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Saturday, March 23, 2002 |
Level 3 Communications & James Crowe mentioned here
Telecom, Tangled in Its Own Web. While all eyes remain on Enron, a tragedy of identical plot but with far more damaging implications is the story of the Telecommunications industry. By Gretchen Morgenson. [New York Times: Technology]
It is a shame that this writer wasn't able to go into a bit more depth about the differences in the companies she mentioned here. To put a single sentence in the context of the article leaves a vast amount of information to the guesswork and suppositions (suspicions) of readers.
Oops...there's more!
10:17:17 PM 
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An RCS Idea?
Wait a minute. Do I have this straight? RCS is free and Radio is $40 a head. If there's a 15 person financial services firm. They represent 8 different insurance/financial products firms. They want software for keeping everyone in the firm who needs to know up to date about specific products. Let's say 5 of the people only view a web site. The other 10 post updates. Does that mean for 10 x $40 plus some advisory/support time, this firm could build a collaborative software infrastructure on their existing LAN and track the 8 firms they represent as "categories" in Radio?
If I'm even close to accurate about this, why isn't Radio & RCS the hottest news in collaboration since the word was first used??? Have I just stepped into the K-Log realm?
8:46:41 PM
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Breakthrough Day
Today has been great! Barring an unforeseen blast, spring is coming. All three daughers are doing great. It sounds as if my wife and I are headed to Australia. After 69 days of thinking about HTML, weblogs, themes, templates, macros, scripting, posts, XML, RSS, aggregators and prefs, the lights came on today - or, at least the next part of the journey is illuminated!
I can write what I want here or on the wall of a public bathroom or on a scratchpad. I may or may not get "published." I may or may not have something to say about "the news" that isn't covered by BigPubCo. All of that remains to be seen.
Better than half the reasons I started this weblog are about learning the web, design, servers, posting, "web services/apps," software development and the like. Due to a combination of emails, posts and comments today, the lights on this next pathway are bright. Radio is an incredible tool. The folk who are interested in it are doing some profound work if you ask me.
Now the challenge comes in putting it all to work - profitably. My courage is up and I'm going to start experimenting again. This will be fun indeed! A wireless laptop, a digital camera and a tool for "reporting." I should write a book about what these 69 days...wait, that's my weblog!!!
4:44:20 PM
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GIF's
Here I am plodding along, concentrating - probably waaayyyy to serious about this stuff - and Dave drops in Frank and Fritz, after the fact. He also added the punchline to his earlier post - it's Radio! Well, I wish I knew Dave from other than his writing. It'd be great to catch the significance/humor of Frank & Fritz in the context of Dave's post. Maybe everyone but me "gets it."
But, one line that I thought a lot about (during yard work today) went like this earlier:
"what's so wrong about a font tag if it's easily comprehended" or something like that - he edited it out.
That hits at the essence of my current state of knowledge. I know what a font tag is. But, my questions revolve around "a font tag as opposed to what?" I feel like I'm so close, but just missing some of the real meaty debate. It's like "what's so wrong with 7 turnovers if he scored 38 points and had 9 assists." I know enough to catch the meaning in that.
I hope I'm not Fritz, but I'm not entirely sure I want to be Frank, either!
2:24:28 PM
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Patience
Dave is more patient with me than I am. I think I'm okay being the designated HTML newbie! I want to graduate to the next designation sometime soon. I'm beginning to understand what I call the pure HTML stuff. (Thanks Dane, Dave, Russ and Jenny.) What has not completely gelled (yet) is how macros fit inside templates and how templates work together to render a page. When I "view source" (something my browser has started allowing only intermittently - why?) I'm seeing the "after effects" of a theme's templates and the macros of Radio doing their work. At least those are my conclusions. That "flow" of information to yield the rendered page in HTML that the world sees is what I don't yet grasp! Hurry, Russ!!! <kidding, sorta>
The rest may be distraction with "toys!" Two examples come to mind. Jason Kottke has done some nice design work on his site (in my opinion). Look over on the right where he has a list called "Not Recommended At All." See the "more links" link at the bottom. Click it. How did that get done? Yeah, javascript, but who-what-when-where-how? Is this "gadget" useful or important. Or, are these displays of what designers can do in hopes of getting new projects?
Same set of questions with Lance Arthur's glassdog site. Go there, scroll down the page and watch the left hand menu of links slide into place. Gimmick or is there some piece of knowledge and skill behind the scenes that has real utility, rather than simply a high coolness factor? And what about all these *.shtml pages? I can only imagine what I might once have thought "shtml" stood for. (I might have even called someone that much earlier in my life!)
Am I into the truly advanced stuff and beyond the HTML newbie stage? Maybe. And, judging from the sites I'm seeing, any notions I have about making money in HTML/web design are fatally flawed. So, where can all of this lead? Is weblogging to be an interesting hobby for me? Is it merely a tool for self-publishing my writing? Is there a business somewhere in this stuff? Where to focus the attention is what tries my patience.
I love it, but at some point, I'm going to have to designate this fascination as hobby or work! Wouldn't it be great if it could be both?
Thanks for the link, Dave. I do love this stuff!
12:25:24 PM
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Bertrand Russell. "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." [Quotes of the Day]
8:07:53 AM
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CSS again
CSS Daily Challenge Report. In January, Chris Casciano announced a challenge of creating a new CSS each day during the month of February as a response to his article, Your CSS Bores Me. He... [meryl's notes]
Is this feature merely a "toy" - i.e. letting readers select the color and style that appears on your weblog?
Here's another example of that.
7:59:14 AM
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© Copyright 2002 Steve Pilgrim.
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