Sunday 27 April 2008

Mighty Mississippi

Dawn is breaking with the early morn. The activity on the river is getting busier.

I had come here once in 2001, first trip post 9/11 with the man whom I love most. Michael and I had an awesome room overlooking the river. We took one day to just drink and talk and watch the comings and goings of the many boats and other river vessels sailing through.

The Mississippi river is something everybody should see. It’s an iconographic river, it has been an essential piece of my beautiful country’s history.

This river is called Mighty for a reason. It’s a working river, and all through America’s history and present, has maintained its mighty status always. Nurturing, destructive, muddy and oily, I love it despite its flaws and I hope you will too.

Rivers, lakes, oceans, brooks. I’m mostly a desert dweller these days but I will never lose my appreciation for the earth’s amazing power and flow. I should be sleeping, but I watch this river, and somehow, it empowers me.

Filed under:   travel, community
Posted by:   Molly | 4:10 am | Comments (9)

Wednesday 27 February 2008

Interview: Roger & Molly: Webstock New Zealand

I like this interview! It runs a bit long but Roger made me feel so welcome it just came out as a spontaneous chat.

Anyone willing to do text transcript, holler. I’d like to make one available!

Thank you, Roger, for a great interview.

Enjoy, comment, bitch etc. below:

Filed under:   professional, humor, standards, software, web design and development, travel, food and drink, society, w3c, conferences, announcement, creativity, browsers, microsoft, ie7, innovation, whatwg, community
Posted by:   Molly | 8:12 am | Comments (39)

Wednesday 20 February 2008

There’s No Place Like Home

It’s been said that “home is where the heart is.” Well, this heart has been very blessed, because I’ve found heart in so many places, and with so many people.

Tonight I get on the plane that will take me to the plane that will take me to the other plane that will bring me to my physical home in Tucson, Arizona. I’m looking forward to seeing my cat Honey as well as all my friends and loved ones there.

But as I sit here in Cairns, Australia, nearing the end of a month-long journey throughout the southern hemisphere, I’m deeply moved to know that the Aquarian age of ideals has, while always shaped me, proven out in real life.

I feel a true part of the family of humankind, and a part of this beautiful earth that I am so fortunate to travel and experience.

So, it is with my sincerest thanks and all my love to each and every person, and with regard to each and every place, to have helped me find out this amazing fact: There truly is no place like home.

How lucky I am to have found out what that really means. How grateful I am that you have shown me.

Filed under:   travel, society, family, community
Posted by:   Molly | 9:24 pm | Comments (28)

Monday 18 February 2008

Well-Behaved Women Rarely Make History

Guess I’m going down in those history books, because I am scandalous!

What fun! I love the fact that Matt (the fellow whose shirt I unbuttoned the top two buttons of) used to “smuggle” my books into class. In the sixth form, no less! Oh, the irony.

Filed under:   humor, blogging, pop culture, web design and development, travel, blog slut, food and drink, society, conferences
Posted by:   Molly | 7:25 pm | Comments (19)

Friday 8 February 2008

Melbourne, Australia

If it isn’t on your “places to see before you die” list, put it on.

I might never leave.

Coolest most awesome, broad minded, multicultural city I’ve ever been in.

I love Melbourne. What an amazing, unique town.

Filed under:   blogging, travel, food and drink, creativity, community
Posted by:   Molly | 9:15 am | Comments (34)

Tuesday 5 February 2008

Come Spend an Evening with Me!

What? Why, it’s “An evening with Molly Holzschlag” in Melbourne, Australia. An informal, question and answer forum, the goal is to have a great discussion about all things Web. Standards, practices, oh, and yeah, I’m sure IE8 will be of interest. The event was organized and is being brought to you free by the wonderful folks at WIPA (Web Industry Professionals Association) and Web Standards Group.

Date:	Wednesday 6 February
Time:	6.30pm for 7pm start
City:	Melbourne
Venue:	Loop Bar, 23 Meyers Place Melbourne 3000 VIC
Cost:	FREE

The conversation will likely take up an hour or so, with plenty of time for drinks, socializing and networking after. I’m very excited to be seeing old friends, and meeting new! Please come by if you’re near the area, and make sure to come say hello to me.

Filed under:   professional, standards, web design and development, travel, food and drink, w3c, announcement, microsoft, community
Posted by:   Molly | 5:26 am | Comments (21)

Wednesday 23 January 2008

Travelblog: The Missing Day

As I write this I’m sitting on Tumon Bay, Tamuning, Guam, in Micronesia. Tumon Bay is an important ecological environment, most especially due to the coral reefs that are, as just about everywhere, being destroyed all too quickly.

I started my journey on what was my Monday, with a short flight to Houston. There, I met up with the always effervescent Erica O’Grady and wonderfully witty Kelsey Ruger, who joined me along with a fellow traveler just met named Bruce. We drank good wine, talked about social networking, bringing more women to the stage, and the advantages of theater training for speakers, in this case with Kelsey focusing on stand-up comedy to help build his presentation skills. My guess is he’ll find that web design wasn’t his calling after all .

After that it was an early flight the next morning to Honolulu, where I made a brief “lei-over” (I know, I amuse myself far too much, but someone has to!). Flying over Oahu I got a clear shot of the inside of Diamond Head:

After a refreshing bit of delicious pineapple, it was back on the plane for another 8 hour leg, this time flying into Micronesia, specifically Guam, for one day here. Guam’s always been a bit elusive to me because I know so many U.S. military folks who have been stationed here over the years. Guam is the westernmost U.S. territory and is far more beautiful than I’d imagined.

Here are some photos I took during my traditional walk at dawn. This is the sun rising over Tumon Bay:

Also along my walk I came upon some strange creatures. What kinds of pods are these? I surely don’t know:

And a pretty but perhaps not so strange creature, too! This is Fuji, and he had a lot to tell me. But he must have been speaking the local language of Chamorro, because while he was clearly befriending me, I had no idea what he was going on about:

Finally, there is nothing quite so wonderful as coming along those spots on the planet where there is nothing but peace. Here’s the hidden cove I found:

Sitting there overlooking the gorgeous day come to bear made me not only happy to be alive, but gave me much-needed respite from the trials and tribulations of a very busy and often challenging life. Somehow, I started this adventure on Monday. And now it’s Thursday. There’s definitely a day in there I lost, but I’m reassured it’ll be given back to me upon my return.

Onward to Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef!

Filed under:   photos, travel, food and drink, society
Posted by:   Molly | 10:07 pm | Comments (21)

Tuesday 22 January 2008

TravelBlog 2008: Australia and New Zealand

I’m in Houston and in a few hours will board a plane that will take me to Guam, then on to Cairns and points in Australia and New Zealand.

There are two concise reasons this trip is important to me:

1). 2008 marks the 20th (yes, that’s TWENTIETH) year online (bbs’s anyone?)
2). I turn 45 on the 25. It’s a rite of passage, I think.

For one month I’m going to explore Australia and New Zealand. I will post photos and ideas and inspiration.

I am also working hard, my current project: massive HTML and CSS testing for MS.

I’m very excited.

Filed under:   professional, standards, software, web design and development, travel, food and drink, society, w3c, browsers, microsoft, ajax, rails, accessibility, javascript, whatwg, The Daily Molly, community
Posted by:   Molly | 12:01 am | Comments (40)

Saturday 1 December 2007

Clouds Over Catskills

Playing around with black and white settings in my little digital elf. I liked the results and textures of this photo, taken from a jet flying over the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York.

Filed under:   photos, travel
Posted by:   Molly | 12:10 pm | Comments (52)

Saturday 27 October 2007

The Word “Jew” is Considered an Offensive Google Search

I saw something I’ve never seen on Google tonight.

Friends and I were hanging out talking about this and that, and the topic turned to New Mexico. I brought up the “Crypto-Jews” which are an unusual sect of the Jewish culture that was given a choice by Spanish and other legislation to either be exiled or to embrace Catholicism at least as early as Columbus sailed the ocean blue, in 1492.

Encouraged by friends to Google for more detail on how a branch of the Crypto Jews wound up in the U.S., much less the dramatic environment of New Mexico, I used this search query:

jew new mexico

I was surprisingly greeted by Google with a rather cautious explanation:

“If you recently used Google to search for the word “Jew,” you may have seen results that were very disturbing.”

Google continues:

” . . . why is a search for “Jew” different? One reason is that the word “Jew” is often used in an anti-Semitic context. Jewish organizations are more likely to use the word “Jewish” when talking about members of their faith. The word has become somewhat charged linguistically.”

Ashkenazim and Sephardim

I am what is known as an Ashkenazi Jew. Easily explained, this means my heritage is Eastern European, and the unique language of my people is the more commonly known language, Yiddish. If you know Jews personally outside of Spain and nearby countries, you are most likely to know Ashkenazi Jews exclusively.

There are, however, quite a fair number of Spanish Jews, known as “Sephardim” who have settled the world. Though a smaller sect, the Sephardic Jews continue to follow their unique language and cultural versions of Judaic belief.

Historically, many of the Sephardic Jews who were unwilling to give up their rituals and beliefs chose to emigrate to other countries around the world. Many have come here to the U.S., but a unique group settled in New Mexico.

Isolated and very much to themselves these Sephardic nomads have hung on to their faith and, most notably, their language, Ladino.

Ladino, Zionists and The Proper Jew

Ladino, as it’s known, is the Sephardic equivalent to Yiddish - at least conceptually. Ladino has Spanish, Arabic, Hebrew, Italian, German, Turkish and even more exotic languages mixed in! Alas, it is mostly a lost language due to the ousting or conversion of Jews during the time of the Crusades.

Jews in the U.S. are facing a lot of challenges, particularly if they take a Zionistic viewpoint. As a Jew I have a spiritual but not necessarily religious relationship to my Judaism. I embrace my heritage with the love of a poet who hears the cadence in the words as they are written. I also have enjoyed the great glory of a strong soprano who has been humbled by the more ancient and holy; more haunting harmonies of a heritage thousands of years old.

What I am today is not a Zionist, nor a religious Jew. By the judgement of some, that’s not a proper Jew at all. But I am the culmination of those thousands of years, and proper or not, as a student of life but most especially words, for me, the word “Jew” isn’t offensive. Rather, descriptive as an ethnographic identity.

And Google . . .

So my question, at the end of all this soul searching, is: Is it up to Google to be a purveyor of political correctness?

Who at Google determined what my ethnicity, heritage and terminology therein means?

My Judaic and history as a U.S. born American has shaped me and made me the person that I am and for that I am very proud.

Maybe Google isn’t as emotionally secure?

Filed under:   faith(less), travel, society
Posted by:   Molly | 11:00 pm | Comments (34)

Friday 19 October 2007

Double Dare: Your Last Meal on Earth

So I posted this to Twitter:

Twitter Poll: If you had to decide your final meal on earth, what would it be?

Which emerged from this post:

you know, if I ever get the death penalty for offing some bad ex boyfriend, my last meal will be exactly that. (Rib Eye bloody, plus taters and veg)

Then a lovely fellow emailed me from Ask500people:

Hey Molly, Just saw your tweet, would you like us to run your question on Ask500People.com? We could gather 100 votes for it.

And snarkily, after eating a really good steak and “hopped” up on Pike Pale and red meat, I responded:

So you’re saying if we ask 500 people we’ll only get 100 responses?

Double dare you to make more than 100 posts about what is your perfect last meal on earth.

GO!

Filed under:   humor, blogging, food and drink, creativity, community
Posted by:   Molly | 7:20 pm | Comments (76)

Wednesday 22 August 2007

Come Together for a Rich Web Experience

The Rich Web Experience is a show I’m really getting excited for. I’ll tell you why.

I know nothing about JavaScript and Web applications in the real world. And I’m aching to learn!

And wow, I get to do that from people such as Douglas Crockford and Alex Russell. If you do anything with front end web development or browser technology, they are both worth a very serious listen. Not to mention the fantastic line-up that RWE has put together.

I’ll be reviving the popular keynote I did in Vancouver in February “WSI: Web Standards Investigations” as well as presenting on Web browsers and standards. I’m giving a workshop on CSS, too.

Here’s my schedule:

• KEYNOTE - WSI: Crimes Against Web Standards
  Web standards investigators: Get your crime scene gear on and help Molly dig up the dirt on crimes committed against web standards. Molly will demonstrate markup and CSS samples from her own felonious work dating back to 1993, as well as the work of other infamous standardistas before they got rehabilitated and let standards into their hearts.
• Markup & CSS for Developers: Empowering the Application Developer with Front End Magic
  As a developer you’ll probably be tasked with technical concerns such as streamlining file size, optimizing http requests, and ensuring that your web sites and apps remain manageable and flexible. You also need to step in and modify style and even create visual interfaces for your apps. Markup and CSS for Developers is a 90 minute presentation aimed directly at dealing with CSS from a developer’s point of view.
• The Broken World: Solving the Browser Problem Once and For All
  The Web was meant to be interoperable, but as every web designer and developer knows, interoperability is the very thing we lack. As we build standards-based, flexible, accessible, well-designed sites, we find it’s the browser that gives us most of our headaches. In this session, you’ll learn to take better control not through hacks and filters, but through an understanding of why browsers work the way they do.

Social Software as a Platform for Human Advancement
As we enthusiastically embrace the many technologies that come together to create Web applications, it’s important to also stay aware of the societal impact our software offers. In particular, social applications offer a foundation for improvements in all kinds of relationships. Spanning from business-oriented apps that enhance networking and economic opportunities to the more personal social applications that allow for myriad interaction, the social application deserves our attention not just as technologists, but as individuals and communities, too.

I’ve been honored to bring what I know about markup and CSS to the Rich Web, in particular the applications experience. I’m not a programmer, but I love working with programmers to find solutions to major issues in the delivery of a great web site experience.

Who’s going to The Rich Web Experience (RWE)? Anyone want to go?

I’m hoping to see you there.

Filed under:   professional, policies, standards, software, web design and development, travel, WaSP, society, w3c, conferences, announcement, browsers, microsoft, ie7, ajax, rails, accessibility, javascript, whatwg, community, RWE07
Posted by:   Molly | 4:02 pm | Comments (56)

Wednesday 25 July 2007

Creativity Jam Session With Eric Meyer: Ashore

Check out this great photo from Eric Meyer and share your creativity.

I’m really biased. That’s the Jersey Shore, or “Down the Shore” as we Jersey-ites say. Memories of my own childhood in that there photo.

Filed under:   photos, travel, creativity, community, nmby
Posted by:   Molly | 2:09 pm | Comments (20)

Thursday 12 July 2007

MaxJet: The Little Airline That Could?

So MaxJet is a little airline with a big promise: All business class from major US destinations to London Stansted. For the price give or take 200 quid of economy class on other carriers.

The first time I flew MaxJet I left from Las Vegas and everything was great! Service exceptional, on time flight, on time arrival to Stansted, everything promised - delivered, and delivered well.

So I booked them again, this time leaving Stansted to JFK and switching over to another carrier to get home. MaxJet is a small carrier, not too many planes. They had a little tune up problem. That meant a full day delay.

So this is what they provided:

• Immediate room and meals with free wifi accommodations at the SAS Radisson Stansted with a very generous dinner voucher
• Breakfast - Full English (oh, I do like that)
• Paid limousine service to Heathrow (if you know where Stansted is you know this isn’t a minor journey!)
• Upper Class tickets on Virgin (flat sleeper seats, etc.) plus connections to home

Okay, cool, that was fine with me! I was already impressed! Then, today, I get an email from MaxJet telling me that between now and next year I can come to London at their upper class service, round trip, for free.

I can work with this. I really can. Apparently, if I fail, I just end up upper on Virgin. This works for me.

Thanks MaxJet

Filed under:   travel, food and drink, society
Posted by:   Molly | 6:32 pm | Comments (33)

Wednesday 13 June 2007

Budapest

Parliament Building, Budapest

Some new photos from Budapest, Hungary.

Filed under:   web design and development, photos, travel, conferences, microsoft
Posted by:   Molly | 1:32 am | Comments (32)