Blog

Paul Jarvis (of twothirty fame) and I have been discussing an idea over the last few days, centered around this concept: many designers (especially those who, like us, believe in and evangelize web standards for our projects, and care about building user-friendly interfaces) bemoan the absence of a CMS that meets the following requirements:

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I was reminded today of the kind of nonsense that made my mother search out alternatives to the public school system here in the U.S.. My younger brother, Alex, was educated at home for the entire equivalent of the K-12 public system, while I only had to endure one year in “Pre-1st”, an experimental grade (at that time) intended for kindergarten-aged students who were more advanced than the standard program was intended for. The rest of my standard education was managed by my dear mum, and chatting with her today she mentioned one of the typical run-ins she had with a school official during my “Pre-1st” days.
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I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not always using the best software for monitoring stats for web sites (and by stats I mean anything from hits to referrers to user patterns, and everything in between and on each side), including personal projects such as this site, and commercial projects for clients. I’ve tried built-in log-analysis offerings from various hosts (e.g. Webalizer), as well as free scripts such as Shaun Inman’s ShortStat and Dean Allen’s Refer (usually combinations of more than one such application and/or script), some of which provide useful information, but I’m not entirely convinced that I’ve found the correct collection of tools to evaluate and monitor (and allow clients to do likewise) web site statistics.
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There are times when living in the tropical paradise/hurricane target range that is South Florida can be quite nice, and today I’m basking in one of those times.

I’m writing this as I sit on the front porch, in very comfortable 86 degree not-too-humid weather. A soft breeze is blowing through the trees, and I have just enough shade to keep the sun out of my eyes and easily view my LCD screen. This is the perfect distraction-free environment for writing, which is my task this afternoon.
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This is just one of the trees brought down by Frances over the weekend. It took down a power line as well, thus our entire block is without power (still) and will likely remain that way for the next few days (I’m currently posting from Starbucks, which is kindly offering free wireless access for the time being).

I’ll have some more photos soon, but I was able to take a few small videos during the first feeder bands of the storm, so if you are on a high speed connection, go ahead and give them a whirl:

• Hurricane Frances: Wind (3.6MB)
• Hurricane Frances: Clouds (3.7MB)

We’re thankful no one was injured, and other than the trees we suffered no property damage either. We count ourselves lucky, however Hurricane Ivan lurks on the horizon, so our shutters will remain in place for the time being…