Year: 2008

Categories
XHTML/HTML

HTML and XHTML and bears, oh my!

James Bennett writes on why HTML is the markup for him. There really isn’t anything to agree or disagree with, because he’s expressing his personal preferences. To him, the fact that you can co-mingle different vocabularies, such as XHTML, SVG, RDF, and MathML, isn’t enough to overcome the draconian error handling (there’s that term again, death to the term). Fair enough: XHTML isn’t for everyone.

One point of clarification, though: HTML5 isn’t just HTML, it’s also XHTML5. I know that the specification is misleadingly named, and seems to implicitly promise a path away from XHTML in the future, but I’d hate that those who prefer HTML would close that road for the rest of us; somehow helping to remove the option of using XHTML for those who have worked through the XML error handling in order to reach the advantages of a truly open page markup.

Working through the XML processing becomes less of a challenge as time goes on, as tools undertake the “burden” of ensuring proper markup so that we don’t have to be so encumbered. I’ve found the htmLawed Drupal plug-in to be wonderfully adapted to solving so many of the problems I’ve had with character encoding in the past. As for generating proper markup in the post, I can either manage the markup myself, which typically consists of paragraph and hypertext links, with an occasional image or SVG document; or I can have the filtered HTML option handle the markup, as it seems to respect and not munge SVG documents.

As for site design, every Drupal theme I’ve adapted so far has validated as strict XHTML. Makes my job pretty easy.

The point isn’t that HTML is better than XHTML, or that XHTML is better than HTML. The point is we all have our preferences, and we should expect browsers to properly handle both—now and in the future.

(via Simon)

Categories
Copyright Social Media

Mobs 2.0 and the AP

I’ve withheld writing before on the AP fooflah, primarily because writing counter to the Mob is about the same as throwing a sandbag on a levee that’s already broken. Now the Mob is descending on the Media Bloggers Association because Rogers contacted that organization for legal advice, and the organization’s lead knows the AP folks.

The noise is that the Media Bloggers Association doesn’t represent the webloggers, which is something that the MBA has never claimed. What’s really at stake, though, is discovering that, as I thought and wrote in comments to some of last week’s posts, there is more to this story than first appeared with Rogers’ initial posting. The concept of waiting to hear all the facts, though, seems to be anathema in this environment now. Report first and maybe fact check some other time seems to be the credo of a disappointing large number of A listers who actually call themselves “journalists”.

What’s particularly sad about this recent variation of the AP fooflah, isn’t so much that the MBA is representing “all” bloggers so much, but that people like Jeff Jarvis, Michael Arrington, Matthew Ingram, and Teresa Nielsen Hayden, at Making Light, seem to be offended that Robert Cox is getting attention, which we assume, should be directed at Jeff Jarvis, Michael Arrington, Matthew Ingram, and Teresa Nielsen Hayden. This following digging up an old AP form, set up for businesses who want to incorporate AP content into their material, and making a breathless and astonishing leap of judgment that this is what the AP’s answer to webloggers is going to be. Talk about manufacturing facts out of whole cloth— this, this is our newest form of journalism?

How much of this is really based on outrage and how much is based on wanting to generate attention is a difficult to separate at this time— a fact that should give us serious pause. The outrage is disproportionate to the event, until such time as the AP comes out with more information about what they feel is, or is not, fair use. Remember, it doesn’t make the organization evil because it wants to provide clarification as to its interpretation of fair use. Also remember that just because you’re a blogger doesn’t mean you get to set all the rules. We’re not six year olds, demanding our lollies.

Scott Rosenberg has a good point in that it is important to hear the AP’s guidelines and interpretation of fair use, because both could have far reaching impact on how we write in these spaces. However, Rosenberg has not joined the “burn ’em first, ask questions later” war path; deciding to join with others, including Denise Howell at Lawgarithms, and the New York Time’s Saul Hansell, in wanting to find out the facts, first, before taking match to the current effigy du jour.

What’s chilling about this event is Michael Arrington’s post deriding Hansell for his coverage of this event. Hansell’s coverage has presented both sides of this issue, in a manner that is both thoughtful and level headed. In particular, he deplored the over the top reactions among some webloggers, including demands for AP boycotts, the benefit of which will only increase the exposure of a few at the expense of the many. To chastise him for what is nothing more than decent reporting is to chastise anyone daring to have a differing opinion from The Mob.

What I’m seeing with Arrington and the others is a demand for group think; an it’s their way or the highway implicit directive that, to me, is a greater threat to truly free and open communication within weblogging than anything the AP can or will do.

Categories
Weather

Sandbagging and levee breaches

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

CNN has a summary post of the levee breaches and the state of flooding in both Illinois and Missouri, including links to videos on the levee break at Winfield. The films especially show how dangerous levee breaches can be, and why we so desperately try to prevent them.

I impulsively ran out of the house yesterday to help sandbag, only stopping to grab gloves on the way. I forgot to put on suntan lotion or a hat, and my face is pretty burned and swollen today. I won’t be going out to sandbag during the day, but plan on going out this evening when the sun is down.

There is still a threat of major flooding and levee breaches all down the Mississippi in Missouri and Illinois, so there’s still a desperate need for sandbaggers.

Categories
Climate Change Weather

Helping Hand

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Update Unfortunately, there was one levee outside of Winfield we couldn’t save.

second update Steve Ley, one of the two men in the photograph in the post, also wrote of today’s experience.

third update The Salvation Army has set up a localized fund to help flood victims in Missouri.

I wish I could say I acquitted myself well sandbagging today, but I really was a wuss.

I arrived at the high school in Winfield a little after 2 to find a bustling sandbagging operation underway. However, rather than dig in, we new volunteers had to wait in line to get a badge with picture. After over half an hour standing in the sun, the powers that be evidently decided they were in danger of losing volunteers because they let those who had ID start work.

Later, I found that the place did have prisoners from a local prison helping, so I’m assuming the security was related to them. Otherwise, our country has gotten a little too paranoid if we’re worried about protecting piles of dirt.

I partnered immediately with a man who was on his second day of sandbagging and a young woman (Breanna, who said hi in comments) who lived in the local area, both of whom had extraordinary energy, as well as being enjoyable to be around. I didn’t get a picture of the man, but I did Breanna. Behind her were twins who also partnered with us when they weren’t hauling bags to pallets.

Sandbagging

Next to us were two gentlemen who also had come up from St. Louis, Dogtown to be exact. They were a great deal of fun, and we found that we shared a lot in common, including careers in tech, and possibly even people who we mutually knew in the tech/online world. Talk about small world. I also think they bagged about 10 bags for every one I helped fill. Still, I like to think that there’s a levee somewhere, just about to fail when one last sandbag is placed on the top, keeping that last drop of water out. And I’ll have filled that bag.

Well, maybe I am being a tad fanciful.

Sandbagging

Following is a wider view of the operation. As you can see from the mounds of sandbags, people came to work, and work they did.

Sandbagging

Tonight I’m sunburned, with a headache that just won’t go away. However, I think I can drag my butt out tomorrow, early in the morning this time, and see if I can’t fill that last bag that saves that last levee.

In the meantime, the American Red Cross is out of money. Our country has had some difficult times in the last few years, people aren’t donating as much, and the result is that the American Red Cross is now having to borrow in order to help the folks in the Midwest. Not to mention that we’re only now heading into hurricane season.

I know you’re broke, I’m broke, we’re all broke and gas and food prices are horrid, but if you can see your way to dropping a few dollars into the Red Cross bin, you’d be helping a lot of people who have lost everything.

If the Red Cross is not your bag, and you want to help a more local organization, the Missouri Humane Society is known nationally for its pet recovery and sanctuary during weather events such as floods. The organization was in Iowa rescuing pets, and now is working to help people in Illinois and Missouri not only by actively rescuing pets trapped in the floods, but also by taking in pets for those who have no place to keep them.

If you can find your way to help out a little, I promise I’ll bag more sand. I’ll even name a bag after you. Who knows, maybe yours will be the bag that stopped the drop of water that saved the levee that saved the town.

Sandbagging

Categories
Browsers

Urges

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I have this insanely perverse urge not to download Firefox until Wednesday. To get up in the dead of night, tip-toe to my machine and hit the download button when the date is safely the 18th; cackling in glee at the thought that I, I, am the sole hold out–the traitor, the ingrate, the rebel.

What will happen, instead, is I’ll forget about it and sometime later tonight when I’m online, reading or writing or both, the automate update wizard will pop up and tell me there’s a new version of Firefox. I’ll click the button for the upgrade, and probably won’t think twice about it.

My moment of rebellion will have passed, immersed in other things.