Categories
Technology Writing

Notes from the book part two

Summary:   Wherein author picks up both stick and carrot, paying particular attention to the attached metadata: Me relate stick. Me relate carrot. Me class hitting. Stick class hit. Carrot class eat. Me relate Microsoft. Translation: I am hitting the stick with Microsoft, while eating a carrot.

  • Open source developers, providers of free or inexpensive shareware applications, those working on open standards and specifications, or providing documentation, tutorials, and help for all of the above: you almost make me believe there is a land over the rainbow, and that it has fairies and unicorns and we never have to wear shoes. I don’t thank you, as often enough, and as much as you deserve.
  • Speaking of which: whoever came up with the original idea for CSS, you deserve chocolates
  • Everyone is mad at Apple for iPhone, but I don’t care: Safari 3 is a wonderful browser. Color management, far out. And Opera? Thanks for standing up for standards. Firefox, you’re cool, too, but you need to commit to implementing one spec before you start on others. Oh, and it would be really nice if you didn’t crash so much. No, really that would be cool.
  • The WhatWG and (X)HTML5 efforts are, in my opinion, not the best use of resources. We’ve spent years separating presentation values from page layout, only to turn around and make the same mistake with semantics. Accessibility is in; accessibility is outMachine versus human semanticsIndent versus blockquote. Hey! Poem markupSVG isn’t ‘semantically rich’ . When semantics have to be hard coded into the syntax, satisfaction will never be guaranteed. Open models, not new specs. When will they ever learn? When will they e-v-e-r learn.
  • Regarding microformats: Using “rel”, “class”, and “profile”, as the only available means in which to add semantics to markup is the same as using LOLCats to re-define the Bible: it’s pidgin markup. “Me class sitting. Me relate chair. Chair relate desk. Me class watching. Me relate windows. Window relate Woman. Woman class running. Woman relate street. Woman class feeling. Feeling relate weather. Weather class cool. Weather class fall. Me class wistful. Me class wishing. Me relate woman.”–this is my sad attempt to describe my sitting in a chair at my desk, looking out through my open window at a woman jogging along in the wonderfully cool fall weather, wishing I was her instead me being here at the computer. At some point in time, simplicity breaks down and you want a richer method in which to express your meaning.
  • Chew on this: pictures as data, as well as visual, entities.
  • Canvas is cool, but SVG is better. It’s not just because SVG elements become part of the Document Object Model (DOM) and are easily scriptable. It’s because we can find SVG similar to what we want, copy it, manipulate it, and we don’t have to know any scripting. I wanted images of musical notes and searched on “music notes svg”, which led me to this Wikipedia page and this (as well as this) public domain SVG. I copied the SVG file and deleted the SVG creating the bars–no bitmap tool magic needed to pull the notes separate from the bars. I split the notes into two separate images by coping and pasting the two different elements. I copied the SVG for both into this post, and scaled them into tiny little representations of themselves. Though the browser had to reach to scale them so small, we’re not left with a tiny little bitmap blobsI did think about using the following image, copied from this resource. Oh look, the original SVG contains metadata defined using RDF/XML. Isn’t it marvelous when you can merge rich, well defined XML vocabularies together? Just like that?
  • Silverlight: Why? There’s nothing in Silverlight 1.0 that doesn’t exist as an open standard and can’t be supported for IE applications–if Microsoft would just support them. Silverlight as a 2D graphics system? Both SVG and Canvas are 2D graphics systems. Microsoft supports form controls like buttons? Hey! Guess what we’ve had in HTML for years? Silverlight 1.1 integrates web browser and ASP.NET functionality, which means you can use your Microsoft Visual Studio and Microsoft Web Expression applications to create Rich Internet Applications? Fantastic! It still doesn’t change the fact that Microsoft pushed its browser on the same developers it’s trying to suck into the Silverlight world, and then abandoned it, and us, for five years; effectively holding up advances in internet development for half a decade.
  • Adobe Flex/AIR: Why? It’s true that Flash has done much for us over the years, and we’re grateful, but we’re ready to move into a new era of open standard applications and, frankly, Adobe, you’re rather hit and miss when it come to ‘open’ and ‘standard’. Take your SVG plug-in. It’s cool and we thank you for providing it so that IE users could see what they’re missing using a half-assed browser. Now you’re going to pull the plug-in and your support for it. Why not open source it, and let the open source community decide if it wants to continue to support it? Is it because, as has been noted elsewhere, you want us to consider converting [our] SVG application to an Adobe Flex® application? Golly, I just love these opportunities to get sucked into another bloated, proprietary application environment. It makes me feel so good when you finally, inevitably, stop.
Categories
Books Photography Writing

Lessons from the book

Lessons learned so far from the book:

  • Photoshop, still king. After working with several photo and graphics editors, I can say with a great deal of certainty that Photoshop really does deserve the respect it’s been given. Adobe’s habit of re-arranging its products with every release, paranoia about stolen software (somewhat justified) and high price tags aside, the product is the best.
  • There are other good photo editing tools. Having said that Photoshop is the best, there are other excellent photo editing tools, including GIMP. I tried out the new GIMP 2.4 and was very impressed with the application. What’s important to remember about GIMP is that it’s one of the few that isn’t claiming to be a “Photoshop killer”. It considers itself to be a unique photo editing product.
  • Of the other products I explored, Paint Shop Pro has gotten a lot of flack for only being 8-bit, and deservedly. It still has an extraordinary number of photo effects, though. Paint.NET is not–not ready for prime time, that is.
  • Photoshop Elements is fun Elements is more than Photoshop with much of the guts torn out. Elements really is focused at a different audience. It doesn’t have much of the fine control that Photoshop provides, true. It does, however, support what most people want from a photo editor, and a whole lot of new functionality that most people would find fun. Since I have my TV hooked up to my computer, I adored Element’s ability to generate a widescreen HD-compatible slideshow movie with music of a folder of photos.
  • The next Photoshop will be an online tool. I’m amazed at the number of online photo editors. I’m doubly amazed with all the hyperbole surrounding them. These tools are described variously as the next Photoshop Killer or the next Photoshop, period. Even Adobe is coming out with an online tool. My first test for each of the online photo editors I looked at? Uploading and opening a RAW image file. Puts the whole ‘online’ photo editor thing into perspective.
  • Colorful black and whites. I don’t think I’ve realized how colorful black and white photos really are until I started exploring, in depth, the many ways one can convert a color photo into a black & white. This exercise should be a requirement for every class teaching black & white photography.
  • Snag-It is great for screen captures and Skitch has an interesting social network facility, but my favorite screen capture tool ended up being Faststone’s Fast Capture. I found it more comfortable to use then the other two products.
  • I will accept software that dynamically resizes my photos for online display, only if you let me use my new Grease Monkey script that removes all the conjunctions from your writing.
  • Most important graphics tools. The most important tool both for editing photos and creating graphics is the Gaussian Blur. You can do without most other things, but you can’t do without the Gaussian Blur.
Categories
SVG Writing

Blog pulse

Summary:   beep…beep…svg…beep…beep…

I need to refocus on the book, but you’ll be seeing the tangible aspects of writing a book on web graphics throughout my web sites in the weeks to come. For instance, if you’re using an SVG capable browser, you might notice the ‘squiggle’ line across my header. That’s my ‘blog pulse’. It reflects my updated comment count for the last 80 posts. Of course, you know what this means: if my blog pulse straight lines flatlines, my weblog is dead. You hold the life of my blog in your hands.

Currently the ‘pulse’ isn’t viewable to IE or other non-SVG enabled browsers. The Adobe SVG Viewer won’t pick up the SVG, as I’m embedding the SVG directly into the page’s XHTML. That’s the whole reason I bit the bullet and converted to XHTML in the first place.

I could convert the example to using the Canvas object and Google’s ExplorerCanvas library, or perhaps use Sam’s SVG to Silverlight Workbench. Frankly, even though I have a lot of visitors using IE, as long as the information represented in the graphics is either available in other formats or non-essential, I may just blow off IE.

Categories
Books

Back to business

It’s amazing how things seem to happen at once. I’ve been waiting to find more information for one story in order to write a follow-up, and waiting on an event for another. Both happened today. Isn’t that just the thing?

The follow up is to the Jena story. Details of Mychal Bell’s juvenile records are being quoted, and I’ve tried to track down the source, but have had little luck. Every time I’ve asked someone where they got their information, they either disappear, or ignore the question. Today, Pursuing Holiness and Evangelical Outpost have posted links to eyewitness testimony, police reports, and the DA’s bail hearing argument. The documents are at Evangelical Outpost, as separate links. One is a broken link, but I imagine that will be fixed, soon (here’s the link — it doesn’t say anything new, and carefully cut out the defense attorney’s response). The person who provided this information wrote a post at Pursuing Holiness, and wishes to be anonymous.

I talked with a reporter from one newspaper who mentioned about Bell’s past record and who stated that this information was released with Mychael Bell’s bail hearing. I’m assuming the information I’ve been looking for is in the document with the broken link. One other document I wanted was included, and is another of the missing pieces I needed for my follow up.

I was contacted by a production editor at CNN yesterday about the Jena story, but she was mainly interested in where I lived. I must update this in my About Me page. I believe she contacted me because she was looking for someone in Jena for an afternoon ‘bit’ on Jena. I watched the bit, which ended up being a debate between Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson from bondinfo.org, who managed to work into the discussion that the NAACP is the equivalent of the KKK; and Roland Martin, a CNN contributor. Peterson is an embarrassment to the black people of this country, but Martin spent all of his time looking supercilious and quoting Jesse Jackson.

More disturbing, the CNN talking head managed to introduce some of Mychal Bell’s juvenile record into the discussion, in a very offhand manner, without references to sources, or even if the source was credible–showing that CNN is reading our comments, folks. It was one of the most despicable acts of sensationalist journalism it’s been my misfortune to see.

I never thought I would agree with Doc Searls and others who believe in citizen journalism and that the mainstream media is dead. After yesterday, though, I agree with the latter, but I’m not sure of the former. Seems to me that the mainstream media is only giving the people what they want: sound bites; innuendo; dozens of shallow, sensationalist ‘bits’ rather than one longer, thoughtful story; opinion rather than fact–the in-depth coverage of a story is sacrificed to immediacy and ratings. The thing is, that’s what too many weblogs and ‘alternative news sources’ give, too.

Still, there were webloggers associated with the Jena 6 event who wrote thoughtfully, tried to dig up information, and find, and publish, the facts. I’ll link to these when I write my follow-up.

The second story is on a press conference being held today about a report that Public Citizen is releasing today on the abuses of Binding Mandatory Arbitration (BMA), and in support of the Arbitration Fairness act of 2007. I’ve read the report, and it’s excellent–very detailed, very factual. Most of the work is based in California, where records have to be kept by arbitration companies. If anything, California is actually much more ‘pro consumer’ than most other states, and whatever the report shows for that state is probably doubled in others.

I have a couple of other items I want to cover, one on photography, one on tech. The one on photography is based on some of things I’ve discovered about myself while working on the book. The tech one is based on some of the things I’ve discovered about myself while reading weblogs while working on the book. I need to get back to the book, however, especially since I’m determined to see if finished on time.

I’ve had a hard time with this book, and it’s not because of the subject or the reviewers. The subject of web graphics, covering topics ranging from photography to SVG to the new Silverlight, and everything in-between, is one I absolutely love and always have. The reviewers are three people I know, like, and respect, and they’ve been very encouraging.

I have this book, and another for O’Reilly I’ve talked with my editor about and then that will, most likely, be it for me. I’m considering trying alternative publication routes, including my own ad-based web sites on technology and graphics, and perhaps even publishing my own PDF-based works. I’ve always want to return to the topic of making technology more accessible for the non-tech, a subject I really like. I’ve enjoyed the graphics writing so much that focusing on that, also, has great appeal.

Josh Anon at O’Reilly Media reviewed just such a bookGet Your Head Around Aperture 1.5 from an Aperture help site, Bagelturf. The author, Steve Weller, self-published the book, and promises to provide updates of the book, as they arise. It’s based on work he did at his site, and though the layout looks a little rough, the ability to be able to update the book to fix typos or errors, or to update the material based on new information appeals to me enormously.

At the same time, people really don’t want to pay for things they’d rather get free. Eventually, the only writers who can afford to publish online may end up being Cory Doctorow or those who are independently wealthy, and I’m neither.

Something I have to think on, while I finish the book.

Categories
Just Shelley

Going South

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

It’s almost 8pm, the air conditioner has been on for seven hours solid, and it’s still close to 85 in my room. You can feel the heat pulse through the wall, which is a little unnerving. I can’t even imagine what it’s like for people without air conditioning.

I’ve also had some plans go somewhat south, which has forced me to look at my day to day activities and decide that I need some time offline instead of on. I don’t have a lot of patience lately, and sometimes weblogging really pushes the little I have. I also want to see if I can get the book finished sooner rather than later. Knock on wood.