blog (January, 2003)
Rochester Web Design Meetup
Tonight I met four local web designers for the Rochester, NY Web Design Meetup.
My first Meetup, (through meetup.com,) had me a touch anxious of what to expect, but it was worthwhile and enjoyable. The relatively thin turnout was just fine for good discussion of web development and technologies on multiple levels: business, hobbyist, and straightup geektalk.
I found interesting the perspectives of people involved in the web but somewhat outside the blog universe. Wrapping my geekself up with involvement in this realm, I've taken it for granted -- as if it is what's going on with the web right now.
But isn't it?
I made some friendly and intelligent acquaintances/contacts and picked up a few good leads to local area user groups: the Rochester Flash User Group, and the Greater Rochester Macromedia User Group, where Chris (from tonight's meetup) will be presenting a talk Tuesday night, Dreamweaver MX and Practical CSS: How to Separate Content from Presentation.
Friend of a Friend
A brave, almost presumptuous world stood before me. I kicked it square and sent it flying, face-first in the dust.
This weekend was a blast. Friday night in Buffalo with my cousin, Mark, and Saturday the Alexander Street Fest back here in Rochester. Old friends were by my sideways and new encounters set me spinning. Good to climb out of some of the stagnant water I've been wading in for the last few weeks. Opposite of way-nonplussed.
Before the eatdrinkdance festivities began, I sent my computer ninjas to work Thursday night on catching me up in social software trendiness. I've avoided the whole Friendster bit, (and am determined to continue so,) but the Friend of a Friend (FOAF) project interests me and merits mention. From their page:
The Friend of a Friend (FOAF) project is about creating a Web of machine-readable homepages describing people, the links between them and the things they create and do.
My ninjas speak RDF, so they suited up and hacked out my FOAF file. A helpful resource was Getting Started With FOAF, along with the current FOAF spec. And if your ninjas aren't so skill'd, FOAF-a-Matic will sort of automate the process.
FOAF Explorer turns the RDF into a nice viewable format, (example: mine.) And foafnaut starts heaping FOAF's meat and potatoes onto the plate, graphically mapping relationships between people.
My ninjas haven't yet begun listing folks I know in my FOAF file. I gave them the weekend off so they could have a beer and meet some people.
the memphis blues again
Dylan was stuck in Mobile; I am in Rochester. I've described my present state to some as stagnant. I've been back at home now since Christmas Eve; the plan was to stick around for a couple weeks to recharge before heading to Spain to work on organic farms for awhile. I just began looking for a flight, though, so my stay here has stretched a bit longer than expected.
The site redesign has taken quite a lot of my time. I'm pleased with some of the results, but overall, nothing too spectacular. I've made the move from tables to CSS, got sendmail working for a comments page, and have that current media sidebar that is just soooo ultra hip for bloggers these days. A few other things to iron out, like images overflowing within div's...
Just when I finished altering my import script that transforms my Explorer Favorites file into a links page, Apple had to come out with a hot new browser called Safari (that has already hooked me) and change the bookmarks format around completely. But it is XML instead of HTML, which is a step in the right direction for the world, even though it sets me back a little.
Please give me a shout if anything looks weird to you.