Categories
Critters Photography Weather

Too hot

Even before Summer officially starts on Sunday, we’ve had heat alerts the last two days. Combined heat and humidity has led to effective temperatures of 105 degrees. We haven’t broken upper temperature records, but we have lower temperatures in the evening.

As these two Grévy’s zebras demonstrate, the only way to handle weather like this is to stay in the shade, or in air conditioning. I’ve had to turn my air conditioning up to 80 degrees, just to keep it from running 24 hours a day.

Not sure if the sudden heat wave is an indicator of a bad summer or not. From what the climatologists have said, it looks like we will have an unusually warm summer. Move over, zebras.

two zebras under shade of tree

Categories
Just Shelley

Decisions Decisions

There is nothing more implacable than a decision waiting to be made.

It can shake you out of sleep, pulling the covers off, forcing you out of bed and to your feet. It can hover around you during your waking hours, beating at you with tiny, subliminal fists of frustration.

As time passes the decision grows and swells, bulges from barely sensed speck to overshadowing monster. Your attempts to fend it off become weaker as it smothers you in it’s soft folds, pushes you against the wall, and rolls over you as you try to run.

Poets write of Decision. In The Road Not Taken Frost wrote:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler

The poem ends with “…and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

In this poem Frost sees Decision as noble — Man choosing to follow his own path rather than following the crowd. Compare this to Dorothy Parker’s caustic and brutally direct ‘Resume’:

Razors pain you; Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful; Nooses give;
Gas smells awful; You might as well live.

No nobility here — life as a lesser of evils.

Not all decisions are the same. Whether to choose strawberry ice cream or chocolate is but a moment’s thought; after all, one can choose chocolate tomorrow when choosing strawberry today. There are an infinite number of these decisions made in a life.

Some decisions, though, can only be made after sleepless nights, and days spent in thought—little scales in your mind working overtime. To have a child or not. To marry or not. To make this move, buy this house, take this job, follow this path. Or not.

Regardless of the magnitude or its impact, once the the decision is made, you’re free of the weight, the monster has rolled on. This leaves plenty of room for Decision’s younger brother, Regret.

Categories
Burningbird

New page New Start

My web sites are undergoing a redesign, including this new page, which will eventually feature a lot more than what you see at the moment.

Until everything is up and running, you can access current material at the following focused sub-sites:

If you’re currently subscribed to any of my feeds, you don’t need to do a thing. I am redirecting the feed locations, which should cause your feed readers to update to the new location.

Categories
HTML5 Specs W3C

The “WhatWG’s Mine is Mine” Design Principle kerfuffle

I’m not part of the HTML WG, but still follow along. Enough to see that one of the big ongoing debates lately is about the HTML WG’s Design Principles draft document. There are too many threads to link, but I would suggest the following as good places to start:

I think some people, i.e. Laura and Larry, expect the Design Principles to be used as rules, rather than as means of explaining

My own opinion of the document, and the discussion surrounding the document, is that the HTML WG Design Principles document is imprecise, vague, and vulnerable to use by self-justifying entities—OK, if you just want a fuzzy feel-good document that looks good in the press, but not something you want to see from a formal W3C Note, which is what the Design Principles wants to be…when it grows up. Definitely not something you want to see used to enforce, or justify, design decisions.

There have been numerous objections to the Design Principles document, in the past and in the current debate, not all of which have been addressed. In my opinion, though, what’s more important is that provisions in the HTML WG Design document have been used to shoot down discussion and debate about namespace support in HTML, support for RDFa, and the introduction of the microdata section:

But I don’t want RDFa to hog all of the focus. Other groups and interests have also been gently schooled in the HTML Design Principles:

So, what do we know about the Design Principles? Ian Hickson in the HTML WG mailing list:

I think the text in the Introduction of the editor’s draft of the HTML Design Principles as of rev 1.26 is quite accurate, and that the rest of the text in that document meets the goals set out in the introduction admirably. I think that it is ridiculous to think that language design can ever be based on strict objective rules, and I do not think that the design guidelines claim that this is what is attempted (indeed quite the opposite). In fact, that’s what the term “design principles” means.

Thank you for that clarification, Ian. Oh, Henri, about that DOM Consistency principle you frequently mention…

Categories
HTML5 RDF Specs W3C

My HTML WG status

I posted about quitting the HTML WG on Twitter, but there’s only so much one can shove into 140 characters. Of course, I realize that most people will probably be uninterested in a longer writing on my reasons, but that’s the advantage of syndication feeds—you can see at a glance whether you want to read beyond the first few sentences of a writing. Or not.

First of all a clarification: I joined the HTML WG once. I quit the HTML WG once. I joined the HTML WG reluctantly, because as I wrote at the time, I’m really not a joiner. I feel I’m best writing in my own space, not participating in a back and forth in email lists; definitely not through quick non-thinking blurbs in an IRC channel, or teleconferences where key players never participate.

I did join, though, and became actively involved. However, I never could figure out the “rules” of the effort, and I found it both discouraging and exhausting. So much so that it drained the energy I needed for the writing I need to do for a living. More importantly, I felt I really wasn’t making a difference, and I’m not sure I was willing to play the game in order to make a difference.

A further point of clarification: My decision to quit did not come about because of any exchange I had yesterday with any person. It was a number of factors that led to my quitting, a primary one being the one I just mentioned, needing to focus on work. I’d already decided to quit before yesterday, but was waiting for a specific thread on RDFa to play out. I will mention, though, that some of the reasons why I’m leaving were echoed in that thread, including the hostility of the WhatWG backchannel IRC, and the lack of respect some members of this group have for members of the HTML WG and other W3C groups.

Some of the the WhatWG members seem to think that I’ve quit the HTML WG more than once, but they are mistaken. I unsubscribed from the WhatWG email lists, because I found the environment hostile. I stopped working on my assessment of metadata use cases, because the HTML5 author, Ian Hickson, suddenly released a new microdata section, changing everything I wanted to write.

I have unsubscribed from the WhatWG mailing list, and that won’t change. I have quit the HTML WG, and I may, but it’s unlikely, rejoin at some later time. But I have not stopped writing about the HTML5 specification. Whether I make a difference or not, my way of “participating”, in the HTML5 effort, and any other, is by writing in this space. And I will continue to do so, in my own time, and in my own way.