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This site is no longer maintained.
My current weblog.
Monday, April 15, 2002Fixing Your Site with the Right DocType
"This little article will provide you with DOCTYPEs that work, and explain the practical, real–world effect of these seemingly abstract tags." [A List Apart via The Shifted Librarian]
My own DOCTYPEs are not proper, they do not reference the DTDs. Mozilla and IE/Win don't seem to mind that. Putting in the DTD reference for my Transitional pages puts Mozilla 0.9.9 into Strict mode. That's bad, and my CSS-ified version of the Radio default theme has a rendering issue with Mozilla's Strict mode. It's very slight, but the whole purpose of the CSS conversion was to prove that it could be done in a nearly pixel-perfect way.
Eventually I am going to build my own theme from scratch that is attractive, fully compliant, and renders correctly in all browsers. Until then, I'll keep my "broken" DOCTYPEs, thank you very much.
Follow-up: Explanation for my minor image rendering problem. The whole site is now rendering corrently in Mozilla with HTML 4.01 Strict. Yeah baby! I'm also fully CSS compliant again, except for the work-arounds for IE5/Win box sizing miscalculations. Full W3C HTML 4.01 compliance is never going to happen, unfortunately, because the Radio default theme does many non-standard things.
Weblogs to Go
The Shifted Librarian points to Paolo moving Radio to his iPod for transportable blogging and pleads:
C'mon Palm developers - you can do it, yes you can, provide us with some blogging jam!
Palm users have Hanx webLog for Palm OS, and AvantBlog works with Palm and CE/PPC. Radio would require some scripting glue to work with either, but for someone who groks UserTalk it should be pretty simple.
Neither of those is as cool as Pocket Blog tho 
Another 30-second Movie Review
Last night's late-night movie was Haiku Tunnel, via Blockbuster. IMDB user review:
[...] leaves the laughs somewhere outside the door, waiting for a chance to sneak in. Unfortunately for the audience, that chance never comes [...]
The movie is the tale of a "temp" worker who goes "perm" and proceeds to screw up the simplest of tasks. The DVD box drew parallels to Office Space. Standing at the video store, the movie appeared to have great potential for hilarity, but 30 minutes into it I was praying for a prompt ending. Maybe you have to be a "temp" to get it.
If you already have Office Space, I recommend reading a short novel, going for a walk, or trimming your toe-nails over wasting 88 minutes of your life watching Haiku Tunnel.
Hack the Planet: The Horatio wireless authentication software used at UT Austin has been released.
The Horatio system is a firewall authentication tool. The premise: Legitimate users want to attach laptops and other mobile hosts to the network, but security demands that illegitimate users be prevented from accessing the internal, secure network and from abusing the general Internet.
I've been waiting a long time for something like this. In a nutshell, users on the "untrusted" network must authenticate themselves, via a web page, before the firewall will pass any of their traffic. It is somewhat like the systems that many hotels have for providing in-room broadband access, except that the hotel systems will usually transparently route unauthenticated browser requests to the authentication (payment authorization) page. IMO, Horatio needs that add feature before it will be an effective mechanism for authenticating users.
Horatio is one piece of the puzzle to securing a wireless and other untrusted network. Just one piece.
Went to see my dad today, it's his birthday. And his twin sister's. Her younest son's. And my best friend's. Lot of birthdays for one day.
My dad's wife is studying for a Realtor's License, and he just purchased a '93 Mercedes E-Class for her to drive future clients around in. He says that he is planning not to drive it much, as it will spoil him. I can sympathize. Owning a 3-Series BMW in Germany completely changed my perspective on what consitutes a great sports car. BMW is the gold standard for practical performance automobiles.
What BMW is to performance, Mercedes is to luxury. I'm fond of saying "A twenty-year-old Mercedes is still a Mercedes." New or old, a Mercedes has a smooth ride like no other automobile. The Japanese immitators, constantly trying to de-throne the E-Class or 3-Series, simply do not compare amongst those people for whom cars are more than a price tag and consumer reports rating.
