So, I’ve trimmed up a few loose ends in the redesign. As stated on Monday, my XHTML now validates as well as the CSS file I’m using. One subtle improvement in my CSS is that I’m using a single CSS file for the entire site. A friend suggested that my menu with JavaScript rollovers could be implemented using some CSS. He went so far as to make a working mockup using only CSS. It’s pretty fine and surprising true to the original. Take a look at Faust’s menu. It’s a fine implementation.

My only complaint is that there are variations in the way it renders in different browsers/platforms. I guess that’s the whole thing with CSS at this stage in the game. He also suggested a workaround for IE5/Mac.

I agree with the tenants of web standards and semantic markup, but I’m leary of CSS. CSS experts spend a lot of time figuring out and discussing work arounds for various browsers. This is a sad state of affairs. Every browser has it’s own quirks. 90% or more of the visitors to this website use Internet Explorer 6.0, which many claim is buggy in its CSS support. There are definitely many advantages to using CSS on a sitewide level — ability to switch designs, reduced bandwidth, and so on. But I don’t see the point in making workarounds for every browser under the sun. I have a friend who still uses Netscape 3.0 on her Mac. I think this current design which still uses a table tag displays better for her than my previous CSS-only design. But I’m surely not going to work on a CSS workaround to target that aged browser. I’ve got better things to do with my time. Besides, I think she’s finally going to upgrade … to Netscape 4.0!

Work continues tonight on the redesign. It’s tweaking time, folks. Of interest to web designers, the entire site now validates as XHTML 1.0 Transitional and valid CSS. I’ve also been gradually shifting more of the coding over to CSS. I’m still using a table for the body of the pages, but am working on a CSS version. I may have to read Eric Meyer on CSS to get it done though. Any suggestions from my readers would be appreciated. The other main change was the rotating image on the front page is selected via a PHP script from Hivelogic rather than with JavaScript.

Thanks to those who have already emailed with congratulations and comments. Faust did a rather bang up job rendering my rollover menu in CSS, which I may implement but haven’t yet due to variations across browsers/platforms. I’ll post his CSS tomorrow.

I’m pleased to announce that DanielStout.com has a new look. Feel free to look around the site and see how this new design has taken shape. The entire process — from design conception to implementation — took three evenings of work, and went much faster than redesigns in previous years thanks to Dreamweaver and Movable Type templates.

A special note to the people who read this blog via the RSS feed: Please stop in and check out the new design. You’re in for a treat. Click the link.

From Edupage (Oct 24, 2003), an electronic publication of Educause.

STUDENT ENDS LEGAL CHALLENGE TO RIAA
A Boston College student has given up her legal challenge to the Recording Industry Association of America’s (RIAA) subpoena to learn her identity in connection with alleged copyright violations. The student, whose identity has not been made public, had called the subpoena powers of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) unconstitutional and was fighting to keep her identity from the RIAA. In the face of growing legal costs and concerns that the RIAA would learn her identity through some other channel, the student withdrew her motion to quash the subpoena and has reached a monetary settlement with the RIAA, according to David E. Plotkin, the student’s attorney. In addition, the U.S. Justice Department recently voiced support of the subpoena provision, possibly adding to the student’s unease. Under the settlement, the student admits no wrongdoing but will pay the RIAA “in the range” of $2,500, said Plotkin. An attorney from the American Civil Liberties Union said the settlement does not change the group’s position that subpoena provisions of the DMCA are unconstitutional.
Chronicle of Higher Education, 23 October 2003

Since she admits no wrongdoing, settling the case is the right thing to do. Her legal bills are undoubtedly more than $2,500 at this point. If everyone who was served a subpoena had fought it, then they might have had a chance of changing the RIAA’s strategy. But as a lone voice, the student didn’t stand much chance against the unlimited legal resources of the RIAA.

Apple released an updated version of iTunes for Windows. The new version number is 4.1.1. That’s a quick response from Apple, given that iTunes/Win was released only last Thursday. Apparently some people running Windows 2000 were having compatibility problems.

As for me, I’ve made iTunes my default media player. Microsoft did away with play counts in Windows Media Player 9, and I’m glad to have them back. Apple also adds date/time last played for each song. I bought my first album off of iTunes Music Store the other day, and it worked well. The download was fast, and I burned the songs to CD without a hitch. So far so good. I don’t really see using the iTunes Music Store much given the steep prices for what you get. Instead of spending $10 on an album of files of marginal quality, I’d rather pay the $13 for the CD, which gives me the album packaging plus an original CD that I can rip at higher quality.

Via email come a couple of links discussing the evolving role of blogging and “participatory journalism” within the larger world of the media. First, is NYU’s Jay Rosen asking the question “What’s radical about the weblog form in journalism?” Here’s the link.

The other link is to “We Media: How audiences are shaping the future of news and journalism” written by Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis of Hypergene. Here’s the link.

For people in Iowa City, the university libraries is having a book sale today and tomorrow. It runs today from 10:30 to 3:30 with shorter hours tomorrow (noon - 3:30). Hardcovers are $1 or $2, scholarly paperbacks are $1, and mass market paperbacks are 50 cents. Tomorrow, it’s $5 for a bag of books. Take what you will. The sale is on the second floor of the Main Library. Go in the north entrance and follow the signs.

On Thursday night, I downloaded Apple’s iTunes software, which is now available for Windows. I had been hoping to write an extended review of the software, but I think now I’ll hold off until the software is updated. If you read the support forums, some people are having problems with iTunes crashing their systems, and others can’t get into the Music Store. What I found was that iTunes was not playing well with Norton Internet Security 2004. I punched a hole in my firewall for iTunes but the Music Store wouldn’t load. I found that if I turned off Internet Security completely (not just the firewall), loaded the front page of the music store, and then turned Internet Security back on, it worked fine.

At any rate, iTunes did import the 47 GB of music on my hard drive, and it appears to be a first rate media player. It’s just damn odd and yet thrilling to see Apple software running on my WinXP box. I’ve got a longer history with Apple than most — I’ve been using Apples since 1980 (it was an Apple II+) but I bought my last Mac in 1997. I went to a demonstration of the PowerMac G5 on Wednedsay. Very very nice piece of machinery. I spec’ed a system out with LCD and speakers, and even with educational discount it came to over $3,300. No wonder PowerBooks are overtaking the PowerMacs as the default Macintosh system.

Well, as promised, the RIAA is launching its second wave of lawsuits against individuals. This time around they are giving the individuals involved prior notice before legal action is taken. Looks like 204 people are on the docket this time. There’s a NYTimes article published today here.

Spammers can’t seem to decide what languages I know. For months now I have been receiving Chinese language spam from Taiwan with the occasional spam in Korean thrown in for good measure. I suppose I could run it through the babelfish to find out what they’re trying to sell me. But really, it’s spam. I just delete the fuckers.

Lately though, the spammers seem to think Russian might be more my taste. My curiosity has been piqued. What possibly could they be trying to sell me? Here’s the text of one Russian spam I received today that I ran through babelfish:

Company “[text removed]” proposes to the organizations - the import of any loads on the conditions DDP with the complete customs cleaning/purifying and the optimization of the payments: the selection of load on the factory- producer at any point of peace/world, freight to the storage in Europe, consolidation from Germany every week, customs cleaning/purifying, the delivery/procurement of load on Russia. If the activity of our company interested you, we would be grateful for obtaining of demand and prepared to begin work with your specialists. bodies. (095) 95x-xxxx faks. (095) 95x-xxxx It is brought its apologies, if this information did not interest you or delivered inconveniences. Your address was undertaken from the open sources

Hey, are they offering import services to Russia? Now that might just come in handy! I’ve got 1,000 gross of pirated DVD’s of the movie Swept Away with Madonna that I’ve been trying to dump. The Russian market would be perfect. What was that phone number again, lads?

The folks over at NaNoWriMo.org have an interesting idea: get a lot of people to each write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. Hey, it’s National Novel Writing Month! [via BoingBoing]

My emusic.com subscription ended on September 30th, and it looks like it was the right time to get out. eMusic has been bought out by Dimensional Associates, and the changes are immediate. They’ve made some “tweaks” to their privacy policy [before and after] and even more disturbing, they’re junking the unlimited download plan. So instead of paying your $10-$15 a month for unlimited downloads, you’ll only get 40-65 songs for your money. Here’s a link. eMusic was the best deal out there for music. Plus the downloads were in MP3 format so you could burn them to CD or whatever else you wanted. But it was too good to be true, apparently.

A news brief from mediabistro.com’s Daily News Feed:

Heavy viewers of the Fox News Channel are nearly four times as likely to hold demonstrably untrue positions about the war in Iraq as media consumers who rely on National Public Radio or the Public Broadcasting System, according to a study released last week.

Link to article.

Johnny Cash is on the stereo tonight. On my recent visit to my alma mater, Faust burned a couple discs of Johnny Cash for me. One disc is Johnny Cash himself and the other disc are covers of Cash’s songs by other bands. Some of the material is old and just now was Johnny Cash playing a Nine Inch Nails song. The tune sounded familiar, but it took me a moment to place it. I don’t necessarily associate Johnny Cash with Trent Reznor. I think that song must of been off of Cash’s late-in-his-career recordings for American Records. Perhaps Faust knows the provenance of that one.

The weekend warmed up here and turned out to be fairly nice. Iowa beat Michigan on Saturday, and the home crowd was very happy. I didn’t go downtown Saturday night, but I’m sure it was a madhouse. Things get especially crazy around here when Iowa plays Wisconsin, because so many people drive down from Madison for the game. Football is one of my least favorite sports, but I’ve gotten to the point where I can at least cheer on the home town team. It was a sell-out crowd; 70,000 people in the stadium.

I’ve been rearranging some of the furniture in my house, and I think I’m nearly done. I just needed a change, you know? Things seemed kind of static around here, and I wanted a new way of looking at things. I know some people who take furtniture arranging as an art and are constantly rearranging things for the better or worse. I’ve definitely done more rearranging this year than last, mostly because this year I’ve added a few pieces. It’s almost getting to the point where I’ll need to bring in the patio furniture and put it in the garage, but it’s supposed to get up to 80 degrees. I’m hoping to have a last fling of the year out there this week.

Yesterday, I made the two and a half hour trip to my alma mater. There was one objective on my mind: to meet up with an old friend. At 5:30, sure enough as I was sipping a Boulevard, which only costs $2.00 for a pint in that neck of the woods, in walked Faust and his lovely wife, who I had not met before. We had dinner there at T-Bock’s. Other old friends and acquaintances were hanging about. In walked Juchems, who seems to get around these days. I got an email last week from a friend in Wash DC who saw him out there. And apparently now he was in Decorah. Even more fortuitously was the appearance of Kent, my former academic advisor and still fascinating philosophy professor. He maybe had a little more gray in his beard, but he looked exactly as I remembered him. Faust, wife, Kent, another friend, and I ventured out to Spring Grove to see the play that Mr. Storlie was directing up there. A good time was had by all.

It funny how it is with old friends. I hadn’t seen Faust since our New Orleans road trip a few years back — which we both fondly remember — but we fell into a comfortable dialogue as if no time had passed at all. That is how it has been with the old friends I’ve hooked up with again this past year — they’re much as I remember — a little older, but very much the same people that they always were. My reawakening with old friends began with my trip to California this summer and seems to be continuing. Who next I wonder? I visited J. on the Mississippi last weekend and she sent cookies. (Very Good! Thanks, J.)

We are the company that we keep.