afongen

User Friendly.

It seems trite to write anything about this, but I can’t just ignore it. I’m still not sure how to react to the terrorist attack that destroyed the World Trade Center towers and — according to the last guess I heard — at least 10,000 lives. I heard about it today at a coffee shop on my way to work, that a plane had crashed into the first tower. Once at work, I found that I could do little else but watch, listen, and read about what was going on.

The major (American) news sites on the Web were dog slow, but still I managed to find information, largely thanks to a few webloggers — most notably Dave Winer on his scripting.com. Sites that typically focus on technical news, like Slashdot, picked up the slack and disseminated what information they could. CNN.com was unreachable for some time, but Google made a cached version of its news coverage available. And I have to congratulate whoever at CNN.com had the bright idea of minimizing its page design to reduce server load and make it possible to get to the site.

Kiara, when she heard that the World Trade Center had collapsed, was terrified, thinking that it was the WTC in Saint Paul. I don’t work there now, but I’m still there every now and then.

Still, none of it felt real until I read about counselors waiting at bus stops to deal with children whose parents are never coming home.

This is pretty much just to remind me where it is: the W3C’s slide making tool.

I’ve looked at a number of web log analysis tools. Lots of people seem to like WebTrends. It’s nice for those who have a budget. My web hosting service likes analog. Me, I favor the Webalizer. It’s comprehensive, it’s free. The only real problem with the Webalizer is a twisted and possibly frustrating series of dependencies necessary to build it. This is not insurmountable by any means, however, and now PHPBuilder‘s recently published an article on building and using Webalizer.

NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day has been pretty cool recently. Yesterday, a composite photo of the moon and stars (you can see galaxies!), and today the moon and sun.

I’m not sure how I feel about composite photographs, but what the heck.

And for you folks at work, Ganymede.

A new issue of The Perl Journal is out, at long last.

Hey, you can send Jabber messages from a web page, thanks to a new little tool called the Jabber Web Pager. I’ll probably add this to afongen. Now, can I build a web-based chat system using Jabber?

I got the Qwest yellow and white pages on CD-ROM today. Qwest is running a test, sending some 64,000 of these out to see how they go. When I first read this, I was pretty psyched. I almost never use a hard copy of the phone book–they’re unwieldy, too-often out-of-date, and just a pain to keep around. On the other hand, I use qwestdex.com all the time. To have the directory available on CD, well that’s just downright handy.

Except that I don’t use Windows. It only runs on Windows. Way to go, Qwest.

Now, I understand to a point: if you’re gonna pick an OS to support, it probably oughta be Windows. Or maybe a Java VM, except that Windows XP has pulled Java support, hasn’t it? Still, this is damn annoying.

Anyone want a CD-ROM of the Minneapolis – Saint Paul phone directory? I’ve already offered it to a friend, but if he doesn’t want it then it’s up for grabs. Email me. And use my PGP key.

Update: The CD is spoken for.

Well, MAPE rejected the State’s “final” offer, so it’s looking more likely like they’ll strike.

Sigh.

Made a couple changes to the templates. Some minor CSS fixes to deal with problems I was finding with Netscape 4. Now it’s at least legible in NS4, even if it’s not perfect. I never expect perfection from NS4. Also, you might have noticed the little “open links in new window” box. Doesn’t serve much of a purpose, but I thought it was kinda cute so brought it back.