Matt made an interesting post about changing your USER_AGENT strings to include a nickname so you can leave behind a virtual calling card when you visit sites. Very cool.

There seems to be only two things that anyone’s interested when it comes to the Academy Awards; who won, and what are they wearing?

And I think the only reason the fashion aspect is a part of it now is because awards shows themselves are so crap-ass boring.

I’ve been noticing the emergence of what I hope isn’t the start of a new trend in the blogging world. People removing commenting from their sites. Alison, Ernie, and Derek have all removed the feature from their weblogs. They all have their reasons, and I’m not about to second guess them, or say that they were wrong to do it, but it’s certainly not a trend I would like to see propagate throughout the community. There are a lot of sites I would love to see add this functionality. I don’t like the idea of people removing it.

A nice couple of articles at ALA this week. One dealing with tweaking Dreamweaver for better XHTML compliance. The second, dealing with Web Accessibility, touches on what toolmakers like Macromedia, Adobe, and Microsoft are doing to make the designer/developer’s job easier.

Which brings me to yesterday.

I’d decided to go to the Web Accessibility Seminar offered by Macromedia [pic]. I spent more time getting there than I did at the actual seminar. Delay after delay, from bridge traffic, to my train being delayed a half hour, prevented me from getting to the seminar on time. Once there, not much went on. I arrived and got seated slightly after 2:00pm. It was a fairly sparse gathering. A couple of people in my row were napping.

By 2:25pm the demonstration laptop, running Windows XP, crashed while trying to load GW Micro’s Window-Eyes. We took a 10 minute break while it was rebooted. Upon returning we delved back into some more accessibility in Flash MX. We were maybe 10 minutes into it when, again, the laptop crashed while trying to load Window-Eyes. It was at this point that the seminar’s moderator decided to call off the rest of the seminar to do a little Q&A, and raffle off the schwag. I won a Macromedia Training from the Source book. Instead of keeping it, I gave it to a grateful young girl in my row who had been openly hoping to win it. ’Cause ya know, I’m all about the little people.

All in all, the seminar was a bit of a waste. Nothing too exciting to report. Flash MX seems to have some nice improvements. Wish there was more to report.

“If you find yourself struggling with loneliness, you’re not alone. And yet you are alone. So very alone.”

“It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.”

They have just the kind of reminders I needed.

I’m having a difficult time in controlling the typical male response of rating the rack of lovely images. I keep telling myself, “It’s just a portal. It’s just a portal.” But damn if kitty’s portals aren’t a 10+

Red Towels.

Blood.Red.Towels

“We’re not getting red fucking bathroom towels”, she said.

“Why not?”, I asked.

“Because it’s ridiculous. Nobody has red towels.”

“Well someone must. They make them don’t they?” I was pressing the issue now.

“I don’t care. It’s fucking stupid, and I don’t want red towels in my bathroom.”

“What about for me? Get one set of red fucking towels and I’ll use ’em. They don’t have to be the bathroom towels. They’ll just be for me.” At this point I was just being stupid and indignant.

“We’re.not.getting.red.fucking.towels.”

The rest of the day was a disaster. The dialogue exchange devolved into a series of “Fine”, and “Do what you want”.

It wasn’t about the red towels. The red towels were a catalyst that brought to the surface all the stress we both felt regarding our wedding plans. The way that we handled the red towel issue was a symptom of everything that was wrong with the relationship. A series of arguments over trivialities led to what was basically the end of the relationship one Christmas eve.

Christmas day I opened a present from my mother.

A set of red towels.

I had mentioned the red towel issue to her some months earlier.

My ex-fiancé never saw the red towels. I’ve always believed that to be a good thing. I can’t imagine the blowout we’d have had over that.

In my bathroom hangs a set of red towels.

Blood.Red.Towels

I use them every day.

audio version

britneyunderground looks at some good old-fashioned NY-style vandalism, while trying to approach it from the perspective of public commentary on Britney’s oversexed popstar image.

While the comments in the forum can be an interesting read, I recommend avoiding that area unless you’re prepared for lots of cookies, pop-up ads, and some spy-ware installs. I found the images to be more than enough. It’s quite a collection.

Currently making the rounds is the Ultimate Flash Face. If you haven’t seen it, and you have some time to play, I recommend it for the fun factor. Remember, you can save your faces in the database.

I found the page in the previous link (in case you were wondering) by looking for these reenactments of masterpiece paintings using people. There’s a video overview and a couple of pictures once you make your way inside. The site uses frames (needlessly so, in my opinion), otherwise I’d have linked a bit deeper than the front page. It seems like a very interesting festival though.

I’ve always found this sort of thing oddly fascinating, and would love to check it out sometime. I tend to think it would be more interesting in a smaller street type of setting than in a larger venue, but without seeing it, I don’t want to downplay it. I’m sure I’d still be blown away.

Anybody been to this, or seen something similar?