Semantic (adj) Of or relating to meaning.
If you've ever felt muzzy while trying to understand the concept of semantic design principles, you must read Semantic Typography: Bridging the XHTML gap by Mark Boulton. This is an absolutly wonderful article that illustrates exactly how to structure a page according to its meaningful elements.

He speaks - we listen. Tantek Celik's post "Pandora's Box (Model) of CSS Hacks And Other Good Intentions" is definitely a must read post for anyone who is developing with CSS these days. Many interesting notes on the background of various hacks - which I found very useful in gaining a broader context of the hack/filter - plus some sage (common sense) advice at the end.
Note: it was also posted at webstandards.org.

Just got back from this movie and was pretty impressed. I really enjoyed it. Even though they cut tons of stuff out of the book the story still came through well enough. I think the opening -scenes of the Quidditch World Cup - was right on awesome. Quite the stadium! It's unfortunate in a way that the characters are growing up as they now have teen moodiness and hormonal angst to deal with. The actors did a well enough job of it but it does tend to get a bit tiresome. Especially when you have a teen at home... ;) The Tri-Wizard Tournament was well done too - particularly the first and third tests. And the tragic end, in my opinion, was bang on. The only disappointment was not enough Snape! There's so much story that the teachers played very minor roles in this show. But overall I'd give it 5 stars!

★★★★★

Ever have one of those weeks? I don't really need to go into it but trust me when I say it sure felt like a week of Mondays. Maybe the full moon had something to do with it, I don't know, but it seemed like everyone was in a state of chaos. It's the kind of week where I got up to leave work this evening at suddenly realized that my neck and jaw was just aching from gritting my teeth. Ugh - as soon as I got home it was a case of crank up the Dokken CDs and just decompress.
So I'm sure glad it's Friday. Doubly so because I'm looking forward to seeing Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire tonight - got the tickets on Wednesday -- I'll have to do a write up when I get home.

Another interesting article caught my eye over at Roger's blog (456 Berea Street) - this one on web professionals and the need to stay on top of current best practices. He says "Web professionals who refuse to update their skills and insist on using outdated methods can no longer be called web professionals." And I couldn't agree more.

If this argument sounds familiar, it certainly is. Back in the heady days of the latter half of the 90's, web professionals were lamenting the flood of newcomers creating tricky nested table layout websites with Front Page (no offense - it's what was used then), while the others were hand coding on Notepad or textedit or some such.

You had then -and still have now- on the one hand a group of individuals who have the desire to gain deep technical knowledge in their craft, and on the other hand a group of individuals who, for whatever reason, do not wish to invest the time in building a better skillset.

In September of 2004 I wrote an article called "licensed to design" discussing an piece by Michael Nuttley that I had just finished reading. My article was basically continuing the exploration he starts on whether our industry should be regulated. I didn't feel that regulation would be the answer, however, I did feel that certification would be beneficial, more so if there were a continuing education requirement to maintain your certification (similar to what project management professionals must do to remain certified). I'm not saying that every web professional needs to be a deep technical expert, but I do believe they should need to be technically proficient in the best practices of our craft. And today, that means aesthetically pleasing css based semantically correct accessible designs.

I turn around in my chair to get ready to pack up and leave the office, and what do I see out my window? Snow. Gently falling, pretty little flakes of snow. Guess it had to happen sooner or later. It won't stay though - it's supposed to rain later on tonight. Hmmm...maybe it's time to put the winter tires on the car. I don't know - I keep trying to hold off on that at least until December. Kinda like those people who keep wearing shorts until their legs turn blue from the cold.

Today is Remembrance Day, and 2005 is the Year of the Veteran. The symbol of this day being the scarlet poppy, I've included a scan of an original watercolor of poppys painted by Aynihayat Kapkin, my mom.

Usually, November 11 is a sombre day marked with heavy grey clouds, sometimes rain, and sometimes snow. Well it's cold enough today with temperatures hovering just above the freezing mark, but the sun shines brilliantly and I could only imagine how it might look shining on a field of white tombstones stretching almost impossibly far, and festooned with the nodding heads of scarlet poppies. It is, in my mind, a haunting image. Men and women have given their lives, and continue to give their lives in the ongoing battle to allow peace and harmony to prevail. It is an enduring and bitter irony.

First Measure Map yesterday, now I just received an "invite" or what they call a WordPress Golden Ticket, to wordpress.com which is WPs online blogging tool. It's really easy to use, perfect for the non-designer blogger, and likely will be good competition for Blogger. They give you eight themes to choose from to customize the look of your blog, you can add non-blog pages, upload photos and images - and all through an easy to use dashboard.
For my WP blog, I started a fencer's journal called the language of steel - I may end up putting all my fencing posts over there.

I just received my invite to test the Measure Map application by Adaptive Path - and, da da da, da daa, I'm lovin' it. It's really good. Easy to use, easy on the eyes. And the data is interesting too. The only small problem I found with it so far is that it doesn't seem to recognize that Daylight Savings Time ended (yet?). Small potatoes - this is a beta product after all.

Comparing Measure Map and FeedBurner
I think the services are more complementary than competitive. Measure Map tracks your blog traffic (eg: browsers used; links followed in and out; countries they are coming from) plus some blog stats such as comments made on your posts, while FeedBurner analyzes your subscribers (number of readers subscribed to your site; what aggregators they are using; posts they are visiting). To be sure, there are areas of overlap but both services combined give you a richer understanding of your visitors and subscribers.

I heard a speaker on the radio (CBC) this morning and like so many others I've heard in the past he responded to the interviewer's thank you with a thanks. I hear this response often, and it grates every time I hear it. It reminds me a bit of the Chip 'n Dale cartoon chipmunks that were so awfully polite...

"Thank you my dear Chip"
"No, thank you my dear Dale!"
etc.

And on and on. So very polite, but in the real world, thanking the thanker sounds awkward and stilted. It leaves the conversation seemingly unfinished. So it is my firm belief that there are only 3 reasonable responses to a Thank You so as not to sound cartoonish, awkward or stilted and to end a conversation with grace:

1. You're welcome.
   The standard reply. You really can't go wrong with this one.


2. My pleasure.
   For those times when you were happy to oblige.


3. Don't mention it.
   For when you're feeling particularly generous or humble.

So there you have it - a small thing but it adds so much grace to your use of the language.

Apple released the 10.4.3 update today - a massive 56MB file through the software updater(97 MB for the standalone version) which purports to fix a gazillion things and the kitchen sink! The install was uneventful but I found the restart to be reallllly slow. Patience is a must on the first reboot. Everything seemed to work fine, except apple mail suddenly stopped processing the rules i had set up. Yikes!! I get so much email on a daily basis that this is a critical problem. I figured it was the add-ons to mail that was causing the issue and uninstalled mail act-on and mail tags (just remove the bundles from your home>library>mail>bundles directory), and as i suspected the rules began working again.
Another notable: Running a repair permissions after updating results in a huge list of repairs.