Tuesday 29 September 2009

The Painter, The Shoemaker

I am a painter, but my house has no paint.
I am a shoemaker, but I cannot make shoes.
I am a web designer, but I cannot design.
I am a software engineer, but my start-ups often stop.

A painter has paint
A shoemaker makes shoes
I am painting my shoes
and shoe-ing my paint

All for the sake

of loving you.

Filed under:   blogging, community, creativity, humor, just fun, personal
Posted by:   Molly | 07:28 | Comments Off

Thursday 5 March 2009

Google Maps Street View: Oopsie!

Was checking out maps of the area so I can find my way from here to there and back again. Lo and behold, this is what I stumbled across with street view:

I wonder how often this type of thing has actually been found on street view. It’s so very funny, but not.

Filed under:   just fun, travel
Posted by:   Molly | 04:10 | Comments (12)

Sunday 26 October 2008

Flashback: Way Back! Me at 19

Here’s a photo of me at 19 years of age, close to three decades ago! I’m inside one of the smaller Toltec pyramids at Teotihuacan, Mexico.

The photo was taken by my friend long passed, Jack Schwanke.

This of course was not digital, just taken with a cheap camera, commercially processed, put in a box for 10 years and scanned at some point.

Filed under:   flashback, just fun, photos
Posted by:   Molly | 08:58 | Comments (19)

Friday 24 October 2008

Sing Along: Common People

I’m losing all my teeth USA
you forgot to get the dentist on my union plan
despite the begging of the common man

Sure he’s limping after years of cutting hay
you forgot to tell him to keep his ankle out of the way
despite what the common people had to say.

Ain’t a Capitalist
Ain’t a Communist
Believe in Conversations
Without the Altercations

Filed under:   community, faith(less), how we will be, just fun
Posted by:   Molly | 12:13 | Comments (9)

Thursday 9 October 2008

I CAN HAZ TAN!

This is Honey Bunny, insisting on having a tan right in front of my monitor.

Filed under:   family, humor, just fun, lolcats, photos, pop culture
Posted by:   Molly | 03:19 | Comments (27)

Sunday 31 August 2008

Flashback Post: Web Design and Development Personality Indicators

From 2005, for your amusement.

(original post here: Web Design and Development personality indicators)

-=-

I’VE HAD ENOUGH! Frustrated with the range of attitudes and opinions I deal with as a standards-oriented educator, I’ve decided to begin a project (very) loosely based on the Meyers-Briggs personality indicators. So, dear readers, I’m hoping you’ll help me add and refine my categories, but I’m off to a start with the following:

• OFAD. Old Fart Anti-Design. These are the guys (and I mean guys) that were on the Web as early as 1991. Almost all physicists at major research institutions, they’re the ones who helped Tim Berners-Lee refine the Web and were the first adopters. Mostly long in the tooth now, some are still kicking and they can be described as the anti-designers. These aren’t even purists – today’s approaches seem foreign and sometimes frightening to them. They long for the days of Lynx, really, but barring glowing text on a terminal and HTML authored in Vi or Emacs, their idea of Web design is default gray backgrounds, default text, maybe a list, and the apex of old fart visual design: a horizontal rule. Fortunately, this is a very rare breed and usually they can be ignored because unless they’ve progressed somewhat, they have precious little to offer the contemporary, standards-oriented Web designer or developer.
• OSVD. Old Skool Visual Designer. These are the folks that refuse to see beyond their nested-tables-spacer-GIF design. In fact, you can find them at a variety of ad agencies and teaching at conferences all over the world, still excited when they create a design in Photoshop and use the so-called HTML export utility. These designers are often extremely hostile toward standardistas largely because the idea of change or looking at code is so traumatic that they hold on to the Old Skool methodology as if it were a lifeboat on a stormy sea. Unfortunately, this breed isn’t rare enough.
• TTLM. Trying To Learn More. In this category are the good men and women who might still be serving it up Old Skool but are open to learning, open to growth yet struggling with standards related concepts and the snakepit of browser challenges of contemporary Web design and development. These brave souls are not in the majority, but they are to be lauded and assisted for their willingness to venture forth and expand their horizons.
• SAVD. Standards Aware Visual Designer. These people are designing with standards in mind – creating beautiful sites for the screen, working toward achieving accessible sites, examining usability and human factors, and very possibly beginning or already designing for alternative devices and media types. A very rare breed, and if you are reading this post it’s very highly likely you’re either one your own fine self, know all their names or have Zeldman’s personal phone number memorized.
• SASS. Standards Aware Structural Semanticist. These personalities are very code-centric, with little interest (or more often, skill) in presentation but lots of interest in the proper structuring of documents, use of meaningful markup, microformats, Semantic Web and the like. At their most compulsive, they can become purists to the point of having unrealistic expectations of the more worldly Web worker. Also a rare breed, SASS personalities are extremely important to the good of the Web but sometimes need to be reminded that smart structure and semantics can happily co-exist with visual design.
• SACE. Standards Aware Cutting Edge. Whether visual designers or code-centric or both, these are the folks that design first for Firefox, Safari and Opera and work around IE 6.0 only because they have to. Given their druthers, sites would be built using practically no markup and lots of attribute selectors, just because they like the idea. A rare breed worth watching, but also in need of reminders that the rest of the world just ain’t there yet, and in fact, really are lagging behind.

Hybrids are not unusual, either. I sort of live between the SASS and the SAVD personalities, with not enough real design skill to execute great visual designs, but enough savvy to appreciate beautiful, standards-based Web sites. There’s probably a personality type for people like me, but it’s very difficult to assess my own character, so I’ll leave it there for now.

As I’m typing this, I’m on a ship in the Eastern Caribbean teaching CSS on a Geek Cruise. The ship, the MS Zuiderdam, is just in the process of docking at Road Town, Tortola, in the British Virgin Isles. I’m sure you all feel really sorry for me right now.

It’s just past dawn and I’m up at the very top of the ship where there happens to be WiFi at the going rate of 40 cents USD per minute, so you’ll forgive me if I leave you now with the following questions: Are you one of these personality types, and if so, which? Do you have a personality type you’d like to add to my little list?

Filed under:   blogging, flashback, general, how we will be, humor, just fun, molly asks you, pop culture, revolution, society, web design and development
Posted by:   Molly | 01:37 | Comments (31)

Thursday 31 July 2008

Even Dexter Knows HTML

I’m thinking there’s got to be a lot of jokes residing in this still I grabbed from the show “Dexter” which is about a blood spatter CSI by day and a serial killer cleaning up the streets of bad guys by night.

Filed under:   just fun, pop culture
Posted by:   Molly | 12:54 | Comments (39)

Monday 14 July 2008

Child Labor Laws Questioned, Holzschlag Says “Start ‘em Young”

In late-breaking news it has been learned that Web standards advocate and educator Molly E. Holzschlag has been found using what appears to be child labor to help solve Web site issues. Here, we see a photo of Holzschlag’s youngest team member, who at 7 months old is hard at work:

“Lil’ P” has advanced skills in HTML, CSS and even is apparently learning some JavaScript. Despite his age, Holzschlag is confident that educating front end developers from early childhood does not equate to mistreatment toward children.

“If anything, starting children in computer technology this young is going to assist in innovative and rapid advancement of our industry. Start ‘em young, and train them right, and a lot of the mistakes we’ve made will be avoided in the future.”

While Holzschlag insists Lil’ P is well provided for, his father, Big P, expresses his own concerns:

“The problem as I see it is that Lil’ P was always a bit big for his britches, and now he’s speeding far past old dad here. How can I effectively raise my child when I can’t even understand the words he uses? Frankly, while the public might question child labor laws for the safety of the child, in a case like this I’m far more concerned about the parental mistreatment that will ensue.”

Clearly the subject of considerable controversy, when asked his opinion on the matter Lil’ P smiled, laughed, picked up a handful of mushy peas and smeared them all over his face. After significant analysis we are still uncertain whether this was a profound statement of Lil’ P’s sentiments on the matter, or if he was just ready for his mid-day snack.

Filed under:   family, humor, just fun, web design and development
Posted by:   Molly | 01:23 | Comments (31)

Sunday 29 June 2008

Molly’s New Microformat: Microtude

In order to make online communications more meaningful, I propose a new Microformat called “microtude” that, using the class attribute, will have a number of values to enhance the semantics of a given communication.

Let’s say you want to make a sarcastic comment. Knowing that most of your friends and colleagues understand you often keep your tongue in your cheek, it’s not necessary to wave a sarcasm flag in front of them. But what about those folks who don’t know you, and only have your text to help them understand the full impact of your comment? Microtude to the rescue! Consider the following:

<p> Wow, your code is so clean I can eat off of it! </p>

Using Microtude, you’d simply add the class with a value of “sarcasm” to clarify your intent:

<p class="sarcasm" > Wow, your code is so clean I can eat off of it! </p>

Pretty clear. Now I’m starting to work on the full range of allowed values for Microtude and this of course is where you come in. Suggestions and examples most welcome.

Filed under:   announcement, creativity, humor, just fun, molly asks you, web design and development
Posted by:   Molly | 04:56 | Comments (43)

Tuesday 24 June 2008

The Irony That Was the Hooters Geek Meet

Here’s one for the books.

So I stirred up the pot a bit regarding a bunch of Tucson guys who were planning a Geek Meet at Hooters recently.

Opinions, and emotions, ran high. The guys organizing the event immediately changed the venue to Old Chicago, which is a far friendlier place (even pets are welcome on the patio) with great beer selections, a smoking area and a menu that is broad enough to provide something for everyone, including vegans and vegetarians and flesh-eating types such as myself.

Of course, I was beholden to these guys, in light of their being so apologetic and moving locations that clearly I had to show up to the event, which was small but friendly, with good conversations and laughter.

One of the regulars to this event pointed out that this was actually the event that I started years ago and then “disappeared on.” This of course led to commentary such as “Molly went to Microsoft and we all ended up at Hooters.”

It’s a small, funny, world. I like being reminded that sometimes those things we walk away from are the very things we need to nurture all along.

Filed under:   community, food and drink, humor, just fun, professional, society, standards, web design and development
Posted by:   Molly | 02:09 | Comments (17)

Thursday 19 June 2008

MicroThought: Late Night Music

I go for Chill. Faithless spinning now. What’s your 4:00 a.m. music magic?

Kajagoogoo Kajiura Yuki Kaki King

Filed under:   Twitter, just fun, microthought, molly asks you, music, pop culture, religion, society
Posted by:   Molly | 03:54 | Comments (34)

Monday 26 May 2008

Andy Warhol Had it Wrong

Fifteen minutes of fame was a good guess, but had Mr. Warhol known about blogging, I think that measurement would have been far greater.

Filed under:   blogging, community, cults of personality, flashback, humor, just fun, pop culture
Posted by:   Molly | 22:32 | Comments (23)

Thursday 15 May 2008

Thirty Percent Likely to be Humorous

After a few of the responses to that last silly post, I realized that people sometimes take me far too seriously. So here’s a short list to know when I’m being humorous:

• - The post is tagged with “humor” or “just fun” or both
• - There’s one word in a post that has a long subject line (dead giveaway)
• - There’s a pun somewhere in the content that is either glaringly obvious or super subtle and negates whatever I’m saying
• - If it really seems like I’m being funny rather than serious, apply the 30/50 rule (30 percent likely to be humorous)
• - Ask me

Of course, I’m probably delusional to think I’m ever funny in the first place, but I’ll leave that to your judgment.

How funny are you?

Filed under:   community, humor, just fun, molly asks you
Posted by:   Molly | 01:12 | Comments (24)

Monday 14 April 2008

What About Those Handles and Nicks?

DID YOU THINK I MEANT A SHAVING ACCIDENT? I’ve had a few of those, due to certain handles, nicks and other slips.

This evening the discussion is about our online nickname stories. We all have them! My very first online handle/nick was “guitargirl” on the “Q-Link (Quantum Link)” service, offered to Commodore 64 users (some Apples, too, and later Amigas).

I had an external 300 baud Hayes modem. It was the size of a large tissue box.

Over the years I’ve had a bunch of other “Handles and Nicks” – from BBS silliness on to whatever forms of “molly” I could grab.

So what about your handles, and your nicks? Good stories always welcome,

xoM

Filed under:   creativity, just fun, nmby
Posted by:   Molly | 17:22 | Comments (44)