so much easier.

The only real challenges I faced were setting up the email system, and porting my Just Shelley web site; the former is just plain cumbersome, and the latter did not like the move to a PHP 5.3 environment. After the move I discovered that Drupal 7 is PHP 5.3 friendly, Drupal 6 is not. There is something in Just Shelley that triggered problems, though luckily the other sites ported without any problems.

So, I've upgrade Just Shelley to Drupal 7, as well as having installed a new Drupal 7 account, and I'm finally getting a chance to take the new version for a run. I can already see I have a lot of work to do. Yes, a lot of work.