b.cognosco
Where leaping to conclusions is my primary form of forward motion.
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Robert Plant Apparently Did License Cadillac
Can We Please Just Do The Obvious?
"If there's a bustle in your hedgerow ...
An Inconvenient Truth
Breakthroughs Happen in a Social Context
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Blueprint CSS Framework
My friend Matt Mower recently pointed me to the Blueprint CSS Framework, a very nifty set of modular CSS stylesheets and accompanying sample files that help a neophyte web builder create nice looking sites with multi-column layouts while still using CSS.I can't point you to my results yet, but I can say that it's helped me immensely and allowed me to actually structure a multi-column web page without the use of tables.
About once a year I foolishly take on the task of designing a new website. As you can see from the HTML on this very page (assuming you're looking at my web page and not the RSS feed) this effort has never actually resulted in a new design for b.cognosco. But never mind that.
What normally happens is that I spend days and days with high blood pressure, evolving a blue-streak vocabulary, throwing temper tantrums, and being cruel to small animals while I try to get HTML to do what I want with my limited understanding of the all too cryptic CSS.
Once I have good and well failed at that I try to hire someone to help me. I am a cheap bastard and have no interest in going out to *real* designers who will charge me $3,000 - $10,000 for a website that is basically for some hobby interest of mine or some freebie for a friend. But I am also a contrarian - so I do not wish to click over to TypePad or Wordpress and grab up a template that is in use by a few hundred other people. I like to do a lot of stuff that simple templates don't cover.
So I do various mockups of the page in something I can understand (like Adobe InDesign) until I have something I am happy with, create a PDF, and send it to some HTML slice-and-dice service or con one of the many web people I know into doing a little work for me on the side.
Sometimes this last approach works out ok except that no one creates CSS stylesheets I can really understand. So even if the site looks good I have to spend days of frustration trying to understand the nesting and tagging and inheritance and hacks and browser-specific workarounds that everyone uses.
But Blueprint has made it a lot easier, and more understandable, to use CSS by providing a discrete grid for layout and a well-documented set of stylesheets that explain what things do. I'm told the grid is even quite useful for experienced web designers to speed their basic development. I'll put some links to the new site(s) here when they're ready. In the meantime, try out Blueprint. It's nice.
Robert Plant Apparently Did License Cadillac
This is old news by now and my source is not impeccable, but I asked the question a few days ago, "Who sold the rights for commercial use of Led Zeppelin's music to Cadillac?"Apparently, Robert Plant and Led Zeppelin did. Scroll down this Led Zep tribute site and you'll see news photos of Plant at Cadillac's 100th Anniversary celebration.
I'm shocked. Shocked, I say.
Guess all that money from the '70s ran out. But it says something interesting that they still control their music, unlike the Beatles and lots of other musicians. Good for them.
Terry Frazier at 10:37 AM
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Monday, October 29, 2007
Can We Please Just Do The Obvious?
For anyone who's managed to miss the news for the past 6 months, the southeast US is in a 100-year drought. As we are wont to do in such cases, we have ignored this for the past several years until now all our lakes and reservoirs are nearly empty. Suddenly, we have a crisis.Imagine that.
So what do our vaunted civil servants do in this precarious situation? They implement outdoor watering bans. They argue with other states. They complain to the Army Corps of Engineers. They shutdown car washes and landscape companies. They go on TV and tell us how dreadful it is, and how sorry they are that people must lose jobs, and that they just can't help this awful, awful situation.
All the while they completely ignore the blindingly obvious, brain-dead simple, straightforward, and guaranteed 100% foolproof solution to the problem. Any 3rd-grader could suggest this.
Raise the price of water!!!
Oh, I know we can't raise the price. After all, it's completely unfair to the poor.
Bullshit.
The average person can live comfortably on 1,000 gallons/month. They don't even need to be particularly conservative to do that. We could probably survive well on 750, but let's say 1,000 to be compassionate. So for a family of four you need 4,000 gallons.
Let's be really, really compassionate for the poor. Set the price for the first 5,000 gallons at $10. Set the price for the next 1,000 at $10. That's $20 for up to 6,000 gallons - enough to serve a family of 7.
Set the price for the next 1,000 at $20. The next 1,000 at $30 and so on. At 10,000 gallons you're paying $150. By the time you get to 15,000 gallons (a typical amount of water used in one month watering a yard) the cost is now $550. Nobody gets a pass. Everybody pays.
You think people won't stop using excess water once they get a $550 bill? I sure will. If they won't (or don't), raise the incremental price to $20 per thousand. I don't know anyone who would spend $1,100/mo on water. If you have that kind of money more power to you - there aren't going to be enough of you to significantly raise total usage and we can all get on with our lives without these self-serving, jackass politicians grandstanding on TV with all their new emergency regulations.
Car wash owners would have to run out and change their coin-ops from $2 to $10. Or $20. That will hurt business, but people who want to spend $10 or $20 can still wash their car now and then. And maybe the owners will figure out they need to recycle. Ditto for industrial users and the power company. Office building managers will have to figure out how to actually operate their sprinkler systems, or turn them off. And landscapers will have to stop guaranteeing their plants. But we'll get over it.
It's absurd to try and reduce the use of limited resources in every way imaginable except the one way that is best designed for managing limited resources - economics.
But this is the government. I wish I could be surprised.
Terry Frazier at 11:12 PM
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"If there's a bustle in your hedgerow ...
Don't be alarmed now.It's just a spring clean for the May Queen."
Just what the hell does that mean? I've wondered for more than 30 years.
But my real questions is, if Zep really still owns the rights to their music who sold Cadillac the rights to use it in their commercials?
From Rock Gods to Ringtones
Posted by Alan Wexelblat
As you've no doubt seen by now, the remaining members of Led Zeppelin have finally agreed to release their complete collection on iTunes, along with a special purchase item that bundles all 141 tunes. Verizon Wireless will also be offering Zep ringtones.
The band has famously refused most prior commercial uses of their music, with one amusing exception: Jack Black begged them for the rights to use "Immigrant Song".
Terry Frazier at 10:19 AM
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An Inconvenient Truth
If a truth is ugly and inconvenient, is it still a truth?If a truth is offensive to you or might hurt someone's feelings is it still a truth?
If you just don't like a truth, does pretending it's false make it untrue?
Friday, June 8, 2007
Breakthroughs Happen in a Social Context
Tuesday night I rode my bike down to Fayetteville, just south of Atlanta, to attend Lisa Haneberg's "2 Weeks 2 a Breakthrough" talk And talk about your breakthrough ideas - Lisa is riding her motorcycle across the country to promote her new book. I feel safe in saying this is the first time a business book has been promoted in such a way. And I'm certain it's the first time ever by a woman. Pretty cool.
So what did I think about the talk? Lisa’s premise for this talk (and the book) is that little things matter. She relates in terms of chaos theory and the Butterfly Effect – which is a little new-agey – but the analogies are for inspiration more than analysis. The main idea is that continual forward progress, even in tiny increments – builds velocity, and forward velocity leads to breakthroughs. To illustrate Lisa uses the consulting mainstay – the 2x2 matrix:
I think many of us spend our lives either in “Dreamer” or “Stuck” modes. Those with adult ADD tend to be in the “Victim” quadrant – confusing motion with progress and paddling furiously but getting nowhere. But where we all want to be is in the “Peak Performer” quadrant.
Lisa offered two points that stood out for me:
- Breakthroughs happen in a social context – If you aren’t out actively promoting your goal or idea – discussing it regularly with friends, colleagues, and strangers and sharing your challenges, achievements, and objectives – you aren’t going to make any breakthroughs.
- Introverts, no matter how smart, rarely make breakthroughs – Breakthroughs do not happen in front of your face. They happen in the connections and gaps and networks that emerge from constant forward action and focus. [Editor's note: Following a comment from Lisa the above bullet point should read 'Introverts, no matter how smart, rarely make breakthroughs until they breakout of introverted behavior patterns...']
I am a natural introvert. I’m more comfortable sitting alone in my office than I am in a crowd. Over the years I’ve worked hard at developing my extrovert capacity and done a lot of public speaking and presentations. But at my core I’m always more comfortable alone. That makes it easy for me to slip into the Stuck or Dreamer states.
And that’s a dangerous thing. It’s like exercise, or eating habits, or any other behavior you want to modify. What’s required is constant forward progress – even in small steps. If you stop – even for a little bit – getting started again is difficult. The inertia that builds is deadly. This is really the underlying principle behind all behavior modification, from Alcoholics Anonymous to Weight Watchers.
And so it is with Lisa’s program – simple, proven principles packaged in an easy-to-read program and supplemented with specific plans to help you move forward. More important, Lisa is building her own network and cult following. She asked each attendee to contact her by the end of the week and let her know how it was going, and if she could help, she would. Her goal for this tour is to help as many people reach a breakthrough as possible. Lisa has quite a few cities still to visit as she heads back west. Check her travel itinerary and go see her if you get the chance.
Terry Frazier at 11:04 AM
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