Author Archives: Paul

CS 601 – Fragment Linking

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Just a short post today. While reading through chapter 3 of the Felke-Morris book, I actually learned something new. While most of the chapter covered basic anchor items, it turns out that the name attribute for fragment linking has been deprecated. Instead the mechanism is to use <div id="foo"> (or any (block only?) element) and the reference it using <a href="#foo"> (as before). This is interesting considering the fact that name is still being used in the BU WordPress 3.1 installation. I’ll have to keep this in mind when writing new pages.

First Real CS 601 Post – Felke-Morris Chapter 1 Focus on Web Design

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First Real Post

The first blog assignment for class is to look at one of the sites referenced in the first chapter of Felke-Morris’ Basics of Web Design: HTML5 and CSS3 (LINK) and answer some questions about it. I decided to use the Creative Commons website. As an serious amateur photographer with (I’d link to think) above average knowledge of copyright issues, the idea of having a series of licenses that allows for sharing media without full release into the public domain. It also allows for more control than something like the GNU public license. (If you’re interested in this, I would suggest reading Siva Vaidhyanathan’s Copyrights & Copywrongs, though it may getting outdated as it was published in 2001.)

Anyway, to the topic at hand (web design). I’ll go through the questions as presented in the book:

  1. What is the purpose of the site? The main purpose of the site is to educate people about the concept of Creative Commons and the organization. (They also provide a mechanism to search for content.)
  2. Who is the intended audience? Basically everybody, but the focus in on media producers & users. However, this includes several groups such as artists, in one form or another, educators, scientists, and governments.
  3. Do you think that the site reaches its intended audience? Yes. The front page has links basic information presented prominently. It also has direct links on the main page to subpages for specific groups.
  4. Is the site useful to you? Yes. I actually have licensed my photos use CC license, and the site has provided detailed information on the different type of licenses. It also has a good description of the overall purpose of CC and why it’s important.
  5. List one interesting fact or issue that this site addresses. That both Al Jezeera and Nine Inch Nails have issued material under a CC license. This is actually important in that it shows it’s not just amateurs that are using CC licenses. Instead, real media creators are doing so as well.
  6. Would you encourage others to visit this site? Definitely. Issues of media ownership and use are very important to the future of information exchange.
  7. How could this site be improved? Personally, I find the very large summit "e;ad"e; distracting and takes away from the content. (On my smallish laptop screen, it cause the real information to be pushed off the bottom.)

Our New Grad

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As many of your know, Kyle graduated from pre-school yesterday. The school hosted a very cute ceremony. The class sang a bunch of songs, each led by 2-3 students, along with a few other things. Kyle got to lead the class in counting to 10 in German. He did an excellent job. They also called each child up and handed them each a diploma. Afterward, we had nice dinner at the Westfield Diner where Kyle got to have chocolate chip pancakes.

Patriots’ Day Turkey?

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I know I’m way behind in getting photos up. I’m working on going through a bunch, including those from my Aunt Lucy’s wedding a few weeks back. I hope to do some catching up this week. In the meantime, I had to share our special “Patriots’ Day” turkey. This was in the yard at my apartment in Boston. (Well … it started in the front and then moved around to the neighbor’s back yard.)

Snowed Under

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Cars drifted in snow

If you’ve seen the news in the past 24 hours or so, you have undoubtedly heard about the blizzard on the East Coast. It started snowing late yesterday morning, but really started to pick up by mid-afternoon. It was very windy and snowing at a couple of inches per hour for most of the night. It turns out that we’re in the band that got the highest snowfall, 20-30 inches. This is about right as I used a yardstick (a ruler wasn’t enough) to measure a few spots. Where it wasn’t drifted I was getting 2 feet.

Snow drifted against the front storm door

Some of the drifts, including the one along the street, were up to 30+ inches. We even had a good 8-10 inches drifted against the front door. I ended up having to go out the door on the side porch (which had 1-2 inches of snow despite being under cover) and slogging around to the garage to get out the snow shovels. Luckily, while the snow had drifted to 2 1/2 feet against the garage door, most of it had been blown away from a couple of feet in front of the door. After spending a couple of hours shoveling, we managed to clear the driveway from Suzanne’s car to the street and the front walk. My car is still buried, but it’s supposed to warm up by the end of the week, so hopefully at least some will melt.

Suzanne shoveling

The back deck - 19 inches on the table

Path on the back deck