Blog Entries

• EOY

  

  As I am writing this, I am looking at a fabulous view from my hotel room in what some of my friends call my second home of Vancouver, Canada. Part of me needed to get away to here do some end-of-the-year evaluation and some focused thinking about 2011. Then again, I allowed myself to relax a bit during these last days of 2010 (and I watched the Canucks beat the Flyers 6-2 Tuesday night at the home area…)

  But there are some things that occurred during the year that I need to mention before the final ball drop closes the year 2010:

  Fencing

  If you had asked me at the start of the year if I was going to start fencing again, it would have been a firm “NO.” There was no motivation to start again and no one was really asking to do so. And all the focus that I had with fencing went into my work, which paid off big. Irony, the only people who ever asked about me starting up again were my co-workers at CDG.

  Well, after two years, I decided to try fencing again. It has been the only sport that I have some liking to. Not to mention, the least likely to get bored at.

  Another bit of irony is that I restarted with Olde Town Fencing, the club I left almost four years ago. Despite that, the warming response made the comeback easier. Definitely a reminder of why I fence in the first place.

  Despite dealing with various injuries the last month, I am determined to continue my progress and actually compete again after a 2+ year absence.

  Travel

  This year:

  • Savannah, Georgia (IxDA Interaction 10)
  • NYC for opera (The Nose and Lulu) and design (Cooper-Hewitt)
  • Seattle/Canada (Victoria and Vancouver I)
  • For my first time, travel outside the Americas with FOWA/London
  • Of course, Vancouver for end-of-the-year

  For next year:

  • Boulder, Colorado for IxDA Interaction 11 (February 9-12, 2011)
  • NYC for opera with Nixon in China (Adams) and Wozzeck (Berg)

  Project Charles

  Basically, stops and starts. At one point, it was dead in the water. At one point, I almost considered ending the project. However, I caught a break (and some motivation from Tame Impala’s InnerSpeaker album) and did the complete site mockups. Started to work on the HTML templates but delayed due to technical review from the last two conferences I went to. Both made me think about what I was doing and in the end, the decision to make some more substantial changes in my work.

  Restarting work on templates in early 2011 and hopefully finishing the new site by The Wilson Project’s 10^th anniversary in April.

  Work

  High point was three conferences:

  • IxDA Interaction 10 in Savannah, Georgia
  • An Event Apart a few blocks from my office in Washington, DC
  • FOWA in London, UK

  Lots of work, punctuated with four blog entries and some other minor additions to the blog.

  However, lots of reflection on my work process, especially considering many of the changes that affected my position as a UI/Front-end developer.

  But more about that in the next entry in this blog…

  Epilogue

  In the end, I remember about ten years ago that I started what would become a 20-month unemployment period. Now, at the end of 2010, thing have changed so much. A number of things that I first experimented with such as XHTML and building pages without table layouts are now not only accepted; they have become the gold standard.

  Now, with Project Charles heading for the finish line (?) in April 2011, more changes are in the pipeline for the next couple of years. Hopefully, 2011 will be a good one, not only for me, but for my family, friends, and especially my co-workers at CDG.

  Happy New Year 2011 from Vancouver, Canada!

• What I’m Listening To (Veteran’s Day)

  What’s on iTunes today – War Requiem, Op.66 by Benjamin Britten, based on the Latin mass intermixed with poems of Wilfred Owen. Listening to the reissued 1963 Decca recording.

  Further Reading (Wikipedia)

  • War Requiem, Op.66 by Benjamin Britten
  • Wilfred Owen

  Pay close attention to the when/where this work was performed. Needless to say, there were lots of layers of symbolism.

• London and Back

  

  Just re-entered the country, after a week in London for the last FOWA (Future of Web Apps) conference for 2010. Take a while to settle down (not to mention get back to a regular sleep schedule). Spending a week going through all the notes and ideas from the conference. However, all this information will be slowly integrated for the remainder of this year. I was able to get some sightseeing, as well as going to The National Theatre (Hamlet) and a concert (BBC Symphony @ Barbican).

  Now, going home to DC to a stack full of work at CDG.

  Later.

• Namesake

  

  Statue of Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
  Central Hall, Natural History Museum, London, UK

• In London

  

  Currently attending the Future of Web Apps conference here in London, UK. The first time that I have gone outside the Americas in my life. Got off to a bad start by missing the first day due to the Tube strike (thanks for a memorable start, guys…) and mobile phone problems.

  Hopefully, things will get better. Even as a write this, planning to do a few new things and the next two days will still hold some importance with regard to the work that I will be doing for the rest of the year.

  And then, two free days in the city…yes!

  Later.

• Another Blog Entry for CDG’s Book Club

  

  On the train back from NYC last Sunday (8/22), I got a chance to write not only the last blog entry (26.08.2001) but also one for CDG. In this case, it is the third CDG Book Club review. The book was Jeremy Keith’s HTML5 For Web Designers, a brief intro into the hottest topic on the web – HTML5.

  To buy this book – go to A Book Apart

  Interview with the author Jeremy Keith from The Big Web Show (5/7/10) – http://5by5.tv/bigwebshow/2

  BTW – The author will be in Washington, DC for An Event Apart conference on September 17th. Unfortunately, the conference has been sold out for months. However, there are some tickets still available for the one day workshop on Saturday, September 19th for HTML5/CSS3 with Ethan Marcotte.

• HTML5 for Web Designers Book Review

  (Originally published on CDG Interactive/Innate blog)

  It’s back-to-school time, so here’s a pop quiz on today’s new buzz word: HTML5.

  1. What is it?
  2. Should I care?
  3. Should I worry?

  Answers: 1) see below, 2) yes, 3) not yet but soon enough

  So, now that you’ve taken the quiz, may I suggest a textbook? Specifically, HTML5 for Web Designers by Jeremy Keith.

  Now, I’ve known about HTML5 for a while (and some of the preliminary work around it). But when I heard about this book, I was curious how much more information could I gleam from its pages about HTML5. Judging by the title, I thought that it would be just an introductory text for web designers (not necessarily for experienced web developers).

  But, I took a chance. I ordered a copy and waited. And the package arrived.

  And when I first opened the box and held the book, the first thing that popped into my head was “Wow, this is a pamphlet!”

  OK, not a pamphlet but a brief, concise book (under 100 pages).

  However, from the very first page, it was evident that conciseness is the intent of the author. What Jeremy Keith does, with good effect, is to give the reader a brief synposis about HTML5, bypassing W3C language. (Alert: W3C documents are so precise, they could turn a cake recipe into a DVD instruction manual.)

  Of course, he starts off by answering what HTML5 is and is not–not a new version, but a much-needed upgrade for building future web applications. This means it not only adds/removes features, but also adds more semantic meanings attached to the current set of tags (important for Internet devices like mobile phone or screen readers.)

  For the remainder of the book, Keith highlights some important features and gives bits of advice for the newly introduced. The best thing is that he engages the reader enough to encourage further study in HTML5, which is not easy. This book could have easily become just another five pound dictionary. Of course, he remarks that there are others more experienced with this and points to some online resources. (As I am writing this, a number of new HTML5 books have popped up in the stores.)

  In the end, the author does what he planned out to do – give a nice gentle push in the right direction towards HTML5.

  Now, if you don’t mind. I have a list of HTML5 books to read.