Year: 2003

Something is indeed coming, and coming soon; unfortunately, good news often comes at a price, and the price in my case has been limited time to do anything other than work, eat and sleep (and little of the last two), which includes managing SuperfluousBanter.

Posting has been rather infrequent of late (as noted by readers like Adam Polselli), and it’s due to a few projects which have been taking up quite a bit of my time over the last few weeks (most of them warrant the time spent…).

I will be writing more in the week(s) to come (expect limited posting until some of these projects have been completed) but here’s a quick run-down of what to expect:

• A CSS Project to be included in the second edition of Cascading Style Sheets: Separating Content from Presentation, currently being revised by its original authors, and soon to be published by Apress;
• Webgraph will be launching a new site for the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians (all XHTML and CSS of course, with some extra accessibility thrown in for kicks);
• Hopefully an announcement of some new projects which are in the closing stages of discussions with clients.

Everything is quite exciting at the moment, which is a nice change of pace. I’m also working on ideas for a few articles that I will attempt to have published (ALA, Digital Web, etc.) — I’ll publish them here if I have to (ahh, the joys of independent publishing).

Changes continue to be made to SuperfluousBanter, some noticeable, others hidden behind the scenes — I’ll write up a list of changes and any interesting tidbits once some of these other projects are underway. One you will see soon is a transition from JavaScript to CSS for the style switcher rollovers in the sidebar, as well as further use of the FIR technique (or its recently discovered alternatives throughout the site (for more on FIR, read Dave Shea’s new article for Digital Web Magazine, In Defense of Fahrner Image Replacement).

Finally, in addition to The Old Technology Giveaway, I’ll be posting another little contest early next week (possibly over the weekend) with some more useful prizes, and a little less-esoteric theme.

While sorting through some old piles of paperwork, SyQuest cartridges, and floppies, I came across a curious item: An original AOL 2.5 for Macintosh Installer Disk, still shrink-wrapped!

So I started wondering “what other mint-condition examples of useless technology are hidden in the collections of techies like me?” Since I can’t very well go rummaging through your houses, under your desks, etc., the only way for me to know is for you, my cherished reader, to submit links to photos of your ancient technological curios in the comments of this post.

“What’s in it for me?” you ask? Well, I thought of that too, so as incentive, I’m offering up another piece of computing history to the individual whose submission tickles my fancy the most (this is, of course, purely subjective, but it’s my giveaway, so deal with it) — the top two “winners” (term used loosely) will receive (shipping paid by me, and the first place submission gets first choice of the prizes) either an original Quadra 950 Motherboard w/68040 Processor! (pics: one, two) or a shrink-wrapped 3M 590MB Rewritable Optical Disk! (pics: one, two). Hey, we are talking old technology here…

This “contest” will run for an almost indefinite amount of time, but no later than November 30th (so you can get your prize in time for X-mas — if you celebrate another, earlier holiday, good for you, but the November 30th deadline will stay put).

Also, if you link to this contest (“The Old Technology Giveaway”) from your site, it will certainly make for a much more interesting experiment (and I’ll get lots of traffic too… ;-) — feel free to use my mini-banner in your sidebar.

Happy digging!

UPDATE: To paraphrase the walrus, the time has come — the contest is now closed to new entries, and judging is underway (sounds serious, don’t it?). The winners will be posted within days…