Category: Just Shelley

Categories
SVG Technology Writing

Snowing

I’ve not been the best at keeping up with my writing at my various sites. I have been writing, though.

I have a two-part article up at A List Apart: Using SVG for Flexible, Scalable, and Fun Backgrounds, Part 1 and Part 2. Though Microsoft still hasn’t implemented SVG in IE, with the company’s new membership in the SVG Working Group, there’s new hope for the future. And I cover how to use a JavaScript library, SVGWeb, to work around the lack.

I’m also finishing a new book for O’Reilly: the JavaScript Cookbook. It promises to be a big book, which isn’t surprising, considering how much JavaScript has advanced. I’m also incorporating the relevant bits from the HTML5 specification, though I have to be careful, as we don’t know which bits will remain, and which removed before Last Call.

Speaking of which, I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time with the HTML WG. I have about a dozen Change Proposals coming up in March, which I’ll write about here, when finished. Among them is one to remove one of the more recent additions, the iframe srcdoc attribute. This example for this new attribute is the following, for weblog comments (the use case for the new attribute):

<article>
 <h1>I got my own magazine!</h1>
 <p>After much effort, I've finally found a publisher, and so now I
 have my own magazine! Isn't that awesome?! The first issue will come
 out in September, and we have articles about getting food, and about
 getting in boxes, it's going to be great!</p>
 <footer>
  <p>Written by <a href="/users/cap">cap</a>.
  <time pubdate>2009-08-21T23:32Z</time></p>
 </footer>
 <article>
  <footer> At <time pubdate>2009-08-21T23:35Z</time>, <a href="/users/ch">ch</a> writes: </footer>
  <iframe seamless sandbox="allow-same-origin" srcdoc="<p>did you get a cover picture yet?"></iframe>
 </article>
 <article>
  <footer> At <time pubdate>2009-08-21T23:44Z</time>, <a href="/users/cap">cap</a> writes: </footer>
  <iframe seamless sandbox="allow-same-origin" srcdoc="<p>Yeah, you can see it <a href=&quot;/gallery/cover/1&quot;>in my gallery</a>."></iframe>
 </article>
 <article>
  <footer> At <time pubdate>2009-08-21T23:58Z</time>, <a href="/users/ch">ch</a> writes: </footer>
  <iframe seamless sandbox="allow-same-origin" srcdoc="<p>hey that's earl's table.
<p>you should get earl&amp;amp;me on the next cover."></iframe>
 </article>

Just in case you’re curious, no, I’m not particularly fond of weblog comments as escaped HTML within an attribute on an iFrame.

I’ve also been playing with the new Drupal 7 alpha in my copious spare time. I won’t be moving my sites over to Drupal 7 until a stable release, but I do have a “play” site. I like the new release, though I wasn’t terribly fond of the admin overlay. However, the new admin overlay can be turned off. In addition, I re-posted all of the pages, and comments, from my older WordPress weblog. It takes up little room, and ensures I can find, and link, some of my older work. Plus, folks can find their comments. I was impressed with the fact that WordPress was able to upgrade my old site, without a hitch.

So much to write, so little time. Today, though, it’s snowing, and I haven’t had a walk outside since the weekend. Enjoy the articles at A List Apart, and more writing here, soon.

Categories
Just Shelley

Just a cat

It was the shoe clawing that left me uncertain.

She was getting old, over 18 years old. Her arthritis was getting worse, but she could still make it upstairs: slowly and painfully, sometimes having to pull herself up with her front legs rather than push from behind.

She had good appetite, always wanting to have her tastes of whatever it was we were eating. She was particularly fond of the salmon steaks I made, and I must admit to having salmon more for her sake than ours.

Then, she stopped eating as much. It started with her midday treats, which began to go uneaten more often than not. Then it was her dry food, and her morning and evening wet food. By the time she lost interest in the salmon, we were desperately worried. She still chased her feather around, though slowly, and not for long. I sometimes think she chased the feather more for us than out of interest.

We knew that this would be her last year. It’s something that lurks in the back of your mind, but you don’t actively acknowledge in your thoughts. It manifested in little things, like whether I should buy a flat of her cat food, or just a few cans. I bought the flat.

Taking her into the vet was something we didn’t do lightly. As a young cat, she was abandoned, twice, at the Humane Society. I think she equated the carrier and the vet with loss, and fought against any trips with a desperation that left us shaken. The only good thing about taking her to the vet was returning home, when she would bound out of her box with a gladness that shown like a ray of silver hued sunshine— tail high, she would explore every nook and cranny of her home, and claw my shoes, to mark possession.

When she stopped eating, though, and could barely drink her water, we knew we had to take her in. During the exam, the vet tried to determine how far we wanted to take tests, because of her age, and the costs. But we had to give her a chance so ordered up the tests.

The results weren’t completely definitive. A beginning loss of kidney function was expected, but not the fluid around her lungs. Not good, and ultimately fatal, but neither of which would account for her loss of appetite. The doctor did think there was a good possibility of cancer, perhaps returning via her thyroid where she had a tumor once before. We had treated her for her thyroid tumor, but in rare cases the problems can return.

We took her home as we waited the blood tests, and to think about what we could do. At her age, surgery is a high risk, and anything else would require frequent visits to the vet, only to prolong her life a few months. She hated the vet though, and I hated the thought of her last months spent in an endless round of vet trips, needles, being force fed, and poked and prodded by strangers.

We tried hand feeding her using baby food. She’d take a lick or two, but that was it. Still, she purred when rubbed under her chin, snuggled in our arms, and clawed our shoes,

That last day was warm outside, and so I took her out on the front lawn. She was an indoor cat, so this was an extraordinary treat for her. She laid on the cement of the steps and felt the heat of the sun-warmed surface as it soaked into her stiff joints. She walked about on the grass, nibbling on the blades. People would stop when they walked past and comment on how beautiful she was. She was beautiful, silver stripes with white mittens, one eye green and one brown. They didn’t see what I saw though: the effort it took for her just to get to her feet, the weakness of her steps.

When not outside, she slept on my lap. After my roommate came home, she slept on his lap. That evening when we talked, asking each other if we were sure, she got up, came over to claw my shoe, and then laid down with her head on my foot.

At ten that night, roommate said good-bye to her and I put her in the carrier and took her to the vet one last time. In the room while we waited the vet, I held her in my arms and talked to her. I thanked her for the joy she brought us for 18 years. I told her how much we loved her.

The vet came in and picked her up to prepare her for the final injection. It would be given through a catheter, which is the quickest, painless approach. Little girl looked up at the vet, thinking she was roommate, and then hissing when she realized she was held by this strange person. My little girl still had fight. I felt pride, and even a faint hint of humor.

In a few minutes, the vet returned with her wrapped in a soft white towel. She was placed in my arms, and the vet asked if I needed more time. I held her close, and said, no, we had said good-byes. One shot, one last breath, a sigh really, and she was gone.

I left with the empty carrier. As I drove through dark streets I screamed—raw, primal cries of grief that stripped my throat. I drove until I couldn’t scream anymore and then went home.

I no longer see her shape out of the corner of my eye, and it’s no longer strange not to see her water and food bowls. I told myself I wouldn’t second guess the decision we made. I don’t most of the time, but every once in a while, when I put my shoes on, I remember that last time she clawed my shoe.

Categories
RDF W3C Writing

It’s a beautiful fall and I’m stuck inside

he fall has been nice, but I haven’t been able to take advantage of the decent weather and pretty scenery. I have a book deadline next week for my new book for O’Reilly, The JavaScript Cookbook.

I can’t do much anyway, because my car is doing very odd things, and I no longer trust it for longer out of town trips. I know there’s a short somewhere, but every time I take it in, it costs me $500.00. But I’m getting a relay click in the dash, the battery light comes up, briefly, every time I start the car (and it’s a new battery), and the speedometer went crazy on one trip. All of this combined is wiring, and wiring seems to be beyond car repair people.

I save the longer trips for the weekend when I can drag my roommate, and my roommate’s car, about. His car isn’t possessed.

I rejoined the HTML WG. Again. The group has come up with a change procedure/process that I can support. There was confusion before about whether HTML WG members could issue formal objections, since supposedly we’re part of the group making the original decisions. The new procedure, though, reserves us the right to submit a Formal Objection if all other avenues are blocked. I’m more comfortable being part of the group, now. I even have a first change proposal assignment, due after the book deadline.

Good news from the group: the HTML+RDFa document is now a published draft. However, the work on distributed extensibility is slow going. It’s difficult to split off the technical concerns from the knee jerk reactions.

You may, or may not, have noticed that I don’t post links to my main feed, or this site, for my Just Shelley site. That site is very personal, and a lot of people who read my stuff are more interested in my more impersonal writings, such as tech. Of course, I haven’t been writing at any of my sites lately. Too busy with the book.

I did get a Wave invite–thanks to whoever sent me it. And yes, I’ve given out all of the Wave invitations I have.

What do I think of Google Wave? I think it’s too much for me, though I did have a fun exchange with Marius Coomans, as he was sailing the ideal waters around Australia. We exchange emails and twitter messages, but there’s something different about seeing a message being typed out by someone who is on a boat, and watching them make corrections, as they’re watching you correct your own mistakes. And you’re on opposite sides of the planet, and different hemispheres. It’s not earth shattering, but it is a bit uncanny.

So what else is there to say about Wave. The user interface sucks, but that’s not unusual for a Google application. The performance is sluggish, but it’s alpha. And it performs better than Twitter. Other than that, though, I’m just not sure about the usability of the service. I know that others like the tool, such as Laura Scott who had a nice write-up.

Frankly, though, I’m really getting burned out on the whole social media thing so I may not be a good judge.

There was another instance where I wrote one thing, and it was interpreted as the opposite. I supported what Kurt Cagle wrote on HTML5, but based on a intense Twitter exchange I had with another person, Kurt interpreted my reaction to be opposite of what it is.

Twitter is useless as a tool for doing more than pointing out a link or talking about what you had for breakfast.

Categories
Burningbird Just Shelley

Crickets: Comments, HTML5, and Drupal 7

I did turn the comments back on for the post, Maxwell’s Silver Hammer: RDFa and HTML5’s Microdata. Well, until the post gets overrun by spam, or until the crickets chirping drive me batty, whichever happens first.

My idea of comments on this site, and redirecting from the others didn’t work. It left people confused, and the connection ended up being overly complicated. I figured, when it seems right to open comments, I will.

Speaking of communication, it’s always fun to read stuff like the following in the WhatWG IRC logs:

[23:02] TabAtkins: Like, okay, I dislike Shelley Power. I *really* dislike her. But she performs a very valuable service by strongly disagreeing with stuff, and offering reasons why she disagrees that you can actually address. I rarely agree with her reasons, but I can *understand* them, and that’s really useful to have.

Probably one of the many reasons why the HTML WG is not a place for me. Oh, not so much the acrimony, though lordie knows there’s a lot of that. But, for better or worse, I’m a writer. I may not be the best writer. I’m certainly not the most successful writer. But writing is how I best contribute back to the tech world. I can do more, writing in my space, then I ever can on the HTML WG.

Including writing about my newest experiments with Drupal 7. Yes, I’m walking on the wild side, and have installed a Drupal 7 site. I am über geek woman, hear me type.

Categories
Just Shelley

Review of Flip Ultra Camera

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

A couple of months ago, Amazon invited me to participate in its Vine program, where customers are given books, gadgets, food, and other items, in exchange for reviews (either positive or negative). In the month that I participated, I received a couple of books, a nice laptop bag, and the second generation Flip Ultra Camcorder. I was happy to receive all the free goodies, but the Flip Ultra was an especially nice item, as I’ve wanted a camcorder for some time.

The Flip Ultra, and its higher end cousin, the Flip UltraHD, is a hand held camcorder about the same size as most cellphones. It’s a very simple to use gadget, and you can be taking your first videos about five minutes after you open the box.

With 4GB of memory, you can record up to two hours of videos with the Flip Ultra, which can be uploaded to your computer, and to the internet via the included software. Unlike the higher end HD device, I found the Flip Ultra worked with all of my computers, even my much older Powerbooks. You transfer videos to your computer via a pop-out USB attachment, which attaches directly to your computer, or use a USB extension, as I do (the USB extension is not included with the camcorder).

I find the camcorder to be very comfortable to hold and use. It fits into a pocket of my camera bag, so I take it with me whenever I’m out shooting photos. The Flip Ultra adjusts easily to differing light conditions, though I have found it works best in well lit indoor light, or outdoor in lightly overcast or clear days (but not in direct light or in extreme conditions of light and shadow). The LED is more than large enough to easily see what you’re recording, and viewable in bright daylight.

It’s an exceptional device for recording people, or anything that’s approximate 5 to 15 feet from the camcorder. It would be a very good device for podcasting, or filming your daughter on the piano, or your son doing his homework. Farther out than that, though, and people become too small. There is a zoom built into the camcorder, but the resolution of the zoomed image isn’t very good. I don’t recommend depending on the zoom.

The camera shoots 30 frames per second, with a resolution of 640 x 480. The light sensitivity is not as good as the HD model, but sufficient in most cases. The sensor is a 1/4″ VGA CMOS sensor, 5.6 µm pixels, and the bitrate is 4.0 Mbps, with an auto-adaptive algorithm. What this means is that the quality is good, but don’t expect the same quality as a higher end camcorder. But then again, don’t expect to shell out the same $1000.00 you’d need for higher end camcorder, either. (See the Flip Ultra camcorder spec page for more details.)

As for audio, the sound quality on the device is very good. In fact, the pickup on the device is surprisingly good, considering that the microphone is towards you, and the camcorder is such a small device.

It runs on two AA batteries, which last about 3-4 hours, filming and uploading. Included with the camera is a component cable (for connecting the camcorder directly to your TV for playback), a little carrying bag, wrist strap, batteries, and software that allows you to email videos directly, do some minor editing and store and catalog the videos, as well as upload directly to YouTube.

No, it’s not an iPhone

Recently Michael Arrington wrote in Techcrunch and in The Washington Post that Flip has little chance in an iPhone World.

The new iPhone takes very good video (640 x 480). That isn’t as good as the Flip, but it’s still able to shoot perfectly good videos on the go (example), which is exactly what the Flip is for. And the iPhone has something that the Flip will never realistically have, cellular and wifi connectivity that lets you upload your videos immediately. No need to sync back with your base computer to edit the video and upload it. You can do basic editing right on the iPhone, and publish it to YouTube immediately. As an added bonus, that video can be geo-stamped via the phones GPS capability.

That makes it significantly more useful as a video device than the Flip, and worth the reduction in quality. You already have to make some quality tradeoffs with the Flip anyway, so if you are going to have a second video device after your iPhone, it may as well be a slightly bigger video camera that you keep in your bag. I just don’t see people grabbing that Flip when they run out the door.

Actually, I do grab the Flip when I leave the house with my camera case, since it’s included in a pocket of the case.

The mistake Arrington makes is that he’s assuming we’re all running around with high-end cellphones. Though the iPhone is popular, it is still a niche market item. What the Flip provides is a very inexpensive camcorder (I’ve seen prices ranging up to $128.00 US), that’s extremely easy to use. It would make a great gift for new parents or old parents, alike. It would also be a nice gift for a friend or family member heading off on a long trip, or on some other new adventure.

Best of all, it doesn’t come tethered to a two year cellphone contract that costs upwards of a hundred bucks a month.

Audio Slideshows

I found one other purpose for the Flip Ultra, and that’s as an audio recording device.

I’ve long been interested in trying my hand at audio slideshows, but didn’t have a voice recorder small enough to carry around with me. The Flip Utra is small enough to fit in my camera bag, and the good sound pickup works about as well as a small audio recording device. When I get home, I separate the video and audio (using Quicktime Pro), and then use the video part to help me catalog the locations associated with the sound files. A simple sound only recorder wouldn’t provide that visual cue.

Frankly, I’ve had a gas with the little device. There may be a day when I’ll want to go with a higher end camcorder, but the Flip is more than sufficient for my current needs.

You can see some of my playing around with the Flip Ultra out at my new Youtube channel (YouTube channel…my, aren’t I precious). My first try at creating an audio slideshow is below, with photos and sound grabbed from the Shaw Nature Center, just outside of St. Louis. Typically you have a different sound file for each slide, but it’s a start.