“The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.” — Churchill via Steeno
Also read the article this comment is attached to. I laughed out loud when I read it.
Monthly Archives: February 2008
Stuff I Think: Just Words.
Mark Gungor Is a Genius
I’ve never heard of Mark Gungor before but after watching these two videos I firmly believe the man is a genius. First watch a Tale of Two Brains and then watch Men’s Sex Drive. The way the man puts this stuff makes so much sense, and he does it in a way that doesn’t offend. That’s a gift right there.
Girl’s Writings Provide ‘Remarkable Insight’ On Autism
Girl’s Writings Provide ‘Remarkable Insight’ on Autism. How wonderful when this kind of breakthrough happens. It just cements in my mind that regardless of the “worth” a society may put on a person, everyone is wonderfully made.
Help American Idol by Voting for the Worst
I love watching American Idol. It’s reality TV at its finest. And yes, that’s exactly what it is, reality TV. It’s not a “talent competition” or any other such nonsense. Who was the last “winner” of AI that was even remotely good? Kelly Clarkson . . . maybe. The producers make up back stories, edit clips, and generally do their best to make the show as dramatic as possible. After all, this is what turns the best ratings. And I certainly want to help them in their task of creating entertaining programming. That’s why this year I’ll be voting for the worst.
Vote For The Worst dot com words it very well on their home page:
“We think that the less-loved contestants are more entertaining than the producer favorites, and we want to acknowledge this fact by encouraging people to help vote for the amusing antagonists that annoy the judges. VFTW sees keeping these contestants around as a golden opportunity to make a more entertaining show.”
What do you think happened to the show’s ratings last year when Sanjaya kept getting voted on? Ratings went up. If anything, when large groups of people vote for the worst performer it helps the show. It adds drama and thus, increases its entertainment level.
You think it’s mean? Unfair? Consider this: even though Daughtry lost to a gray-haired old man who insisted on convulsing around the stage he has STILL sold millions of albums. This tells me at least two things: 1) Success or failure on AI has little effect on a good artist. A good artist will succeed regardless. 2) The general voting public has little sensibilities concerning good music.
Does anyone really think that American Idol can produce a great singer? Come on folks, American Idol is meant for entertainment purposes only, not to make good music, let’s make it entertaining. Vote for the worst.
From Windows to Linux - and Back Again
From Windows to Linux – and back again is an interesting article showing, in micro, why Linux isn’t surpassing Microsoft.
Is PBS Still Wanted?
Is PBS wanted? Signs point to “no”.
Basic CSS for People Who Suck at CSS
Just like most things in life, experience is the best teacher. If you want to learn CSS your absolute best bet is to get a website (if you don’t have one already) and just jump right in. The worst thing that can happen is you totally botch your styling. Without error there is no learning. When it comes to HTML and CSS there simply is no substitute for DOING.
Still, sometimes certain principles can be learned which will aid the learning process, and that’s why I’m writing this article. It’s very basic. It’s meant for the almost completely unexperienced. It assumes that you know HTML, however. If you don’t know HTML do a Google search for HTML tutorials and get a handle on that first.
How it used to be
Originally the Internet wasn’t the beautiful place you see today. At first it was just fugly text on a plain background. Then people started adding in some good looking style and totally rad animated gifs. They added the styling directly to their HTML document and it looked a bit like this:
<td valign="top" width="0%">
<img src="grx_vspacer_v01-40.gif" border="0" width="34" height="346"></td>
<td valign="top" width="100%">
<font face="arial, helvetica, verdana" size="2">
<img style="width: 500px; height: 60px;" src="grx_bar_v01-40.gif" border="0">
</font><font face="arial, helvetica, verdana" size="2">Pretty ugly and frankly, very hard to read. Now we do things differently.
How it is today
Today we separate the structural code (HTML) from the stylistic code (CSS) into separate documents. They’re then combined when they are loaded in the users browser. They’re combined by adding a link to the stylesheet within the <head> tags of your html document. The link looks like this:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/path/to/stylesheet.css" />
So now we put our structure together, our “skeleton” if you will, with HTML totally devoid of styling. Then we use our stylesheet to hang the style “skin” on. Consequently, it really does help to think of things this way. HTML is the skeleton, CSS is the skin and Javascript is the muscles. But we’re not getting into Javascript here 
Understanding how CSS relates to HTML
Every HTML document has this basic skeleton:
<html>
<head>
<title></title>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>
So far the only element we can style is the <body> element. But, quite obviously, when we make a website there is more that just the bare skeleton above. The biggest parts of any website are its divisions.
Almost every website has a few similar components: the Header, the Body or Content, a Sidebar and a Footer. So what we do is take everything that will go within the Header and put it in a division like this:
<div id="header">
. . . Header content goes here . . .
</div>And now we can style everything within the header with this CSS:
div#header {
style elements go here
}Since the div had an ID of “header” we then use “div#header” in the CSS; consequently we could also completely leave off the “div” and just write “#header”. If the div had a CLASS of “header” then we would use “.header” in the CSS. This is an important distinction.
Divisions are used, generally, to separate large chunks of content from other large chunks of content. There are exceptions to this rule, however. The <div> tag is not the only HTML tag that can receive a class or an id. You can assign a class or id to <p> tags, <span> tags, <ol> tags and the list goes on and on. Virtually any HTML tag can have assigned to it a specific class or id.
Also, the name of the class or id doesn’t matter so long as you remember what you called it so you can then style it in the CSS.
ID or CLASS? Which one?
I get asked this question a LOT. The answer seems trivial but is very important. Id’s are meant to be used once per page. So basically you could, on the same page, have this following code chunk and be totally fine.
<div id="header"></div>
<div id="sidebar"></div>
<div id="footer"></div>You could not, however, have this:
<div id="header"></div>
<div id="header"></div>That’s illegal. The Markup police will come and arrest you.
If you want to style two elements the same way then you just give them both the same class. Classes can be repeated infinity times per page. So this would be OK:
<li class="sidebar-item"></li>
<li class="sidebar-item"></li>
<li class="sidebar-item"></li>
<li class="sidebar-item"></li>
<li class="sidebar-item"></li>
<li class="sidebar-item"></li>This could then be styled with the following CSS:
li.sidebar-item {
style goes here
}
Don’t use spaces
Spaces don’t translate well from HTML to CSS; or anywhere on the Net for that matter. If you want to name a class “sidebar module” then you should put a hyphen or an underscore instead of a space; making it “sidebar-module”. Trust me, it won’t work any other way.
Basic descendants
In any given HTML page there are going to be some elements that are “nested” inside other elements. Here, let me give you an example:
<ul id="navigation">
<li><a href="http://google.com">google</a></li>
<li><a href="http://yahoo.com">yahoo!</a></li>
<li><a href="http://msn.com">msn</a></li>
<li><a href="http://wordpress.org">wordpress</a></li>
<li><a href="http://openswitch.org">openswitch</a></li>
</ul>Now, there are a few descendants there. We can style the whole unordered list:
ul#navigation {
styling
}We can style the list items within the unordered list:
ul#navigation li {
styling
}Or we can even go so far as to style the links inside the list items inside the unordered list:
ul#navigation li a {
styling
}Note that there is just a space between the descendant elements in the CSS. Understanding how descendants work is IMPERATIVE to mastering CSS. There’s just no way around it. Work extra hard at understanding this.
Conclusion
I hope this helped you understand basic CSS a little more. If this was a little over your head please let me know, I don’t mind editing this article after the fact.
Also, I am really interested to find out if there are any other blogging related technical questions I could answer with a how-to post here.
The Appeal of the MacBook Air
John Gruber shares more of his thoughts on the MacBook Air.
Here
How to Snag a Favicon
Adding a favicon to your site adds an air of professionalism that no serious blogger can afford to skip. For those of you who don’t know what a favicon is, here’s a screenshot: click here. Have you ever wondered how the site owner got that image there? The answer is very simple, and it’s the topic of this tutorial.
Step #1: Get a square image
The image can be virtually anything you want but it’s going to be best if you keep the image simple because favicons are typically only 16 pixels square. Very small. For my favicon I first made an image that was 50×50 pixels. This made it easier for me to get the spacing right (when you upload it to the favicon tool in the next step, the tool will make sure the image is the appropriate size). There is some disagreement on creating a small favicon out of a large image like I did, but for our purposes it’s unimportant. We’ll be happy if we can get at least something up there, right?
Step #2: Run it through a favicon creator
A favicon is a different type of image. New tools for creating favicons are popping up all the time. Just do a quick google search for “favicon creator” and you’ll have dozens of options. The tool I used is by Dynamic Drive.
With any given tool the process is the same. You upload your image and the tool spits out a favicon for you to download. Download the favicon. The download file might be a .zip file or it might just be the .ico favicon itself. Either way, you’ll want to make sure you have an image now that is titled “favicon.ico”. That MUST be its name.
Step #3: Put that image somewhere
If you have your own server then you need to only upload your favicon to your root directory. A lot of people don’t know what their root directory is. A root directory is the “top-level” directory from which all other directories stem. If you need a hint, on many servers the root directory has a name like “public_html” or “html” or “www”. If you’re using WordPress then your root directory is where your wp-admin, wp-content and wp-includes folders are.
If you do not have your own server then you need to find someplace to store the file online. People who do not have access to their own servers would include those who have a Blogger blog. Where this place is located matters little. However, you must remember the exact URL of where that favicon of yours is. It’ll be somewhere such as “http://www.thisIsWhereMyFaviconIs.com/images/favicon.ico”. You’ll need that address.
Step #4: Edit your head
The last step is only necessary if you have hosted your favicon somewhere other than your own server. If you have your own server and have put the favicon.ico in your root directory you should not need to do this step.
To accomplish this step you need to be able edit your HTML files. Specifically, you need to edit your <head>. Somwhere in between your <head> put this line of code:
<head>
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://www.mydomain.com/favicon.ico"/>
</head>The only part you’ll have to change is the URL there. Make sure it’s pointing to where your favicon is.
Troubleshooting
Things sometimes go wrong with favicons, or at least they go differently than makes sense to us. Here are a couple fixes I know of for common problems I run into with regards to favicons.
— If the favicon does not load in the address bar, even after you refresh the page a few times, visit http://www.yourdomain.com/favicon.ico and refresh that page a time or two. Sometimes browsers are reluctant to load a favicon for some odd reason and this helps fix that.
**I’ll add to this troubleshooting section as people come up with new problems **
Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?
Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge? The answer, obviously, is “no”. That’s a pretty stupid idea to assert too. The thrust of the article seems to hinge on the author asking, “Are most Americans less intelligent than me?” I’ve not seen any “anti-intellectualism” anywhere in my experiences.
Things Republicans Like
After living for 11 years in the Bible Belt, arguably one of the most Republican parts of the country, I’ve recognized certain traits amongst Republicans.
- Leviticus — Well, not necessarily the whole book and all its teachings, but just the parts that can justify certain ideologies such as anti-Homosexuality or Capital Punishment.
- Truck Nuts — This site kinda sums it up for me. And just who WOULDN’T want fake testicles hanging from their trailer hitch?
- Christian bumper stickers — Whether a fish or a marketing decal for their local mega church, every good Republican needs a “witty” Christian bumper sticker.
- Mega Churches — Nothing says “I’m a Republican” like being a member of a mega church. But don’t forget to pick up a church bumper sticker for your truck, just so everyone on the road knows what mega church you you attend as well.
- Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter — If you ever want to know what an average Republican thinks about a certain topic, be it the war in Iraq, taxes or the latest school issues, you need only find out what Rush or Ann are saying about it. He is the priest and she is the priestess of Republicanism.
- Jimmy Swaggert — This one isn’t as set in stone as some of the other items in this list, but it’s pretty solid. Preacher, man of the Word, anti-Satan weapon of God, what this guy says goes.
- Capitalism — Republicans swear by Capitalism. It’s virtually biblical, like an 11th commandment.
- AM Radio — Doesn’t matter what station, or what radio personality. Republicans are the reason AM radio even exists today.
- “W the President” stickers — And don’t think for one minute that these will disappear off Republican vehicles after January ’09.
- Hunting — It’s a fact, Republicans love to hunt. We don’t know why, it’s just in their genetic makeup.
- The 700 Club — Do people still watch that show? Yep. Republicans do. They’re the only one’s that do too. The slogan for that show might as well be “By Republicans, for Republicans.”
- Liberal Women — Arnold Schwarzenegger serves as our case in point. Conservative men adore liberal women. Maybe they find their philosophical counterparts exhilarating. And if you’re a Republican man and deny this truth, you’re just in denial.
- Honda Goldwings — A conservative motorcycle for a conservative American. Same goes for Buicks for that matter.
- Capital Punishment — This is a question on the entrance exam to the Republican party: “Are you in favor of Capital Punishment . . . any time it’s even remotely justifiable?”
123 Meme
Shawn tagged me with the 123 meme. Basically, the meme requires me to grab the book closest to me and punch out an excerpt based on a few rules. The rules of this meme are as follows:
1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. No cheating! 2. Find page 123. 3. Find the first 5 sentences. 4. Post the next 3 sentences. 5. Tag 5 people.
So here’s mine:
“The Christian needs to be reminded that there is no loss on earth more deadly than the loss of religious conviction. It is not enough that truth be held in the head. It must be held in the heart and in the soul.” —The Thought Of God
To be transparent, this is the first time I’ve ever even seen this book. It just happened to be the closest book to me at the moment. Also, I don’t read paper books too often. I do most of my reading online and digitally via pdfs.
Stuff White People Like
Stuff White People Like is a site that includes, but is not limited to, Mos Def, Expensive Sandwiches and Worrying About The Poor.
It is a poorly guarded secret that, deep down, white people believe if given money and education that all poor people would be EXACTLY like them.
This quote made my whole freakin’ day. The rest of the list is good too, but this quote did it for me. On a different note, however, I don’t even know who Mos Def is.
Two Thumbs Up for Patriarchy
Molly shares some thoughts on patriarchy and egalitarianism. Great read.
The Christian egalitarian message is not about,
Say “No” To Big Space Rocks
Do we really want an asteroid the size of Texas crashing into our planet? If we elect Obama then we’re just asking for it. Say “no” to big space rocks and “yes” to . . . something . . . not so destructive.
Revitalized WordPress Admin in the Pipe
It looks like we can expect a revitalized (my words) WordPress admin design on March 10th. Awesome.
The Guys in the Hills
“Anyway, I think in the long run the best refuge from Hillary Rosen and Jack Valenti isn’t with Steve Jobs and his beautiful machines (much as we may love them). It’s the guys in the hills making free tanks out of spare parts.” —Doc Searls
My sentiments exactly. And frankly, it’s one of the reasons that I continue to love Linux.
More Thoughts on the ‘08 Presidential Campaign
I’m growing less and less interested in this presidential campaign since Ron Paul announced he was scaling back his energies for ’08. He is the only candidate that fully encapsulates my beliefs, mostly with regards to abortion and small government. Obama sounds good at first because he’s all about the biblical mandate to help the poor but he refuses to acknowledge that biblically the mandate to care for the poor and widows falls squarely on the back of local organizations not the government. It is NOT the role of government to aid the poor, or the underprivileged. It is the role of local organizations which includes, but certainly is not limited to, local churches.
I can get behind a lot of what Obama stands for, but I’m afraid he’s just going to be another big spender.
Huckabee just plain scares me what with his “taking this country for Jesus” jargon. Scares the crap outta me to be honest . . . and I’m a Christian. Sorry sir, but that’s not the job of the president; and while we’re at it how ‘bout you quit courting conservative Christians just to get elected. And I most certainly don’t want to live under a Theocracy. Freak.
Jesus doesn’t ‘endorse’ anybody in this election. In fact, I tend to think that if the Almighty were here He would say something like:
How Americans Spend Their Money
Here’s a very interesting graph showing how Americans spend their money.
The Fever Talking
There is so much I hate about being sick. From the body aches to the head aches to the runny nose, sore throat, fever, chills, and the list goes on. I’m using my last bit of energy just to write this article. OK, that’s not entirely true. But I feel truly horrible.
On the bright side my wife and I will be celebrating five years of marriage on Thursday. Yeah, we got married on Valentine’s day which honestly was pretty cool. We also went on our first date on Valentine’s day so that’s why we got married on that day.
You see how redundant that last paragraph was? That’s the fever talking. And my nose is running away.
