Bush Ratings At All-Time Low

The latest CBS News poll finds President Bush's approval rating has fallen to an all-time low of 34 percent, while pessimism about the Iraq war has risen to a new high...For the first time in this poll, most Americans say the president does not care much about people like themselves... Just 18 percent said they had a favorable view of the vice president, down from 23 percent in January.

Read the article Poll: Bush Ratings At All-Time Low

Movie: Kinsey

Interesting, may challenge your ideas

This is an interesting movie about the 1950’s sex researcher and author of the Kinsey Report. After watching the movie I also watched the 1.5 hour PBS documentary and was surprised how accurate it revealed the movie to be. All the better!

Book: Designing with Web Standards

Needs editing, but good if you wade to the information

If I edited this book, I’d condense the first 153 pages down to about 25 pages. Zeldman goes on and on trying to convince you of why web standards are good and useful. I’d argue that anyone who buys a book called “Designing with Web Standards” doesn’t require 153 pages of convincing.

But starting on page 154, the book is detailed and useful. Zeldman continues to be unnecessarily verbose, but it’s possible and worthwhile to skim. Since this book was published in 2002, it spends a lot more time on hybrid layouts (using tables for some positioning) than newer books do.

At first I all-but-ignored the chapters on hybrid layouts. But then I discovered how insanely difficult it is to create multicolumn layouts with fixed and fluid columns (aka “The [CSS] Holy Grail”). At that point the hybrid layout chapters became my best friends.

So, this book is another useful tool to have in your XHTML & CSS toolbox. I haven’t really evaluated the usefulness of these CSS books versus the authors’ websites. Either way, be sure to check out alistapart.com, zeldman.com, simplebits.com, accessify.com, and so on.

Book: Predator

It doesn't redeem the Scarpetta series

I was very excited when Patricia Cornwell released a new Kay Scarpetta mystery. I haven’t particularly enjoyed her recent books and was hoping this was a return to the core of her best series. Unfortunately it’s not that great. Perhaps the Scarpetta line is just played out. But, I’m also finding that over the last several books Cornwell has moved toward telling chunks of the story from the perspective of the perpetrator. These forays in to the minds of madmen are disturbing and unpleasant.

I think it reveals something important about how sheltered and selective we are about what we want to know and think about. I’m part of this huge group of people right now who thoroughly enjoy CSI and other forensic television shows and books. But I’m sure I’m not alone in not wanting to think about the truly disgusting acts and motivations that go into these crimes. It’s entirely possible this means that I shouldn’t be taking part in the consumption of these materials. But I talked to Piper about this and thought about it more and I think that it might be okay to be fascinated by the forensics. Piper also pointed out that there is something good about the scientists being portrayed as heroes. Their motivations are always described as being true – seeking to put away the evil people . I suppose it’s better that I don’t enjoy the horrific aspects of these crimes. If I did, we’d have a whole other concern to deal with.

Anyway, this book isn’t terrible. But it’s not great. It certainly isn’t the redemption of the Scarpetta series that most of us were hoping for. At this point I think I am hoping that Cornwell discoverers a new direction and character that we can all enjoy as much as we did Scarpetta in her hay day.

Book: Eric Meyer on CSS

Smart guy, but too formulaic

This book wasn’t put together in a way that work for me. It was all about re-creating his examples in order to learn the techniques of CSS. If that style of learning appeals to you, than this is probably an excellent book to learn from.

Even though I didn’t end up using it much, it was clear to me from Meyer’s writing, particularly his factual margin notes, that he’s extremely knowledgeable and communicates well on the topic. I suspect that I would find his other books on CSS useful. However, this one was much too formulaic for me.

I find this interesting since the Bulletproof Web Design book that I enjoyed so much is also based around examples. But those seemed much easier to adapt and use as needed for similar projects without actually following along step-by-step to re-create his examples. Now that I’ve read some of Dan Cederholm, Jeffrey Zeldman and Eric Meyer, I can see the variation in approaches. I’m not yet knowledgeable enough to know which approaches are best, but since all of these guys are associated with one another I suspect they are all good and that the variation is just that. Perhaps at some point I’ll pick up the O’Reilly CSS book that Meyer wrote or one of his other “cut and dried” CSS books.

Book: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

A different perspective, worth reading

My father-in-law and sister-in-law both recommend this book. It is worth reading. It’s told from the perspective of the 15 year-old autistic boy. Presumably he’s a “highly functioning” autistic because he’s very good at math and seems relatively functional and other areas.

A review I read on Amazon.com, supposedly written by an autistic man, said that this was the best portrayal he’d read of what it’s like to be autistic. It felt very insightful, and was interesting, sweet and unique.

When I read excerpts of this book on Amazon.com I noticed that there were a bunch of in-line pictures. They weren’t superfluous illustrations, but rather were part of telling the story. Given that, I was concerned that listening to it on audio wouldn’t work. I ordered both the printed and audio version from the library. It turns out that the audio version is very well done and they do an excellent job of making sure that the content of the pictures is incorporated in the storytelling. You wouldn’t actually know that there are drawn pictures in the book; you would just think there were written descriptions like you hear. Perhaps you miss out on the quirky and unusual nature of the in-line pictures, but you don’t miss anything substantive. So if you like listening to audio books, don’t let that stop you.

Book: The Ice Child

Nothing special

I did finally finish this book. Now that I actually read all the way till the end, I wouldn’t say the story is unresolved. However, it isn’t wrapped up in a neat little bow either. I would recommend this book by wouldn’t dissuade you from reading it either. I guess I’m ambivalent about it. Other than giving a face to a bone marrow recipient, it isn’t a book that I’ve thought about much since I finished it.

Movie: Freedomland

Dark but good

This movie was much different than I expected it to be. I thought it was a thriller about the kidnapping, but really it’s about racism, poverty and social unrest. It’s pretty dark, somewhat annoying, and not the best movie I’ve ever seen. However, it had something to offer I’ve thought about it several times since I saw it.

Supreme Court to Revisit Late-Term Abortion Ban

Another lovely development on the abortion front from earlier this week.

The Supreme Court said Tuesday it will consider the constitutionality of banning a type of late-term abortion, setting up a contentious issue for a newly-constituted court. The Bush administration has pressed the high court to reinstate the federal law, passed in 2003 but never put in effect because it was struck down by judges in California, Nebraska and New York. The outcome will likely rest with the two men that President Bush has recently installed on the court.

Read the article High Court Jumps Into Abortion Debate Other articles (also from CBS News):

• Justices to Revisit Late-Term Abortion Ban
• Alito Key As Court Revisits Abortion

South Dakota approves abortion ban

It looks like the South Dakota legislature is about to pass a ban on all abortions except when the life of the mother is at risk. They are specifically aiming to have this loss taken to the Supreme Court in the hopes of getting Roe v. Wade overturned. Here are a few disturbing snippets from the article:

Under the new bill, doctors in South Dakota would face up to five years in prison for performing an abortion. The only exception would be for women who need abortions to save their lives...

[L]awmakers were told an anonymous donor has pledged to give the state $1 million to defend the abortion ban in court. The Legislature is setting up a special account to accept donations from the public because other people want to contribute to the legal fight.

"I can tell you first-had we've had people stopping in our office trying to drop off checks to promote the defense of this legislation already," Rounds said.

Read full article on MSNBC.com

If you want to contribute funds to help defeat this abortion ban and others like it, make a donation to Planned Parenthood Federation of America. They will be filing suit on this as soon as the law passes.

My friend Leanne is pregnant! It's very exciting. She married a sweet guy named Charles last year and now they have a bun in the oven. She's still experiencing first trimester yuckiness, but this ultrasound made it official. The baby is doing great so far. Having so many new babies and pregnancies around lately certainly makes me think about having kids. But once the gut reaction passes, I remember that I'm still not quite ready for that myself. I just snuggle my puppy and know that is good enough for now. Maple is pretty damn cute and incredibly soft, you know. Babies can come later. :-)

Speak to me you ape!

On Tuesday I got Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional 8.1 installed at work. It's pretty amazing software. It's certainly not perfect, but I'm amazed at how well it does. Of course sometimes I get very frustrated, but it's way cool and I am typing less. Oddly,this WYSIWYG form doesn't work with Dragon very well. It seems to have issues putting spaces between phrases and selecting the correct section when I make a correction. The "scratch that" command doesn't work either. On the other hand, it knew what WYSIWYG was from the sound, not spelling it out. :-) Sometimes I forget to tell it to "stop listening" and funny things result. For example, a few minutes ago I accidentally created an Outlook calendar entry called "lust for apes." Tee he he. If this makes you wanna run out and buy it, make sure you get the Professional Version. I know it's way more expensive, but I've heard that it makes a huge difference. Can get a discounted price on it through the people who set it up on my computers at work and do our training on the software. If you're interested, let me know and I'll hook you up with them.

Book: The Ice Child

Okay, so there’s a reason that the book seemed unresolved. I wasn’t really finished. Yes, I am an idiot.

One of my kind coworkers responded to my plea for help. Apparently the layout I'm trying to do is one of the biggest, or most common, problems with CSS layout. That is, a three column layout with fixed width sides and a fluid center. It's amazing to me that it can be that difficult, but it is. It's referred to as "The Holy Grail."

My nice coworker pointed me to a recent article on alistapart.com. I was so excited, I went home and spent Monday evening implementing my layout using this technique. Well, kind of. It turns out that it doesn't work in Internet Explorer. I should've spent more time playing with the examples and I could've seen this, but I didn't.

Given the percentage of people that run Internet Explorer, I can't use a layout like this. In IE 6 when you resize the window the sidebars flicker and disappear and move around. Even if I could, it didn't seem a good idea to use a bunch of hacks to get around us. They probably break in IE 7 anyway.

So I decided to bite the bullet angle is a hybrid layout, as described in Designing with Web Standards. So Tuesday night that's what I did. (Yes, I did spend Valentine's Day night redesigning a construction web site.) It seems to be working quite well actually. You can check it out here (note this link is going to break when I launch the site, but I'll try to update it then). Note that only the home page is done so far.

Book: The Ice Child

Unresolved story

This was a pretty decent book with a few different intertwining plot lines. I like the way that the plot lines connected together, though sometimes it was a little overly obvious. The author did like to spell things out for you. I definitely felt unresolved at the end of the book though.

I have to admit that this is much more common with audio books than when you’re reading a printed book, because it’s easier to get distracted and to lose track of how close you are to the end of the book. But I don’t even feel like I finished the book. One plot line in particular was left open-ended. Not that that’s inherently bad, but I’m not sure what I’m supposed to take away from in this case. Regardless, it still not about book. It’s not a book I’d actively recommend, but it’s okay. It may only deserve 2 stars, but I'm not a very harsh critic. :-)

I'm removing Harry Potter from my list of current reading materials since we haven't listened to it in a very long time. Benjamin and I are (theoretically) listening to it together, but we only listen to it when we drive somewhere at least an hour away. That hasn't happened for a while. I know I'll finish it eventually, either with B or alone, but for now it comes off the list to reflect reality. ;-)

I've been working a lot lately on the web site design for The Remodeling Guys. The design has been done for a while but coding it has been a bigger challenge than I anticipated. I decided to code it in XHTML and CSS2 since I wanted to learn them and this was a great opportunity to do so. It would also make this site better. As you may have noticed from my reading list, I've been reading up on the subject. I thought Dan Cederholm's book was great, but I wasn't able to figure out how to build my site using that information. I looked through Eric Meyer on CSS but that wasn't much help. I went back to Designing with Web Standards, but so far that hasn't done the trick. The first 153 pages are pretty much useless. After that it is good, though verbose. However, it isn't really getting me the info I need. It is however, making me more knowledgeable on the topic. If any of you dear readers wants to help out, let me know. I've just emailed one of Benjamin's coworkers for advice and will probably sent out a general request at work tomorrow. I'd hate to have to build it out in tables now that I've invested this much effort!

Book: Bulletproof Web Design

Excellent CSS book This was a great CSS 2.0 book for me. I liked the presentation style and found it relatively easy to consume. The only thing I've noticed to me missing so far is a real review of fixed width layouts. I wish he would do the 3-column layout in Chapter 8 as fixed width as well as fluid. This is my first CSS 2.0 book and my opinion may change a little as I learn more, but I still think it's a good starter book if you're fairly web savvy. I'm now reading (well, skipping around in) Eric Meyer on CSS and it is interesting to see the differences. The Meyer book was published in 2002 versus Cederholm's summer 2005 book, which makes it more current for hacks and browser-specific stuff. However, Meyer also seems to feel less need to get into that level of specifics regarding browser inconsistenciesinitialnital impression is also that Meyer is less concerned aaccessibilityility than Cederholm. Why do I say that? Meyer is specifying type in pixels whereas Cederholm dedicates a whole chapter to text flexibility and specs his type with keywords and percentages. More when I review Eric Meyer on CSS.

Book: The Forest Lover

A decent story This is a story about a woman artist in British Columbia in the early 20th century. She is fascinated by the native people (Native Canadians?). She paints totem poles and forests. It’s not a great book, but is a nice, readable story.

Security flaw in Adobe CS2 products

There are new security patches for the CS2 versions of Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and Creative Suite. The security flaw affects "shared, multi-user systems" running Windows or Mac OS. "The identified vulnerability allows non-privileged users permission to... replace these program files with malicious or harmful code that could read, write, or destroy sensitive data if subsequently run by a privileged user. "

Repetitive stress

I am in the Accessibility lab at work playing around with different mice and keyboards. I have already tried the Goldtouch split keyboard and now I am using the Evoluent Vertical Mouse 2 and the Kinesis Maxim split keyboard. It's odd. I wonder if it's any better than what I am using now. It can be raised or flat, but its main feature is that the two sides can separate a variable amount and it is not as wide as a normal keyboard because the 10-key pad is a separate unit. That means that you can get your mouse closer to the keyboard, putting your shoulder in a more natural position. I think I'm gonna get one of these for my office because of the shoulder thing. Even though the Kinesis is less customizable than the Goldtouch, it has a built-in wrist rest and I think I need that to keep me from tweaking my wrists. The vertical mouse is interesting but I don't know if I would like it for ongoing use. It's so hard to tell these things with only a few minutes exposure. For me it is anyway. When I use the vertical mouse I keep tweaking my wrist when I click, which makes my pointing really inaccurate. It's hard to know whether that's just because it is new or not. So indecisive this girl is! I'm, leaning toward not getting it since I fear it will just cause the pinky-side of my hand to cramp up like the 3M "joystick" mouse did. My hand isn't a fan of me wresting it on its side apparently. Mostly I am just dying to get my new voice recognition software installed - Dragon Naturally Speaking here I come!