The November book sale is now behind us. Yay! I haven’t got the official total for the day, but it exceeded £5,000 (cf. £3,400 last year.) Many thanks to everyone who helped out, everyone who bought books and everyone who showed up at the end to take away unsold books for free. Last year we had to dispose of two tonnes of unsold books. This year, the church was picked clean by 6pm.
I’m now very tired and very hungover.
This week, I’ve been mostly grooving to Stevie Wonder…
I had the good fortune to hang out, briefly, with Chris Heilmann after the London Web Standards Group meet-up this week.
As we stood outside the pub, a very nice, but rather inebriated, young lady staggered past with her friends, looked at Chris and went, “It’s Simply Red! I want my photo with Simply Red!”. I laughed at ‘Mick Hucknall’ until she turned, stared hard at me and said, “You. You’re that guy. You know the one. That one. The lady in red.” I stopped laughing, but I let her take her photo with me. A gentleman always accedes to a lady’s requests.
Chr*s de f*cking B*rgh my arse!
This month, the Blackheath & Greenwich Amnesty letter-writing evening is brought to you from the comfort of the first floor bar at the Greenwich Picturehouse. We’ll have blank letters, concerning a range of current actions and cases, ready for members of the public to sign. We even handle the postage – all we need is your signature. Please come down and join us.
If all goes well, this will become a regular event at the Picturehouse.
The new Maritime Museum prints catalogue is now live. I’m quite proud of this – all of the HTML, CSS, SQL and backend coldfusion code was written by me. Except for the layout, where I used a modified version of Yahoo grids. I also built the SQL server 2000 database which lies behind the site, and is populated by legacy data from some rather large structured text files. The site uses a strict doctype, valid HTML, CSS for layout as well as looks and all of our prints records are now open to Google, via the magic of Google Sitemaps. I’ve also thrown in a little bit of unobtrusive JavaScript, courtesy of a free copy of Jeremy Keith’s DOM scripting book, which I blagged at Geek in the Park.
Oh and did I mention that the 20,000 images are served from our internal image server, again with a bit of coldfusion/Samba magic that I set up? I love getting a chance to do this sort of stuff.
The item level catalogue template uses a table to hold the actual catalogue record. “That’s funny”, I hear you say, “surely a record like that is actually a definition list?” Indeed, I thought that too, and you can see an early version of the catalogue record page in which I did use a definition list, styled with CSS to look like a table.
However, I sent that round a few friends for comment, and pretty much the first response I got was “Why on earth are you using a definition list?” Screenreaders, you see, don’t handle definition lists very well. Consequently, screenreader users find them very frustrating as they have to sit through the reader announcing the whole list, along with guff about whether it’s reading a term or definition. With a properly marked-up table, on the other hand, a screenreader user should be able to jump from one record heading to the next, without listening to the table data unless they want to. So the live site has a table.
Things I learnt from this:
An animated title sequence, courtesy of Charlie Owen. Everyone should have a title sequence.
After one whole quart of brandy
Like a daisy, I’m awake
With no Bromo-Seltzer handy
I don’t even shake
Men are not a new sensation
I’ve done pretty well I think
But this half-pint imitation
Put me on the blink
I’m wild again, beguiled again
A simpering, whimpering child again
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered – am I
Couldn’t sleep and wouldn’t sleep
When love came and told me, I shouldn’t sleep
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered – am I
Lost my heart, but what of it
He is cold I agree
He can laugh, but I love it
Although the laugh’s on me
I’ll sing to him, each spring to him
And long, for the day when I’ll cling to him
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered – am I
He’s a fool and don’t I know it
But a fool can have his charms
I’m in love and don’t I show it
Like a babe in arms
Love’s the same old sad sensation
Lately I’ve not slept a wink
Since this half-pint imitation
Put me on the blink
I’ve sinned a lot, I’m mean a lot
But I’m like sweet seventeen a lot
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered – am I
I’ll sing to him, each spring to him
And worship the trousers that cling to him
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered – am I
When he talks, he is seeking
Words to get off his chest
Horizontally speaking, he’s at his very best
Vexed again, perplexed again
Thank God, I can be oversexed again
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered – am I
Wise at last, my eyes at last,
Are cutting you down to your size at last
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered – no more
Burned a lot, but learned a lot
And now
How do I love the Minutemen? Let me count the ways. Suffice it to say that on the insanely long train-and-night-bus journey home from Brighton yesterday, I listened to double nickels on the dime twice, all the way through.
So it was with some excitement that I greeted the discovery, on Friday night, of a fresh new copy of We Jam Econo (Disc 1), from Amazon rentals, on the welcome mat at O’Donnell Mansions. Tim Irwin’s documentary is a work of love about a great band – three blokes who formed a punk band out of a love of making music and because they had something they wanted to say. And yes, the Minutemen were a punk band, even if they did do Blue Oyster Cult and CCR covers. In fact, maybe because they did Blue Oyster Cult and CCR covers.
Anyway, my excitement was not unwarranted. This is a great music documentary, about a band that still sounds like nothing else I’ve ever heard. Live film of the band is interspersed with interviews – Greg Ginn, Henry Rollins, Chuck Dukowski, Kira, ed fROMOHIO and Mike Watt’s mum among others. Much of the story is told by Mike Watt, with occasional stories from George Hurley. The DVD includes 222 minutes of extras, on two discs. I may have to buy myself a copy.
Such a shame that they’ll be mostly remembered as the band that did the theme tune for Jackass.
History Lesson Part II
Our band could be your life real names’ll be proof. me and Mike Watt we played for years. punk rock changed our lives. We learned punk rock in Hollywood drove up from Pedro we were fucking corndogs we’d go drink and pogo. Mr. Narrator! This is Bob Dylan to me my story could be his songs I’m his soldier child our band is scientist rock. but I was E Bloom then Richard Hell Joe Strummer and John Doe. me and Mike Watt playing guitar.
This is tiresome. I hate flamewars. Here’s a fragment of Chris Beasley’s blog comments, as it appears to me. Quite different from comments 17 and onwards on Chris’ blog. What I can’t figure out is, why aren’t my comments showing up?
September 2nd, 2006 at 9:04 pm
Assuming the US and Australian court systems are not that different:
1 Most the damages will go in legal fees;
2 If things go pear shaped Bruce Sexton can lose everything
3 If it is so easy, why does not every shyster lawyer get every disabled person they can sue every commercial website in the US and make huge fortunes and retire to the Bahamas?
September 3rd, 2006 at 2:30 am
“So unless you have something new to add why not stop being antagonistic and just put me on your list of people to hate and leave it at that?”
Mate, I don’t have a list of people to hate. Even if I did, you wouldn’t be on it, okay? I think you’re the one that ’sees enemies where there are none’ here.
By the way, I’m not a Socialist either. I voted Liberal Democrat in the last election.
Re. quotes taken out of context, you really should provide a link so that people can make their own minds up. Here’s the URL of the post that started all this fuss in the first place. I believe the comment in question was number 59:
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=346162&page=3&pp=25
Cheerio 
September 3rd, 2006 at 5:52 am
1. About 30%, to these predatory lawyers.
2. No, unfortunately in US courts the plaintiff doesn’t lose everything if their lawsuit is found to be without merit.
3. They do, not everyone because some people atleast have ethics. Predatory personal injury lawyers go out seeking any possible client, and many so called professional-plaintiffs engineer repeated injuries or injustices for themselves that their job is literally suing people for money. They have no other employment.
Here are some links: 1 2 3 4 5 6
This legal climate is directly responsible for shaping my opinion on the matter. The US is such a litigious society at the moment and it really irks myself and many others.
September 3rd, 2006 at 7:09 am
Hmmm, I see my most recent comment (after Nick Cowie’s, before yours) is “awaiting moderation.”
Oh well, I posted my response on my blog. Comments are welcome (and uncensored)
http://eatyourgreens.org.uk/archives/2006/09/alone_and_easy.html
Welcome, comrade, to a new post from the glittering proletarian utopia that is the People’s Republic of Jimbo. Yes, that’s right folks, all of a sudden I’m a socialist. Or so says avowed capitalist, libertarian (and, thus, Enemy of the People) Chris Beasley. He also states on his blog:
“…why not stop being antagonistic and just put me on your list of people to hate and leave it at that?”
My list of people to hate? I don’t have one. But I suppose my shiny new Socialist Republic needs one, if only to deal with counter-revolutionaries and other malcontents. I don’t know, precisely, what I’ll do to them but it’ll be something pretty darn nasty. Oh yes indeedy.
Chris is angry because of a lawsuit brought against the retail store Target on behalf of a blind customer, Bruce Sexton. Mr Sexton, a student at Berkeley, cannot shop online at Target because their website will not work with the screenreading software he uses to browse the web. He approached the National Federation of the Blind (NFB), who then approached Target on his behalf. The NFB negotiated with Target about making their online store accessible to blind people. Those negotiations broke down and the NFB took Target to court in California.
Under Californian State Law, a bricks-and-mortar business is required to make their place of business physically accessible to handicapped people. It is unclear whether the same law extends to online businesses. Under the Golden Rule, however, it’s possible that a court may decide that the intention, rather than literal meaning, of the law may be that businesses in California should not discriminate against whom they do business, on the basis of disability, regardless of the physical circumstance. It will be interesting to see how it turns out.
Chris Beasley argues that the NFB’s motive in this case is greed, not accessibility for blind people. They have brought the case to reap huge damages and live off the profits. To my mind, only one type of person gets rich off of legal action – lawyers. If this case is resolved on behalf of the NFB, I’ll bet the majority of the damages will go to covering their legal costs. Samuel Johnson, I think, said it best:
“There ambush here relentless ruffians lay,
And here the fell attorney prowls for prey.”
It’s unfortunate that this has gone as far as a legal action. I don’t believe that suing companies under existing disability legislation is the best way to promote web accessibility. The business case for accessibility alone should be enough to convince any rational capitalist. An accessible website lowers your costs and wins you extra customers. In this case, Target were approached out-of-court about the inaccessibility of their website. When that approach failed, the next step was, unfortunately, legal action.