this is mikel.org — Page 358 — Michael Boyle's weblog

I love a good rant

August 2, 2001 by Michael Boyle

: The Talking Moose tells some more truth: “when you run a business by the spreadsheet, you deserve all the hell that you get.” A lot of interesting stuff about content, the place of content developers (aka writers and people like that) and the web.

I read about

August 2, 2001 by Michael Boyle

the WIRED Rave Awards a couple of places today. So I went to the site. Ugh. It doesn’t work (broken gifs, jerky flash, no hyperlinks even in the web category) and it looks butt-ugly. Orange highlighting a deep grey background is pretty tired as a combo, and anti-fuctionality is so September 2000.

Thirty-four years ago

August 2, 2001 by Michael Boyle

today I was born. Also on this day? Aaron Copland wrote a letter to Leonard Bernstein, Loretta Clause played cards etc. with Marines in Vietnam, Martin Luther King had a letter to the editor published in the New York Times, All You Need is Love was at the top of the charts, and Cyrus Vance left Detroit at the end of the riots there.

Dig Caterina’s

July 31, 2001 by Michael Boyle

Dig Caterina‘s guest blogger. It’s funny how some people’s writing styles (and subjects chosen) are so distinctive. Not everyone has that distinctive a ‘voice’. At least I’m pretty sure it’s who I think it is.

PS: excuse the gratuitous use of the term “dig” above. I saw Easy Rider over the weekend. Did you notice Toni Basil is in it? Yes, Toni Basil of “Hey Mickey” fame, and the progenitor of Paula Abdul, was in Easy Rider. Dig that.

Apple has redesigned

July 30, 2001 by Michael Boyle

their Technical Note format, and altough it’s really dry information of a technical nature, in its own way it’s quite beautiful. A subdued but good use of fonts, good in-file linking that’s well distinguished from the rest of the page, a good executive summary at the top, the date of publication/update is prominently displayed, and they use shading and an indent to very clearly highlight code. And there’s a PDF equivalent available at the bottom, cause no matter how nice it looks online, a PDF will print better. Form following function, to ape the famous old line, but not devoid of form as many techies assume is appropriate for other techies.