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The Painter, The Shoemaker

Molly — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 07:28:31 +0000

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.

A Proprietary Web in Deed and Fact?

Molly — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 08:15:33 +0000

Paul Ellis eloquently points out a few things I’ve become hoarse saying over the past year in his recent post A proprietary Web? Blame the W3C.

My personal list goes like this:

There’s no such thing as “Web Standards”
There’s no such thing as an open Web (except in our dreams)
There’s no such thing as interoperability on the Web

Of course the grand irony here is that it’s supposed to be the W3C where we get Microsoft and Adobe and Apple and Mozilla and so on around the table working together to create specs. So blanket “blame the W3C” statements are a bit flawed. I’d be more specific. I’d say “blame patent and IP old-skoolers, blame poor W3C infrastructure, blame an archaic and slow rather than agile and rapid process.” I can honestly tell you the most interesting, passionate and standards-oriented brainstorms I’ve had the opportunity to be present at have always been at W3C WG meetings.

Alas, those meetings of minds are then hacked apart and returned to their respective Member Companies to be scrutinized in light of policies, agendas and oh the list does go on.

My concerns are therefore different than Ellis’, who feels that it’s time for a richer Web experience anyway. While I do agree with the need for rich experiences, I am more fundamentally concerned about how the “Open Web” will ever be re-opened, and if it ever will be.

Every time I’ve said “Web Standards Aren’t” I get a significant response. Sometimes people laugh, sometimes they look at me as if I forgot my medication that day. Ellis’ article brings it a little closer to home about the many years of commitment standardistas give to a quality of work and a visionary cause that may have long been lost before it was ever truly won.

Longing For Math and Being Art

Molly — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 06:58:01 +0000

The first wound is the one you remember:

Your teacher says:

“you’ll never need it don’t cry it’s okay”
you don’t believe her anyway.

You talk to your friends twenty years later
and they all say:
“Be your art”

Oh, how it feels good
To learn math and therefore see,
a life denied of algorithms and rationality.

What is Independence to You?

Molly — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 14:41:07 +0000

Today is the 4th of July, which is independence day in the U.S. We party with feasts and drinks and fireworks.

It’s a great tradition. Have you tried the hot dogs? Beef, hot mustard, sauerkraut.

Still, I’m concerned with the core values of Independence. Concerned that the idea that independence is not at all what we have, even though it might be what we thought we set out to have.

Independence to Me

Is believing everything I do matters, even if it doesn’t.