July 19, 2006

           The clouds are keeping the temperatures perfect around here while the rest of the country swelters. It was so nice, I took a day off work and got some things done around the place. Summer is usually too hot for that so I dared not miss the chance.

           It is still too warm at noon, don’t get me wrong. I went over to the bookstore and read up on more CSS programming. Nobody is outright saying it, but HTML was one of the most terrible designs to start with and things like CSS are really nothing more than patch-ups. The word terrible is not an exaggeration, this famous CERN lab always mentioned as the beginning of the Internet should have stuck to material they knew about, they certainly were not English majors or programmers.
           Do you see the brownish-orange box in the picture? Can anyone tell me what it is? I bought it at a swap meet two years ago and had to take it apart to find out what it did. Turns out it was broken and I was able to figure out things by repairing it. Answer at end of today’s entry.
Dickens has mentioned already that there is a possibility he wants me to work at the store a couple of days a week. This will be a difficult decision. It would have to pay the rent and pay more than I could make doing occasional computer work. That means at least $100 a day or it is just not worth my while. Even that is nothing but the way things are I doubt that is possible.

           You can always tell a slow day. I talk about computers. It was a marathon study session, all on CSS. I still don’t get these chapters about inheritance. Most of the other things I can get to work, including how to position without using tables. The inheritance features are another example of how they shot themselves in the foot. As in so many computer-related fields, failure with the feature that makes things easy to use eclipses all other good they may have accomplished.
           I’ll give it a chance but really, 99% of people would have given up by now and just used Dreamweaver. There are no obvious advantages to learning the “code” over just taking shortcuts from the design point. However, it is totally necessary for doing anything truly original. One thing I do not like about html is that anyone can view the source code. I would like a stab at preventing that even though I am 100% certain others have tackled it already. The way it stands, this dumb command ensures no web page can remain totally original for very long.

           Most of the process is also misleading. I look at the authors of these books and most of them seem to be in their mid-thirties, with only two women represented. This could cause an observer to conclude web programming is a skill only acquired by a generation who grew up with the Internet. False, in fact, most programmers have done a poor job of it. I come from an era 5 to 15 years earlier, when anyone who even touched a computer was and necessarily had to be an expert.
           That explains why I rejected html in 1997. I read one of the first books on the topic, programmed a couple of pages and concluded that the language (I use the term loosely) was too primitive to amount to anything. The fact is, the Internet is youth-oriented and youth-dominated, which many wrongly think makes a youthful science. If the original users had known a thing or two, they may not have latched on to html.

           Last, my purpose of this study is to create my own blog template. I want it to read like a standard text, with full paragraphs and indents. Pictures with borders, and if I can figure out how, with captions. Using a garden-variety template is just too dippy.
           Ah, the mystery box. The seller didn’t know either, so I bought it for $8.00. Here are a couple of last moment hints. The black circle on the end is a sponge material cover and that is where the music comes out. It contains no mechanisms, no batteries and operates on steel ball bearings. Give up? It is a wind chime without the wind.

           Inside are several ordinary wind chime tubes, but hung horizontally on nylon strings. There are several hundred tiny ball bearings inside the case. On the inside “roof” is a patch of semi-permanent glue. When you turn the box upside down, the bearings stick to the glue. When placed back normally, gravity very slowly lets a few of the bearings drop at a time over the next hour or more. They strike the chimes with a very high quality ring, a very pure note that can easily put you to sleep. Trust me.
           It is not an antique. During the repair I noticed several tell-tale signs of modern manufacture, such as air gun staples. There are no identifying marks though it is definitely mass-produced. It is in the office because of air conditioning. Sadly, when the temperature rises above 80 as it regularly does in my place, the glue becomes less tacky and the bearings drop all at once. Some people who don’t know their physics suggest the top plate is magnetic (but that would not let the bearings drop). Sadly ,I cannot get you any better pictures without dismantling it again and that is out of the question until I find another example. Right now it is unique.